Boredfinger! He’s the man, the man with the boring touch! A boring… zzz…
Auric Goldfinger, a man so obsessed with goooooold that Mike Myers’ caricature of the character was actually understated, wants to rob Fort Knox because it’s full of goooooold. Only one man can stop him: James Boooooond!
I’ve never read an Ian Fleming novel before and, after this, I’m not sure I ever will again! This book is so BORING - and it’s supposed to be an action spy thriller, which sounds exciting, until you read Fleming’s version of that here.
In the opening chapters, Bond is approached by a rich man he met in Casino Royale who tells him that he can’t beat this mysterious fellow, Goldfinger, at Canasta and asks Bond to sit in on the games to see what his trick is. I won’t say what the reason is but it’s a childishly simple explanation that sets the standard for the rest of the novel - and these opening chapters are the high point of the novel!
There’s an extensively tedious info dump on gold as it relates to world currency and a 40 page description of a golf game between Bond and Goldfinger. The golf game is easily the worst part of the novel, not least as I don’t care about the sport at all, a sport that is shockingly dull even when played at the highest level, but because it’s so irrelevant. All it reaffirms is that Goldfinger is a cheat, which was established by the preceding Canasta sequence. It doesn’t get much better after this unfortunately. Bond follows Goldfinger across the continent on a lengthy car ride where barely anything happens.
Alright, I’m gonna get into SPOILERS from here on out and get a bit Scott Evil-y too because he was so right about how Bond villains behaved back in the day - god, what a dummy Goldfinger is! Suffice it to say, I’m not recommending anyone bother with this novel - maybe I just read the crappiest Ian Fleming, maybe they’re all like this, but beware Boredfinger and try anything else instead.
So after Goldfinger discovers that Bond is a spy, he decides to NOT kill him, even though he’s a clear and present threat to his plan to rob Fort Knox, because he needs him to take the minutes of a meeting he’s having with mob bosses who are going to join him on the operation. Why the hell does Goldfinger need formal minutes - ie. evidence - of a major crime?!
But he also wants Bond to sit in on the meeting and let him know which mob bosses seem hesitant about joining him on the plan. Ok - except he’ll find this information out himself at the end of the meeting anyway when he asks each of them if they’ll join him. So what use is this information in hindsight? Especially as he immediately kills anyone who doesn’t throw in with him.
So then, once Bond’s singular purpose is completed, will Goldfinger kill him so that there’s no chance of Bond interfering with his masterplan? No. He keeps him alive, and involved in the operation - for no reason! This is the Scott Evil moment. The modern day reader looking back, baffled, as to why the villain just doesn’t simply shoot an unarmed, but obviously still dangerous, 007. Dumbfinger!
The plot in general is childishly simplistic. Based on nothing, Bond assumes Goldfinger is funding Soviet spies. It turns out he’s right but still it’s pure luck and you’d expect Bond to look for hard evidence rather than make flimsy assumptions before pursuing someone at great length. When Goldfinger’s flying a plane over Fort Knox and is challenged by the military air traffic control to explain himself, he tells them over the radio that he’s with Paramount Pictures location scouting for a movie, and they simply buy it without further questions or asking for evidence. Well that’s convenient! Not only are Goldfinger and Bond complete morons, so is everyone else in the book - it’s almost like the author is a moron too!
And then there’s the key plot point: how Bond foils Goldfinger’s plan. He manages to write a small note asking anyone who finds it to contact Felix Leiter in New York, for a reward of $5k, and tapes it to the underside of the plane’s toilet seat. So he’s hoping that someone who isn’t Goldfinger or one of his goons sees this note, contacts Felix for the reward money, and who will somehow be able to scupper Goldfinger’s plan in the nick of time.
WHICH ACTUALLY HAPPENS! A note on the underside of a toilet seat. Childishly simplistic. I couldn’t believe that this was the solution.
So Fleming’s Bond is an idiot. He goes off half-cocked on base assumptions, stumbles into the inner circle of a supervillain, and manages to save the day with the most absurd plan that only works because it has to - he’s James Bond. He’s also got some quite loathsome homophobic views. This stuff doesn’t really bother me - I take into account the era (this was written and published in the 1950s) - and it makes me laugh more than anything, especially as it’s so indefensible and makes Bond look so bad. This is Bond’s take on a girl he fancies but who won’t have sex with him: she’s obviously gay!
“Bond came to the conclusion that Tilly Masterton was one of those girls whose hormones had got mixed up. He knew the type well and thought they and their male counterparts were a direct consequence of giving votes to women and ‘sex equality’. As a result of fifty years of emancipation, feminine qualities were dying out or being transferred to the males. Pansies of both sexes were everywhere, not yet completely homosexual, but confused, not knowing what they were. The result was a herd of unhappy sexual misfits - barren and full of frustrations, the women wanting to dominate and the men to be nannied. He was sorry for them, but he had no time for them.” p.313-14
Dismissive and condescending, not to mention pig ignorant, enough for ya? This is also the novel where the classic characters Oddjob and Pussy Galore are introduced. Oddjob is Korean and he’s described in a casually racist way, often as an “ape”, who’s inarticulate, making sounds rather than words. Pussy, like Tilly Masterton, is a lesbian (you’d never guess from the name, eh? So subtle, Mr Fleming!) but only because she hasn’t met the right man. That’s right, Bond turns Pussy Galore straight because he’s such a real man and sexuality is clearly a choice. Take a bow, 1950s society! What a horrible “hero” Fleming’s Bond is.
Homophobia/racism aside, Goldfinger was still an awful novel. Thoroughly uninteresting, full of dull, unending chapters featuring a cast of dolts enacting an even stupider plot - I can only surmise that the Bond legacy is entirely thanks to the movies rather than Ian Fleming’s bottom-rung storytelling inability. Like I said earlier, maybe I was unlucky and somehow selected to read the worst Bond novel of the bunch, but I’m certainly not rushing (with love) to pick up another Fleming novel to see if I was wrong.
Avoid this turd-standard novel!
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