The Man with the Golden Typewriter (39 page)

I am hoping to see you – or should I say watch you – at the gathering at Bedford Square on Wednesday. In the meantime let me wish you as I always do, an enormous sale for this book.

TO MRS. FLORENCE TAYLOR, Ford's Book Stores Ltd., 9 & 11 Market Hall Buildings, Chesterfield

Mrs Taylor wrote icily to say that she ‘did not care for your new book', that it was ‘a great disappointment', and ‘I do hope that this is not a new trend in your style of writing.'

18th April, 1962

Dear Mrs. Taylor,

It was really very kind of you to have taken the trouble to write to me and I was touched by your affection for James Bond.

The point is that if one is writing about a serial character one's public comes to want more or less the same book over and over again, and it was really to stretch my writing muscles that I tried to write like a twenty-three year old girl and put forward a view of James Bond at the other end of the gun barrel so to speak.

But this is a unique experiment and I have just completed the next Bond book, I think the longest yet, in which he appears from the first page to the last.

Again with many thanks for the kindly thought behind your letter.

The brickbats continued. ‘What a let down', wrote a Canadian reader. From H. S. Baker of New Bond Street – ‘in the sacred name of ‘Casino Royale' and ‘From Russia with Love', you hadn't oughta have done it.' From one David Ferney – ‘Now look here Fleming, this catering to fifth form eroticism must stop. Do you hear?[. . .] It's inadequate Fleming, and you know it.' From an attorney in Chicago – ‘This particular book does not belong in a library any more than a package of garbage does.'

Fleming was dismayed by these and other criticisms. As he wrote, ‘The experiment seems to have failed and I am suffering from multiple contusions as a result of the onslaught of my critics.'

TO MICHAEL HOWARD

19th April, 1962

‘
The Spy Who Loved Me'

I am becoming increasingly depressed with the reception of this book although I don't think the TLS was as harsh as you gave me to think. But obviously reviewers and, as you know, some of the book trade are upset by two factors. Firstly that James Bond makes a very late entry into the book and, secondly, though this I think weighs less heavily, with the alleged salacity of certain passages.

It is the second of these criticisms to which I am perhaps overly sensitive.

Both I and all of you have treated the whole of the James Bond saga with a light heart and so, with one or two exceptions, have the reviewers, most of whom for the first nine books have been very kind. But in the reviews of The Spy I detect a note of genuine disapproval. This surprises me because of the genesis of this particular book which should perhaps now be explained to you.

I had become increasingly surprised to find that my thrillers, which were designed for an adult audience, were being read in the schools, and that young people were making a hero out of James Bond when to my mind, and as I have often said in interviews, I do not regard James Bond as a heroic figure but only as an efficient professional in his job.

So it crossed my mind to write a cautionary tale about Bond to put the record straight in the minds particularly of younger readers.

It was impossible to do this in my usual narrative style and I therefore invented the fiction of a heroine through whom I could examine Bond from the other end of the gun barrel so to speak.

To make this heroine a credible figure and one who would be likely to come into Bond's path, I had to explain her at considerable length and endeavour to make her worldly wise.

This I did by telling the story in her own words of her upbringing and love life which consisted of two incidents, both of which were of a strongly cautionary nature.

The trouble she then got into with the gangsters was of the normal American thriller variety.

Its verisimilitude and the language used were incidentally checked by a member of the University Library of Yale at his own request.

And, just to remove some further ‘heroism' from Bond, he is depicted as making a considerable hash of his subsequent fight with the gangsters.

After the love scene with the heroine which Bond breaks off in the most cursory fashion, there follows the long homily from the chief detective warning the heroine and the readers that Bond himself is in fact no better than the gangsters. And on that note the book closes.

I haven't bothered to explain my reasons for writing this book before and I only do so now because the experiment has obviously gone very much awry, and I am in general being criticised for doing almost the exact opposite of what I intended.

