Word: bond
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...literary London, where the vogue in controversy runs to turtlenecked highbrows and Angry Young Men, the latest brouhaha is whirling around an unlikely book by an unlikelier author: a mystery shocker called Dr. No, by an uppercrust Tory named Ian Fleming. The book marks the sixth appearance of James Bond, 007 by code number, a deadpan British secret-service agent with high tastes and low instincts. With the help of an estimated 1,250,000 British readers, Bond has boosted Creator Fleming high on the bestseller lists and into the gunsights of outraged critics. They blast him as a kind...
...Foil. Not all readers will agree that Dr. No, which Macmillan will publish in the U.S. in July, is magnificent writing, but pages of it, at least, qualify for Ezra Pound's classic comment on Tropic of Cancer: "At last, an unprintable book that is readable." Secret Agent Bond is sent to Jamaica to investigate some mysterious goings-on on a neighboring island. His unknown foes promptly plant a six-inch venomous centipede in his bed ("Bond could feel it nuzzling at his skin. It was drinking! Drinking the beads of salt sweat!"). Bond gets to the small island...
...fiction. He is 6 ft. 6, and looks like "a giant venomous worm wrapped in grey tin-foil." For hands he has "articulated steel pincers," which he habitually taps against his contact lenses, making a "dull ting." Dr. No's hobby is torture ("I am interested in pain"). Bond survives Dr. No's inventive obstacle course from electric shocks to octopus hugs, buries his tormentor alive under a small mountain of guano, and rescues the girl from a fate as a tasty snack for some giant land crabs...
...current Twentieth Century, Bernard Bergonzi called Fleming's attitude toward sex that "of a dirty-minded schoolboy." He noted that the women are usually pushovers in a Fleming novel, and cited a bra-and-pantie-clad minx named Tiffany Case, who says not too long after she meets Bond: "I want it all, darling...
Bath Cubes by Guerlain. But the critics sound as if they might be kinder to Bond's non-U. penchant for drop-kicking the men and devil-dealing the ladies if he were not such a dandy among the consumer goods, a slave to "crude snob-cravings." The monocle glitters over the private-eyeful afforded by Agent Bond. He smokes Macedonian cigarettes marked with three gold rings. He drinks Dom Perignon champagne, drives a Bentley. At Blades, a posh St. James's Street club that he frequents, "no newspaper comes to the reading room before it has been...