‘Daniel Craig is not Bond’ – Ian Fleming

‘Daniel Craig Is Not Bond’ – Ian Fleming

That’s exactly what Ian Fleming is telling me from across Jamaica, from across 53 years to be exact. The image above is our new Epson CX300 high-quality scan of our old copy of Ian Fleming’s Casino Royale (New American Library 1953) – I have read it 4 times idea for idea, if not word for word; it’s only 144 pages in a pocket-size format. I have marginal notes and internal notes and underlines and plenty of this – @ – to signify a point, phrase or paragraph I want to read again or quote at some other point in time. And today, in my 4^th reading, I found a bombshell that I shall now explode.

But first, here is James Bond explaining to Mathis how he got the license to kill, to be 007:

It was a pretty sound job. Nice and clean too. Three hundred yards away. No personal contact. The next time in Stockholm wasn’t so pretty. I had to kill a Norwegian who was doubling against us for the Germans. He’d managed to get two of our men captured – probably bumped off for all I know. For various reasons it had to be an absolutely silent job. I chose the bedroom of his flat and a knife. And, well, he just didn’t die very quickly.

For those two jobs I was awarded a Double O number in the Service. Felt pretty clever and got a reputation for being good and tough. A Double O number in our Service means you’ve had to kill a chap in cold blood in the course of some job. (page 109)

Tough, not brutish, not sadistic, not animal. ‘Kill in the course of a job’ means kill if you have to, not because you want to. Bond shifts paradigm:

Now, that’s all very fine – the hero kills two villains; but when the hero Le Chiffre starts to kill the villain Bond and the villain Bond knows he isn’t a villain at all, you see the other side of the medal. The villains and heroes get all mixed up. (page 109)

It’s the animal, the madman in Le Chiffre mixing up the distinction between hero and villain. In Daniel Craig’s Casino Royale, the roles are reversed; the hero becomes the villain – James Bond. He is all mixed up; he is villainous; he is all animal; he is all madman.

There’s no lesson from Casino Royale (the movie) except brutality – and how to play baccarat with millions of dollars at your disposal. There’s a lesson from Casino Royale (the book) about learning. Here Bond tells Mathis about the devil:

So, Le Chiffre was serving a wonderful purpose, a really vital purpose, perhaps the best and highest purpose of all. By his evil existence, which foolishly I have helped to destroy, he was creating a norm of badness by which, and by which alone, an opposite norm of goodness could exist. We were privileged, in our short knowledge of him, to see and estimate his wickedness, and we emerge from the acquaintance better and more virtuous men. (page 111)

Borrowing from Ian Fleming’s Casino Royale, I see that Daniel Craig’s James Bond has created a norm of badness by which, and by which alone, an opposite norm of goodness now exists – Pierce Brosnan’s James Bond. With Daniel Craig’s James Bond, we were privileged, in our short knowledge of him, to see and estimate his wickedness. So I hope we emerge from that acquaintance better and more virtuous men (embracing women). Otherwise, we haven’t learned at all and Daniel Craig’s Casino Royale was all an exercise in futility.