Mister 8

Through July, or at least until I run out of things about which to talk, we’ll be looking at the Harry Palmer series of novels (in which the character doesn’t actually have a name), their author — Len Deighton, the films based on them, the star of those films — Michael Caine, and the television movies that followed. I will be re-reading the whole series of novels, re-watching the films, and giving my thoughts on all I encounter. I’ll inevitably be drawing heavily on the collection of Kees Stam, author of The Harry Palmer Movie Site, and Rob Mallows, creator of the Deighton Dossier, and other odds and ends that I’ve turned up over the years.

We’ll hopefully have a more in-depth post on The IPCRESS File tomorrow, but tonight, I need sleep as soon as possible. So let’s zoom out a level and look at our author Len Deighton again, and his interactions with another famed thriller, Ian Fleming. This will be the first in a series of pieces where we compare the two franchises of Palmer & Bond, and examine instances where they “cross over.” Sort of.

To start, I want to cite sections of LeRoy Panek’s The Special Branch; the British Spy Novel, 1890-1980, where Panek discusses what he believes to be the key difference between Deighton and Fleming, their literary heritage:

Both these writers rely, to a large extent, on reproducing mechanical, external elements of the hard-boiled hero without understanding the deeper significance of the figure. Deighton is different. For one thing he does not derive his inspiration from degenerate heirs of the hard-boiled story, like Spillane, as Fleming does. Instead he was lucky enough to start writing late enough to take in Raymond Chandler–a later-comer to the form, writing well into the fifties. Deighton learned much from Chandler. He alludes to him–through Philip Marlowe–in Spy Story, and it is evident that some of Deighton’s habits of description were learned from Chandler, as a passage from An Expensive Place to Die can illustrate:

“Summer rain is cleaner than winter rain. Winter rain strikes hard upon the granite, but summer rain is sibilant soft upon the leaves. The rainstorm pounced hastily like an inexperienced lover, and then as suddenly was gone. The leaves drooped wistfully and the air gleamed with green reflections. It’s easy to forgive a summer rain; like first love, white lies or blarney, there’s no malignity in it.”

Short sentences, similes, personifications, alliterations: this is figurative prose like so many passages in Chandler. In An Expensive Place to Die Deighton also makes a pretty clear comment on the other side of the hard-boiled tradition. Here a windy English writer holds forth in a bar on the subject of James Bond:

“‘But I have always immensely adored violence. His [Bond's] violence is his humanity. Unless you understand that, you understand nothing.’”

Whereupon someone punches the speaker into insensibility with great technique and precision. Only an imbecile or an anthropoid would, this incident says, love violence. Sam Spade does not love it; Marlowe does not love it. Even if deviants like Mike Hammer love violence, Deighton’s hero does not. What counts in the original hard-boiled writers is style, and here Deighton understands Hammett and Chandler better than shoals of smaller fish have. The essence of the hard-boiled story lies in placing a man in a perverse relationship with authority and circumstances. That man’s responses in word, thought and deed mark him off as a hero–as someone from whom readers can learn important things.

I hadn’t yet made the connection to Chandler myself until yesterday, when thriller novelist Jeremy Duns commented that, “Deighton wrote like an angel, and there are single lines in IPCRESS that are more exciting and evocative than whole novels by other writers.” This is also how I feel about Chandler, and I also feel that the shortcomings of The IPCRESS File — the reactionary, sometimes passive narrator who has to explain the holes in the plot at the end — mirror the shortcomings of much of Chandler’s work. But like Duns, I find it easy to overlook these elements in favor of the quality sentence-to-sentence writing.

Scholars of Fleming, including Kinglsey Amis and O.F. Snelling, cite other influences, most frequently Bulldog Drummond, but the difference in influences is still notable.

* * *

In my review of The IPCRESS File, I called the narrator character the opposite of James Bond.  Duns took me to task for this, noting that, “There are as many Bondish elements to the books as there are counters: he loves his food and appreciates other cultures, exotic locations, beautiful women throw themselves at him, gadgets in cars, technical expertise, a feeling of getting the inside scoop on espionage, etc.” With the caveat that I’ve only read one of the Deighton novels so far, I would agree with Jeremy to a point. The Deighton character, I feel, treats these elements more…I hesitate to use the term, but at this hour, I can’t think of another…realistically.

Bond is, for all intents and purposes, a fantasy hero (one critic, I can’t remember who, posited that writing the 007 novels prevented Fleming from going out and attempting to live the fantastic Bond lifestyle himself), and thus cannot veer from the course of the adventure. For instance, while it is clear that Bond appreciates the places he visits during his missions, his appreciation seems to come in the form of a dossier with bullet points — here’s the local history, the relevant landmarks, a handful of observations about the local folk — before he has to go off and shoot someone. The narrator’s enjoyment of, for instance, Adem’s house in Lebanon seems to go deeper. He is taken aback by Adem’s visits to see the animals don’t involve shooting — with either guns or cameras — but later, after a sort of sublime moment staring out at the landscape and listening to the opening bars of Mozart’s Symphony 21, he thinks to donate to Adem’s preservation fund. I’m not sure if the Fleming character, detached and often cruel, is capable of having a sublime moment.

