PAUL STERLING MUST DIE!

Bond, James Bond

Ian Fleming, author of the James Bond novels, only rarely and in very vague ways described to readers just what his fictional secret agent looked like.  In "Casino Royale", femme fatale Vepser Lynd describes him as looking something like Hoagy Carmichael, shown on the right.  Not a bad looking man, certainly, but not the sex magnet of legend that we've all come to know.  Fleming once said that he first hit upon James Bond as a character on his wedding night.  He married late in life and found himself genuinely nervous, even panicked, at the thought of losing his bachelor freedom and so to calm himself as well as steel himself to the prospect of marriage, he invented a new and more confident persona.  One that wasn't afraid.  It was that persona, he said, that became James Bond.  There are many examples of fictional characters that aren't described in great physical detail.  Raymond Chandler's private eye Philip Marlowe is rarely described outside of the color of his suit or women telling him he's a handsome brute, and if you read any amount of spy or private eye paperbacks, most will leave the looks of the hero a blank slate.  

In most cases, I think this is done so that the bald,  potbellied or homely reader can more easily insert himself into the fantasy world that this type of fiction so readily provides.  If the hero is described as handsome, muscular, with a full head of hair, etc. it might be harder to fit into his shoes and enjoy the goings-on.  If he isn't described at all, then you become him, and his triumphs and trials are your own.  

In the two cases listed above, Bond and Marlowe, I think that the hero was a kind of vehicle for the author.  They didn't describe the hero because they felt they were the hero.  They were living out fantasies on paper.  Of course, the dearth of description allows the reader to latch on more easily, as stated above, and this, I think, is why Fleming and Chandler are still in print today.

It was thinking all of this up yesterday that I decided that Paul Sterling must die.  Not a physical death, but be wadded up and thrown in a wastebasket, pending a serious overhaul.

It won't be easy, but over the course of the next few months I am going to come up with a new Paul Sterling.  Admittedly, there's some good stuff there.  An unpolished diamond with a lot of potential.  But by the time I'm finished, Paul Sterling will have greater adventures, more meaningful romances, and win fortunes undreamed of by the slob he is now.  

Stay tuned.