Essential for fans of the James Bond books. And who isn’t a fan?
A collection of letters from the creator of Bond, James Bond.
In 1952, former intelligence officer, bibliomaniac, and drinking enthusiast Ian Fleming (1908-1964) acquired what he called a “golden typewriter” (which, he added, cost $174, a small fortune back then) and set out, in a period of doldrums while living in Jamaica, to write a book. On it, he banged out the first Bond novel, Casino Royale, along with a stream of letters that touched on various aspects of the thriller—not just its gestation as a manuscript, but also large details of royalty payments (to his publisher, Jonathan Cape: “If you are feeling in a more generous mood today, for symmetry’s sake you might care to include 12 1/2 percent on the 5,000 to 10,000 [copies sold], but I will not be exigent,” occasioning a decisive marginal “No” from the recipient). Fleming even wrote fine-tuning instructions on the cover art. As this collection of letters progresses, we see a friendly but jousting relationship developing between Fleming and his editor, William Plomer, who laments the death of Oddjob in Goldfinger (“what an exit!”), questions some of Fleming’s more outlandish plot twists, and, as an editor should, suggests better wordings and better titles (Fleming originally wanted to call Dr. No “The Wound Man”). In his letters, we also see the steady dissolution of a marriage and other effects of fame and fortune. The volume includes a few letters from outraged readers who, in those innocent days, objected to Fleming’s “ghastly filth.” Overall, the letters emphasize, as the volume editor observes, that Ian Fleming passed on numerous of his private passions to his creation, including scuba diving, fast cars, golf, and cards, “along with women, tobacco, Martinis, and scrambled eggs.” In that regard, the relationship of art to Fleming’s real life is fascinating.
Essential for fans of the James Bond books. And who isn’t a fan?Pub Date: Nov. 3, 2015
ISBN: 978-1-63286-489-5
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Bloomsbury
Review Posted Online: Oct. 3, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2015
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
The author's youthfulness helps to assure the inevitable comparison with the Anne Frank diary although over and above the...
Elie Wiesel spent his early years in a small Transylvanian town as one of four children.
He was the only one of the family to survive what Francois Maurois, in his introduction, calls the "human holocaust" of the persecution of the Jews, which began with the restrictions, the singularization of the yellow star, the enclosure within the ghetto, and went on to the mass deportations to the ovens of Auschwitz and Buchenwald. There are unforgettable and horrifying scenes here in this spare and sombre memoir of this experience of the hanging of a child, of his first farewell with his father who leaves him an inheritance of a knife and a spoon, and of his last goodbye at Buchenwald his father's corpse is already cold let alone the long months of survival under unconscionable conditions.
Pub Date: Jan. 16, 2006
ISBN: 0374500010
Page Count: 120
Publisher: Hill & Wang
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2006
A moving meditation on mortality by a gifted writer whose dual perspectives of physician and patient provide a singular...
A neurosurgeon with a passion for literature tragically finds his perfect subject after his diagnosis of terminal lung cancer.
Writing isn’t brain surgery, but it’s rare when someone adept at the latter is also so accomplished at the former. Searching for meaning and purpose in his life, Kalanithi pursued a doctorate in literature and had felt certain that he wouldn’t enter the field of medicine, in which his father and other members of his family excelled. “But I couldn’t let go of the question,” he writes, after realizing that his goals “didn’t quite fit in an English department.” “Where did biology, morality, literature and philosophy intersect?” So he decided to set aside his doctoral dissertation and belatedly prepare for medical school, which “would allow me a chance to find answers that are not in books, to find a different sort of sublime, to forge relationships with the suffering, and to keep following the question of what makes human life meaningful, even in the face of death and decay.” The author’s empathy undoubtedly made him an exceptional doctor, and the precision of his prose—as well as the moral purpose underscoring it—suggests that he could have written a good book on any subject he chose. Part of what makes this book so essential is the fact that it was written under a death sentence following the diagnosis that upended his life, just as he was preparing to end his residency and attract offers at the top of his profession. Kalanithi learned he might have 10 years to live or perhaps five. Should he return to neurosurgery (he could and did), or should he write (he also did)? Should he and his wife have a baby? They did, eight months before he died, which was less than two years after the original diagnosis. “The fact of death is unsettling,” he understates. “Yet there is no other way to live.”
A moving meditation on mortality by a gifted writer whose dual perspectives of physician and patient provide a singular clarity.Pub Date: Jan. 19, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-8129-8840-6
Page Count: 248
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: Sept. 29, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2015
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