There was a particular passage in IPCRESS that I thought interestingly mirrored a passage from Fleming, when Dalby takes the narrator to lunch:

Dalby didn’t fool about with expenses; we went into Wiltons and settled for the best of everything. The iced Israeli melon was sweet, tender and cold like the blonde waitress. Corrugated iron manufacturers and chinless advertising men shared the joys of our expense-account society with zombi-like debs with Eton-tied uncles. It was a nice change from the sandwich bar in Charlotte Street, where I played a sort of Rugby scrum each lunch-time with only two Ph.D.’s, three physicists and a medical research specialist for company, standing up to toasted bacon sandwich and a cup of stuff that resembles coffee in no aspect but price.

Over the lobster Dalby asked me how things were going in the work on Jay. I told him that it was going just great and I hope someone will tell me what I’m doing some day. I wouldn’t have remembered Thursday at all, apart from the fine lobster salad and carefully-made mayonnaise, if it hadn’t been for what Dalby then said. He poured me a little more champagne and crunching it back into the ice bucket, said, ‘You’re working with the same information that I am. Unless I’m wrong we are moving in from opposite ends to the same conclusion.’ Then he changed the subject.

…Which might be compared to the early chapter in Moonraker where M takes Bond to dinner at the private Blades club. Bond jumps at the opportunity, and is treated to an exquisite meal:

The head steward was already behind Bond’s chair. He placed a broad menu card beside his plate and handed another to M. ‘Blades’ was written in fine gold script across the top. Below there was a forest of print.

“Don’t bother to read through all that,” said M., “unless you’ve got no ideas. One of the first rules of the club, and one of the best, was that any member may speak for any dish, cheap or dear, but he must pay for it. The same’s true today, only the odds are one doesn’t have to pay for it. Just order what you feel like.” He looked up at the steward. “Any of that Beluga caviar left, Porterfield?”

“Yes, sir. There was a new delivery last week.”

“Well,” said M. “Caviar for me. Devilled kidney and a slice of your excellent bacon. Peas and new potatoes. Strawberries in kirsch. What about you, James?”

“I’ve got a mania for really good smoked salmon,” said Bond. Then he pointed down the menu. “Lamb cutlets. The same vegetables as you, as it’s May. Asparagus with Bearnaise sauce sounds wonderful. And perhaps a slice of pineapple.” He sat back and pushed the menu away.

“Thank heaven for a man who makes up his mind,” said M. He looked up at the steward. “Have you got all that, Porterfield?”

“Yes, sir.” The steward smiled. “You wouldn’t care for a marrow bone after the strawberries, sir? We got half a dozen in today from the country, and I’d specially kept one in case you came in.”

“Of course. You know I can’t resist them. Bad for me but it can’t be helped. God knows what I’m celebrating this evening. But it doesn’t often happen. Ask Grimley to come over, would you.”

“He’s here now, sir,” said the steward, making way for the wine-waiter.

“Ah, Grimley, some vodka, please.” He turned to Bond. “Not the stuff you had in your cocktail. This is real pre-war Wolfschmidt from Riga. Like some with your smoked salmon?”

‘Very much,” said Bond.’

“Then what?” asked M. “Champagne? Personally I’m going to have a half-bottle of claret. The Mouton Rothschild ’34, please, Grimley. But don’t pay any attention to me, James. I’m an old man. Champagne’s no good for me. We’ve got some good champagnes, haven’t we, Grimley? None of that stuff you’re always telling me about, I’m afraid, James. Don’t often see it in England. Taittinger, wasn’t it?”

Bond smiled at M.’s memory. “Yes,” he said, “but it’s only a fad of mine. As a matter of fact, for various reasons I believe I would like to drink champagne this evening. Perhaps I could leave it to Grimley.”

The wine-waiter was pleased. “If I may suggest it, sir, the Dom Perignon ’46. I understand that France only sells it for dollars, sir, so you don’t often see it in London. I believe it was a gift from the Regency Club in New York, sir. I have some on ice at the moment. It’s the Chairman’s favourite and he’s told me to have it ready every evening in case he needs it.”

Bond smiled his agreement.

“So be it, Grimley,” said M. “The Dom Perignon. Bring it straight away, would you?”

Even here, in the area of gourmet cooking where Deighton and his character are famous, I feel there’s a recognizable difference in the authors’ treatment of the menu. In Fleming’s novel, the food is near-unattainable, and much is made of rarity and ages and dates. In Deighton’s, the narrator recognizes his good fortune and is thankful he’s not eating a bacon sandwich (I also feel that, in addition to utilizing Deighton’s knowledge of cooking, the gourmet tendencies of the narrator are a form of over-compensation stemming from his class issues, but more on that in a later post).

In a way, these areas that Deighton’s character and 007 seemingly have in common actually do more to clearly delineate the differences between the two. But, as I said before, I make these observations with the admission that I’ve only read one book in the Deighton series.

Next time around, we’ll reprint a tongue-in-cheek account of the first meeting between Deighton and Fleming, written by journalist Peter Evans for The Guardian, later reprinted in the book For Bond Lovers Only, and examine reports that Fleming and Deighton discussed establishing their agents as part of the same narrative world.