Charon's Boat

Learning a bit more about the bad guy

One of the most famous images from the James Bond movies shows a beautiful woman covered in gold paint. She had been murdered by Auric Goldfinger's manservant Odd Job. Goldfinger does this because Bond discovered a gambling scam Goldfinger was operating and in the process, seduced Goldfinger's assistant/girlfriend.

However, when I read the book, there's more to it. I'll let the woman's sister, Tilly Masterson, explain:

"He has a woman once a month. Jill told me when she took the job. He hypnotizes them. Then he - he paints them gold."

"Christ, Why?"

"I don't know. Jilly told me he's mad about gold. I suppose he sort of think he's - that he's sort of possessing gold. You know - marrying it. He gets some Korean servant to paint them. [...] Afterwards, they're washed down by the Korean with resin or something. Goldfinger gives them a thousand dollars and sends them away."

In the movie, Bond is knocked out and wakes up to discover the Jill Masterson's body. The book goes a bit differently, but knowing now what Goldfinger is into, I'm going to always wonder what happened between Goldfinger and Jill after Bond was knocked out.

Mr. Bond

I've mentioned my affection for Raymond Chandler and many other pulp writers from the 30's and 40's before, but in many ways, I'd resigned myself to the fact that the thrill of new and interesting, to me anyway, was in the past.

But I was going through some boxes of books, and I discovered the writer who, along with Mickey Spillane, picked up the torch during the 50's.

The weird thing is that he's been under my nose almost my whole life, and it bugs me that I've just now discovered his stories. One day, I'll learn this lesson and apply it: if I get the sense of something good, I should go to the source. Other people's interpretations are not the real thing.

Meet Mr. James Bond, created by Ian Fleming:

So this great red full stop marked the end of the Spangled Mob and the end of their fabulous traffic in diamonds. But not the end of the diamonds that were baking at the heart of the fire. They would survive and move off again across the world, discoloured, perhaps, but indestructible, as permanent as death.

And Bond suddenly remembered the eyes of the corpse which had once had a Blood Group F. They had been wrong. Death is forever. But so are diamonds.

Bond dropped down off the truck and started walking slowly towards the leaping fire. He smiled grimly to himself All this business about death and diamonds was too solemn. For Bond it was just the end of another adventure. Another adventure for which a wry phrase of Tiffany Case might be the epitaph. He could see the passionate, ironical mouth saying the words:

"It reads better than it lives."

From the final pages of Diamonds are Forever.

It has all the elements of great pulp: clear writing, fast-moving plots, new worlds in what seem to be ordinary places, but most important of all, a hero. James Bond is one of the good guys. He enjoys good food, alcohol, cigarettes, gambling, and sex. He's also honest, just, and courageous.

This manifests itself in the legal authority he's been given: Mr. Bond has a license to kill. In the hands of a thug or the Bond who appears in the movies, this would be a dangerous, troubling thing, but Ian Fleming's James Bond is not a common thug. He views his license to kill this way:

So here came the last of them, the last of the gang, and yet the first. The man he'd taken a look at in Hatton Garden. The first of the Spangled Mob, the gang that had rated so high in Washington. The only one, except the harmless, rather likeable Shady Tree, Bond had not yet had to kill -- or, he thought of the Pink Garter Saloon and the two men from Detroit, almost kill. Not that he had wanted to kill these people. The job M had given him had only been to find out about them. But, one by one, they had tried to kill him and his friends. Violence had been their first resort, not their last. Violence and cruelty were their only weapons.

Again, from Diamonds are Forever.

The movie James Bond is not the same thing, not even close. I can't recommend the books enough.