You Only Edit Twice

Ian Fleming Publications, the corporate arm of the Fleming literary estate, has announced its intention to subject the James Bond novels to a fresh edit prior to re-release of the series on its 70^th anniversary this April.

James Bond first appeared in 1953. World War II was still fresh in the minds of Europeans and Jim Crow was a reality for millions of black Americans. Although racial segregation did not exist in England, racial attitudes were roughly proximate either side of the Atlantic. Although one was more likely to encounter black Britons on the high-street than black Americans at the local lunch counter, it would be years before the social norms of either nation reflected anything approximating racial equality.

The Bond novels clearly reflect those attitudes. The title, for instance, of chapter five in Live and Let Die includes the N-word, which Fleming places liberally in the mouths of American characters such as Bond’s CIA sidekick, Felix Leiter, who, ironically enough, is black himself in the most recent Daniel Craig James Bond films. It also appears periodically as part of a compound noun (“n***erhead”), which is Caribbean slang for a small atoll. They will clean up such usages, alongside the uncomplimentary descriptions of Harlem nightlife that appear in the novel.

Throughout the original series of Fleming novels, Bond travels widely and interacts with people of many different nationalities – mostly European or Slavic. But occasionally, his adventures draw him into contact with the more exotic ethnicities one might see in Jamaica or the Orient. Fleming, a former travel writer, handles scene description with ease. But his upper-class attitudes toward other races are evident and tend toward the clichéd.

Where Fleming treats the American and Jamaican blacks of his early books with affectionate disdain (Fleming himself enjoyed the company of black people and had a keen ear for dialogue), he portrays the Japanese characters in You Only Live Twice with the generosity with which one might expect a Brit to treat “honored enemies.” It will be intriguing to see how the editors modify Fleming’s descriptions of Tokyo or meetings with Tiger Tanaka, head of the Japanese secret service (to say nothing of his sexual yearnings toward geisha).

Much has been made of recent decisions to subject older books to the scrutiny of modern sensitivity readers. Roald Dahl’s oeuvre narrowly avoided a fisking by the Mod Squad thanks to the intervention of royalty. We have yet to see whether the “shock and dismay” felt by Queen Consort Camilla upon learning of the proposed edits are readily applicable to Fleming, or if Her Majesty’s fears of “those who may wish to curb the freedom of your expression or impose limits on your imagination” will menace James Bond. But I would place Dahl and Fleming in entirely different categories as writers. As such, they should be subject to very different standards.

It is important to distinguish the “enduring” nature of beloved children’s literature from the relative ephemera of thrillers. The hope with children’s books is that adults can pass down beloved treasures from their own youth to their own kids. As such, editing language and scenery is apt to raise objections from the nostalgic. And rightly so. While one hopes that any book for children, written at any time, would avoid racist or prejudicial sentiments, one can understand a parent’s desire to bequeath the same immersive experience to their child that they once enjoyed.

Thrillers are an entirely different animal. Written on the fly, light on characterization and heavy on action, they invariably portray a rougher world – one on the shadowy fringes, filled with society’s losers and the criminal element. The “mean streets” of Raymond Chandler are not a recommended destination for any child’s bedtime hour. And they are not the “enduring” stuff of beloved literature.

The mean streets persist. Many of the same types of bad actors still live there. But how we understand those streets and the language used to describe them are fair game for those who would question the use of racist or otherwise objectionable vocabulary. One can describe the bombed-out streets of Calcutta without descending to colonialist stereotypes, just as one can describe the interior of a Harlem nightclub without referring to it as “n***er heaven.”

The challenge for modern editors will be to shore up those areas of the narrative that may weaken without the objectionable language. Racist language and attitudes, deplorable as they are, serve as shorthand for recognizing the era in which books appeared. Additional exposition may therefore prove necessary. And let us not neglect to recognize that language serves as an indicator of human behavior. If one removes racist language from an old book, does that not suggest that perhaps such language never existed? And if racist language did not exist, are we then expected to pretend that racist attitudes and behavior did not exist, either?

 Editing old thrillers with sympathy for modern sensibilities is all well and good. But replacement dialogue and descriptors are essential for establishing time, place and social attitudes. Anything less and one risks throwing out the Bond with the bath-water.