Review: Colonel Sun, by Kingsley Amis

In taking up the task of writing the first continuation James Bond novel Kingsley Amis had a good many advantages over later writers enlisted to produce new entries in the series. There was the fact that Amis book appeared a very short while after Fleming's last appeared, and the franchise not far from the height of its popularity, leaving him with a simpler choice of courses than his successors, with delivering more of what Fleming did more easily appearing a viable task than a hollow pretension. Where this was concerned it was in itself relevant that Amis was a fan of that series, something not all those who have continued Bond's adventures have been, arguably to the cost of their work. (Cough cough, John Gardner.) Personal feeling aside, Amis was particularly well-equipped for the especially tricky task of continuing another writer's work as an individual accomplished as both a writer of literature, and a scholar and critic of literature, able to not just write a compelling story, but consider intellectually what other writers did. Indeed, Amis had already demonstrated the latter skill in relation to the Bond series specifically, just a few years earlier penning a noted study, The James Bond Dossier (1961), and afterward had an exceptional opportunity to enrich his knowledge of the subject in actually getting to know and work with Fleming, which experience included proofing the galleys for his last complete novel The Man With the Golden Gun (1965). One might add that, again compared with his successors, he was less remote from Fleming and what he represented at that point in time (as an Englishman born just fourteen years after Fleming, and increasingly sharing his conservative, less-than-thrilled-with-the-post-war-world outlook).

Still, according to his biographer Zachary Leader Kingsley Amis did not hope for too much when taking up the James Bond series. He certainly aspired to deliver "more Fleming," but in doing so regarded himself as a "ventriloquist" producing a "respectable second-rate copy" of Fleming's work. And while the resulting book, Colonel Sun (which Amis published in 1968 under the pseudonym Robert Markham), has been judged favorably by critics over the years, with fans commonly acclaiming it as the best produced by all those who followed Fleming, it may be unsurprising that--whether Amis was setting his sights too low, or simply knew the limits of any such effort all too well--the work has its undeniable weaknesses.

Certainly looking at the book it does seem closer in feel to a Fleming Bond novel than anything produced since. Like Fleming, Amis tells Bond's story by way of the showing-rather-than-telling "aimless glance" to which Fleming was so prone, and even imbues his prose with something of the rhythm of Fleming's language, which is a not inconsiderable achievement. And as befits the author of a major guide to the series, he makes clear that he knows the character's traits well. Yet, like a man putting on a ventriloquist act, his performance at times gets rather broad, Amis going to great lengths to emphasize Bond's personal quirks, as if anxious to reassure himself and us that this is indeed a Bond novel and not some generic spy story by some other dude which just happens to be using the name James Bond to tell his own story (or, heaven forfend, offering up a print equivalent of one of those godawful gadget-packed Bond films).

In the process, imitation turned into parody.

Thus the novel starts with Bond losing on the golf course and then twenty minutes later at the bar asking his friend (M's chief of staff) Bill Tanner "Do you think I'm going soft?" starting between them the kind of dialogue about the subject of Bond's inter-mission decline that had always previously been an inner monologue for the previously more taciturn Bond. Moreover, while the Bond of the novels often evinced a distaste for the leveled-down, Americanized post-war world, here it seems that anything and everything is constantly triggering a stream of such invective from Bond. Driving to M's residence, Bond sees mock Tudor houses with television aerials--and condemns the vanishing of Merrie England. The sight of a British European Airways jetliner passing overhead makes him think with distaste of British tourists "bearing their fish-and-chip culture" overseas when on holiday down in Iberia. Not long after when he is in Greece the lack of "Americanization" he sees around him, rather than keeping him from thinking of the issue at all, actually has him (inside his head) go off on a tangent about how it will just be a matter of time before this place too becomes all "super-highways, hot dog stands and neon."

Later Bond's alliance with a Greek Communist predictably provides scope for the series' most blustering anti-Communist rhetoric yet--which, as anyone familiar with Fleming can attest, is really saying something--and seems to bespeak that even more than the ventriloquist going over the top what we are really getting is Amis' own venting. The fact that Bond's ally Ariadne Alexandrou is presented as a naive young college graduate with a head full of leftist ideas who gets subjected to comments like "I beg you, Ariadne, forget your Leninist Institute and start to think!" by her father's friend Litsas (and subjected to much, much worse from other characters) seems to have more to do with Amis' own preoccupations (as a college professor bemoaning the cohort he saw in the lecture hall during the '60s) than anything that was ever on Fleming's mind. One can say the same for Amis' other satirical targets. British Cabinet Minister Sir Ronald Rideout, a conniving, self-seeking politician quick to fling about accusations, and only slightly less quick to cover his arse (apparently, his only two skills), appears only to be made fun of. And coming off far, far worse than that is the stupid, dangerous and stupidly dangerous Soviet General Igor Arenski--introduced in a chapter unsubtly titled "General Incompetence." (Fleming certainly detested the Soviets, and was not subtle about showing it, but he never let it get quite this silly.)

Amis' "venting," one might add, often extended to parts of the James Bond franchise with which he was less than pleased. Amis made it quite clear in his Dossier that he didn't much care for M ("peevish, priggish old monster" he called him). And when the chance came along he seized on it to write a James Bond story in which M, ailing at the start of the book, unable to prevent his own kidnapping, is helpless and useless.

