James Bond — that magnificent battler of Communism and preserver of the old order — remains a blessed salve to conservatives, an antidote to the anti-Western fulminations of so many lauded writers of the modern era. . . Ian Fleming’s spy fiction was pulp. Bond is pulp. . . (B)eneath all of the “Sex, Snobbery and Sadism” of a book (or a movie) like Goldfinger lies more honest humanity, morality, and existential truth than has been mustered up by most of the “nuanced” and “complex” novelists of our time over their entire award-winningly wretched careers.
(Edits made to omit references to Kingsley Amis, which is much of what Part 6 is about, and to put together a more coherent summary of the entire series rather than just the final installment. I don't think I altered the meaning. Sue me if I did.)
Treat yourself to the whole thing here.
Inspired by the installment about John Barry's music for the Bond franchise, I downloaded from iTunes the themes from Goldfinger, Thunderball, and You Only Live Twice. The other evening, while driving Emily and her friends to whatever destination I had to drive them to, I dialed up the themes on my iPod and cranked it up. An eye roll from Emily but one of her friends said, "Hey, that's James Bond. My Dad likes him. Cool."
Cool, indeed.
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Very cool Pete. I very much like Casino Royale and some of the older Sean Connery Bond flicks.
ReplyDeleteI downloaded from iTunes the themes from Goldfinger, Thunderball, and You Only Live Twice.
My dad loved Goldfinger because he had been stationed at Ft. Knox. He loved Thunderball because of all the diving and went out and bought the soundtrack LP for the great cover art link.
The linked series has discusses the set design of Fort Knox and how outrageous it is. He would've agreed that no one in their right mind would design a place for the safe keeping of gold bars as un-utilitarian as that in the movie. Though it looks awesome!
ReplyDeleteAnd speaking of awesome, that Thunderball soundtrack LP cover is really awesome. The owner of the dive shop where I took my scuba lessons in Miami worked on Thunderball - Mike something or other, a Greek or Hungarian sounding name - and had in its display case the prop mouth scuba rig thingie Bond uses to breathe with while escaping the Largo's shark pool.