Despite what some may think or have been told, Kingsley Amis did contemplate a follow-up to Colonel Sun. 007Forever is proud to present more info about Amis`s involvement with the world of 007… According to the New York Times, “While the English notices weren`t so good, the advance sales there indicated that Mr. Amis, may not regard “Colonel Sun” as a mere one-shot, but may go on. If so, the new Bond will be set most likely in Mexico, which Amis visited in January. “I was immediately stimulated by it,” he said at his London home, “and couldn`t help thinking of Bond. It was just his sort of place.””
“Mr. Amis never moves about by air, and cultivated his own deficiencies – his phrase – he went from St. Louis to Mexico City by train. En route, he remembered that “Bond loved trains” (From Russia, With Love) and found himself plotting an assassination on a train. Then as his train moved on, there occurred the inevitable sentence, “Bond had never liked Acapulco.” From that point the next adventure of James Bond seemed to be just a matter of writing time.”
[NK`s note: if Amis had gone ahead with it, the book couldn`t have been published any earlier than 1970. The powers that be at Cape`s, Tom Maschler and Tony Colwell, were keen on Amis writing another Bond novel, but the decision not to proceed seems to have been Amis`s.]
Many years later, Amis approached Glidrose with an idea for a short story. Bond would come out of retirement at age 70 to rescue a kidnapped US Senator from a Russian Colonel-General. Bond presumably dies at the end when he falls down a waterfall. Glidrose blanched and ordered Amis not to write one word of it.
The Letters of Kingsley Amis edited by Zachary Leader (HarperCollins) features a fascinating look into Amis`s life and even includes several fascinating Bond tidbits:
A film producer hired Amis to write a treatment based on an original Fleming idea:
Letter to Theo Richmond, December 20th, 1965:
“I have been having a rather horrible time writing a story outline for one George Willoughby. Based on an original Fleming idea. Willoughby and the script-writer change everything as I come up with it. I gave W. the completed outline five days ago and he has been too shocked and horrified and despairng to say a word since. However, he has already paid me. (Not much.)”
Rumours persist that Kingsley Amis wrote, or rewrote MGG. Amis`s own comments clearly disprove this.
To Tom Maschler – 5 October 1964
Dear Tom [Jonathan Cape managing director],
[…]”Have been driving hard at The Man with the Golden Gun.* I forget what, if anything, we arranged about this. Anyway, you may care to glance at the enclosed list of errors, etc. My own feeling in general is that, while some kinds of error could easily be spotted by a competent reader (repetitions of words, the omission of question-marks – though I may say that none of Fleming`s previous books has been thoroughly corrected for this – the “Adams” mantelpiece, etc), there are on other hand several passages that need to be rewritten by someone with a feeling and flair for style; this is especially true of the 2 1/2 pages of dialogue that will have to be entirely re-drafted (pp 127-129). Anyways, forgive me if some of the errors listed seem insultingly obvious.
My greatest discovery has been to stop what it is that has done most to make the book so feeble. As it stands, its most glaring weaknesses are:
I. Scaramanga`s thinness and insipidity as a character, after a very lengthy though pretty competent and promising build-up on pp 26-35;
II. The radical and crippling implausibility whereby Scaramanga hires Bond as a security man (p 67) when he doesn`t know him and, it transpires, doesn`t need him. This is made much worse by Bond`s suspicions, “There was the strong smell of a trap about” and so on.
Now I am as sure as one could be in the circumstances that as first planned, perhaps as first drafted, the reason why Scaramanga asks Bond along to the Thunderbird is that he`s sexually attracted to him, which disposes of difficulty no. Ii right away and gives a strong pointer to the disposal of no. I. I wouldn`t care to theorise about how far Scaramanga was made to go in the original draft; far enough, no doubt, to take care of no. I.
At some later stage, Fleming`s own prudence or that of a friend induced him to take out this element, or most of it: see p 33-34, which as things are have no point whatever. He as unable to think of any alternative reason for Scaramanga`s hiring of Bond, and no wonder, since the whole point of this hiring in the first version was that it had to be inexplicable by ordinary secret-agent standard. And there he was forced to hold on to the stuff about Bond`s suspicions because Bond would have looked such a perfect nit if he hadn`t been suspicious, and it`s always better to leave an implausible loose end than make your hero look a nit.
There are no doubt all sorts or reasons why we can`t have the book in its original version, the most telling of which is that it probably doesn`t exist any more, if it ever did. I could re-jig it for you, but there are all sorts of reasons against that too. But if you think you could initiate a discreet inquiry about whether there was a buggery thread at some stage, I should be most interested to learn of any confirmation for my brilliant flash of insight.**
I`m sending the typescript back under separate cover.
* Ian Fleming died after correcting only half the final manuscript of The Man with the Golden Gun, and Amis, among others, was enlisted by Cape, Fleming`s publisher, to look the manuscript over for errors and inconsistencies.
** Maschler reported back to Amis that “the resident experts (Fleming, not buggery) don`t occur with your theory” (Maschler to Amis, 9 October 1964). Amis alludes to his theory in The James Bond Dossier (1965), in which he deplores “the ordinariness of Scaramanga, who entirely lacks the physical presence of Bond-villain at his best and remains a mere trigger-man whatever his (undemonstrated) deadliness, the promising hints of homosexuality and pistol-fetishism in him left undeveloped” (p 67).
