Ian Fleming and James Bond: The Cultural Politics of 007 (Paperback)

~ Edward P. Comentale (Editor), Stephen Watt (Editor), Skip Willman (Editor)

Editorial Reviews

Review

[A]...strong collection... lends itself to the pleasure of unexpected insights...convincing......brilliant leadoff...does full justice to Fleming's literary contribution..." --Andrew Hoberek, Project MUSE (MFS Modern Fiction Studies) Volume 54, Number 4, Winter 2008

Review

"[A]... strong collection... lends itself to the pleasure of unexpected insights...convincing... brilliant leadoff... does full justice to Fleming's literary contribution..." -- Andrew Hoberek, Project MUSE (MFS Modern Fiction Studies), Volume 54, Number 4, Winter 2008

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 312 pages
• Publisher: Indiana University Press; illustrated edition edition (March 30, 2005)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0253217431
• ISBN-13: 978-0253217431
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 6 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 2.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #749,471 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

16 of 22 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Academic Conference or Hunting Lodge for Smart Weirdos?, July 15, 2005

By	Found Highways (Las Vegas) - See all my reviews

James Bond is one of the few pop culture references that writer (and portrayer of Riff Raff) Richard O'Brien didn't throw into his masterpiece, The Rocky Horror Picture Show. (At least I don't remember any.) But there's a line in Rocky Horror that applies to the book Ian Fleming & James Bond: The Cultural Politics of 007.

In Rocky Horror, the "sweet transvestite" and mad scientist Frank N. Furter shows innocent young Janet Weiss his Charles Atlas-like creation, Rocky. Janet touches Rocky's firm oiled flesh but says she doesn't like a man with too many muscles.

"I DIDN'T MAKE HIM FOR YOU!!!" Frank answers.

This book was written for academics, not for me.

It's a collection of papers written for an academic conference at Indiana University in 2003. The first half of the book especially is full of the jargony prose that academics use too often. Or, as the introduction states, "This grouping of essays explores Fleming's work as it responds to post-World War II transformations - - theoretical or otherwise - - of subjectivity and intersubjective relations." (My spellchecker doesn't even want to call "intersubjective" a word, but it flagged "jargony" too and I like that one.)

The acknowledgments page thanks the "faculty and graduate students" who attended the conference - - didn't they even let undergraduate students past security? I imagine some freshman with one of Q's hi-tech iris-scanning gizmos sneaking in, just like Bond.

Again quoting the introduction, "In fact, the secret service and academia are linked by this mode: the success of both depends on an ability to cross and confound rigid oppositions, . . ." Come on, guys. I had a Man from UNCLE camera-gun too, when I was ten, but I don't still shoot THRUSH agents with it.

But the second half of the book (the essays tying the Bond books and movies to their moment in history) is more interesting. How Bond went from British pulp hero to transatlantic (in other words American) superspy-savior. How Bond (who we always think of as very modern, whatever decade he's in) is really a conservative reaction against the "angry young men" of fifties Britain ("Shoot Back in Anger"). What are the literary and real-life connections between JFK, RFK, Fleming, Bond, and Castro? (And who among those are real people, who are fictional characters, and who are both?)

If you liked Peter Biskind's Seeing is Believing: How Hollywood Taught Us to Stop Worrying and Love the Fifties, and J. Hoberman's The Dream Life: Movies, Media, and the Mythology of the Sixties, you'll find enough in this book to make it worth reading several of the essays. It's definitely worth the Amazon paperback price.

0 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars worthless, unless you are a silly academic person with nothing better to read, September 23, 2008

By	Java Writer (San Luis Obispo, CA) - See all my reviews

This is another one of those books that seems to be about an interesting and very popular subject, yet when you begin to read, you find that it is a collection of dry, overly wordy essays written by stuff academic types. Each one attempts to analyze the subject matter from a different intellectual viewpoint, such as the subject's impact on society, or use of the subject in marketing products. However, each writer seems to be out-doing the previous one with more pretentious an unreadable language. I wish the humanities Ph.D.s out there in academic-land would just write like they speak. I don't want to have to consult my thesaurus every 2 sentences to look up a word that nobody uses in normal speech.

This book--in a nutshell--is a serious waste of time. All the wordy essays could have done with a serious editing session. Most if not all could have been cut in HALF and they would have been cleaner and more succinct.

If you are a James Bond / Ian Flemming fan, good for you. Go rent a movie, or visit your library. If you are a James Bond fan and you also happen to be a university Poly Sci professor, then you are probably one of the few people who will actually understand and appreciate this book. For all others, don't waste your time. You won't enjoy it. The material is more dry than the Playa dust at Burning Man, and about as exciting to read as the Chinese instructions that come with your DVD player.