Generally I found this article insightful and intriguing, and persuaded me to actually read some James Bond -- I am one of those readers driven off by the movies -- but while Bond is not a snob, apparently Mr. Barra is: "Fleming's genius, if it's proper to apply the word to a writer of genre fiction..."

For the record, yes, it is as proper to apply the term genius to a writer of genre fiction as it is to any other kind of fiction. Edgar Allen Poe, who wrote mysteries and science fiction, certainly deserves the title; some think Stephen King is entitled to it, being if nothing else the modern-day Dickens; I suggest a remedial reading list of Dorothy L. Sayers, John Varley, Alfred Bester, and Elizabeth Peters (who has successfully blended both the Great Game and Haggard-inspired adventure into her Amelia Peabody Emerson books of early Egyptology). Even literary establishment figures like Michael Chabon has not only written novels inspired by comic books, but actual comic books (he wrote a charming backup story in the Justice Society of America title for DC).

Objectivity and openness are preferable to condescension in a critic, to my mind!

Where to begin?

Fleming's genius, if it's proper to apply the word to a writer of genre fiction

Sigh. That's an easy quip that can only come from someone who does not understand literature. Balzac wrote "genre fiction." So did Dickens. So did Henry James. Cormac McCarthy could easily be labled a "genre writer." And we shouldn't forget James Ellroy, often considered one of the best American writers, and clearly a genre man.

Chandler told Fleming that the parts of "Live and Let Die" set in Harlem were remarkable, "quite amazing for a foreigner to accomplish." He might have said quite amazing for an American to accomplish, as Harlem was surely as foreign to white American writers as Istanbul.

The physcially dangerous, and militantly political, Harlem of the late 60's onward may be that unfamiliar, but Harlem was a popular place with whites, for a variety of reasons, throughout the 20's, 30's, 40's, and 50's. They may have romanticized it, and ignored the pressing social problems. But as foreign as Istanbul? Please.

But the biggest stupidity of the article, a classic example of a writer too eager to be clever to be accurate:

Nearly half a century later, the CIA was still trying to talk itself into believing in the existence of WMD; if only we'd had a James Bond to send in first.

How pathetically misinformed. Read Salon's own coverage, please. The CIA always has denied WMD. This has been the ongoing fight between the Bush White House and the CIA. It is of course British intelligence which insisted, and insists, on the existence of those weapons. The CIA from the beginning has said they weren't any, and maintains that position to this day.

"Self-professed Bond fanatic", please. Not "self-possessed".

Years ago, a reporter at my TV station (who later went on to become an anchor in Los Angeles) was a Bond fanatic that I would certainly call self-posessed. (Well, what TV reporter isn't?) He came to a Christmas party in a Bondian white tux with butterfly black tie, and I saw hints of a shoulder holster when he moved. When he did a year-end story about the space shuttle, he insisted that the visual of the shuttle launch be backed with music from the score of "Moonraker."

I also co-wrote an espionage role-playing adventure played at conventions across the country that was set in the Bond universe. You're not supposed to make one character the "star" in those games, so everyone has a chance to contribute to the game's adventures. But my co-author insisted on making one character (the one he wanted to play) an imitation of Bond after the death of his wife, a brooding and haunted agent. The other five characters wound up being supporting characters for my co-writer's mania. As a genuinely novice writer I didn't object, and should have. My partner was truly "self-posessed," and not just about Bond, either.

By the way, I have heard (but never confirmed) that there were a series of paperbacks, ghost-written, that adopted the movie versions of the Bond films. The intention was supposedly to prevent readers from being "shocked" that the books were nothing like the movies. One would think that the Fleming estate would have complained. However, they apparently accepted other desecrations of the original Bond books, such as the horrible animated "James Bond Jr." and a recent "prequel" series of yount teen novels entitled "Young Bond," supposedly describing Bond's life as a student at Eton before World War II.

I was going to post a letter about Barra's strange sideswipe at genre fiction, but as Steve Kelner and "Chris" have already done so, further comment would be redundant.

I will say, however, that at least "genre writers" condescend to provide us with plots, something that, all too often, "literary" writers seem unwilling--or unable--to do thse days.

The best modern day review of the James bond books has been written by John Lanchester; you can find it here

http://www.lrb.co.uk/v24/n17/lanc01_.html

Kingsley Amis wrote a book in appreciation of Bond - the James Bond dossier. And then he went one step better - he wrote a lovely Bond book, Colonel Sun (published under the pseudonym Robert Markham), where he tried to address the failings he carped about in Ian Flemings work - lack of 'real' women, relationshup with M etc.

Those three books are invaluable extra reading for Bond fans: the Bond dossier, Colonel Sun and Pearsons biography.

Somewhere Ian Fleming mentioned that the model for James Bond was his own brother: politician, adventurer, secret agent, Peter Fleming. In the photos of the small, almost petit Peter Fleming, one sees the vague description of Bond himself.

Sigh. If Allen Barra had actually read a biography of Ian Fleming (such as the one by Andrew Lycett), quite a few of his moments of head-scratching puzzlement could have been avoided.

The details of Fleming's wartime military experience -- as personal secretary to the Chief of Naval Intelligence -- and his subsequent newspaper editorial role (and concurrent contacts with MI6) make it very clear where Bond's background comes from: the immediate wartime period of national emergency, from 1938 to 1948 or thereabouts, during which a massive expansion of the demands of intelligence gathering brought hundreds of gifted amateurs into the British intelligence services. And Fleming's own life makes it clear what Bond was: a stand-in for Fleming's frustrated wish to participate in the capers that he himself had planned. (For example, on insisting on being allowed to go along on the Dieppe Raid, Fleming was indeed permitted to accompany the task force ... but was required to watch proceedings from the safety of a cruiser patrolling off-shore.)