James Bond 007: COLD by John Gardner

I feel like I’ve read a thousand novels by John Gardner.

I haven’t.

This is the third (or maybe the fourth?) that I’ve read, but each of his texts is such a slog, such a hassle, such an unrelenting display of all of the ways in which literature can fail as a form, that it’s easy for one to feel like 333 (or 250).

Why, then have I returned to him once again?

Because, of course, James Bond has been back in the news.

The creative control of the James Bond film franchise has – in the last few weeks – been transferred from the Broccoli family’s Eon Productions to the Bezos family’s Amazon.

A lot of people (James Bond fans, or “Bondos” as they’re affectionately known amongst themselves) are very concerned that this will end up with a reduction in quality, and an overwhelming and near-constant barrage of “James Bond” (or loosely “James Bond-themed”) content.

This is almost certain to happen, and the reason why I returned to John Gardner’s James Bond novels is because I wanted to remind myself what that actually means.

When Ian Fleming died – tragically young (that’s a joke) – in 1964, his estate was very quick to begin commissioning continuation James Bond novels for them to sell, with one (Per Fine Ounce) being produced and rejected by a South African thriller writer, and Kingsley Amis’s infamous Colonel Sun being published in 1968.

Gardner, then, a few years later, took over the mantle and produced 16 books (including a couple of novelisations of films), with a few more produced in the 1990s and early 2000s by other no-name thriller writers, before “official James Bond novels” became more of an event in the last 15 years or so, with acclaimed novelists like William Boyd and Sebastian Faulks each having a punt, before the “golden typewriters” were handed back to less respected, but much more workmanlike and productive, writers to regularise and increase the output, which is the stage we’re at now.

In officially sanctioned book form, there have already been multiple spin-offs of James Bond… there have been books centring Moneypenny, books about James Bond as a child, a book about James Bond’s nephew… There have been graphic novels, there have been comic strips running a long time…

In short, James Bond’s literary legacy slash literary reputation has been detached from Ian Fleming’s (inarguably (just(?)) over the line into literary from trash) roots for a very long time, and people still continue to read his initial novels, and people still continue to buy the the the new novels featuring these characters, and losers like me do continue to slowly – and it feels even slower – read through John Gardner’s late 20th century double-O oeuvre.

So, yes, if what happened to James Bond as books is a foretaste of what will happen to James Bond as visual media, this means that, yes, we will likely get faaaar more “James Bond visual media” than anyone needs, and much of it, yes, will be shit…

But a huuuuge amount of film and television that exists already is shit, and – let’s be blunt – quite a lot of the the James Bond films are far from excellent (that’s a polite way of saying are “shit”) so it’s difficult to imagine an Amazon-produced James Bond film that is conspicuously worse than the worst films within the James Bond franchise as it exists, and likewise it’s not impossible to imagine that – through an investment in good writing and good directors, which is a thing that Amazon have done for some films (though often crowbarring in Pro Amazon anti-worker propaganda), their Bond films could be good or even great.

It’s important to remember that the James Bond films are not high art productions – they are fun and frivolous and even when they’re approaching their best (you know the ones I mean), they usually fail to meaningfully address the issues they raise themselves, so it’s only really in a handful of places – and perhaps by accident – that any of these films have managed to become significant cultural touchstones…

Cold War anxieties and mid-century ideas of masculinity, and visual and cinematic design are all beautifully rendered in those first few Sean Connery films, which – despite their politics making them less tasteful now than they would have been considered on release – still work as films… There’s a lot of fun to be had with the exciting bombast, oddly pitched anti-mass media and too much focus on satellite-based laser weaponry of the Pierce Brosnan era… And, of course, there are the succinct and genuinely impressive high points of the better bits of the Daniel Craig run, though his contributions do maintain an edge of the camp and unserious even when they’re finding heftier emotionality than the series ever reached for before…

And then there are about 15 more films that don’t really have much at all to recommend them…

There is no high level creative consistency across this franchise of films, just as there is no high level of consistent quality across the post-Fleming literary versions of Bond. So, unless you’re picketing Waterstones for selling the latest copy of James Bond Jr. or whatever the current spin-off is called, you probably shouldn’t be upset with Amazon for wanting to continue producing James Bond things for people to watch…

–///–

James Bond 007: COLD is shit.

