Who here enjoyed the movie?

[Mister Underhill]

I'm a bit of a Fleming fan myself. I mean, his work isn't literature for the ages, but like Inziladun, I find that Fleming's Bond is less cartoonish, more human, sometimes quite dark, and usually a fun, quick read. I like Carré too, of course, but it's easy to wonder if there would have been Smiley without Bond. One reads like a reaction to the other. But that's not based on anything other than idle speculation. I was going to say something about how Carré can be like eating your vegetables, but I couldn't think what Fleming would be in that analogy, and anyway I like vegetables.

Fleming himself is an interesting character, more than a bit on the Tookish side: a man with a taste for adventure, who doesn't take himself very seriously, has a bit of a mischievous side, not very respectable, a bit cracked.

Have you read that whole how-to essay that you quoted from, Bêth? I enjoy Fleming's thoroughly unpretentious approach, which echoes Stephen King's idea of writing as a blue-collar job, like laying pipe or driving long-haul trucks. Who knows how much of it is apocryphal, but if the stories are true, Fleming built himself a pretty enviable writing life -- Jamaican estate with a private beach, write in the morning, swim in the ocean, take a nap, eat, write a little more, and supposedly he only worked a few months out of every year, at least at the beginning.

As far as questions of legacy and reputation in the long run go, as someone once said, in the long run we're all dead. I'm just glad that there are enough hardcore Tolkien fans around in the here and now to support a discussion site like this one.