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They could just as well have said: “You’re not actually holding a James Bond book as written by Ian Fleming. You’re holding an approximation of a James Bond book, as revised by people who had neither the talent, nor the wit, nor the vision of Ian Fleming, but are arrogant enough to think that they can arrogate for themselves the right to prevent you from seeing what they think is offensive.” They would, however, never dare to be that honest.
The Torygraph article is behind a paywall, so I couldn’t really tell how much it confirmed that pearl-clutching article’s claims. Other than there will be a disclaimer in Bond books from now on. They do read as horrifically racist by modern standards and even a bit racist by the standards of the time.
Have found an Indy article here. Which suggests the edits are minor and a lot of potentially offensive stuff has been left in.
On Fleming’s abilities as an author, he was good, but le Carre beats him hands down in the spy genre.
“Frankly, I had enjoyed the war… and why do people want peace if the war is so much fun?” - Lieutenant General Sir Adrian Carton de Wiart
James Bond books edited to remove racist references
Reissued versions of Ian Fleming’s classic works will feature a disclaimer following a review by sensitivity readers
By
Craig Simpson
25 February 2023 • 9:30pm
James Bond novels have been rewritten to remove a number of racial references from Ian Fleming’s work, The Telegraph can reveal.
All of the author’s thrillers featuring 007 are set to be reissued in April to mark 70 years since Casino Royale, the first book in the series, was published.
Ian Fleming Publications Ltd, the company that owns the literary rights to the author’s work, commissioned a review by sensitivity readers of the classic texts under its control.
The Telegraph understands that a disclaimer accompanying the reissued texts will read: “This book was written at a time when terms and attitudes which might be considered offensive by modern readers were commonplace.
“A number of updates have been made in this edition, while keeping as close as possible to the original text and the period in which it is set.”
The changes to Fleming’s books result in some depictions of black people being reworked or removed.
Dated references to other ethnicities remain, such as Bond’s racial terms for east Asian people and the spy’s disparaging views of Oddjob, Goldfinger’s Korean henchman.
References to the “sweet tang of rape”, “blithering women” failing to do a “man’s work”, and homosexuality being a “stubborn disability” also remain.
In the sensitivity reader-approved version of Live and Let Die, Bond’s assessment that would-be African criminals in the gold and diamond trades are “pretty law-abiding chaps I should have thought, except when they’ve drunk too much” becomes – “pretty law-abiding chaps I should have thought.”
Another altered scene features Bond visiting Harlem in New York, where a salacious strip tease at a nightclub makes the male crowd, including 007, increasingly agitated.
The original passage read: “Bond could hear the audience panting and grunting like pigs at the trough. He felt his own hands gripping the tablecloth. His mouth was dry.”
The revised section replaces the pigs reference with: “Bond could sense the electric tension in the room.”
A further lengthy passage describing Bond’s night out in Harlem, including an argument between a man and his girlfriend conducted largely in accented dialogue Fleming describes as “straight Harlem-Deep South with a lot of New York thrown in”, has been entirely removed.
The word “n-----”, which Fleming used to refer to black people when he was writing during the Fifties and Sixties, has been almost entirely expunged from the revised texts.
In most cases, this is replaced by “black person” or “black man”, but racial descriptors are entirely dropped in some instances.
In one example, some criminals escaping from Bond in Dr No become simply “gangsters”. In the same novel, the race of a doctor and an immigration officer now go unmentioned, as does that of a henchman shot by Bond.
The ethnicity of a barman in Thunderball is similarly omitted in new editions. In Quantum of Solace, a butler’s race now also goes unmentioned.
Detail is also removed from Goldfinger, where the race of the drivers in the Second World War logistics unit, the Red Ball Express – which had many black servicemen – is not mentioned, instead referring only to “ex-drivers”.
Bond literature has been tweaked before to suit different markets, and Fleming gave editor Al Hart his blessing to tone down sex scenes for American readers.
The author also permitted US publishers to tone down racial references in Live and Let Die.
Ian Fleming Publications said: “We at Ian Fleming Publications reviewed the text of the original Bond books and decided our best course of action was to follow Ian’s lead. We have made changes to Live and Let Die that he himself authorised.
“Following Ian’s approach, we looked at the instances of several racial terms across the books and removed a number of individual words or else swapped them for terms that are more accepted today but in keeping with the period in which the books were written.
“We encourage people to read the books for themselves when the new paperbacks are published in April.”
In the past, Fleming’s US publishers changed the title of Casino Royale to You Asked For It and 007 was even referred to in the blurb as Jimmy Bond.
In 1954, Live and Let Die was banned in the Republic of Ireland.
Roald Dahl novel controversy
It came after passages from Roald Dahl’s books were purged on the advice of cultural sensitivity experts hired by Puffin.
On Friday, the book publisher announced that it will reissue his books in their uncensored form following a backlash.
Dahl threatened to never write another word if his publishers ever changed his language, it emerged on Saturday.
In comments made 40 years ago, he promised to send his “enormous crocodile”, referencing the character in his eponymous novel, to gobble them up if they did so, The Guardian reported.
It does seem to be rather less sweeping than the Dahl circumstances, but by the same token, just that bit above 'minor' and approaching 'scattergun'.
I would concur that the PJ Media article does tend towards a more American tendency to be alarmist and sweeping in its language and rhetoric.
Of the examples mentioned here, the removal of mention of the race of Red Ball Express drivers seems to have been implemented even though there is no possible cause for offence there; in general, the removal of racial descriptors of characters seems to be a case of going too far to avoid any offence possible. It is an ocean away from calling black people by an offensive or semi-offensive words.
The wholesale removal of a conversation in accented dialogue in only a tad more understandable, but still strikes me as erring too far on the side of 'avoid all possible offence at all costs'.
The 'pretty law abiding chaps' quote is a case where an excision does not alter the core meaning or intent of the passage, so that is all good.
Finally, the strip club sequence takes evocative and strong writing and turns it into bland nothingness, telling and not showing. This is a bad enough literary offence, but it seems to be done on rather spurious grounds. No fair minded reader could really conclude that the lascivious behaviour of the men in the strip club was due to their ethnicity, but rather their maleness.
I wouldn't say they were cumulatively major edits, but it still steps a bit beyond the minor in my view, in all fairness.
Fleming's style extended more into the 'adventure' or 'men's adventure' category than Le Carre, who was more of a pure spy writer, yet that was his advantage during his lifetime - there was more of a market for the escapist hybrid than the gritty realism of LC.
