The Man with the Golden Typewriter (6 page)

15th May, 1953

My Dear Ian,

The new book held this reader like a limpet-mine & the denouement was shattering. I have had palpitations & “tensions” from the moment I began the story & they show no sign of diminishing now that I've finished it.

If I'm any judge, this is
just the stuff
 – sexy, violent, ingenious – most ingenious – & full of well-collected detail of all kinds. The Harlem nightclub – the scene of the fight among the fish-tanks – & the excellent stuff about St Petersburg, Fla. – these are among the things I enjoyed best. Obviously you'll have to go through the typescript with your fine-tooth-comb for superficial grooming, e.g. I think you oughtn't to use a word like “feral” or an expression like “sensual mouth” more than
once
in a book of this length.

What I particularly like is the Bond's-eye-view of America. It is very rare nowadays to get any kind of book with fresh observation of the ordinary or extraordinary details of American life by an English eye. The whole thing is done with great dash & one believes in it most
of the time as one believes in a highly disturbing dream. I shall now put in a glowing report on it, & I hope there won't be too much Wet Blanketry in other quarters. It is now high time you got busy on the
next
book. . .

Live and Let Die
seems to me just the title for this one – better than
Paravane Lost
, for instance.

There will be a heavy mortality among your “oldster” readers, from sheer agitation – I speak as an oldster myself, with one foot in the boneyard. Meanwhile I take off my hat to the Supersonic Buchan.

Wm.

FROM JONATHAN CAPE

24th July, 1953

Dear Ian,

The matter of the agreement for THE UNDERTAKER'S WIND
⁵
seems to have been hung up. However, here is an agreement which I think you will find satisfactory. The riders which are typed in and attached will need to be initialled by you, also the deleted clauses. So will you besprinkle this with your initials, or get whoever signs on behalf of Glidrose to do so, sign the agreement and return to me. I will then send you a duplicate carrying my signature, and also duly initialled.

Publishing for you has its particularly interesting side. This agreement, and the one for CASINO ROYALE, will serve as historical exhibits when in a hundred years' time the Editor produces a new edition of Mumby's history of PUBLISHING AND BOOKSELLING.

Conning over your proposed agreement with The Macmillan Company [in the USA], I was interested to see the very modest scale of royalties which you are evidently prepared to accept from your American
publishers. Perhaps it is not so easy to be tough at three thousand miles distance, and working through an agent.

To which Fleming gave a tart response on 29 July: ‘Yes, the royalties I accepted from Macmillans were very modest but then they have given me a present of $750 which is rather more, I guess, than I shall recoup on the English edition. If it is a success in America you will be surprised how tough I shall be over “Live and Let Die”!'

TO D. J. CROWTHER, ESQ., Messrs. Spink & Son Ltd., 5–7 King Street, St. James's, S.W.1.

29th July, 1953

I am very sorry to trouble you again with my light-hearted affairs but I am afraid the names of the coins you chose for me will, after all, not fit in. The dates are wrong, due to a slip of my own.

Would you be very kind and choose me four more with the following characteristics: romantic or exciting names; gold, worth to the collector between £10 and £20; and minted between about 1550 and 1650. There should definitely be one minted around 1650.

In fact I could really use the ones you gave me if you will add to the number a suitable coin minted around 1650.

Please forgive me for bothering you like this. Your reward will be a thriller containing everything except the kitchen sink.

TO GEORGE H. HAWKES, ESQ., “Truth” and “Sportsman” Ltd., Keystone House, Red Lion Court, Fleet Street, E.C.4.

Hawkes was the London representative of an Australian magazine publisher. Australia had recently hosted an atom-bomb test which, along with the toxic aftermath of the Korean War, may have led Fleming to suggest his books were an antidote to ‘the future of the world'. No less pertinent was his mention of America's racial tensions.

22nd March, 1954

Thank you very much for your letter of the 19th, and I am delighted that you like the book. From all accounts it is just what people want in order to keep their minds off the future of the world!

