Scaramanga
AlphaOmegaSin
EnglandPosts: 10,924MI6 Agent
Reading through Man with the Golden Gun , I cant help but feel that Scaramanga is more of a Henchman then a proper Villain. He doesn't seem anywhere near as interesting as Blofeld, Dr No or Mr Big.
1.On Her Majesties Secret Service 2.The Living Daylights 3.license To Kill 4.The Spy Who Loved Me 5.Goldfinger
Comments
I think the book is one of Fleming's best although few agree with me! The action on the train and gunfight at the end are great. Perhaps it's my soft spot for Fleming writing stories based in the islands!!
It's true, Scaramanga isn't a mastermind or pure villain in the vein of the others mentioned, but that's not really how he is portrayed, either. He's constantly referring to his bosses, and to Hendrik's bosses, so there are superiors above him. In many ways he might be considered the evil equivalent to Bond.
Twitter: @FlemingsBond
Bond and anti-Bond
After the relative hard-work of YOLT, and the downbeat ending of OHMSS - Bond marries, becomes a widower, almost instantly has middle-age convention thrust upon him - the simple thriller that is THWTGG is perfect. No emotion - no acidie, ennui - just James Bond.
Indeed, the mano-a-mano meeting between JB and Scaramanga over Red Stripes is some of Fleming's best writing. And, to me, what James Bond, in that chapter, is about.
The simplicity of the story - compared with some of IF's recent Bond stuff - really refreshed and revitalised Bond, set him up anew, if you like.
Tragic the Fleming never got to give his the next chapter in JB's story.
adding to it, with longer descriptive passages and filling out of characters etc.
Per Fine Ounce?
I doubt Fleming had much involvement with PFO other than reading Geoffrey Jenkins' outline.
But having read a wee bit of Jenkins after Jeremy Duns PFO research, I suspect that his Bond PFO would have been very much a basic, stripped down thriller. Nothing too deep. Certainly not of the quality of, say, CR, OHMSS, YOLT. Pretty much like TMWTGG.
It's not a new phenomenon. This opinion started with no less than Kingsley Amis, who was asked by the publisher to take a look at the manuscript before publication, and has been echoed by other insiders such as John Pearson.
I totally agree that readers should make up their own minds, of course!
Fleming himself knew the book wasn't up to scratch and told his friend and editor William Plomer "this is, alas, the last Bond and, again alas, I mean it, for I really have run out of both puff and zest." He wanted to rework the book but Plomer told him the book was fine, perhaps to save his seriously ill friend from the now strenuous task of rewriting and further straining his health.
Plomer was wrong. After the attempted assassination of M, Fleming's energy wanes. Too weak to employ the "Fleming sweep" that allowed him to rush through a book without seeming as if he was in that much of a hurry, he let his haste show through in the TMWTGG. Some have even speculated the novel was pieced together from different works--a short story involving Bond's return from Japan and a long fragment involving Scaramanga iin Jamaica. That might explain the book's disjointed feel.
Kingsley Amis was a devoted defender of Fleming, but even he admitted its major defects:
I can also list more of the book's faults:
* The brainwashed Bond story is resolved much too quickly. "Oh, he was cured by lots of electroshock therapy" is not a satisfactory way of advancing the story, especially since it would have been interesting to see Bond retraining and trying to recover his memories and skills. It's true that Fleming to some extent wished to cleanse and reboot Bond, but in doing so he wiped him clean of a personality.
* Mary Goodnight is a boring Bond girl--the most boring Fleming ever created (consider what a strong character Kissy Suzuki was in comparison!). She's hardly in the novel and is given very little to do. The real Bond girl should have been Tiffy, who has a terrifically Flemingian name and is also a spunky girl who has good reason to hate Scaramanga and help Bond. She would have also been the first Black Bond girl.
* Jamaica again? Setting a story in your backyard is acceptable one or two times, but the third isn't a charm. There were so many other places Bond could have visited. Why not set the book in Cuba, where Scaramanga mainly operated from? That would have been interesting. Why not Macao and Hong Kong, two thrilling cities Fleming visited and loved?
But in all fairness, illness likely prevented a new location. Before taking Bond to a new country, Fleming would travel there to do research. But by the time Fleming wrote TMWTGG he was too ill to travel. Fleming told Richard Hughes (the real-life Dikko Henderson) that he badly wanted to visit the Panama Canal--had his health been up to it, he might have set TMWTGG there instead.
* The villain's big scheme involves...sugar futures?? Could Fleming think of anything possibly more boring? What on earth are sugar futures doing in a Bond novel? Who cares about such small-time mischief?
* The recycling of bits from the other Bond novels is obvious. TMWTGG features yet another gangland convention, as first seen in Goldfinger, but with much diminished results. We also get a shootout involving an antique train, as in Diamonds Are Forever.
* The utter banality of Bond's character. After becoming a full human being in YOLT, the recovered Bond becomes a cardboard booby. You'd never have guessed from reading TMWTGG that Bond is a widower with painful memories. This Bond doesn't have much going on in his head. He has however, become incompetent at his job, as evidenced by the ludicrous moment when he lets the lethal Scaramanga say his prayers. The only interesting element in Bond's character is his near-inability to kill in cold blood. Fleming could have used this for psychological effect, by having Bond worry about losing his touch and being no longer fit to be a double O. But this Bond is a stiff.
* As for Scaramanga--a vulgar thug who could be the brother of the hoodlums in The Spy Who Loved Me--Amis devised a now-notorious explanation for the weakness of his character and why he hires Bond in the first place:
I doubt that Fleming intended for Scaramanga be sexually attracted to 007, but it would have been a terrific idea. Then Scaramanga's downfall would have been caused by sexual rapacity instead of sheer stupidity. And a homosexual Bond villain would have been an interesting innovation (Wint and Kidd were only henchmen and they weren't sexually interested in Bond), as elements of Skyfall have shown, though Silva is more likely bisexual.
In any case, such a Scaramanga would have given a real charge to the book. And it would have stayed true to the promise of Scaramanga's wonderful dossier, which hints at homosexuality, phallic gun worship, and all-around perversity. After reading the dossier, the actual Scaramanga is a letdown--an uncharismatic vulgarian with no distinguishing perversity.
Even the lousy Roger Moore film managed to do a better job conveying Scaramanga's pistol fetishism--look at the scene where Christopher Lee strokes Maude Adams's face with the pistol of his golden gun. Creepy and effective.
* After being told what a great shot Scaramanga is, we don't see him do anything flashier than kill a couple of birds, and his final duel with Bond is disappointingly anti-climactic and ends with Bond foolishly asking him if he has any last requests. Bond deserves what happens to him and is very lucky to have survived. M really ought to have retired him afterward, instead of offering him a knighthood. But I will admit that the knighthood scene is one of the best in the book, a lovely valediction with warmth and humor ("I am a Scottish peasant").
TMWTGG could have easily been a better book if its author had been able to fully harness his powers: Keep the brainwashing and assasination attempt on M, but follow up with Bond's relearning to be a 00 while being haunted by his past and fearing his killer instinct has vanished. Keep the brothel scene but have Scaramanga pick Bond up for sexual interest and take him to Cuba with a vengeance-thirsty Tiffy not far behind, and substitute any other plot besides the sugar futures junk (it's not as if anything else could be more dull). The comic-strip adaptation that ran in the Express noticeably improves on Fleming and includes poignant details like Bond visiting the crippled Margesson. If only the film had adapted the comic...