Equally, Amis seems to have seized on the chance to lash out at critics of the series with whom he disagreed. In the Dossier he made his case that the charges of sadism often directed against the Bond novels were overblown--and now writing the series himself seems to have taken the attitude "You think that was sadistic? I'll show you sadistic." When Le Chiffre tortured Bond with a carpet-beater in Casino Royale Le Chiffre, depraved as he was, was still a desperate man fighting for his life. This time the villain, the titular Colonel Sun, speaks lengthily about the theories of the Marquis de Sade about torture as an exalting experience, and despite his having been told by his superiors to extract as much information from Bond as he can, his sole interest is in testing de Sade's theories--his perversity the whole of his motivation. There is, too, the abuse Ariadne is subjected to by Sun's helpers--the like of which never previously befell any of the Bond girls during the adventure (and which in light of Amis' broader attitude toward the character, and the ideology she nominally shares with her captors, seems the more an expression of Amis' mean-spiritedness toward her and what she represents).

While playing up the brutality Amis also plays down the gimmickry that by then had become so prevalent in the films--with any doubt about the intent, again, clarified by still more of his letting us know how he really feels. While the film version of You Only Live Twice had a similar plot--China attempts to bait and bleed East and West--he titular Colonel Sun tries to do the job with only a trench mortar and a handful of helpers, rather than a space program run from inside a volcano crater. Bond's equipment is even more limited--a pair of shoes with special heels, one with a transmitter to let the Service keep tabs on him, the other with a lock-pick and hacksaw blades he can use to free himself if captured and restrained. Bond is dubious about both from the start, and at tale's end, hearing Litsas joke that Bond's suit "is full of little radios and concealed cameras and things," Bond reflects to himself that he "had been right about their irrelevance, their uselessness when the crunch came."

Amid the ventriloquists' act, and the venting in its humorous and not-so-humorous forms, it can seem that Amis had little attention to give to the thriller element that is not exactly a minor aspect of the books. One may as well start with the sketchiness of the political premise. That the Soviet government would host a secret peace conference in the territory of a country that was not just a member of NATO, but at the time of publication under the rule of a right-wing military junta, is unlikely in the extreme, and no special explanation ever offered up for it. The conference plans are also very thinly described, the expected participants, the planned agenda, less spelled out than hinted at. And the Chinese idea for pinning blame for the attack on Britain does not make much more sense. Even if other countries would not put it past the British government to do such a thing, the fact remains that the chief of the Service would not do the job himself, especially when he was so sick that he could not even go into the office. Indeed, the very stupidity of such a frame-up would seem sufficient to give it away.

Granted, in such books the premise is often just an excuse for derring-do, but alas, that is not much more cleverly wrought, the story's placement of the inevitable obstacles in the heroes' path--in making it so that Bond and Ariadne have no recourse but to physically stop the plot themselves, by themselves--leaving much to be desired. Admittedly the chief of Britain's non-official cover agents in Athens is missing in action after his front business is firebombed. However, after that, what is to stop Bond going to the British embassy in the city and using its resources to get word home to the same Service tracking him with the transmitter in his shoe, for example?

The story's cutting Bond off from getting a warning to the Soviets is still less convincing. Ariadne's handler is killed by Sun's agents--but he is hardly the only Soviet operative in Athens, and even if the Soviet station has been compromised, it is hard to see why Ariadne's trying to deliver a message through it is not worth a shot in the desperate circumstances. (After all, if the traitor finds out about it, what would it hurt? They wouldn't find out anything they didn't already know, being aware that she is trying to stop them.)

And as if all this were not enough the last hundred pages or so of the story would not have had to happen at all were it not for the fact that "General Incompetence," overseeing the conference's security, allowed a large team of Chinese operatives to get so close to the site of the conference, then disbelieved what Ariadne told him. In the most appalling turn yet, when Bond and his comrades approach the island to attack Sun's base, one of the KGB patrol boats protecting the site attacks them. In the chaos, Sun's people capture Bond and his comrades, while Arenski's people somehow remain completely oblivious to the armed Chinese presence so close by. The result is that this, too, verges on parody, such that I suspect this part of the book, at least, was never supposed to do that. Indeed, one might suspect that General Arenski was not the only incompetent here.

All this being the case one might wonder at the oft-made claim that Amis' book is hands-down the best of the Bond continuation novels. However, this is less inexplicable than it seems. It is, again, undeniable that, more than any of the rest, Amis was clearly devoted to delivering "more Fleming," as none of the successors tried to do (Faulks' late-in-the-game one-shot only a partial exception), with the result that in the Fleming purist's book Amis wins by default. And there is the prestige of the Amis name, apt to bias the middlebrow, such that they give him the benefit of the doubt when they are not sure about what he is doing, and forgive him more easily than they would others were they to misstep in identical fashion. None of the later continuation writers would be able to count on such good will, while if Amis' intent, at least, was not parodic, the same would not go for his successors--as Amis himself was to observe publicly.

For the full listing of the James Bond continuation novels (and the reviews of them available on this blog), click here.