IAN FLEMING: 1 [Paperback]

I had already read the John Pearson biography of Ian Fleming (Alias James Bond-The Life Of Ian FLeming.) when I picked up this Andrew Lycett biography. Because blurbs and reviews of this biography praised it for the access Lycett had, I was looking forward to something more about Fleming's internal life and motivations and more details and first-person accounts of the interesting experiences Fleming did have. I was severely disappointed.

In the Acknowledgements section of this book Lycett thanks Pearson "for material he collected for his book The Life of Ian Fleming." The influence of the Pearson material seems prevalent throughout. Pearson seems to have set the standard for the depth of investigation and the extent of informed speculation, and there are even trivialities that are related in such a way that it seems Lycett and Pearson were writing from the same material. In fact, I would go so far as to say that Lycett almost seems to have simply removed the whitewash from Pearson's book.

The whitewash is mostly related to sexual matters. For example, Pearson makes it clear that Fleming seduced many women, but Lycett relates the seduction of the wife of one Fleming's friends, soon after the marriage, in which Fleming was supposed to be best man. Likewise, Pearson surgically removed Blanche Blackwell from Fleming's life and obscured many unsavory facts about Fleming's wife Ann. Lycett puts these matters on display, but there is no probing of them for understanding. Fleming was involved with a number of Jewish women, made literary connections with progressives and communists, and lived by choice in Jamaica, but was pseudo-conservative, staunchly pro-British and pro-empire. How were all these things related in Fleming's psychology?

The parallels between the Pearson and Lycett biographies also extend to the things left out. Take, for example, the occult and homosexuality. Fleming's novel "Live and Let Die" makes his interest in these two topics clear. Pearson mentions in passing a personal connection with (bisexual occultist) Aleister Crowley. The book jacket to the Lycett mentions Fleming's interest in astrology. The Lycett book contains a quote from Fleming's wife Ann referring to his "homosexuality." But neither Pearson or Lycett discusses these connections with any depth. Astrology does not even appear in Lycett's extensive index, despite its appearance on the jacket.

On the flip side, as other Amazon reviewers have noted, Lycett's book suffers from an overabundance of useless detail. There are so many small ones--and Lycett writes so implicatively--that "important" facts are often glossed over. For example, in a web article, I found Lycett referring to Lisl Jokl as Fleming's first love, although that fact is totally lost in the biography. It's hard to understand what Lycett's motivation was in writing. There is no Fleming studies industry that is going to benefit from so much detail, and it is a mistake from a literary perspective. Contrary to what some other reviewers have written, Fleming did not live an interesting life. In fact, much of the book is filled with the tedium of betrayals, double-betrayals, law-suits, failed business ventures and the like. And the interesting parts, such as Fleming's dinner with JFK, are often given surprisingly little attention. Pearson dealt with all the boredom in Fleming's life by writing thematically rather than strictly chronologically, showing how Fleming's life influenced the James Bond novels. That was a much better technique.

Another drawback to Lycett's book is his scant use of quotation. Pearson quotes a paragraph from a doctor's report on Fleming's heart, whereas Lycett deals with the same episode by summarizing in his own words. That technique is fine for short and/or topically-oriented works, but in a "definitive biography" of great length, an author needs to let the cast speak in the their own voices as much as possible. This can get frustrating, as in Lycett's very meager treatment of Operation Golden Eye (of interest to 007 fans, of course): "His letter to [Admiral] Godfrey from the British Embassy on his return to Lisbon underlined his extraordinary autonomy and initiative." What? What did he write to Admiral Godfrey?

My sense is that most people who would be interested in reading this book would end up skimming large portions of it or getting bogged down and not finishing. Although I understand that the desire of 007 fans to ogle isn't justification for exposing people's lives in a biography, one has to ask why a biography of Ian Fleming would have been written were it not for 007. To my mind, although Lycett's book is large and, in some ways, more honest than Pearson's, a definitive biography of Ian Fleming is yet to be written.

This biography is worth reading for two very good reasons:

The most obvious is to get a look at the man who created one of the greatest iconic figures of the 20th Century. "Bond, James Bond" is usually on every list of popular and enduring characters from the previous century and his simple introduction is normally cited as the most memorable movie line in cinema history. The 007 machine is still very much alive in the 21st Century with all of Fleming's adventures in print and the secret agent still drawing millions at the box office with last year's "Casino Royale."

The second fascinating reason for reading this biography is the author's frank and open access to Fleming's family and friends. A great deal is revealed through their interviews as well as their diaries and letters.

When I read through the reviews for the hardcover edition, I found some complaints about the constant name-dropping throughout the book, but that was their world. Ian's wife Ann seemed to live to socialize and while most of the names probably mean very little to most readers today, some still jump out--from mobsters like Lucky Luciano to real intelligence figures like Allen Dulles, former CIA boss.

This is a sharp, genuine look at Bond's creator after decades of mythmaking about the life of Ian Fleming.

As the quote on the cover says, "This is an exemplary biography, beautifully written, fast-paced and extremely perceptive."

This book covers an interesting life story and has great detail, but unfortunately much of that detail has nothing to do with Mr. Fleming's life, instead focusing on the bloodlines of every British person he ever met. A typical sentence would read "While at the party Ian met John Blankenship of Eddileshile, who would later become the Duke of Ipswitch and marry the Dutchess of Flem, whose mother, the Dame of Foppishnich, once had lunch with Sir Henry Handllberg" - and NONE of these people would have had anything to do with the story, the party, or Ian Flemming. It is as if a Flemming biography was inadvertantly been mixed with a "Complete Peerage of the Brittish Isles" and they went ahead and published it anyway. If you must, get the print version, so you can skim over the irrelevant stuff that pops up every other sentence - if you listen to the Audible audio version (like I did) you will find it had to follow and boring to boot.

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