Why Does my Art go Boom?

What is a spy-book boom? I don't think. I like the sound of it. Does it mean that a lot of people are using the same subject matter? Then when the hell is the boy-meets-girl boom going to end?

Does it mean that books on this boom kick get sold whether they are good, bad or indifferent? Don't expect me to get enthusiastic about that one.

Does it mean that readers are instructed to buy books that are booming? Getting warmer. Land booms are the harmonious conjunction of sucker and speculator, so why not book booms? I'll tell you why not: Book buyers are book readers and book readers are no suckers. I'm a book reader.

There is nothing new about spying. There is nothing new about writing of it. Xenophon and Caesar wrote of it. The Bible perhaps owes a large part of its high sales to its spy stories. Other writers have tried their hand from time to time. Conrad, Le Queux and E. Phillips Oppenheim all had a deft touch. John Buchan showed how spies could serve imperialism when the going grew too shallow for a gunboat. Eric Ambler threw an idealistic left at the fascists of the Thirties and Graham Greene wrote some of the best of all between fulfilling his contract with God.

It was Maugham's agent Ashenden, in the opening paragraphs of The Hairless Mexican, who set a protentous note, however, when he reported back to his intelligence chief R.:

"'Do you like macaroni?' said R.

"'What do you mean, by macaroni?. answered Ashenden. 'It is like asking me if I like poetry. I like Keats and Wordsworth and Verlaine and Goethe. When you say macaroni, do you mean spaghetti, tagliatelli, rigatoni, vermicelli, fettucini, tufali, farfalli, or just macaroni?'

"'Macaroni,' replied R., a man of few words.

"'I like all simple things, boiled eggs, oysters and caviare, truite au bleu, grilled salmon, roast lamb (the saddle by preference), cold grouse, treacle tart and rice pudding. But of all simple things the only one I can eat day in and day out, not only without disgust but with the eagerness of an appetite unimpaired by excess, is macaroni.'

"'I am glad of that because I want you to go down to Italy.'"

R. was a character who came before M, but apart from superficial appeal, is there much resemblance between Ambler, Buchan, Conrad, Fleming and Greene? There is a certain pre-Nuremberg-trial readiness to shrug off irresponsible behavior on the plea of orders. Indeed, Bond's unswerving loyalty earned him an accolade from America's extreme political right. But did Fleming do anything that could detonate a boom?

He exploited kinky sex and doll-like women. He enthroned the WASP when the WASP's role in the world was a little shaky. But Fleming's importance to the business world was the way he wrote always about what he called the serial character—James Bond—pursued a tested format and made a great deal of money. Fleming boomed.

It's a well-known fact that people don't make money because they are clever, highly trained or brave. They make it either because they are lucky or because they have a secret.

The secret-hunters pawed through Fleming's writings, as intent as cryptologists. They are still doing it. "Spies," they pronounced, "that's Fleming's secret. Spies make money. Spies boom." In Fleming's case they were right, but before the first Bond film, who had Fleming earmarked for boomsville?

In the spring of 1950 I was working on my first book—Ipcress File. I was earning enough money as an artist to write anything I chose. I chose a spy novel, as I still do. I liked to have a problem or enigma that could follow the action of the book, but I wanted the book to be ragged and untidy, as life is. I wanted the characterizations and the dialog to control the enigma, rather than the other way round as had been the case with the detective novels of the Thirties, (continued on page 182)Art go Boom?(continued from page 103) which had become puzzles rather than stories. Above all, I was interested in the permutations of deceit and mistake.

Too many people in the fiction I had read told the whole truth all the time and never seemed to make a mistake of judgment. I decided to write a firstperson narrative in which the narrator would lie to anyone if it suited his purpose. This narrator would finally make such an error of judgement that his life would be saved by a man (Ross) who he had continually told readers was a fool. I dismissed the detective story because I didn't know enough about the regular police force, and chose a secret-agent format so that I could use the political background that interested me. My hero was bespectacled, low-salaried and slightly overweight. There was no sex interest to speak of. It owed a debt to Chandler, but was inspired by Beat the Devil, an old Bogart-Lorre film which, prodding at greed, fakery and the English class system, had produced terror and belly laughs. At the box office it boomed.

Autumn of 1962 was the publication date of Ipcress File and the opening of the Dr. No film. The critics were generous to me and, although it sounds unbelievable today, somewhat hostile to the Bond film. The income from Ipcress was adequate by my standards, but Dr. No buried the box office in gold. It was an attractive sound that caught the ear of a goodly number of otherwise unmusical people.

