mi6_cafe | Mi6 Cafe Book Club - Casino Royale

mi6-cafe-mod.livejournal.com posting in

mi6 cafe book club skyfall font edited.png

Welcome back to Book Club! Get your drinks, snacks and any notes you have and gather round for the final discussions on Casino Royale!

If you want any resources for the Casino Royale book, please find the link to the resources in the sidebar on the right! Please check the schedule to find out what we're discussing this week!

Book Club is designed to be a place where you can go beyond the Bond movies and delve into another medium with our favourite secret agent. There is no set discussions, if you have anything interesting you want to discuss about your reading experience, comments on the text, or even how reading the book might have changed your view on the characters in the movies then do share!

Some Questions to get us started!

1) What do you think of the book overall? What bits would you want to improve?
2) Has the book changed your opinion on James Bond (the character)? Why is this?
3) Have you enjoyed the read along for this month? What has been your favourite bits so far?

These questions are just to get you started, as always please post your opinions, views and other discussion points about the book that you want to talk about! Happy discussing!

Note - we will be discussing the WHOLE book this week, so naturally there will be spoilers if you have not yet finished the book!

Please note - our next book is Live and Let Die, and will start on the 5th of September. Please check the schedules and resources post for more information about the book club times and where you can find copies of the book!

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

From: (Anonymous)

University is important! I know, it would be nice if we could earn a living talking about James Bond, but I think even aca-fans haven't really been able to do that. :D

14. I think Vesper is in a high state of anxiety in the nightclub. Bond has won, and she's waiting for Le Chiffre or her own Control or whoever to bring the axe down on her head, either in a way that will involve her betraying a man she's come to like, possibly to his death, or in a way that will give away her role as a spy and make her efforts on behalf of her boyfriend's life useless. It's probably a relief when she gets the note; it's probably a relief when she's tied up with her skirt around her head, as horrifying an experience as it is, because at least her hands are literally bound--she can't save or betray Bond anymore than she already has. Maybe that's why she's so still and quiet in the car.

15. OMG, I hated and loved that Bond resolved to do this. Talk about cold and calculating. I think part of it is that simple maths kind of thing, "stopping Le Chiffre is more important than saving one person." But part of it is definitely...like, an almost petulant ego? "I'm not going to let you ruin my victory by getting captured," is basically what he's thinking, I think. "Silly bitch." Lots of victim-blaming. And of course the great thing about victim-blaming is that the victim "deserves" what they get, even if that's probably rape/torture/death. But Bond knows that that kind of thinking wouldn't fly with Mathis, or with general society, so he's got to lie and say he didn't know anything about it. (And then, of course, when he's in the same position with Vesper, it's all "poor little beast" and pity.)

Bonus question: They meet in her jurisdiction, and Peggy establishes herself as the leader in terms that Bond can understand. Once that is taken care of, they have a good time bludgeoning bad guys together. I haven't seen the show, so I don't know what Peggy's sexual preferences are, but if she's down with one-night stands then it would be a shame if she didn't get to sit on Bond's face for a while.

16. No idea how he survives the car crash. He fell onto the floor before the car fall, and when the baddies are dragging him out of the car it says his legs are pinned between the steering wheel and the fabric convertible roof. It sounds like he managed to protect his head (or at least not send it spinning like a bowling ball through the windscreen), and maybe the fabric of the roof had enough give that it absorbed some of the shock of impact? IDEK.

From: (Anonymous)

17. I think the "I'll just disappear and have a happy life" is perhaps partly a bluff, and perhaps partly Le Chiffre trying to convince himself of his own happy future. The whole "bosom of the family I shall doubtless create" thing is probably a taunt at Bond's future inability to procreate after his torture rather than Le Chiffre's own family plans; this is the guy who lost Redland's funds by investing in brothels, after all. Re: the "playing at Red Indians thing," I think he was obviously trying to diminish Bond's significant accomplishments and defeat of him at the casino, but I also think he was at least partly sincere? I mean. Did Le Chiffre know about Vesper in particular? Even if he didn't, he would be in a position to know that proper spying, like Vesper has been doing, is different than Bond's style of work. And Bond has been foolish enough to get himself captured, after all. More victim-blaming, this time from Le Chiffre! Isn't it nice to know that he and Bond had that in common?

