Post by dragonpol on Apr 7, 2014 9:58:13 GMT -5
What are your thoughts on the uncharacteristically violent nature of Colonel Sun by Robert Markham, as a James Bond novel?
Did Kingsley Amis (or Robert Markham) go too far in the CR and LALD direction, do you think?
This level of violence - rape/skewering/stabbing/burning/head torture etc. - was it a step too far for a James Bond novel or do you think it fitted in with the works of Ian Fleming?
There are characters brutally stabbed to death, skewered with wooden skewers, almost burnt alive, raped, and Colonel Sun is stabbed by Bond twice in the back and then partially blown up by his own mortar bomb and finally given the coup de grace by a knife slid into his heart by Bond, after he has apologised for the head torture that he had just inflicted upon him and that he was a mad fool to quote the Marquis de Sade and his book Justine etc.. I think the violence in this Bond novel is certainly more graphic than those by Ian Fleming. It's also quite a different death scene for a villaion here, with Sun calling Bond "James", rather like Le Chiffre in Casino Royale. This is indeed appropriate as Colonel Sun bsits very much with the more brutal and violent James Bond early novels like Casino Royale, Live and Let Die, Diamonds Are Forever and Dr. No.
I'm currently writing a lengthy article on this aspect of the first James Bond continuation novel, entitled 'The Strange Death of Colonel Sun'. Watch my blog space, The Bondologist Blog, for when it features there in due course.
Did Kingsley Amis (or Robert Markham) go too far in the CR and LALD direction, do you think?
This level of violence - rape/skewering/stabbing/burning/head torture etc. - was it a step too far for a James Bond novel or do you think it fitted in with the works of Ian Fleming?
There are characters brutally stabbed to death, skewered with wooden skewers, almost burnt alive, raped, and Colonel Sun is stabbed by Bond twice in the back and then partially blown up by his own mortar bomb and finally given the coup de grace by a knife slid into his heart by Bond, after he has apologised for the head torture that he had just inflicted upon him and that he was a mad fool to quote the Marquis de Sade and his book Justine etc.. I think the violence in this Bond novel is certainly more graphic than those by Ian Fleming. It's also quite a different death scene for a villaion here, with Sun calling Bond "James", rather like Le Chiffre in Casino Royale. This is indeed appropriate as Colonel Sun bsits very much with the more brutal and violent James Bond early novels like Casino Royale, Live and Let Die, Diamonds Are Forever and Dr. No.
I'm currently writing a lengthy article on this aspect of the first James Bond continuation novel, entitled 'The Strange Death of Colonel Sun'. Watch my blog space, The Bondologist Blog, for when it features there in due course.
