BOOK REVIEW: Carte Blanche

Every few years, the estate of Ian Fleming authorizes a new James Bond novel to be written by a leading mystery or thriller author of the time. Carte Blanche is the fifth in this series, penned by Jeffrey Deaver, bestselling thriller author and editor of the Best American Mystery Stories 2009.

Between 1951 and his death in 1964, Ian Fleming wrote 9 novels and 12 short stories featuring super spy James Bond. For anyone whose knowledge of Bond comes exclusively from the popular movies, the character that appears in the books may be something of a surprise. Yes, Fleming's Bond is a bon vivant who regularly indulges his taste for cars, women, and liquor. But the literary Bond is thoughtful, often brooding, and sometimes melancholy. He is apparently looking for true love out of his flings with beautiful women, and he daydreams about leaving the service to settle down. He likes nice things, yes, but his Bentley is 20 years old, and he also has a charming taste for simplicity. This complex personality rarely, if ever, comes through in the more purely hedonistic movie character. (Sean Connery in the early movies, and especially Daniel Craig in Casino Royale, come closest to conveying the complex character of the book Bond.)

Fleming's writing style was admirably efficient, with few needless words and generally a snappy narrative flow. His attention to detail gives the books much of their cultural cachet: he freely sprinkled brand names of watches, and liquor, and clothes in the story, a sort of product placement guru before his time. This adds immensely to the plausibility of the tales, as well as their desirability.

Deaver is not as efficient with his words as Fleming, and perhaps overdoes it on details in some places, but overall his story is a faithful imitation of the Fleming style. Deaver places his Bond squarely in the 21st century, with a bewildering alphabet soup of bureaucratic agencies for Bond to navigate (and a helpful glossary in the back for the reader to follow), current hip locations like Dubai and Cape Town, and very cool technology, including a few iPhone apps that would certainly be the hit of any cocktail party. (The eavesdropping app could make for some quite mischievous fun at a party.) Deaver's Bond Girls are also much more modern, in some cases proving indispensable to his success (rather than just serving as decorative accents).

The plot involves Bond trying to decipher the meaning behind various pieces of intelligence that seem to point to an unspecified act of violence and destruction to be carried out by Severan Hydt, the founder of a large, British-based waste management firm known as Green Way. Like all the Bond novels, what happens isn't so important as how it happens: Bond travels in style around the world, dodging shadowy characters, feuding with competing government agents, and enjoying the company of beautiful women, some of whom help and some who hinder his progress. Deaver even proves equal to the task of matching Fleming's knack for double-entendre female names by introducing us to the vivacious Felicity Willing (or Felicity Willful, as we are told she is sometimes called).

While the action is exciting, as is typical in this genre things get wrapped up just a little too conveniently to be believable. But in the end, who cares? It is a wild ride along the way, and Deaver successfully captures that feeling of slight envy at the glamorous life of Bond that Fleming was so good at inducing. Sure, it is ridiculous to think that a government agent can afford a new Bentley Continental GT, or that a supposedly secret agent would drive a car designed to capture attention. But if I WERE a secret agent, I would certainly try to get one too!

Like Fleming often did, Deaver creates a bad guy that is fascinatingly repulsive because he is not only criminal, but also creepy. In this case, the villain is obsessed with decay--in objects, in nature, and in people. Even his female companion is forced to eschew the glamorous hair and make-up jobs that are typical for villain consorts, in favor of unkempt locks and obvious wrinkles. This creepiness, and the criminal activity it inspires, makes Carte Blanche a worthy addition to the Bond bookshelf.

Materialism Fails

I was fascinated by a news item I saw yesterday here on Britain's Daily Telegraph site, where it was reported that a recent UNICEF study concludes that in Britain materialism is rampant.  Indeed, according to the report,

materialism has come to dominate family life in Britain as parents 'pointlessly' amass goods for their children to compensate for their long working hours.

One researcher goes on to conclude that:

While children would prefer time with their parents to heaps of consumer goods, [their] parents seem to find themselves under tremendous pressure to purchase a surfeit of material goods for their children.

I haven't found a similar study focused on America, but it doesn't take too much imagination to believe that materialism is rampant here, too.  The observation of Reg Bailey, chief executive of Britain's Mothers Union, speaking about British society, could apply equally well to American society:

I think it is an issue with the nature of our society, that so often we’ve placed a dependence on things rather than being.

As I've written before here, contentment comes from not from seeking stuff, but from seeking REM:  relationships, experiences, and memories.  British kids are crying out for time from their parents; according to the UNICEF study, their parents seem to despair of giving it to them because they are working too hard to provide stuff for them instead. But stuff can never provide long-term contentment, because the thrill of acquisition never lasts; pretty soon we adapt to the new thing, the feeling of elation wears off, and we turn to pursuing the next new thing.  What a treadmill to be stuck on!  Lord willing, I will be able to recognize when I am on it....

Materialism certainly is a problem in America, but I wonder if its effects are as severe as in Britain, which in an earlier UNICEF report ranked worst of 21 developed countries for child welfare.  According to the Telegraph article,

British children were twice as likely as the average to have been drunk by the age of 15, and significantly less likely to be in two parent families than those elsewhere, were more likely to have tried drugs and had one of the worst diets in the developed world.

Why has materialism seemingly had a more deleterious effect in Britain than in America or other developed countries?  Sue Palmer, author of the book Toxic Childhood, has a hypothesis:

We are teaching our children, practically from the moment they are born, that the one thing that matters is getting more stuff.  We are probably the most secular society in the world, we do not have the counterbalance of religion but at the same time we are a very driven society very into progress and making money. (emphasis added)

According to the Scripture of that religion that Britain used to have, Jesus warned the crowd, "Watch out! Be on your guard against all kinds of greed; a man's life does not consist in the abundance of his possessions."  (Luke 12:15).  Be rich not in stuff, but in relationships.  Pursue experiences with those you love instead of another gadget.  Stockpile memories, not shirts.  You, your children, indeed all your loved ones, will be the happier for it.

Perspective, again

News about the American and global economies continues to be pretty grim, with zero new jobs created last month in America, European debt crises still driving markets downward, and bank shares everywhere under attack by speculators.  Every coffee shop I'm in is filled with people looking for work, or fretting about their circumstances.  I don't know anyone who doesn't feel poorer than he did three years ago, even if it is just on paper.

So I appreciate the shot of perspective that the Economist provided in this week's issue in a article about the global middle class.  Accompanying the article is this chart showing the growth of the middle class around the world over the past two decades:





According to this joint study by the African Development Bank and the Asian Development Bank, nearly 2 billion people have risen into the middle class from poverty since 1990, which is welcome news.   But what really made me think is the asterisk at the bottom of the chart, which defines what the study's authors mean by "middle class":  people living on $2-20 per day. 

I don't want to belittle or dismiss the worries of any Americans, because whether you are making $1 a day or $1000 a day, to suddenly have your income eliminated or severely cut creates short-term hardship.  But the next time I'm tempted to lament my retirement account balance while sipping a $4 coffee drink, I hope I can hold my tongue and spare a thought instead for the billions of people who would view my situation with envy, and who are working hard every day with bustling determination to earn their way up to my blessed situation.