Where did Edwin Come from?
Wednesday, June 4th, 2008So somebody once said, that authors only really write about themselves. And maybe that’s true. Consider Ian Fleming.
Fleming had a good war but fought it all from behind his desk in Whitehall.
Peter Smithers, a colleague in naval intelligence, said: “Ian constantly longed to be personally engaged in the excitement. He was of an essentially aggressive nature. It was the repression of all these desires by authority, quite rightly, which in my opinion fired the imagination engaged in his books.”
After the war Fleming became a journalist again and then a writer, dashing off “Casino Royale” in 1952 and 11 further Bond novels before his death in 1964, at the age of 56.
Pretty stupid to want to be personally engaged in the excitement of war. Because the punchline to all that excitement is invariably death. But you can pretty clearly see how he acted out a latent fantasy with the character of Bond.
So what about me? Well, it’s frighteningly simple. On many occasions I’ve given people advice as a consultant and they didn’t listen. Many, many people have these experiences. Waiters, IT professionals, tour guides, car salesmen, managers, really just about everybody. And it’s tremendously frustrating.
It would be an oversimplification to say that Edwin is how only I took out my frustration. There’s a bunch of satire working in How to Succeed in Evil. And, I hope, a critique of the ways people take themselves too seriously. But if you were to look a link between Edwin and I (or Edwin and any reader) it would be that frustration with people you are trying to help who insist on doing stupid things.