This being so, and though we may get more understanding reviews later, I would like this book of mine to have as short a life as possible, and the subject of this letter is to ask you to co-operate.

In particular I would like there to be no reprints after your present edition is exhausted, and I would ask that it not be offered to Pan Books through whom, presumably, it would reach a more junior audience than your hard cover edition.

This will mean considerable financial sacrifice by both of us and I must just ask you to accept your share of this loss in as friendly a spirit as you can muster.

Please don't bother to reply immediately and perhaps we can talk the whole thing over when I see you after Easter, but I wanted to get this letter away to relieve some of the burden that is in my mind as a result of the book's reception.

 

14

The Liebert Letters

In May 1961 Fleming received a letter from Herman W. Liebert
,
¹
librarian at Yale University and a scholar on the works of Samuel Johnson. Having read Thunderball, Liebert was appalled by the language Fleming made his American characters use. Half the things they said simply made no sense in the US. He enclosed a long list of replacements for words like ‘sponge bag', ‘damnably', ‘gammy', ‘arse-end' and ‘chap'. He was particularly acerbic on the use of ‘by gum'. As he pointed out, ‘I don't think an American has said this since the recent death of A. Lincoln.' And what on earth was a ‘sixpenny sick'?

Despite being hospitalised by a heart attack, Fleming was delighted. Nothing spurred him more than a challenge to Bond's authenticity. He replied with enthusiasm, and was intrigued to discover that Liebert was not only a book collector but owned a house in Jamaica and had been a member of the OSS, the CIA's forerunner. To have a fan of such erudition was one thing, but to find he was also a bibliophile, ex-spy and lover of the Caribbean was irresistible. Fleming wasted no time enrolling him as unofficial fact-checker and editor for his latest book The Spy Who Loved Me. They conducted a warm and witty exchange during its publication, for which Fleming paid Liebert with a Cartier pen set that had to be smuggled into the States by a friend to avoid customs charges.

The archive correspondence ends in 1962 but it would be good to think that their friendship continued, and that they eventually met,
whether in New York or Jamaica. As Fleming said, ‘I have no doubt that fate will bring us together when the stars are right'. To which Liebert replied philosophically, ‘favete astrae' – ‘Let the stars decide'.

FROM LIEBERT

May 10th, 1961

Dear Mr. Fleming,

I am an insatiable Bondomane (what sensible man is not?) and found Thunderball one of the very best. But it was very nearly spoiled for me by the supposed Americanese of Leiter and Pederson.

A list of alternate readings is enclosed. A few are optional, most are not; that is, there are one or two an American might use, but most he would never use.

The Bond books are so very good that it hurts to find them at fault in any particular. Won't you get an American friend with an ear to vet the American dialect from now on? Then they would be perfect.

TO MR. HERMAN LIEBERT, Yale University Library, New Haven, Connecticut, U.S.A.

29th May, 1961

Dear Mr. Liebert,

Thank you for your absolutely splendid and invaluable letter of May 10th, but I only plead semi-guilty.

I particularly asked Vikings to clean up this story to spot anglicanisms and I can only suggest that through publishing Graham Greene and me they are beginning to forget their own language.

Mark you, I have set two or three books in and around America and this is the first time I have had such a dressing down, so I am taking the matter very seriously and passing your letter on to Vikings as they have
a manuscript in the oven at the moment in which I suspect a great deal of the American gangster talk is very ham.

I shall accordingly suggest to Vikings, if I may, that they approach you with a view, for some miserly fee, to go over the Ms with your blazing eye. We will see what happens.

On the other hand I am not prepared to accept without further witnesses more than around 20% of your suggestions for the very good reason that Felix Leiter has been affected by his international work for CIA, and has picked up a good deal of English in the process. An example is “sixpenny sick”, a very English expression for the kind of boat ride holiday makers take from the sea shore holiday beaches.

Anyway I am indeed grateful for your harsh letter and it was very kind indeed of you to have taken the trouble.

