The Name is B***, James B***

This year marks the 70th anniversary of secret agent James Bond’s literary debut in Ian Fleming’s Casino Royale. Published on April 13, 1953, the book launched a pop culture juggernaut that continues to stampede (or at least lumber) its way through the 21st century. The author’s estate is celebrating the occasion by authorizing yet another reprinting of the Bond novels, only this time sanitized, redacted, abridged, edited, censored and otherwise rendered (hopefully) harmless to readers with modern sensibilities. At this stage of the game, it’s fair to wonder why.

The copyright-holders at Ian Fleming Publications Ltd have diligently scoured the books to remove racial epithets and racially charged character descriptions, chiefly triggered by the novel, Live and Let Die, which is set mainly in the United States and features a large number of black characters, most of them villains. The n-word is used multiple times including one prominent reference in a big, bold chapter title, which is obviously a problem now (and should have been at the time). In a press release, the IFP identified specific alterations:

Examples of revised lines include Bond’s assessment in “Live and Let Die” that would-be African criminals are “pretty law-abiding chaps I should have thought, except when they’ve drunk too much,” which has been changed to “pretty law-abiding chaps I should have thought.”

Which I suppose is suggesting that as long as you can keep the booze away from them, black men can usually be kept in line? Again, not a passage designed to win friends in 2023, if ever.

Here’s where things start getting messy, though. James Bond is a character, and characters (at least interesting ones) have personalities. That means some of them are going to be jerks and racists, and the literary 007 is both. Elsewhere in the series, Bond makes disdainful or condescendingly “tolerant” remarks about Japanese, Korean and German cultures; opines that homosexuality ran rampant in the 20th century because women got the right to vote, confusing everyone’s grasp of proper gender roles; thinks the only thing more dangerous than a woman driver is a woman driver with a woman passenger, because they can’t keep their eyes on the road while watching their passengers closely to catch them in a lie; and thinks one sure indicator of a man’s trustworthiness is his height:

“Bond always mistrusted short men. they grew up from childhood with an inferiority complex. All their lives they would strive to be big – bigger than the others who had teased them as a child. Napoleon had been short, and Hitler. It was the short men that caused all the trouble in the world.”

In other words, Bond is a kook, a grumpy old man in a slightly younger man’s body. His saving grace — if he has one — is that he’s an equal opportunity hater; basically he thinks everyone who’s not exactly like him sucks. But you know what, if you’re going to write a book about an amoral government assassin, you might as well go all in and make him an opinionated misanthrope as well. In fact, sometimes it feels like Fleming’s aim with these rants is to make Bond more colorful and “endearing” by presenting him as your crazy uncle with a few too many drinks under his belt. Bond routinely gets cranky, or sullen, or bitter, and when he does, he offers up patently absurd explanations for just why and how the whole bloody world’s gone off the rails. Does even he believe what he’s saying? Beats me.

If Bond really is the spokesperson for Fleming’s heartfelt beliefs, then the books become fodder for psychoanalysis. For example, what do we make of a guy who expresses only pity or contempt for gays, but describes an idealized woman as having a bottom “almost as firm and rounded as a boy’s?” Early word is that while race-related references will be cut, we’ll still get plenty of good old-fashioned misogynism, like Bond’s musings in Casino Royale that sex with Vesper Lynd will have “the sweet tang of rape.” Nothing controversial there, folks.

The IFP goes on to say:

Each book will also carry this disclaimer: “This book was written at a time when terms and attitudes which might be considered offensive by modern readers were commonplace. A number of updates have been made in this edition, while keeping as close as possible to the original text and the period in which it is set.”

This is right and proper. The books should include a disclaimer and they were written in a different time. They feature stories of a steadfastly insensitive character (a paid assassin, let’s again remember) in a bygone era as written by an author who saw the dismantling of the British Empire as the ruination of mankind. So yes, the books are not in tune with the sensibilities of the modern day.

I first read this material as a kid in the mid-70s and even at that young age, with Fleming less than a decade in the grave, the Bond novels already came off as archaic texts, set in the distant 1950s and written by a guy whose worldview was obviously formed – and still trapped – decades earlier than that. His opinions on blacks, Asians, Germans or any other ethnic group came off like the “man yells at cloud” rants of a cranky codger who time had left behind, or a tinfoil hat-wearing conspiracist raving about contrails and lizard people and microchips in vaccines.

Surely anyone who reads these books, starring a World War II vet who drives Ford Thunderbirds with tail fins, stays at roadside motels, uses landline phones, boards commercial flights wearing a gun under his arm and smokes 80 cigarettes a day while ruminating on the Suez Canal Crisis, will know they’re of their time and no more threatening than Huckleberry Finn, Captain Blood or Canterbury Tales. On the other hand, “might be considered offensive by modern readers” is an interesting turn of phrase. I’m betting there were plenty of people around who took offense at this content when the books were first printed, and in every decade since, so it’s interesting that the IFP has only grown a social conscience at this late stage of the game.

Having said all that, while as a rule I’ll always be in the “censorship is wrong” camp, I will freely admit that if I owned the rights, I’d have a serious problem authorizing a 2023 printing of any book that included the “n” word. But once we get beyond that point of agreement we’re on a slippery slope, leading to changes like this one, also shared by the IFP in their press release:

Another scene in the book, set during a strip tease at a Harlem nightclub, was originally “Bond could hear the audience panting and grunting like pigs at the trough. He felt his own hands gripping the tablecloth. His mouth was dry.” This has been revised to “Bond could sense the electric tension in the room.”

