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Page 162
with the bogeyman, suggests that he is black. It is singular that Fleming should be anti-Communist with the same lack of discrimination as he is anti-Nazi and anti-German. It isn't that in one case he is reactionary and in the other democratic. He is simply Manichean for operative reasons: he sees the world as made up of good and evil forces in conflict.
Fleming seeks elementary oppositions; to personify primitive and universal forces, he has recourse to popular standards. In a time of international tensions, popular notions of 'wicked Communism' exist beside those of the unpunished Nazi criminal. Fleming uses them both in a sweeping, uncritical manner.
At the most, he tempers his choice with irony, but the irony is completely masked and is revealed only through incredible exaggeration. In From Russia, With Love, the Soviet men are so monstrous, so improbably evil that it seems impossible to take them seriously. And yet, in his brief preface, Fleming insists that all the narrated atrocities are absolutely true. He has chosen the path of fable, and fable must be taken as truthful if it is not to become a satirical fairy tale. The author seems almost to write his books for a two-fold reading public, those who take them as gospel truth and those who see their humor. In order to work as ambiguous texts, however, they must appear authentic, credible, ingenious, and plainly aggressive. A man who chooses to write in this way is neither a Fascist nor a racist; he is only a cynic, an expert in tale engineering.
If Fleming is a reactionary at all, it is not because he identifies the figure of 'evil' with a Russian or a Jew. He is reactionary because he makes use of stock figures. The very use of such figures (the Manichean dichotomy, seeing things in black and white) is always dogmatic and intolerantin short, reactionarywhereas he who avoids set figures, who recognizes nuances and distinctions and who admits contradictions is democratic. Fleming is conservative as, basically, the fableany fableis conservative; his is the static, inherent, dogmatic conservatism of fairy tales and myths, which transmit an elementary wisdom, constructed and communicated by a simple play of light and shade, by indisputable archetypes which do not permit critical distinction. If Fleming is a 'Fascist', he is so because of his inability to pass from mythology to reason.
The very names of Fleming's protagonists suggest the mythological nature of the stories by fixing in an image or in a pun the character from the start, without any possibility of conversion or change. (One cannot be called Snow White and not be white as snow, in face and in spirit.) The wicked man lives by gambling? He will be called Le Chiffre. He is working for the Reds? He will be called Redand Grant if he works for money, duly granted. A Korean professional killer by unusual means will be Oddjob. One obsessed with gold is Auric Goldfinger. A wicked man is called No. Perhaps the half-lacerated face of Hugo Drax will be conjured

 
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