FROM LIEBERT

June 5th, 1961

Dear Mr. Fleming:

I am most grateful for your full, frank, and generous letter, and much concerned that mine gave you the impression of being harsh. Its emotional source was sorrow rather than anger – the sorrow of seeing what seemed a flaw in an author otherwise so sure and so stimulating that he evokes the wish for perfection. Language wouldn't matter in the host of bad books with which we are all surrounded; it matters desperately to me in books like yours to which I am devoted.

I would be delighted to comb any MS of yours and to offer a list of suggestions that you or Viking could accept or reject. For such a privilege I would not dream of accepting a fee, even the miserly kind publishers usually offer. And of course, if I were offered such a chance, it would shut me up.

I demur at the view Leiter has picked up more than one or two Anglicisms; of the 20 or 30 people I know in CIA (my wartime colleagues in
OSS) I don't think one has picked up any, except rarely in humorous quotes. But you are Leiter's parent, so I demur.

Delighted to hear there's a book in the oven; I would love a chance to baste it while it's cooking.

[PS] Good Lord, I have just done my homework and looked in
Who's Who
to be sure I shouldn't hang a couple of honors (sorry, honours) after your name, and suddenly realize it is you who publish the
Book Collector
.
I suppose I have read the masthead fifty times without waking up. Now I am more than ever at your feet. Incidentally, Jake Carter and John Hayward are both good friends.

I also see you go to Oracabessa. I have a place in Runaway Bay. We must drink together sometime on that blessed isle. You must have known Peter Murray Hill: he and Phyl stayed at my place before he died.

TO LIEBERT

15th June, 1961

Dear Mr. Liebert,

Thank you very much for your letter of June 5th and I am most amused by the number of “bonds” we seem to have.

These, and your apparent enthusiasm, have decided me to take you at your word and ask you to go through the American parts of my next book with a microscope and a very sharp red pencil. I had already passed on your previous letter and notes to Vikings, but I am not sure that they will do anything about it and I would rather take the bull by the horns myself.

I am accordingly sending you by registered airmail a copy of ‘THE SPY WHO LOVED ME' which, as you will see, is very different from the usual Bond but has considerable American angles which I am most anxious to have stringently vetted by an expert.

What I would pray you to do is to pay particular attention to the gangsterese – improving, re-writing, and even editing snatches of conversation wherever you think fit.

Any additions or amendments to the motel theme would also be invaluable as would any necessary brushing up of the local police procedure and nomenclature at the end of the book.

This is an uncorrected first typescript and you can assume that obvious mistakes have been picked up here. What I want badly to stiffen up are the points I mentioned above and if you decide to re-write whole pages or tear out chunks, I shall not be in the least dismayed – very much the opposite.

For instance, at the moment I feel the gangsters are three-quarters cardboard, and if you choose to change their names, clothes, or anything else about them I shall not object, for at the present moment they look to me rather like Mutt and Jeff.

This is going to be hard work, and I am afraid it must also be fast, as my publishers here are screaming for the corrected typescript at the latest by July 15th which means that I must have your amended and corrected typescript back by July 10th. Please don't bother about “suggestions”, just write in your comments on the typescript.

So, as you see, I am taking your kind offer very seriously indeed and I am embarrassed to suggest what fee to offer you for this invaluable work. But if you can successfully bring about this vital piece of collaboration I propose to present you with a handsome present from Cartiers as a memento.

I am coming out to New York by the Queen Elizabeth sailing on July 20th and shall be about two weeks in the States, when perhaps we might meet and I could make the presentation!

I hope you will quickly get over the shock of this letter, and it would be most helpful if, on receipt of the typescript, you could send me a brief L.T. cable saying yes or no to the project.

I would also be most grateful if you could keep this whole affair a secret between us, though if the weight of your scholarship is as important as I think it may be, I will take the liberty of dedicating the book to you.