[PREV - BONDED_COURIER] [TOP]
COUGHING_UP_FLEMING
August 24, 2005
September 5, 2005
Reading John Pearson's
A stab at pegging Fleming: "The Life of Ian Fleming" (1966)
trying to see the real In the Bantam paperback edition
Fleming through Pearson's
only intermittently
skeptical bio...
Pearson readily admits that Fleming's
honesty -- or perhaps, connection to
reality -- was a bit dubious:
For one of the slightly disconcerting
things about Fleming in real life was that
he liked to imagine that he had killed
someone in the line of duty. Very few of
his friends were taken into the secret,
but to those who were he took elaborate
precautions to suggest, subtly, and with a
great show of reluctance, that he had once
been compelled to perform this terrible
deed which marked him off so cruelly from
other men. To one friend he confided the
bare fact that the killing had been done
with a sandbag; he had never realized, he
said, how really hard you needed to hit a
grown man with a sandbag to kill him. To
another he hinted that he had performed
the deed by firing a small automatic which
he had concealed in his old brown leather
brief case -- that was how the hole in the
corner got there. Another close friend
believed that Fleming's black hat had
somehow played its part in a carefully
planned assassination. Yet another is
still firmly convinced that Fleming CASINO_MUNDANE
slugged an agent of the Vichy government
and tipped him over the water front at
Marseilles. -- p.179-180
But there are other points on which Pearson seems
oddly credulous:
When he finally took his skis and swept down
the forbidden slopes he must have felt death
very close to him, for the avalanche did start
and he was buried up to his shoulders, but for
once the fall was lighter than usual and he
escaped with a few bruises and a twisted
ankle. He was considered to have been very (Did anyone *see*
lucky, and next day his reputation as a wild, this happen?)
romantic figure was greater than ever among
the girls of the Café Reisch. -- p.34
And there's one big issue where
Pearson's credulity is absolutely Not that it stopped
incredible: Alexander Cockburn.
Late in his life, Fleming tried to write
himself into history as the original
author of the charter for the OSS (later
to become the CIA).
Oddly enough, this is not a totally
implausible story. It might really
have happened that way, and certainly
I can't disprove it... but given
Fleming's character, wouldn't you
want a little more than his word, and
the insistence of a friend?
Here's how Pearson lays it out:
Fleming disappeared from
the scene for a couple
of days. When he
finally left Washington
he took with him a
present from Donovan.
It was a .38 Police That's General
Positive Colt revolver "Wild Bill" Donovan.
with the inscription, For the "dramatis
"For Special Services." personae", see:
-- p.106
BONDED_COURIER
And a few years before Fleming
died he wrote two letters, both
claiming that he'd written the
original charter for the OSS.
Because of these two letters, Pearson says: (Well, there's also
his "lifelong friend"
It seems undeniable that Fleming, quite Ivar Bryce who confirms
unofficially and without reference to the story.... but why
Admiral Godfrey, did give General would he be any more
Donovan, as a man with a heart-warming reliable than the friends
belief in the ability of Britain to bearing Fleming's
survive, the benefit of his advice, and multiple conflicting tales
that his paper formed the "special of assassination?)
services" for which he received the
revolver. -- p.107
It seems "undeniable"? WTF? A well-know bullshit artist
claims something in a couple of letters, and that's *it*
for the evidence, and that's supposed to be undeniable?
So let's say that "Wild Bill"
gave him that revolver.
That's an interesting detail.
But isn't it at least
possible that the
"special services"
involved something
else?
Like finding
a really good
whore house?
--------
[NEXT - CASINO_MUNDANE]