221b wrote:Perhaps Stephen should read Kingsley Amis's seminal works The James Bond Dossier and The Book of Bond.
Fleming based Bond on an amalgam of real people he had met in Naval Intelligence [/b]
On the outset, it would seem as if Ian Fleming based most of his James Bond character on his naval experiences. However, Robert Druce (whom we have mentioned several times on this thread, lately), author of
This Day Our Daily Fictions: An Enquiry into the Multi Million Bestseller Status of Enid Blyton and Ian Fleming differs from that above assertion. incidentally, he also quotes Kingsley Amis's works on James Bond. Robert Druce's assertion was that the Bond character was created out of his reading intelligence novels of the 1930s.
In a pioneering effort in my coincidental support of Robert Druce's above assertion, I too stumbled upon my own original observations pertaining to the origins of The James Bond character which in, my opinion as I state in
The Famous Five: A Personal Anecdotage was based on a fictional character in Joseph Conrad's semi-autobiographical novel,
The Nigger Of The Narcissus by the name of James Wait who had in turn been inspired by a real black crew man named Joseph Barron
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/book ... -name.html" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;),
http://quizlet.com/5919967/joseph-conra ... ash-cards/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;) on a trip Joseph Conrad had undertaken at sea. For instance, we are told that James Wait is, "cool, towering, superb." In fact in his "swaggering" introduction, "My name is Wait-James Wait" is replicated in the James Bond series, insofar as introducing the secret agent, who often, after a swagger, introduces himself in the books and more so in the movies as, "My name is Bond-James Bond." Therefore, it would seem that Ian Fleming removed the name, "Wait" and replaced it with "Bond."
Stephen I.