It’s a barely sketched together thriller with no meaningful stakes or or plots.

Coincidence is far too prevalent, and character’s motivations seem to change and bend with no sense of consistency.

The overarching plot is a threat to try and put martial law (and basically a version of Christian fundamentalist version of an exaggerated idea of Sharia law) over the United States of America, but for some reason all of the meetings of the people arranging this take place in the Tuscan Villa of Italian gangsters…

John Gardner’s James Bond fucks every woman (except for, I think, literally one) who he talks to within the plot of this book, and there is an absolutely bizarre four year pause in the narrative halfway through the book, at which point John Gardner summarises three or four of his earlier James Bond novels, saying they all happened in this window. This fastforward ends with the lover James Bond had at the end of Garnder’s previous Bond novel in a coma.

I don’t know why it’s taken the coup attempt four years to progress any further, but it has, so James Bond flies back to Tuscany – leaving his partner in a coma (she peacefully dies) and then starts immediately shagging around while dealing with the bad American Christian boys who wants to chop people’s hands off for theft.

Tension is minimal, the sex is eroticless and – as elsewhere – John Gardner’s James Bond is an idiot who knows nothing.

Below are some choice quotes and excerpts, which may seem like they don’t make sense out of context, but I guarantee they don’t make sense within the context of the novel either:

Let’s start with the dedication: “This book is dedicated to the executives and staff of Glidrose Publications (the owners of the James Bond Literary Copyright) who had confidence in me when choosing a successor to the late Ian Fleming and have given me so much assistance and help over the past sixteen years.” For anyone even slightly more talented than Gardner this would come across as extreme brown-nosing, however it feels more like an understandable sense of disbelief given that he’s been able to turn in utter crap for almost two decades and continue to get paid. The fact that the books are as shit as they are shows that this dedication likely went unread – with a clear absence of quality control where it matters, presumably no one ever saw the inside of this manuscript other than Gardner, the typesetter and mugs like me who bought the book…

A lovely Partridgian “I rented a piece of Japanese high-class stuff – a Lexus” on p. 17

“crossing her long and exceptionally lovely legs” p. 19

“He was uncertain, not sure that this should happen so quickly, even though, in the past, he had been her love, but she was insistent, and when it came down to it, frantic, passionately wild as though sex released some drug into her body” p. 19

“‘[order] something expensive from room service.’ / He called room service and ordered two chicken salads, coffee and a semi-reasonable Chardonnay” p. 21

“a serious-looking thin blonde with breasts like large peaches and a permanent scowl who answered to the unlikely nickname of Twinkle” p.26 – “large peaches” is such a nebulous term.

On p. 43 it is revealed that Bond’s “field name” (a code name he answers to) is “Predator”.

“forgoing his beloved toast, eating bread rolls with butter and jam.” p. 57. Look, we all know Bond likes eggs and breakfast more than any other meal, but to elevate toast to the level of a “beloved” feels a mote too much…

On p.96, someone suggests Bond escape from a trap using a jet-ski, to which he responds “Water motorcycles?” Gardner’s Bond makes Roger Moore’s appear sharp as a tack. (Roger is the Ringo of the Bonds.)

On p. 106, Bond and an accomplice are picked up by a friendly American team. “‘We’ve got nearly a two-hour drive but I got coffee here if you want some.'” Bond replies: “‘Black with no sugar'” as if ordering in a diner, rather than in the back of a car. There’s no coffee service in cars, John Gardner! If there’s coffee, it’ll be a flask and Bond will get what he’s given!

On p. 111 Bond dines in Italy with M: “‘You’re sometimes more fussy than a woman, James.. […] They ate a simple meal of omelettes and pommes fries, with long crisp bread, all washed down with a thirst quenching Galestro.” Gardner doesn’t know anything about food.