To Tom Maschler – 19 October 1964
Dear Tom,
[…] PS: Do I get 25gns for work on Man with Golden Gun? Or more? Or less?*
* Maschler was planning to pay Amis with drink: “I had in mind half a dozen bottles. Or more. Or less.” (Maschler to Amis, 27 October 1964)
Colonel Sun though a cult favourite, remains unfilmed:
Letter to Elizabeth Jane Howard (Amis`s novelist 2nd wife) – 15th September 1976
Dear Piney,
[…] Before that I`d been to Pinewood Studies[sic] to be talked to about the new James Bond film,* which they want me to write an article on. Don`t know that I will, but it was fun to go, meet Roger Moore, etc.
*The Spy Who Loved Me (1977)
Dear Piney, [16th Sep, 1976]
Meant to tell you that while I was at Pinewood I mentioned Col Sun to the PR chap, saying quite innocently that I`d heard long ago that Sal[t]zman had more or less specifically rejected the idea of filming it. PR chap said well, you know Sal[t]zman has left the organisation now and, er, let`s say I`ve heard people mentioning Col Sun. So there may be something in store for us there.
[NK`s note: Elsewhere it`s been said that Saltzman`s embargo against Colonel Sun had much to do with 1.) Having to pay royalties to Amis 2.) Glidrose rejecting the Jenkins Bond novel Per Fine Ounce, which Saltzman had been involved with. Glidrose instead published Colonel Sun which Saltzman had nothing to do with.]
Amis loathed John Gardner`s Bond novels, trashing For Special Services in print. Here, he`s slightly kinder to Licence Renewed:
To Philip Larkin – 9 June 1981
Dear Philip,*
[…] I didn`t know, or had forgotten, that you were such a Bond fan. I agree with everything you say about him AND about Gardner`s book. Glidrose didn`t show me it or even tell me it existed till it was in proof, possibly because I`d have told them it was piss. So sodding tame. Bond tells Murik`s men to stand down an they stand down. Peter Janson-Smith of Glidrose said the present text is Gardner`s souping-up of an original draft they`d sent back as too boring. Imagine what that can have been like. He just can`t write exciting stories.
You are an ole bugar about the rose.** I don`t like it either, but Bond did. He drank a well-iced pint of it in Goldfinger, p 170 (Cape edn.), admittedly with a sole menniere, but if rose goes with anything it goes with anything, right? Funny thing, the day I read your piece I got Who`s Who in Spy Fiction from the local remainder shop (want a copy? p/b, 30p) and read the following piece of bubbling dogs— from the pen of John le Carre:
“The really interesting thing [phrase that shows a lie is coming up] about Bond is that he would be what I would call the ideal defector. Because if the money was better, the booze freer and women easier over there in Moscow, he`d be off like a shot. Bond, you see, is the ultimate prostitute.”
Not true, not the case. That`s what le C`s dull f—–`s are like. He is the most frightful pisser, as I will explain to you at greater length when I see you.
* Larkin had reviewed LR in the Times literary, Supplement, 5 June 1981, pp 625, 627 ** “Amis was both a first-class writer and a Bond fan, and what he produced [Colonel Sun] was a workmanlike job, though one reader at least blanched to find Bond drinking rose with his cold beef, or with anything else for that matter”.
In a letter to Philip Larkin, dated December 31st 1963, Amis mentions that he was already writing The James Bond Dossier
To Victor Gollancz – 1 May 1964 (Amis`s then publisher)
My dear Victor,
I am just completing a book called The James Bond Dossier, the contents of which are probably indicated sufficiently by its title, although perhaps I should add that its approach is that of a Fleming addict and its verdict largely a favourable one.
I don`t think that this is at all your sort of book, in several ways. I`m pretty sure in my own mind that you have very little time for Fleming and the Fleming cult: at the very least, your heart wouldn`t be in it. And this is the sort of book people`s hearts have got to be in, I feel, if it`s to sell more than four or five thousand copies, which, having spent five months on the damn thing, I couldn`t afford.
The hearts of Jonathan Cape would be very much in this venture and, as you will know, they have an immense Fleming distribution and publicity machine already functioning. I have decided, after some not altogether comfortable ponder, that they shall public this effort.
But you are still “my publisher” (if you still want me). My future novels, and any other kind of book I can foresee writing, will be yours. I hope very much that you and Cape`s will be able to come to some arrangement which will satisfy everybody that I am not “going over” to them.*
*Gollancz was not pleased, but agreed to release Amis “subject only to this: namely that Jonathan Cape should agree with me a form of words that will make it absolutely clear, both in the trade press and the general press, that this book is an exception, that Cape publishes it by arrangement with us, and that your future work will be published by us” (Gollancz to Amis, 4 May 1964, in Gollancz).
To Tom Maschler – 28 September 1967
“There is a snag in the proof of Colonel Sun at page 187. I wrote a revised version of this passage and included it in the final copy I dropped at Cape`s or was it Janson-S`s? just before leaving. What appears in the proof is the earlier version. I imagine that the written corrections on that draft were all duly noted and incorporated, but that this, being a properly typed page, slipped through the mesh. I could re-do the thing: the snag would be that I did the revision from notes supplied by Mike K* that I haven`t got here, or probably anywhere. Meantime I will plug ahead with proof-correction. By the way, what about proofs of the maps? I must see them, to ensure that everything that should be on them is on them.
* Keely taught English, creative writing and modern Greek studies at Princeton; most of Colonel Sun is set in Greece, hence Keely`s notes.
In a letter to Philip Larkin May 21st, 1967, Amis mentions that Colonel Sun is finished.
Excerpts copyright (c) Kingsley Amis estate