18. SMERSH: 2 possibilities that I thought of. 1) Some kind of pity for Bond after he's been tortured. The man's just had his balls beaten, isn't that enough? 2) Some kind of sadism, wanting a foreign spy to have to live with the injuries Le Chiffre inflicted. But those aren't very satisfying. It honestly seems like the SMERSH guy can't be bothered? But then he goes to the trouble to carve that letter into Bond's hand when killing him would probably take the same amount of effort.
TBH I like to imagine SMERSH guy as being secretly anti-killing despite being good at it and feeling as though he needs to loyally put his skills to his country's use. He gave off the vibe of having loyalty to his leaders but also not exactly being passionate about his job? Like, "Oh, no, too bad they didn't ORDER ME to kill you..."

If you've seen RED, there's that whole storyline with the agent who's ordered to shoot her lover who works for the Russians, and shoots him without killing him. I would love to have some Soviet cat-and-cat between Bond and this SMERSH agent tbh. It'd be an interesting origin for an Alec-type character: "We met after I carved a letter into his hand. Three years later, he shot my boss, and then he shot me. Now we beat each other up when we're bored" kind of thing.

Or maybe SMERSH just really, really hates it when their operatives take the initiative on anything, and SMERSH guy is being passive-aggressive about it. "Well, I mean, I COULD have killed him, but you said I should only do what you tell me to do, so he's still alive and working against us. TOO BAD, RIGHT?"

I have a lot of unexpected feelings about this weird SMERSH guy.

From:

isthisrubble.livejournal.com

17: I don't think Le Chiffre knew about Vesper. and you're right about the different kinds of spying - bond doesn't collect intel, he just acts on it however MI6 needs him to

18: I like the NO INITIATIVE EVER smersh idea

From:

isthisrubble.livejournal.com

15: what I don't understand is why he didn't think he would just go find Mathis straight away and tell him what was happening so they could get a rescue organised? bc of course it would also be useful for MI6 or the French agency to actually capture Le Chiffre as well as ruin him, if rescuing Vesper wasn't motivation enough

About Peggy: omg you need to watch Agent Carter, please. I was actually thinking along the lines of 'Peggy Carter is a female spy, something James Bond thinks is a waste of time' even though he must have known (and Fleming definitely knew) about female SOE agents and all the work they did during WWII (this really pisses me off!!!!!!! you insult female ww2 spies over my dead body), so how would he react to one who was not interested in impressing him, only with getting the job done

From: (Anonymous)

15) Hmm, that's a good question! (These have all been wonderful questions, btw! I understand the book even better for having considered them.) My guess is that Bond worried that he and Mathis wouldn't be able to do a capture because Le Chiffre would sneak around and go somewhere other than his little seaside cottage. And if his planned shoot-out didn't work, then telling Mathis would involve telling his own government as well, and there'd be a chance--a small one, but there--that they'd authorize the swap of the check for the girl.

It reads like pride is a big part of that first rush of planning and decision-making. There might be some kind of instinctive desire to hide the fact that Le Chiffre got the best of him by getting to Vesper. Bond has just won, and now Le Chiffre has spoiled his victory, and, in the scenario in which he lies to Mathis, bested him in a shoot-out over Vesper. Bond wouldn't want to admit his failure (Vesper's failure--MI6's failure), particularly to Mathis and another organization, and so he plans to sweep it all under the rug.

I think Head of S said that assassination would just make Le Chiffre a martyr, and that probably goes for capture as well. This entire operation was about humiliating and defanging Le Chiffre in order to cause a blow of morale and finances to "Redland."

Agent Carter looks good! I am just so terrible at watching TV, though, haha. But I have so much respect for women spies in WWII--I'm just growling in frustration right now, in fact, because I read a wonderful little book about them but can't remember the title to recommend it to you, and it's not on Amazon; must have been a small printing or something. BUT YES. Bond with his "get back to your pots and pans" comment, omg, literally a "get back in the kitchen where you belong" attitude. Ugh. Vesper teaches him differently, a bit, about the competence of a woman spy, but I'd love for Agent Carter to give that chauvinistic attitude a nice wallop.

-Castillon