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I've always been a fan of Ian Fleming's James Bond novels and pretty much hated (until Daniel Craig, anyway) the Bond films. Ultimately it became work to read and not the emery entertainment I would have preferred. Because of the Dossier, I am likely to re-read some of the Fleming books. That is, Amis is better at documenting his conclusions that the other guys. For example: here is the proof that the Bond Women arrive at an average of one per book. He has a detailed table cross tabbing all the major points in every Bond book and short story. Amis works very hard to document his points. As heavy as Amis can be in his humor, I was always looking for the wink, the nudge the acknowledgement that this is not intended as a serious read. Done as a serious comparative analysis might be to make the same mistake of those Amis systematically out analyzes those critical of Bond as Literature (Capital' L').

Perhaps under the title: My Name? Potter, Harry Potter. Here it might be fun to consider the adult male fantasy value of a James Bond and compare him to the pre-adult male fantasy value of Harry Potter. Bond has to be lager than life, virile and able to live lavishly. Fleming's goal was to create not so much a believable hero, but one that we (I am a fan too) would be able to blur into our image of ourselves and thereby share his heroics and his women. The short answer should be that James Bond is escapist adventure stories for (mostly) adult males. A clear purpose of the Dossier is to give `it' back to those literary professionals who had over analyzed and otherwise over stated the cultural influence or importance of these books. Being a secret agent is a more nebulous calling and is rarely about espionage and more often about, pretty much anything M assigns.Īmis came into the literary world as something of a cynic, broadly critical and majestically sardonic.

Parenthetically, one of the first things Amis explains is that Bond is not a spy, he is a secret agent. The audience for The James Bond Dossier are those who have or are in the midst of reading Ian Fleming's secret agent books. If all you know are the movies and esp the recent ones, much of what Amis discusses will make little sense. He is also writing while Fleming is still alive and before the parade of post Connery Bonds. He is aware of the movies but he is only speaking to the books. Most important is that Kingley Amis is writing about the Ian Fleming James Bond books.

Casino royale signet book of american essays