I’ll grant you that comparing a room full of black nightclub patrons to “pigs at the trough” puts you on pretty thin ice, but does anyone really think the neutered wording that replaced it is an improvement in any literary sense? We go from a powerful description of a room charged with palpable, primal desire (and potential violence) to the flat, matter-of-fact observation of “electric tension.” More, with Bond no longer “gripping the tablecloth” and going dry in the mouth, he’s gone from engaged participant to dispassionate observer, unaffected by whatever emotion the other occupants of the room might be feeling.

The IFP justifies all this tinkering by saying it’s what Fleming wanted.

… ahead of publication in the US in 1955, Al Hart, editor at Fleming’s US publisher, Macmillan, suggested a number of changes to Live and Let Die. Some of these corrected minor factual errors. Others deleted or changed passages or words Hart felt were racially troubling, even then. Fleming approved all the changes and the version of Live and Let Die published in America was therefore different from the British edition, and from his letters, it seems Fleming preferred the amended US version.

It’s true that Fleming gave into pressure from his American publisher to edit LALD. It’s also true that he really wanted to break into the American market, where there were huge profits to be had, and was willing to bend pretty far to make that happen. It’s less true he was happy about the changes. In particular, he rankled at having his take on African-American dialog rewritten. In 1955, he wrote to his American literary agent Naomi Burton:

By the way and sucks to you, I had a drink with Raymond Chandler last night and he said that the best bit of Live and Let Die was the conversation between the two negroes in Harlem, which he said was dead accurate. Perhaps you remember that you nearly sneered me into cutting it out on grounds that “Negroes don’t talk like that.”

Fleming made plenty of other concessions to get the books in print in America. For instance, at the insistence of editors who felt his early titles weren’t commercial enough, he agreed to having the American paperback edition of Casino Royale retitled You Asked For It, while Moonraker was rechristened Too Hot to Handle. These are changes Fleming approved, like the others, but does anyone regard them as definitive? Can we assume that because Fleming said “Well, okay,” that’s the same as saying “You’re right, that’s better!” If Fleming had favored the new titles — or the American edits — he could have incorporated them into the many reprints in the UK and elsewhere that appeared during his lifetime. He didn’t. What Fleming’s acquiescence does do, however, is to provide a convenient dodge for the IFP against charges that “Fleming would never have stood for this.” And maybe that’s good enough.

The IFP’s statement ends by saying:

In James Bond, Ian Fleming created one of the most famous literary characters in history. His books deserve to be read and enjoyed as much now as when they were written. We believe the new Bond editions will extend their pleasure to new audiences. We are certain that is something Ian Fleming would have wanted.

I do agree Fleming would have endorsed anything that drove sales, so they’ve got that part right. But again, the salient question is why now? Why after seven decades and countless printings of these books has it suddenly become important to consider the feelings of sensitive readers?

It can’t be coincidence that it all fits a now-familiar pattern: some product most of the world has forgotten and moved on from is changed in some fundamental way, outrage ensues from various quarters insisting “the old ways” are under attack, and suddenly the product is culturally relevant again. Hey, it worked to put long-dead authors like Dr Seuss and Roald Dahl back in the headlines, so why not Fleming? It was announced months ago that new printings were on the way, but outside of some fan-oriented message boards, almost no one noticed or cared. Then someone at the IFP realized: controversy = publicity and publicity = sales. “Hey, if you think Roald Dahl was offensive, check out our guy!”

So the first answer to “why now” is because it’s all the rage. The second answer is that the clock is ticking. Under copyright law, Fleming’s works have already entered the public domain in some countries and in the next ten years they’ll do so in the rest of the world. If the IFP is going to make a last cash grab, they need a hook, and now they’ve found one. Step right up and get the new improved editions, now with 20% less racism.

But hey, they’re willing to let you decide for yourself:

We encourage people to read the books for themselves when the new paperbacks are published in April.

In other words, please save your outrage ’til after we’ve got your money. Except, who’s going to buy these books? Are there really readers who’ve resisted their curiosity about the Bond novels for seven decades because they heard there was racist content? Are there hordes of Bond enthusiasts waiting breathlessly to snatch up abridged copies of books they already own multiple copies of in their original, uncensored forms? Who is the audience for this?

But in the end, James Bond the money-making machine overshadows Fleming the creator, and there’s an image to preserve, a brand to protect. As long as new movies keep getting made and the old ones live on in home video and streaming, the books will continue to attract curious and hopeful new readers, and if they’re not turned off by offensive content, they could account for years worth of income from movie tickets, Blu-Ray discs, soundtrack albums, model cars, etc. And so for the caretakers of the brand, there are hard decisions to make, with elusive answers: How do you balance the need to ensure the longevity of the character for future generations against the heresy of censoring the works that started the franchise in the first place? Do you shield new audiences from the uglier side of history, or do you preserve the “sacred texts,” inviolate? How many revisions can you make before the phrase “by Ian Fleming” becomes false advertising? Cultural obsolescence is a sad fate for any work, but now we’re seeing that immortality has a price.

In short, this kind of tinkering is the likely future of any work that stays in print on an open-ended basis, yet I remain camped on the “no censorship” side of the fence. Maybe the IFP’s heart is in the right place, but we all know which road is paved with good intentions. As Ray Bradbury said of the many well-intentioned efforts by various groups and entities to “fix” – without apparently any grasp of irony – Fahrenheit 451 , “There is more than one way to burn a book. And the world is full of people running about with lit matches.”