|
 |
|
 |
|
|
appeal for help, only a fixed glare of physical exertion. Even as Bond looked into them, now only ten yards away, they suddenly shut and the great face contorted in a grimace of pain. "Aaarh," said the distorted mouth. Both arms stopped flailing the water and the head went under and came up again. A cloud of blood welled up and darkened the sea. Two six-foot thin brown shadows backed out of the cloud and then dashed back into it. The body in the water jerked sideways. Half of the Big Man's left arm came out of the water. It had no hand, no wrist, no wrist-watch. But the great turnip head, the drawn-back mouth full of white teeth almost splitting it in half, was still alive. . . . The head floated back to the surface. The mouth was closed. The yellow eyes seemed still to look at Bond. Then the shark's snout came right out of the water and it drove in towards the head, the lower curved jaw open so that light glinted on the teeth. There was a horrible grunting scrunch and a great swirl of water. Then silence. |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
This parade of the terrifying has precedents in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries: the final carnage, preceded by torture and painful imprisonment (preferably with a virgin), is pure Gothic. The passage quoted here is abridged; Mr. Big suffers even more agonies. In the same manner Lewis's Monk was dying for several days with his own lacerated body lying on a steep cliff. But the Gothic terrors of Fleming are described with a physical precision, a detailing by images, and for the most part by images of things. The absence of the watch on the wrist bitten off by the shark is not just an example of macabre sarcasm; it is an emphasis on the essential by the inessential, typical of the école du regard. |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
And here let us introduce a further opposition which affects not so much the structure of the plot as that of Fleming's style: the distinction between a narrative incorporating wicked and violent acts and a narrative that proceeds by trifling acts seen with disillusioned eyes. |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
What is surprising in Fleming is the minute and leisurely concentration with which he pursues for page after page descriptions of articles, landscapes, and events apparently inessential to the course of the story and, conversely, the feverish brevity with which he covers in a few paragraphs the most unexpected and improbable actions. A typical example is to be found in Goldfinger, with two long pages dedicated to a casual meditation on a Mexican murder, fifteen pages dedicated to a game of golf, and twenty-five pages occupied with a long car trip across France as against the four or five pages which cover the arrival at Fort Knox of a false hospital train and the coup de théâtre which culminates in the failure of Goldfinger's plan and in the death of Tilly Masterson. |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
In Thunderball a quarter of the volume is occupied by descriptions of the naturalist cures Bond undergoes in a clinic, though the events that occur there do not justify lingering over the details of diets, massage, and Turkish baths. The most disconcerting passage is perhaps that in which Domino Vitali, after having told Bond her life-story in the bar of the |
|
|
|
|
|