Harry Saltzman bought the Ipcress film rights. He said, "A lot of people are going to be after your book because of the success of Dr. No," adding, "and I'm the only producer who, you can be certain, won't make an imitation Bond film from your book." Saltzman, of course, had options on the other Fleming properties and so didn't need to. The news of the film-rights sale brought more Fleming comparisons, and when I changed publishers, so that Fleming and I both had the same one, some people—not including Fleming—were enraged. Donald McLachlan, editor of the Sunday Telegraph, went into print to say that he deplored the way I had been"...brought into the select stable of Jonathan Cape where Mr. Fleming was the first thriller writer to be trained for the big circulation stakes." I was, it seems,"...being coached by Mr. Fleming for the succession."

In the autumn of 1963 my second book, Horse Under Water, was published and Saltzman bought the film rights of that, too. There was more conjecture in the press. "Out-Bonds Bond" and "AntiBond," they said. Out of curiosity, I read Fleming for the first time. I could see no connection whatsover, but no one was asking me.

Fleming's Bond was a proved success, the industry read the entrails. Famous ex-novelists began to write literary critiques about Fleming's meaning. But the big word on the book, jacket was going to be Bond.

Publishers reshuffled their lists, old reviews were scanned to find comparisons with Bond. Sci-ft was out and spy-ft was in. If Fleming was going to be deified, then Buchan could be anthologized. Reprints were artfully retitled to include words like "spy," "secret agent" and "espionage."

In the autumn of 1963 The Spy Who Came In from the Cold appeared, its film rights sold even before publication. It climbed onto the best-seller list and stayed there a history-making period of time. The last stragglers were converted. People who had found Fleming's work rubbish began to see it as fun. Publications that had ignored Le Carré limped belatedly into print with reviews that saw his promise.

It was settled, then: Add up Le Carré, Fleming and Deighton, divide by three and the answer is spies. There was no time for long-term tests and, like Thalidomide, the spy formula was stirred hastily and a long-suffering public told to open its throat. But the public didn't. The most interesting thing about the spy boom is to what extent it hasn't been accepted.

Spy scent, spy trousers, film rights and series contracts. The book ads in the Times grew larger and larger, booksellers were faced with bewildering lists of books, all of them guaranteed to home in to the best-seller list. The flacks were inserting the zeros and omitting the options so that the entertainment industry seemed to have found what it had always been looking for—a substitute for talent. But of this wave of spy-boomery that hit the beaches complete with local money and pay-war units, how many reached the finish line? One would expect the best-seller list to be riddled with spy books by now. If they are there, they are hiding behind strange titles.

The assault, however, continues despite heavy casualties. When Funeral in Berlin went onto the list, the combat troops were given new heart. Mr. Conrad Knickerbocker, writing in Life magazine, said, "...the Great American Washed at last have a folk hero of their very own." He felt that all the "new-style thrillers" needed was a bitter hero and Berlin as a locale. Mr. Knicker-bocker felt that they were appearing at "the rate of one per day."

From the other side of the counter it didn't seem so easy. Coward-McCann (Le Carré's Publisher) growled, "If it was as simple as that we'd all be retired to our yachts months ago."

Considering the very high percentage of spy novels being published, it is remarkable how few ever do anything. Perhaps there is no magic way. Perhaps publishers, like mushroom pickers, just have to know enough to make their own choices. Perhaps the public is doing just that—boom, phony boom or no boom at all.

But if the best-seller list has been the scene of a fine defensive action, the small screen has long since been over-whelmed. It's no coincidence that the American TV industry was chosen as ground zero for the spy-boom blast. Its programs ranged from A to D, and here was a chance to narrow the choice. The ad agencies—masters of the wishful think—relished the thought of a "spy trend." A trend made the agency role important, a trend had changed often enough to keep the cash jingling, trends meant that some agencies could be trendsetters. And trendsetters could soften up the ground way before the next trend was announced. "Spies," the sibilants splashed across the polished-mahogany board rooms. "Give me a child of five and tomorrow we will have eliminated those troublesome writers altogether."

The sands of the great writerless desert that is U. S. TV stirred.

Was it to be "Secret Gunn" or "77 Sunset Spy"? What's the difference, the same gay rogues that outwitted the gutural villains of yesterday against back-projection Bermuda, two flats and a practical door, are there still, but now they are part of the spy boom.

The phony spy boom is another attempt to relegate humans to the role of cog. Writers are not cogs. They are not even, although some reviewers see it otherwise, mutations and subdivisions of other writers. Nor is a book a refrigerator. A house that contains a Bellow can still use a Mailer. Plenty of room for Kipling as well as Eliot. Time for Bach and time for Beatle. If the industry succeeds in selling fashionable trends instead of using and paying writers, it will do so. The skilled painstaking publishers will go to the wall and hordes of mediocrity will eliminate writers in favor of packaging. If you think I am a vested interest, you're right. If you think it wouldn't be so bad, switch on your TV.