Personally I think it's a bloody awful thread on WUS -the comparison between the cooperative way a bunch of people of TZ - UK worked together to try to get to the best solution possible stands in stark contrast to the series of absolute train wrecks that occurred on WUS.Originally Posted by Macca
It was ever thus.
(I came to this thread as M4tt mentioned it in another thread)
The trouble with using OHMSS for reference material RE Bond is that Fleming was influenced at this point by the Film
Fleming takes the trouble to strengthen and establish links between novel Bond and film Bond in OHMSS
(Scottish ancestry, Ursula Andress dining at Blofeld's lair)
There are also many false quotes from the novels RE Rolex, Rolex is very sparsely mentioned in the books
Here's what I could find, titles are abbreviated, apologies if I missed any (I used find function in Calibre)
CR
No mention
LALD
He looked at the Rolex watch on his wrist. It was three minutes pasteleven o’clock
MR
No Mention
DAF
No mention
FRWL
No mention
DN
No mention
GF
No mention
FYEO
No Mention
TB
No mention of Bond's rolex, only the Petacchi character
TSWLM
No mention
OHMSS
and his wrist-watch, a heavy Rolex Oyster Perpetual on an expanding metal bracelet
He sat down and bent to his paper-work and tried not to listen to the hastening tick of the Rolex on his wrist,
through the fingers of the left hand and the Rolex transferred to his right, the bracelet clasped in the palm of his hand and round the fingers so that the face of the watch lay across his middle knuckles
Bond's right flashed out and the face of the Rolex disintegrated against the man's jaw
Bond lifted his left wrist. Remembered that he no longer had a watch. That he would certainly be allowed on expenses. He would get another one as soon as the shops opened after Boxing Day. Another Rolex? Probably. They were on the heavy side, but they worked. And at least you could see the time in the dark with those big phosphorus numerals.
He glanced at the new Rolex on his wrist - the shops were still shut and he had had to blarney it out of Q Branch **
YOLT
No mention
TMWTGG
No mention
O&TLD
No mention (I didn't check 007 in NY)
**Implies Bond had access to Rolex via Q branch.
But with the exception of the single line in LALD, Fleming does not mention Bond and Rolex until after Dr. No (movie) is released......
Lets not forget....
Bond is a fictional character
Fleming also wrote that you could die being covered in paint, that bond had a fight with a giant squid & that homosexual men can't whistle, so lets not get too carried away about the importance of this [says the man who just trawled through his entire e-library of Bond books]
Sorry, are you implying that some of the quotes I used are false? Perhaps you can specify the quotes, because guess what:
I do primary research by hand unless I have no other alternative. Inthis case, I read all the books and used a pencil to mark references. You have missed a few, as there are plenty of lines that identify the same watch without explicitly calling it a Rolex; for example:
Obviously they are a bit harder to dig out, but they are there to find.'You're still wearing that old wristwatch of yours with the big phosphorous numerals....Put your watch right up against the counter. See! The sweephand is getting all excited. Move your hand away and it loses interest. It's those phosphorous numerals of yours. Remember the other day one of the watch companies withdrew an air-pilot's watch from the market because the Atomic Energy people got fussy? Same thing. They thought this particular pilot's watch, with the big phosphorous numerals, was giving off too much radiation to be good for the wearer.'
Try this, it's a little more detailed:
http://forums.watchuseek.com/f45/wha...ux-298155.html
I think that my account is premised upon the fact that Bond is fictional.
like I clearly stated I used a search function on every single bond novel/short story (bar 007 in new York)
my search was "Rolex"
I wasn't interested in searching 'watch' or 'wrist watch' because this doesn't explicitly imply a Rolex wrist watch.
I'm a bond novel fan, I'm 100% supportive of anyone's quest to link fictional Bond to a particular watch
A computer driven search function of electronic text is a reasonably robust method to find text.
The 60 page WUS thread doesn't interest me (sorry)
If you or anyone can make a positive ID of Bond's Rolex from what amounts to a few lines from OHMSS then power to you, but like I said, OHMSS is "tainted" by the Dr. No movie, so.....
As you've read the books, (which despite you owning in hard copy you realise they are the same as the ebook version right?) you'll know as well as me that Fleming was perfectly capable of explaining things in detail if he so desired... if I asked what tobacco was in Bond's cigarettes or how do I make a Vespa then easy answers right? So perhaps the question isn't what Rolex did Fleming have Bond wear, but why was Fleming seemingly disinterested in stating exactly what model, as he easily could have done.
He did state precisely the watch Bond wore. People just forget that such a watch existed. He then changed the watch. It's all in the thread that you don't want to read. I'm aware the ebook is identical, but your search method wasn't terribly thorough, as the quote I posted demonstrated That clearly referred to two discrete Rolex models. Again, you'll need to read the first post of the thread to find out how.
Last edited by M4tt; 10th November 2013 at 01:15.
Great thread thanks!
I never knew that the Bond watch used to be a Rolex. As somebody who is not knowledgable about watches, I associate Bond with Omega as much as I do with Aston Martin.
It's the same thing with the cars; Bond didn't have an Aston in the first film.
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