A friend of a friend was flipping back and forth between the Kindle edition of Diamonds are Forever and a paperback edition he had handy. At one point James Bond is talking to the femme fatale of the novel, Case, and he asks her, “Do you mind if I smoke?”
In the Kindle edition she replies, “If that’s the way you want to die,” which is quite progressive of her given it’s the 1950s and doctors are still recommending smoking to relax one’s nerves. That’s also the only version of the scene I can find online, for example in Google books.
In his paperback edition, however, she apparently replies, “So long as it’s tobacco.” Which is also progressive, though in a different and more funny way.
So my question is if anyone knows in which edition this change occurred, and whether I am right in presuming that pressure was brought to bear on Fleming or his publisher to clean up the language.
I’m listening to the audiobook of this novel as we speak, and I’m 90% sure the line was “If that’s the way you want to die.”
The release date for the audiobook was 2004 by Blackstone Audio, based in Oregon.
I’d be interested to know when the paperback was published & by whom.
I have a paperback version published in September of 1957. If you’ll tell me the page number I’ll check this copy.
I just checked Google Books. One of the versions of the book they have is dated 1956 and the line there is “So long as it’s tobacco.”
Thanks, I’ll try to find that out.
Man, your Google-fu is better than mine, I still can’t find that. What I did find was a talk section on Wikipedia in which someone quotes the Berkeley edition as saying “Not so long as it’s tobacco.”
Whatever the timing, it’s interesting that someone made an editorial decision to change the text. I guess James Bond picked a good day to stop smoking pot.
The paperback I have kicking around somewhere has the “want to die” version. I’ll see if I can find it next weekend.
Personally, I don’t see the “tobacco” version as an improvement.
I didn’t know Eric Flint was working on James Bond novels.