About the site

Welcome to Number 007. Titled after Chapter 3 of Ian Fleming's first novel, Casino Royale, this site aims to explore the work of the late author; but on another level, it is an attempt to befriend him. I refer to the Ian Fleming who wrote quietly in his Jamaican retreat, Goldeneye. He began one morning in February 1952, crafting what eventually evolved into that first novel; and for the next dozen years or so, he returned each winter, looking at the Caribbean horizon, thinking, puffing on cigarettes, and writing as the typewriter clattered against the tranquility of the sea. But the end result was always the same: a warm fictional voice graced the latest opus—loquacious, friendly, giving the impression of one who carried something of a deeper knowledge of the world than ourselves, who knew the fine restaurants, the scenic drives in the Loire Valley, someone who had traveled to far away places such as Algiers and Mandalay and speaks of such experiences with confidence and a sense of wisdom, our guide through the adventures in his storytelling.

It's been a long while since I first encountered that Ian Fleming. I was a different reader then; but that individual has moved on, and so have my own experiences and knowledge. My strong background in literary studies and the craft of writing have forced me to rethink Fleming, or at least to approach his work with some scrutiny. In his fiction, there are the occasional bits of essayistic commentary, the quiet homages to literary motifs, the sudden turn of the narrative into something intriguing, even compelling, that jolt the reader. What does one make of the following passage from Live and Let Die?

They were flying at 15,000 feet when, just after crossing Cuba, they ran into one of those violent tropical storms that suddenly turn aircraft from comfortable drawing-rooms into bucketing death-traps. . . . [Bond] looked at the racks of magazines and thought: They won't help much when the steel tires at 15,000 feet . . . [and] the little warm room with propellers in front falls straight down out of the sky into the sea or on to the land, heavier than air, fallible, vain. And the forty little heavier-than-air people, fallible within the plane's fallibility, vain within its larger vanity, fall down with it. . . . (150-152)

Here you'll find my writings, the ramblings of my thoughts, on primarily Fleming's 007 oeuvre, with occasional commentary on the James Bond films. The endeavor proved to be, and continuous to be, a challenge; for I often ask myself: how far do we take the “analysis”? Do we risk crossing the border into the region of over-interpretation? Despite my reservations, whenever I re-visit the old Fleming books, I discover again the uniqueness of his fictional world. And each time, my features transform into a taciturn mask, ironical, brutal, and cold whilst a thin comma of black hair dangled above my right eyebrow. It wasn't surprising that legions of women found me irresistible because I imagined myself in a tuxedo, strolling nonchalantly through a dry, smoke-filled casino and settled at the baccarat table. I was hardly a few pages into On Her Majesty's Secret Service before I was longing to drive an Italian sports car along a quiet coastal road. Dammit all, I was reading the prose of a writer, absorbing his fiction, no differently than the way I would read a Tolstoy or a Hemingway novel. Any book I read I bring my knowledge of other books, my experience, my understanding of the world, into the text. And so it is with, say, From Russia, With Love. In the end, my overall approach to Fleming is a mixture of literary criticism and the essay—something of a pilot-commentary, not intended as scholarly babble, but certainly a personal view of Fleming's work.

A web site that purports to offer guidance in Fleming fiction may seem superfluous, especially given that Fleming himself never intended his thrillers to be serious works of literature. Nevertheless, recent biographical studies of the man reveal that he took care in the writing of his tales and appeared capable of handling two aspects in his writings simultaneously: for underneath the veneer of the mass market thriller, there are subtleties in his writings—subtleties that could only come from a man who, one gathers, thought deeply; a man who—in the warm recollections of Violet Cummings, Fleming's housekeeper—walked in the garden of Goldeneye, “thinking, when he was writing.” He would ask that “all the windows in the bedroom would be closed, and the door shut tight,” insisting there “couldn't be any noise at all” (Schenkman 22). At Goldeneye, Fleming found a sanctuary, a place for the silence of his thoughts.

Again, this site is an attempt to befriend that Ian Fleming. There is now more to be said about his work, about his life, about the time in which he wrote the 007 tales. It's good to meet you and I hope you enjoy your stay.

Ian Dunross
Wellington, Florida

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It is not my interest to track your usage of this site. To the best of my knowledge, no identifying information is collected about you, apart from whatever data is logged by the web hosting service. Moreover, I cannot be bothered to understand such arcane behind-the-scenes IT processes. Best to consult the next available nerdy IT chap for elucidation.