They make a cute couple, no?

1960, Feb. 22
Ian Fleming

"...what was easy at 40 is v different at 50. I used
to believe - sufficiently - in Bonds + Blonds +
Bombs. How the keys creak as I type +
I fear the zest may have gone. Part of
the trouble is having a wife & child.
[Page 2]
They k[???] the writerliness out of one. I
shall definitely kill off Bond with my
next book - better a poor bang than a
rich whimper!"


1912 Mar ?
Virginia Woolf

"I began life with a tremendous
abound ideal of marriage, then
my birds eye view of many
[Verso Page 1]
marriages disgusted me + thought I must
be ailing[?] what was not to be had.
But that has passed too. Now I only
ask for someone to make me vehement
+ then I'll marry them!"
...
I spent a strange fortnight in
bed among faded old ladies
who might have been weeds at the
bottom of a river they were so
placid + remote from everything
+ yet alive.               I am now
[Verso 2]
leading a semi-invalid life + it is
very nice when the days are fine,
doesn't that sound old!"


(Only moments) before class, I just wanted to post this interesting little alliance Fleming and Woolf have in their attitudes toward the "zest" of life and domesticity.  They are such the unlikely pair. A couple years ago, I think my sophomore year, I took a class on British Sexualities and we had an entire unit on Fleming's misogyny, homophobia, racism, and just general imperial/colonial attitude toward British masculinity in the come-down of GB's heyday. Woolf also deals with the waning of England's imperial might during the interwar period and perhaps shares some classist ideologies, but one could agree her treatment of gender is wildly, wildly progressive and queer. Anjona told me briefly a day or two ago that Fleming seems as though he tries to be Bond (which I'm sure will be said far more eloquently and ingeniously in the presentation.) Anyway, the matter of killing off Bond rings with a bit of a suicidal threat-- not that Fleming himself is suicidal, but that killing off Bond has greater implications than simply bringing a franchise to a well-meant close.
Anyhow, there seems to be a shared fear of aging and becoming irrelevant, that the world will move on without them, that strikes me.