The American rights have sold handsomely, which is rather remarkable as they generally fight very shy of anything touching the colour problem, however remotely, and they don't generally like to accept “Americanese” used by English writers.

I should think it's just the stuff for your full-blooded readers and because of my eight years' relationship with your Group, I have told Cape's to refuse all other enquiries from Australia until your people have made up their minds.

By the way, the “Star” wished to make it their “Thriller of the Month” but stipulated that we should put on a paper binder to that effect, which Cape's were not willing to do now that the book is already out for review and appearing Monday week.

TO VARIOUS, undated, 1954

A sample of the many letters that Fleming wrote to drum up publicity for the American edition of
Live and Let Die.

TO MR. MALCOLM MUIR,
⁶
Newsweek, 152 West 42nd Street, New York 36, N.Y.

Here is the second volume of my autobiography and I hope that you and Mrs. Muir will enjoy it.

If you feel it wouldn't scarify the readers of NEWSWEEK I would be vastly grateful if it could find its way to your Literary Editor for mention if a dull week comes along.

I am sorry to keep missing you when I come through New York, but I hope I will catch up with both of you again this year.

TO MRS. FLEUR GARDINER COWLES,
⁷
Cowles Syndicate, 488 Madison Avenue, New York 22, N.Y.

Here is the second volume of my collected works and you were so sweet about giving CASINO ROYALE a fine send off in LOOK that I wonder if you would continue to make my fame and fortune by passing LIVE AND LET DIE with your blessing, to the Literary Editor.

If not, I should be proud to have the book go into that very handsome waste paper basket of yours.

TO RT. HON. SIR WINSTON CHURCHILL, K.G., Chartwell, Westerham, Kent

Winston Churchill ranked high in the pantheon of Fleming's personal heroes. Not only had he led Britain to victory in the Second World War but he had been a close friend of Fleming's father, Valentine. The two men had served in the same regiment and when Val died in the trenches in 1917 Churchill wrote his obituary for
The Times
.

1st April, 1954

Since I have had the presumption to steal from “Thoughts and Adventures” your dramatic tribute to the Secret Service, which my publishers have printed on the jacket of my book, I am now also presuming to send you a copy.

It is an unashamed thriller and its only merit is that it makes no demands on the mind of the reader.

I hope you will accept it and forgive my theft of a hundred words of your wonderful prose.

With my kindest regards and best wishes,

On the jacket flap of
Live and Let Die
Fleming included the following quote from Churchill's
Thoughts and Adventures
: ‘In the higher ranges of Secret Service work the actual facts in many cases were in every respect equal to the most fantastic inventions of romance and melodrama. Tangle within tangle, plot and counter-plot, ruse and treachery, cross and double-cross, true agent, false agent, double agent, gold and steel, the bomb, the dagger and the firing party, were interwoven in many a texture so intricate as to be incredible and yet true. The Chief and the High Officers of the Secret Service revelled in these subterranean labyrinths, and pursued their task with cold and silent passion.
'

TO DR. ALAN BARNSLEY, 374 Loose Road, Maidstone, Kent

A doctor from Maidstone complained that Cape had sent him a copy of
Live and Let Die.
‘Foolishly, I opened it and started to read: I immediately found myself deep under water carrying a limpet mine. [. . .] There was no alternative but to go back to the beginning.' He hadn't been able to put it down, had been late for his surgery, and now had recurring images of a limpet mine kissing a hull. It was quite extraordinary because, ‘I am such an inveterate
non-
reader before breakfast that I do not even take a daily newspaper.' Why had Cape sent him such an irritating book? Anyway, who was this so-called Ian Fleming? Was it a pen name? Or could he be related to a distinctly unbookish Fleming he had known at medical school?

21st April, 1954

I was driving myself up from Dover yesterday morning and it took me more than half an hour to get through Maidstone. Unworthily I cursed the town little realising what a beneficent influence was at work there. Only an hour later I got to London to find your letter.

It really is extremely kind of you to have written so charmingly and I only wish the book had been sent to you by me. But it must have been
some rival physician trying to sabotage your practice as I am no relation of any medical Fleming – not even of Sir Alexander.

