Of Human Bondage

THE SPY WHO LOVED ME (211 pp.)--Ian Fleming--Viking ($3.95).

Among the shocks and disappointments 1962 still has in store for President John F. Kennedy and many thousands of other unsuspecting people is the discovery that the cruel, handsome, scarred face of James Bond does not turn up until more than halfway through Ian Fleming's latest book. They will look in vain for the familiar early scene in the eighth-floor office on Regent's Park where the taciturn M re-lights his pipe and hands Bond his latest assignation with Death and the Maiden.

And that is not all they will miss; unaccountably lacking in The Spy Who Loved Me are the High-Stake Gambling Scene, the Meal-Ordering Scene, the Torture Scene, the battleship-grey Bentley, and Blades Club.

But these lapses are understandable after all--Fleming is not the author. As he archly explains in a foreword, he found the manuscript on his desk one morning--"the first-person story of a young woman, evidently beautiful and not unskilled in the arts of love," who was involved "both perilously and romantically with the same James Bond whose secret-service exploits I myself have written from time to time."

The Dreamy Pines. Vivienne Michel is her name. Motel receptionist is her game--at least when Bond meets her. The first half of the book is a detailed flashback to explain how Miss Michel happened to find herself one dark and stormy night in a deserted motel between Lake George and Glens Falls, N.Y. "I was running away. I was running away from England, from my childhood, from the winter, from a sequence of untidy, unattractive love affairs . . ." Vivienne goes on at some length about the love affairs. The most recent was Kurt, a West German newspaperman, who made love with West German industry and efficiency until she, with English inefficiency, got pregnant. After an abortion in Zurich she bought a Vespa, some saucy fur-lined goggles, and "a rather dashing pair of black kid motorcycling gloves," then set out to work and scooter her way down the U.S. coast to Florida.

And so to The Dreamy Pines Motor Court, where two hoods called Sluggsy and Horror find Vivienne all alone in her black velvet toreador pants ("with the rather indecent gold zip down the seat"). They behave tastelessly ("Okay, Horror. Let her go. This is for me"). Enter, at long last, the man with the white scar on his left cheek. "I quickly put my hand up to hide my nakedness. Then he smiled and suddenly I thought I might be all right."

Rather Cold Passion. She is all right, of course, with Bond beside her in a blaze of bullets and burning motel.

Author Fleming calls this "the bang-bang kisskiss formula." But it takes more than this to account for the undisputed eminence of James Bond as the best-known wearer of a shoulder holster in print. One explanation is Bond's universal expertise. His man-of-the-worldsmanship is so explicit that his fans' fantasies have a rich and varied diet to feed on. His cigarettes, with their three distinctive gold rings (a considerable security risk), are blended for him of a Balkan tobacco mixture by Morlands of Grosvenor Street. For breakfast: "The single egg in the dark blue egg cup with a gold ring round the top was boiled for three and a third minutes . . . Then there were two slices of wholewheat toast, a large pat of deep yellow Jersey butter and three squat glass jars containing Tiptree 'Little Scarlet' strawberry jam; Cooper's Vintage Oxford marmalade and Norwegian Heather Honey from Fortnum's. The coffeepot and the silver on the tray were Queen Anne and the china was Minton." One memorable meal, in Moonraker, takes 6 1/2 pages for Bond to order and eat.

Bond also seems to have the full range of modern technological fun and games at his fingertips--from automobiles (which fascinate him) to aqualungs. He talks knowledgeably about perfume (though he admits the gaffe of once attributing Vent Vert to Dior instead of Balmain). He is a whiz at games; his adventures include several elaborately described games at which Bond wins five-figure stakes from the villain--usually by out-cheating him.

Cheating is certainly another secret of Bond's popularity; he is the bad guy who smolders in every good citizen. He is a professional murderer (the double zero in his secret-service designation of 007 indicates that he is one of the three operatives privileged to kill even when not acting in self-defense). In between assignments, he makes love "with rather cold passion, to one of three similarly disposed married women." And he can be as fast with the vodka martinis as with his Beretta .25; in the opening pages of Thunderball, he was in such bad shape that M had to send him to a sanitarium for a couple of weeks to dry out.

Goodbye, Vivienne. Lanky (6 ft. 1 in., 168 Ibs.) Author Fleming, 53, a product of Eton and Sandhurst and sometime reporter, editor, columnist and naval intelligence officer, began writing his giltedged Bonds in 1952 "because my mental hands were empty and as a counterirritant or antibody to my hysterical alarm at getting married at the age of 43."*

Last week Fleming was back in London after his annual two-month "writing vacation" at his place in Jamaica, where he had knocked out a new book at his usual rate of 1,750 words in three daily hours of writing, while at the same time visiting the location shooting for the movie being made of his Dr. No (TIME, May 5, 1958). Fleming made clear that the girl-narrated technique of Spy established no trend, nor was Vivienne Michel likely to unzip her way into any more of the saga. He was careful to send a complimentary copy to his famous fan in the White House. Copies will also circulate in an other place where he has friends -- the British secret service. "They tell me," says Fleming happily, "that my books are remarkably good recruiting manuals."

* To the former wife of one of Britain's famed press lords, Lord Rothermere, who named Fleming corespondent in his divorce suit.

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