![FLEMING, Ian. Notebook containing AUTOGRAPH NOTES for You only Live Twice. N.p., n.d. [ca. 1961].](https://www.christies.com/img/LotImages/2002/NYR/2002_NYR_01098_0102_000(050421).jpg?w=1)
Details
FLEMING, Ian. Notebook containing AUTOGRAPH NOTES for You only Live Twice. N.p., n.d. [ca. 1961].
Oblong 12o. 54 pages and 7 blanks, written mostly on rectos. Cloth-backed boards.
These notes were probably made at about the time of Fleming's trip to Japan in 1961. He returned to Japan (see lot 105), this time with the express purpose of making a trip that he could funnel into a Bond story. He wrote his friend Richard Hughes in advance with a detailed itinerary listing all the things they would need to see for the novel: "After a couple of days in Tokyo, I would like us to take the most luxurious modern train down south to the inland sea... I would also like to see pearl girls diving - my heroine will be a beautiful girl who has learned to speak English working on an underwater film in Hollywood--and hot baths, a live volcano for suicides, and any terrifying manifestation of the horrific Japan" (Pearson The Life of Ian Fleming, London, 1966).
While jaunting around the hottest spots of Japan with Hughes, Fleming kept this notebook. Along with hotel and restaurant addresses, phone numbers, and simple Japanese phrases, the notebook contains several long prose passages. Philosophical jottings on the people and culture of Japan, include the followning:
"How many of one's own nationals want to live in another country & how many of that country want to live in yours."
"Moshimosh = hello!
"Only the good can be bad - only the believer can blaspheme - only the black can be white."
"Flower - known as the FL service - or to the subs as FLOPPO."
FLEMING MANUSCRIPT MATERIAL IS QUITE SCARCE and very few items of any significance have appeared at auction. Another notebook for You only Live Twice, similar in format but shorter (39 pages), was sold at Sotheby's London, 20 July 1989, lot 174. A 120-page typescript, being Fleming's working notebook of ideas for various Bond novels, kept from July 1957-January 1964, was sold at Sotheby's London, 15 December 1992, lot 296. Besides these, and a few scattered notes for From Russia with Love and his article "Bang, Bang. Kiss, Kiss," no other significant Fleming manuscript material has come to auction in thirty years. The present notebook may well be only one of a few pieces of Fleming manuscript material outside the Lilly Libary's Fleming collection (purchased from Fleming's widow in 1970, along with Fleming's book collection).
Oblong 12
These notes were probably made at about the time of Fleming's trip to Japan in 1961. He returned to Japan (see lot 105), this time with the express purpose of making a trip that he could funnel into a Bond story. He wrote his friend Richard Hughes in advance with a detailed itinerary listing all the things they would need to see for the novel: "After a couple of days in Tokyo, I would like us to take the most luxurious modern train down south to the inland sea... I would also like to see pearl girls diving - my heroine will be a beautiful girl who has learned to speak English working on an underwater film in Hollywood--and hot baths, a live volcano for suicides, and any terrifying manifestation of the horrific Japan" (Pearson The Life of Ian Fleming, London, 1966).
While jaunting around the hottest spots of Japan with Hughes, Fleming kept this notebook. Along with hotel and restaurant addresses, phone numbers, and simple Japanese phrases, the notebook contains several long prose passages. Philosophical jottings on the people and culture of Japan, include the followning:
"How many of one's own nationals want to live in another country & how many of that country want to live in yours."
"Moshimosh = hello!
"Only the good can be bad - only the believer can blaspheme - only the black can be white."
"Flower - known as the FL service - or to the subs as FLOPPO."
FLEMING MANUSCRIPT MATERIAL IS QUITE SCARCE and very few items of any significance have appeared at auction. Another notebook for You only Live Twice, similar in format but shorter (39 pages), was sold at Sotheby's London, 20 July 1989, lot 174. A 120-page typescript, being Fleming's working notebook of ideas for various Bond novels, kept from July 1957-January 1964, was sold at Sotheby's London, 15 December 1992, lot 296. Besides these, and a few scattered notes for From Russia with Love and his article "Bang, Bang. Kiss, Kiss," no other significant Fleming manuscript material has come to auction in thirty years. The present notebook may well be only one of a few pieces of Fleming manuscript material outside the Lilly Libary's Fleming collection (purchased from Fleming's widow in 1970, along with Fleming's book collection).