UBC #2: Goldfinger
Apr. 6th, 2006 05:43 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
truepennyUBC #2:
Fleming, Ian. Goldfinger. 1959. Introd. Anthony Burgess. London: Coronet-Hodder & Stoughton, 1989.
omg I am so not the intended audience for this book.
Entirely leaving aside the racism, sexism, misogyny, homophobia, and rampant bigotry, this is a book for people (unlike Mr. Fleming, I will not assume all of them are male) who like sports. Sports and cars and card games. Things you can win at. Things that make you feel macho.
And yet.
I did get caught up in the story, ridiculous as it is. Fleming made me, for the first time in my life, care about golf. He even made me understand golf, at least a little bit. And he writes lines like, "Mr. Springer had the glazed eyes of someone who is either very rich or very dead." So while there are things deeply, deeply wrong with the world view of this book, although it is as dated as a pint of whipping cream that's been in the back of the fridge long enough to develop an ecosystem and primitive culture, it was an enjoyable read.
There are still paragraphs that hurt, though. I won't quote them, because they are just brutally offensive, but trust me. I noticed. You'd notice, too. If James Bond survives much farther into the twenty-first century, it's going to be the movies that carry him, because in the movies, he can shed the baggage given him by his creator.
Fleming, Ian. Goldfinger. 1959. Introd. Anthony Burgess. London: Coronet-Hodder & Stoughton, 1989.
omg I am so not the intended audience for this book.
Entirely leaving aside the racism, sexism, misogyny, homophobia, and rampant bigotry, this is a book for people (unlike Mr. Fleming, I will not assume all of them are male) who like sports. Sports and cars and card games. Things you can win at. Things that make you feel macho.
And yet.
I did get caught up in the story, ridiculous as it is. Fleming made me, for the first time in my life, care about golf. He even made me understand golf, at least a little bit. And he writes lines like, "Mr. Springer had the glazed eyes of someone who is either very rich or very dead." So while there are things deeply, deeply wrong with the world view of this book, although it is as dated as a pint of whipping cream that's been in the back of the fridge long enough to develop an ecosystem and primitive culture, it was an enjoyable read.
There are still paragraphs that hurt, though. I won't quote them, because they are just brutally offensive, but trust me. I noticed. You'd notice, too. If James Bond survives much farther into the twenty-first century, it's going to be the movies that carry him, because in the movies, he can shed the baggage given him by his creator.
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Date: 2006-04-07 06:21 pm (UTC)I couldn't actually finish reading the one Bond book I picked up. The writing was very, very good, but there were too many things in it that made me queasy.