On reconnecting with an old lover, Bond plans to “slake their mutual thirsts.” (p. 124)

On parting from a current lover, Bond “kissed her gently on the mouth, whispering one quick line from The Song of Solomon, ‘Behold, thou art fair, my love; behold, thou art fair.’ He saw tears start in her eyes, and wondered at his act of sentiment.” (p. 124). Absolute nonsense.

On p. 145, Bond fears drowning and his life flashes before his eyes: “He saw wrecked bodies, women he could never forget, and some he had long forgotten: a girl covered from head to toe in gold paint; a young Japanese woman bending over him whispering endearments; his wife of hours, shattered and bleeding, bullets ripping into her as she sat next to him in a car.” This is all, of course, an incompatible timeline when considered against John Gardner’s series of novels. It’s his last one, though, so who fucking cares, right???

On p. 149, Bond visits an American hospital and has a bizarrely positive reaction to the food on offer: “The chubby nurse returned and gave him an injection, which livened him up enough to consider that she might be fun after all, but a dark-skinned orderly brought him food. / Bond had always associated hospital food with the kind of muck they had served at school but either he was ravenous, or this was better quality, for he ate the lot: a potato and leek soup, liver and bacon with the omnipresent mashed potatoes, followed by some kind of strawberry mousse which was possibly full of chemicals, he considered. Yes, a lot of stodge you would not really expect in a country obsessed by cholesterol and healthy eating.”

On p. 157, Gardner’s erosion of Bond as not quite self-destructive enough resurfaces: “He had given up cigarettes some time ago, but the events of the past few days seemed to have got under his skin.” Bond is, here, smoking while plane spotting, to relax.

On p. 201, Bond reconnects with a different former lover, who responds as follows after Bond has poured some coffee: “‘You remembered.’ She sounded please and looked happy. ‘You remembered that I like it black with sugar.'” It is facile, terrible, personless dialogue.

On p. 214, Bond and his CIA asset (a sexy lady, of course!) are getting ready for the final confrontation and Bond refers to her weaponry as “doobries”, like an ancient doddering man shuffling towards senility. On the same page, more field names are discussed: “She was to be Red Fox while Bond would be Grey Fox. “That should fox them,’ he quipped.”

Description of a goon on p. 235: “He had the face of an idiot child, the kind of inbred relic you used to find in rural areas, places where incest still thrived among small, lonely communities.” Feels a bit out of the narrative voice, if I’m honest!!!

It all gets a bit gothic at the end, with the following description of the Big Baddie feeling more Hannibal (when was that published?) than Bond: “General Brutus Clay’s face seemed to be made up of partly-hanging flaps of skin. The top of his head was a crinkle of skin, the flaps coming down from his forehead and joined to his jaw. There were four misshapen holes where there had once been eyes, nose and mouth, though parts of these features were discernible: the glint of eyes moving behind the layers of skin, a nostril rebuilt with part of the nose, and a gaping oval which moved, like the mouth of a ventriloquist’s dummy, as he spoke. Where the ears had been there were now two little knobs, like small shells.” (p. 245) Awful, bizarre, yet somehow insincere horror.

On p. 250, Bond is detained by an Italian American goon who, in response to a mild idiom, says in his otherwise phoneticised English: “‘The means “yes” in Brit talk?'” Absolutely no one in the world, John Gardner, talks like this.

The whole thing is as chaotic, crass, confused and confusing as the above comments imply.

No.

–///–

John Gardner was a very limited and a very unimpressive writer, and the fact that he was permitted to write 16 of these books really shows that the character and the “world” of James Bond is not something the people who have owned its legal rights have ever cared about before, so we shouldn’t care about it now, and instead we should all get ready to enjoy whatever slop Amazon are going to throw at us. I will be watching, just as I will probably be reading more John Gardner before too long…

You shouldn’t, though.

Don’t read James Bond 007: COLD if you have anything better going on in your life.

I don’t, so will return to Gardner the next time I feel like I need something shit, but don’t hate myself for reading crap. It’s a very narrow window, but it rolls around from time to time…