Free The James Bond Bedside Companion by Raymond Benson

Goodner.)

On February 4, 1962, the Sunday Times published in the first issue of the new color supplement a James Bond short story by Fleming entitled "The Living Daylights." The Daily Express, which had been serializing the novels and held the rights to the comic strip, was incensed about this, but Fleming managed to smooth things over once he got back to England.
    THE SPY WHO LOVED ME was published in April, with a lovely Richard Chopping jacket picturing a Wilkinson dagger, red carnation, burnt paper and a burnt matchstick. On the title page, Fleming added a co-author under his own name: Vivienne Michel, the heroine of the story. In a preface to the American edition, Fleming stated that he found the manuscript on his desk at his office one day, spruced it up, and submitted it for publication. But he didn't pull anyone's leg. The world knew it was Ian Fleming's novel. The author was expecting mixed reviews for this one, and got them. In fact, Fleming was quite distressed at several violent attacks (one on television) for what some critics called the "pornographic" episodes of the heroine's early life before Bond enters the story. As a result, the book was banned in some countries, including the paperback edition in England for a few years. The Times called it a "morbid version of 'Beauty and the Beast,'" and The Listener described it as being "as silly as it is unpleasant." More women seemed to like it, however. Esther Howard in Spectator found it "surprising," adding that she liked "the Daphne du Maurier touch" and preferred it that way, but doubted that real fans would. Because of the poor reception of the book in England, Fleming stipulated to Eon Productions and Glidrose that only the title of this particular novel could be used by the film makers when the time came to bring THE SPY WHO LOVED ME to the screen. In America, reviewers were cool toward the book as well. Anthony Boucher wrote that the "author has reached an unprecedented low." This was the last Bond novel to be published by Viking Press. Fleming switched to New American Library and NAL immediately began a mass paperback campaign to promote the books, all with uniformly designed covers.

Ian Fleming camping up the Bond image. (Photo by Loomis Dean, Life Magazine, © Copyright 1966 by Time, Inc.)

That summer, with his health fluctuating between good and bad, Fleming decided he would send Bond to Japan for his next novel. The author was anxious to be reunited with his friend Richard Hughes, the Sunday Times representative in the Far East. Fleming had met the Australian in 1959 during the THRILLING CITIES tour. For twelve days, Fleming was guided through Japan by Hughes and Torao "Tiger" Saito, the editor-in-chief of a distinguished annual called "This is Japan," published by the Asahi Shirnbun. Fleming was to show his gratitude to the two men by creating in their images the characters of "Dikko" Henderson and Tiger Tanaka.
    Fleming received considerable exposure in American magazines that summer. The short story, "The Living Daylights," was published in the June issue of Argosy under the title "Berlin Escape." The August 10 issue of Life featured an article on Fleming. The photographs, taken by Loomis Dean, showed the author camping it up as he posed with guns, playing cards, and a Bentley. Other American magazines, especially men's publications, began featuring Bond serializations. DOCTOR NO was published in Stag magazine with the inappropriate title, "Nude Girl of Nightmare Key."
    A couple of years later, Stag publishedTHE SPY WHO LOVED ME as "Motel Nymph"! Playboy ,though, did a much classier job with serializations of all the remaining Bond novels beginning with ON HER MAJESTY'S SECRET SERVICE. The appearances of Fleming's work in Playboy did much to perpetuate the Bond/Playboy image in the early days of the author's fame in America.
    Around this time, Fleming's portrait was painted by his friend Amherst Villiers, whom he had known since the thirties.