Self-Parody in Ian Fleming's James Bond Novels?

Of course we all know that in the James Bond film series self-parody set in relatively early. Kingsley Amis argued that it was there from the start in Dr. No (1962). More charitable commentators would have said that from You Only Live Twice (1967) on (omitting 1969's OHMSS as an anomaly of course) on (and especially in 1971's Diamonds Are Forever) self-parody was the order of the day on into the Roger More era Bond films until For Your Eyes Only (1981) returned Bond to a pre-YOLT level of seriousness.

Something that is much less well-known or written about in any articles is the fact that there were pieces of self-parody in Bond from the very beginning - namely in the literary Bond of Ian Fleming. The first novel to contain self-parody was probably that of Goldfinger (1959). The whole plot is fantastical - raiding Fort Knox of its gold. The names are parodic in nature - Auric Goldfinger, Pussy Galore. Perhaps the fight with the giant squid from Dr. No (1958) the year before would count too?

Another example that comes to mind, that could sum up all of the Fleming Bond's fantastic adventures in one memorable sentence occurs at the very end of one of Fleming's most literary novels, Diamonds Are Forever (1956):

"Bond dropped down off the truck and started walking slowly towards the leaping fire. He smiled grimly to himself. All this business about death and diamonds was too solemn. For Bond it was just the end of another adventure. Another adventure for which a wry phrase of Tiffany Case might be the epitaph. He could see the passionate, ironical mouth saying the words:

'It reads better than it lives.'"

In Fleming's From Russia, With Love (1957) there were also elements of parody at play. On the first page of Chapter 1 of that novel Donovan 'Red' Grant is lying naked beside a swimming pool and by his side is, among other items, "the sort of novel a rich man pulls out of the bookcase to take into the garden - The Little Nugget - an old P.G. Wodehouse." It's not the sort of book one imagines a serial killer and SMERSH executioner like 'Red' Grant ('The Moon Killer') would appreciate or be reading. He'd be more into the likes of the works of Marquis de Sade (as Kingsley Amis' Colonel Sun Liang-tan later was)! Could this be Fleming's little joke at Grant's expense? I think so.

Then, towards the end of the run of Bond novels in You Only Live Twice (1964) it's revealed in The Times obituary chapter:

The inevitable publicity, particularly in the foreign press, accorded some of these adventures, made him, much against his will, something of a public figure, with the inevitable result that a series of popular books came to be written around him by a personal friend and former colleague of James Bond. If the quality of these books, or their degree of veracity, had been any higher, the author would certainly have been prosecuted under the Official Secrets Act. It is a measure of the disdain in which these fictions are held at the Ministry, that action has not yet -- I emphasize the qualification -- been taken against the author and publisher of these high-flown and romanticized caricatures of episodes in the career of a outstanding public servant.

This was surely the height of Fleming's self-parody in Bond - that there was a version of his Bond novels in Bond's own world. This throwaway passage was later used as a springboard for John Pearson to write Bond as a real-life figure in his book James Bond: The Authorised Biography of 007 (1973).

So, those are (to my mind at least) the most obvious examples of self-parody at work in the Bond novels of Ian Fleming. Do you agree with them? Are there any I have missed? Do you think there was an element of self-parody in the work of Ian Fleming that may have gone on to inspire the Bond films down a similar path in the 1970s? Or did the character of James Bond simply lend itself all too easily to self-parody anyhow?

This is the thread to discuss all of this. I'd love to hear your thoughts, as always!  

Nothing springs to mind immediately, but good write-up regardless. I never really thought of the novels being as self-referential as the films, but I guess it goes to show that it wasn't something they shied away from. Certainly the obituary in YOLT was an obviously example and perhaps the biggest fourth wall breakage in all Bondom.

Thanks for sharing this!!
Well, you can easily fill a book with Fleming's humour.

First, let's go back to the passage about the Bond novels in the obituary. He points out here, that, if the books were any better in quality (which is an ironical self-portrayal), he would have been prosecuted for giving out material of the secret service.
I think he points fun at the fact that his books are believed to contain real MI 6 material. The most obvious story is FRWL. We have a short note at the beginning which informs us hat all buildings and characters presented in this book are exact copies of the Russian Secret Service. Problem being that the name of "G" translates to something like murderer. Yet, as far as I know, this was not obvious enough for some readers who wrote angry letters to Fleming that his description of the Russian headquarters was not accurate. They even included photographs to prove their point. Didn't they realize that he was poking fun at them considering what names he used?
    Then, there is the rumour (I call it rumour because I still lack the sources where this was taken from originally) that CR contains secret MI 6 material about a syndicate in the Lorraine (France). Well. If it did, do you really think there would have been 11 novels and a handful of short-stories to follow? I could never make head or tails of that curious fact that such a security breech should not have consequences and I have posted my question online elsewhere. I got the answer that Fleming was closely connected to the MI 6 for his whole lifetime and he would never have done anything to jeopardize them. I like to add that Anthony Eden might have decided in favour of another retreat if he risked ending up in the next novel of Fleming...So, again, a duck, I'd say. There is no MI 6  material in Fleming's novels.
     The next scenario is that some readers have believed that there was a Canadian young lady named Vivienne Mitchel who has written TSWLM. The American edition of the novel contains a disclaimer that this book was not written by Fleming, but that he found the manuscript on his desk, telling him about the secret agent about whom he has written to many books!
     In the long run, this casts a different light on his poking fun in the obituary at the fact that people took his novels for real. He spells it out here: "If my novels were real, I would be prosecuted; why do you send me letters and blame me for giving you wrong details?". This is a comment upon the publishing history and his experiences as an author.

There are numerous breaks of the fourth wall in Fleming's novels. Fleming was a genius author. I mean it.

We have parody about Bond's virility: I have just mentioned the other day that in YOLT Bond gets amnesia and forgets what sex is; in LALD he breaks the little finger of his left hand and is thus unable to make love to Solitaire; in Goldfinger he is wedged in between two lesbians who are completely disinterested in him. If you call these novels "kiss kiss bang bang" as it has happened, you have probably not read them.

There are a thousand small things in his descriptions, comparisons which are too numerous to sum them up here.

And, that man has written a novel about bird shit, come on!!!

Things that happen overseas are easy to fudge, so Moonraker is pure self-parody. If anything remotely like the first British ICBM launch - much less its swamping a fleet of ships - had happened by then, everyone in the country would have known about it.
John Pearson used this point in his 007 bio - confuse the enemy by describing events that never happened, thereby convincing them that Bond himself is fictitious.
Then there's Tiffany Case: "Got a passport?"
"Well, I have," admitted Bond, "But it's in my real name."
"Oh." She was suspicious again. "And what might that be?"
"James Bond."
She snorted. "Why not choose John Doe?"

AMC Hornet wrote:

Things that happen overseas are easy to fudge, so Moonraker is pure self-parody. If anything remotely like the first British ICBM launch  - much less its swamping a fleet of ships - had happened by then, everyone in the country would have known about it.
John Pearson used this point in his 007 bio - confuse the enemy by describing events that never happened, thereby convincing them that Bond himself is fictitious.
Then there's Tiffany Case: "Got a passport?"
"Well, I have," admitted Bond, "But it's in my real name."
"Oh." She was suspicious again. "And what might that be?"
"James Bond."
She snorted. "Why not choose John Doe?"

So do you think that this is a counter-strategy to make look Bond "real" again?
This veering back and force and blurring of outlines of what might be real and what isn't is very interesting.