The New York Times, that beacon of cutting-edge journalism and cultural exploration, surprised me this week with its scathing portrait of the late novelist Ian Fleming, creator of James Bond 007, who would have turned 100 this month.\nMost of the article was dedicated to contrasting the fearless, witty, seductive hero with his creator—a lecherous, shy, thin man who smoked and drank himself to death before James Bond came to represent the symbol of ultimate masculine dignity.\nBut there are enough of those dudes in our literary history to fill an encyclopedia of tasteless trivia. Ian Fleming stands apart from them because his series of novels gave rise to a legendary film franchise, beginning with Sir Sean Connery in the early 1960s, which eventually reshaped our understanding and appraisal of the modern movie star.
While this summer promises to dazzle us with bigger blockbusters than ever, the appeal of these grand-scale action flicks owes much of itself to the adventures of James Bond, the quick-witted, dashingly handsome gentleman who teases you with horrible puns after cleverly vanquishing the latest deformed bad guy, just before rescuing and locking lips with the latest entrancing female.\nWhile assessing James Bond movies for their philosophical and cultural insight is an enterprise Fleming himself would have trouble taking seriously, we can’t help believing that there must be a point to all this sex, violence and the endlessly creative ways he managed to celebrate both. \nNo matter how popular the next comic-book adaptation strives to be, it won’t come close to matching Bond’s internationally iconic status over the years. Your father may have said he wanted to be John Wayne or Roy Rogers as a kid, fighting for the American way with perfect pistol shots while teaching those damned Indians their place. But in truth, he always wanted to be James Bond. And deep down, so did you.\nWomanizer that he was, Bond never limited himself to as bland and monochromatic a place as the Old West, with its grotesque ethnic stereotypes and whooping, sarsaparilla-sipping heroes. In fact, the typical 007 movie will take you from Cairo to London to the Carribean in just two hours. And like any English gent who finds himself abroad, Bond conducts himself with crisp manners and perspicacious taste buds whenever choosing drinks.\nWhen it comes to choosing women … well, that’s debatable. If modern feminists ever read any of the James Bond books, they couldn’t have thought too highly of their author. And although he had almost nothing to do with the movies, they would have hated him for those, too. It’s hard to blame them when considering the female lead of “Goldfinger,” (who, despite her reflexes and a martial arts prowess that gives Bond a run for his money, goes by the name “Pussy Galore”).\nMaybe sensitivity wasn’t Fleming’s strong suit. Neither was Bond’s. If it were, he’d be a tremendous loser.
