The Bond Brain

When we read the Fleming novels, or watch the movies, we get the idea of a 007 somewhere between his late thirties and early forties—depending on which book we read or movie we see. We might say that there is a special decade to be Bond at his best—between thirty five and forty five.

Once again we turn to the short stories of Fleming to see what advice we can glean to feed the Bond Brain. Let’s turn to Risico, a lesser known short story, first. Probably won’t ever see that as a movie title, but there’s plenty of bang bang in this one, with some memorable characters.

So there’s no mistake, we are not dealing with the movie here, we are dealing with Ian Fleming’s short story. It has perhaps the least excitement of any of his Bond tales - it’s all basically a story about a married couple’s downfall being told to Bond in a stodgy Nassau country club by an elderly civil servant. Yep, that’s it.

Bond has just enjoyed getting into “training” with Jill Masterson—an Iron Horse ride from Miami to New York, paid for courtesy of Auric Goldfinger. On dropping off Jill at Pennsylvania Station, Bond reflects “Some love is fire, some love is rust, but the finest cleanest love is lust.”

One of the things about James Bond is he is careful. Careful about what he eats, drinks, smokes, and also about the people he befriends. So should you be.

After having survived two hours and twenty three minutes of viewing SkyFall, I have selected perhaps the only passage in Thunderball wherein we get a glimpse of the Bond Brain. It bears on both movies and people.

Fifty years ago this was the first film for Bond, so in honor of a half century of cinematic 007 we will turn the Bond Brain to Dr. No, but by the book, not the film, for our purposes.

In this installment of The Bond Brain we read our tarot cards, cast our spells, avoid getting chomped on by sharks, and learn how to Live it Up (but not let die).

After looking at the Bond Brain in the Casino Royale novel, we continue with the Bond Brain as evidenced by quotes from the Fleming novels. In this installment, we not only quote 007, but the late and lamented Darko Kerim, the Brit’s man in Istanbul in From Russia With Love.

We continue our journey through the books to glean wisdom from the Bond Brain, and in this installment, we shall fill a rather sensuous but cynical basket of goodies from Casino Royale.

In this series of articles, we are going to take a look at the Bond brain as it manifests in the books, and see what useful lessons we can learn in applying Bond brain techniques in our own missions. As Casino Royale was the first Fleming novel, so shall that be our first stop.