If after finishing LIVE AND LET DIE you would still like to know more about the author and are prepared to lay out 10/6d for a copy of CASINO ROYALE, my previous book, you will find a potted biography of the author and an extremely moderate pencil drawing.

I flash through the town in a 2½ litre, black Riley, every Friday evening ten minutes either side of 7 p.m. and back again every Monday morning either side of 11 a.m. and if I ever hit anything in the process I shall come straight along to Loose Road to be mended.

Again with very many warm thanks for your really charming letter.

TO DAVID CAPE, 30, Bedford Square, W.C.1.

23rd June, 1954

Dear David,

Many thanks for your letter of June 21st and I must say that if you made a loss on CASINO ROYALE and are now making a loss on LIVE AND LET DIE I shudder to think what you must be suffering from some of the other books on your list.

I always understood that on a 10/6d novel the get-out figure was around three thousand copies and since you have sold about eight thousand of both my books you should be what is generally known as “comfortably situate”.

But perhaps the secret lies in your mention of overheads which presumably include the salaries and expenses of the directors and staff of Cape's. But then it is very misleading to compare your net profit with my gross profit. I also have overheads and could show a comfortable net loss on both these books.

However, since in theory we are both agreed that the book would benefit by the advertising campaign you suggested and since your firm is clearly on the verge of bankruptcy, I will agree to go fifty-fifty and let us proceed forthwith on the lines of your proposed campaign.

If we are to do the book any good we should press on with this immediately and before everyone has left on their holidays.

But I do recommend on behalf of all Cape authors that you now abandon the “all prices are net” line at the end of your copy which is quite meaningless and not used by any other publishers. The space thus saved may even turn your losses into profits.

This is rather like the man who went to the Gillette Company saying that he had the secret of how to increase their profits gigantically. He refused to divulge his secret until a substantial payment had been made and he then said “put five blades into each packet instead of six”.

The only difference is that I give you this brilliant idea for nothing.

TO A. J. JOSEY, ESQ
.,
Evening Despatch, Corporation Street, Birmingham 4

Keen as always to encourage publicity, Fleming was delighted by the approach a Birmingham newspaper took to its serialisation of
Live and Let Die.

25th August, 1954

I have just got back from America and I must hasten to thank you and congratulate you on the really fine show you gave to LIVE AND LET DIE.

Apart from the pleasure you gave me I do think that the whole treatment of the serial was quite brilliant. The competition was an excellent one but above all the editing and cutting, analysis of the characters and “The Story so Far” pieces were most expertly done by somebody who really knows what he was doing.

As an editor you really squeezed the utmost value out of the serial instead of, as did other papers who ran it, just slapping it on to the page with a “take it or leave it” attitude to your readers.

Your treatment was real salesmanship and I should be surprised if you don't find it easy to get the authors you want if you accord them this sort of handling.

I would be most interested to hear how the serial went and what sort of response you got to your competition, so please drop me a line if you have a moment.

My next book is with Cape's but will not be appearing until April. I think it will make a good serial although the “Saturday Evening Post” have turned it down on the grounds that “it is too dramatic”.

For LIVE AND LET DIE Cape's sold the Group rights to the Provincial Press and I suppose it would be a question of getting your London office to have a look at it if you are interested.

Anyway many thanks and congratulations for your treatment of the last one and if you would like a letter from me on the results of your competition or any other promotion idea of this sort, please let me know and I will be delighted to help.

TO MRS. H. M. POLLEY, 3 Royal Crescent, Brighton

Hilda Polley, pointed out that
Live and Let Die
was the title of the last comedy written by her husband Syd. ‘It was a very ingenious title,' she wrote, ‘and I remember Frank Cellier saying he'd like to play in it if only for the title.' How, she wondered, had Fleming come by it? Further, Mr Polley had nearly finished a novel when he died, and although Sir Osbert Sitwell had suggested an ending Mrs Polley felt he would be too busy to finish the book himself. Might Cape (or, by inference, Fleming) be interested in the manuscript? She enclosed an SAE for reply.