"James Bond is quite serious about his drinks and clothing and cigarettes and food and all that sort of thing. There is nothing wry or amused about James Bond"
About this Quote
Bond is often sold as a smirking fantasy of competence, but Follett punctures that marketing with a colder diagnosis: the man isn’t playful, he’s dutiful. By zooming in on the “drinks and clothing and cigarettes and food,” Follett points to the consumer surfaces that viewers treat as a wink - the martini order as punchline, the tux as camp, the cigarette as vintage flair. His point is that for Bond these aren’t jokes; they’re equipment.
The line “all that sort of thing” is doing quiet work. It lumps the fetishized details into a single category: ritual. Bond’s connoisseurship isn’t leisure-class indulgence, it’s a coping mechanism and a professional code. When you live in a world of betrayals, poison, and sudden death, you cling to things you can control: the cut of fabric, the burn of tobacco, the taste that proves you’re still you. That’s why Follett insists there’s “nothing wry or amused” about him. Bond doesn’t use irony as armor; he uses precision.
Contextually, this reads like a corrective to the franchise’s self-parody and to the audience’s tendency to treat Bond as a meme of male style. Follett, a thriller writer who understands suspense as labor, is arguing that Bond’s aesthetic is inseparable from his violence. The elegance isn’t garnish; it’s the uniform of a man who has turned taste into discipline, because discipline is the only thing standing between him and panic.
The line “all that sort of thing” is doing quiet work. It lumps the fetishized details into a single category: ritual. Bond’s connoisseurship isn’t leisure-class indulgence, it’s a coping mechanism and a professional code. When you live in a world of betrayals, poison, and sudden death, you cling to things you can control: the cut of fabric, the burn of tobacco, the taste that proves you’re still you. That’s why Follett insists there’s “nothing wry or amused” about him. Bond doesn’t use irony as armor; he uses precision.
Contextually, this reads like a corrective to the franchise’s self-parody and to the audience’s tendency to treat Bond as a meme of male style. Follett, a thriller writer who understands suspense as labor, is arguing that Bond’s aesthetic is inseparable from his violence. The elegance isn’t garnish; it’s the uniform of a man who has turned taste into discipline, because discipline is the only thing standing between him and panic.
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