GOLDFINGER by Ian Fleming

Finished We 7/3/13
My post on Good Reads-

  What a difference does fifty years make! I found GOLDFINGER to be nothing more than a novel of great cultural curiosity with a rather mundane storyline that faultlessly embodied the social and political correctness of an era that is most thankfully behind us.

    If you have been awake at any time during the last few decades it's nearly impossible to consider James Bond as anything more than a very dated potboiler fantasy/action adventure hero. And, more to the point his entire character deftly provides a benchmark as to how far we have come in terms of social consciousness in the last half century. Author Ian Fleming seems impervious to the slightest compassion or understanding of anyone other than rich, white males of American or British extraction, and his overheated and frenzied conclusions come ludicrously close to bombastic White Supremacist rants. Also, his depiction of women, gays, and lesbians is completely beyond the pale, and his ridiculous assertion that women's suffrage and sexual equality caused "feminine qualities to die out or be transferred to males" is nothing short of astounding.  And, to further embarrass himself, Fleming offers this observation;  "Pansies of both sexes were everywhere, not completely homosexual, but confused not knowing who they were. He (Bond) was sorry for them, but he had no time for them".    And next the various races of planet earth come under Fleming's scrutiny. The novel's Korean arch villain, Oddjob, is a blatantly flat racial stereotype that rivals anything posited by anything found in Mein Kampf or the American Ku Klux Klan of the 1920's.  Fleming's cracked observations should never have been confused with knowledge, although racist and homophobic views were much more accepted in the fifties and sixties, and loony cultural observations aside, his prime objective seems to be to present the unmitigated rush of a story. And, even here he is deficient as I think most readers would agree that John le Carre and Len Deighton provided fictional accounts that were much more accurate depictions of Cold War reality, and offered much more dramatic intensity.

However,  the character of James Bond will forever be emblematic of a kind of 'last gasp' of Old World cultural viewpoints. The fact that John F. Kennedy publically acknowledged Ian Fleming as his favorite writer probably gave this mundane English author much more credibility than he actually deserved, but I guess JFK was kind of a quaint caricature of 'the way we were' as well.

NOTES-

Dated potboiler fantasy

Do not mistake information for knowledge, and who above all wrote for the sheer rush of the story. John Le Carre and Len Deighton are probably more accurate depiction of Cold War reality.

Auric Goldfinger

OPERATION GRAND SLAM-Now mind, the idea of robbing Fort Knox is brilliant, and Fleming could have made it work. But here, in my opinion, it did not.

Stereotypical depiction of Women and Oddjob is here as one of the more fascinating flat, racial stereotypes. Homosexulaity!!!!







JFK, while President of the U.S., declared Ian Fleming his favorite author

Shirley Bassey