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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!
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Castillon (20-25, 27)
Date: 2015-08-30 03:33 am (UTC)More seriously: I think that Bond saw some of Le Chiffre in himself as a fellow player of "Red Indians," and perhaps even some of that SMERSH fellow in himself as a government assassin. I think he's begun to question the ethics of his profession, and his own actions as a killer, and begun to process the cost of it to himself as a person. Mathis talks about a conscience, but where was Bond's conscience when he made the decision to disavow any knowledge of Vesper's capture? Bond seems to be trying to reconcile his image of himself as a good person (or at least, on the "good" side) and as a 00 (a killer, a cold decision-maker), and resigning is his way of escaping that conflict.
If you're looking for a book rec, I can't help but be reminded of Dave Grossman's excellent book, "On Killing: The Psychological Cost of Learning to Kill in War and Society," which does exactly what it says on the tin and talks about the effects of killing on people's mental health.
Although probably I should also be thinking about the effects of torture on Bond's state of mind as well. You know what killed me? The fact that Bond and Le Chiffre both like coffee. I know it's stupid; tons of people like coffee. But the image of them drinking from the same cup, their nourishment springing from the same source...
21-24: Starting with a bit of a non-sequitur, one of the things that struck me in this book was the way Bond laid out his misgivings for M in the beginning, and M gave him the stink-eye, and Bond was like, "Oops, I tried to honestly communicate my feelings, how stupid of me." That scene, and Bond's feelings for Vesper, remind me a lot of this post: http://moosefeels.tumblr.com/post/113718248923/mirabailavellan-birddotcom-straight-men-repress It's about how men try to have feelings with people but are socialized not to, so then when they discover equalish-companionship-with-feelings with a woman they are like, "It's true love!" And in the aftermath of his torture and his existential crisis, Bond is desperately reaching out for some kind of connection. Mathis is a jerk who admittedly listens to his concerns but ultimately dismisses them and abandons him to go do French security stuff. Vesper, on the other hand, has strong emotions at him somewhat freely and offers her support in his recovery while also giving Bond a chance to feel stronger and active because he's able to influence her (relieve her guilt, etc). After a while, Bond feels like they connect in a way that he doesn't want to lose.
I think about the way Bond says "he was happy to be in her hands" and trusts Vesper to take care of him and find the perfect hotel to rest up at, and just. ;_; I don't think he could face the idea that his support throughout his recovery, the person who encouraged him to take a leap into a non-MI6 world and engage with an actual emotional connection, would betray him. Not only because he loves Vesper as much as he's capable of loving someone, but because she's a crucial foundation to the new life he's planning, the escape to that crisis of identity. Which brings us to 27.
27) The first escape of this crisis was accomplished with Vesper's help: he could resign and be a good husband to her, if not a completely good man. The second escape is after Vesper's death, when he commits to (maybe) being a bad man, but one who kills men who are even worse, and in the service of M, who broke security protocols to call personally for him, and his country, which he's loyal to. IDK if there would be a more effective method than Vesper's betrayal to turn Bond back onto the idea of being a 00 for his country and killing those who he thinks deserve it.
Castillon (26)
Date: 2015-08-30 03:39 am (UTC)But none of those one-in-a-thousand chances could happen if she couldn't get in contact with anyone. And she couldn't. No nines came up late in the game for Vesper, so she folded in the only way she could.
Re: Castillon (26)
Date: 2015-08-30 10:06 am (UTC)Re: Castillon (26)
Date: 2015-08-30 09:40 pm (UTC)Re: Castillon (20-25, 27)
Date: 2015-08-30 09:09 am (UTC)do you think Bond trying to escape the conflict by resigning is a coward's way out?
21-24: oh my god I love all of this.
27: I really think your last point here is really important, because you can't have James Bond, 007, cold blooded killer, without Vesper, and without her death. oh god I've made myself sad again
Re: Castillon (20-25, 27)
Date: 2015-08-31 01:02 am (UTC)What's curious for me is that Bond doesn't seem to doubt his own skills as an agent. He thinks about how foolish he was to start partying without thinking that Le Chiffre might act against him or Vesper, and acknowledges that Vesper did more and better spying through her work with Head of S than he has ever done while getting blown up in the field. However, the question of "Will I be proficient if I continue this work [either in a possible future, like when he's talking with Mathis, or against SMERSH at the end of the book[?" never seems to cross his mind. He's way more worried about his dick than he is about his spycraft. Why do you think that is?
-Castillon
Re: Castillon (20-25, 27)
Date: 2015-08-31 06:58 am (UTC)Re: Castillon (20-25, 27)
Date: 2015-08-31 08:47 am (UTC)-Castillon
Re: Castillon (20-25, 27)
Date: 2015-09-01 07:11 am (UTC)I like the idea of him doing translations or being a military adviser for a novelist maybe
Re: Castillon (20-25, 27)
Date: 2015-09-01 11:33 pm (UTC)-Castillon
Re: Castillon (20-25, 27)
Date: 2015-09-02 09:57 am (UTC)Re: Castillon (20-25, 27)
Date: 2015-09-03 11:37 am (UTC)But I mean. He feels a bit slighted when Vesper asserts her right to choose her own drink, of all the silly trifles to get defensive over; he's a character who likes control, and as a male he'd probably entitled to it when it came to his wife. And he might think of her that way--"his wife," an object that belongs to him. And he's also a character who's learned to use violence to solve his problems, and who's casually thought about spanking Vesper to get her to tell him what she's up to, so. Yeah. The possibility's there. :(
-Castillon
Re: Castillon (20-25, 27)
Date: 2015-09-03 11:42 am (UTC)