From Hemingway's Rolex to Murakami's vintage Heuer – the 7 best watch quotes from literature
Whether it’s the Breguet pocket watch that belongs to the dastardly Baron Danglars in The Count of Monte Cristo or the orange-dialled Doxa worn by Dirk Pitt in Clive Cussler’s novels, the literary world is full of watches. Sometimes they’re mentioned as passing details to flesh out a character’s appearance. Sometimes a character’s wristwear comes laden with semiotic depth to reveal some hidden facet of their personality. For this article, Time+Tide hastily re-read every single book ever written – OK, we skimmed a couple – to unpack our selection of horological quotes. THE QUOTE: “He could not just wear a watch. It had to be a Rolex.” CASINO ROYALE by Ian Fleming (1953) Ian Fleming was as morbidly obsessed with brands as Patrick Bateman in American Psycho. In his first 007 novel, Casino Royale, Bond drives a Bentley, drinks Taittinger champagne and pointedly wears a Rolex watch. Although the precise model of Bond’s watch is undetermined, it’s now commonly assumed to be a Rolex Explorer 1016. Not only did Fleming wear that watch himself, but in his later novel, Thunderball, Felix specifically asks Bond whether “he is still wearing that old wristwatch…with the big phosphorous numerals?”. At any rate, Fleming…
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Right now, the dive watch market is more saturated than a saturation diver’s wetsuit. If you want a fit-for-purpose timepiece made to withstand the pressures and perils of H20, you are most definitely spoilt for choice. Of course, it’s understandable why watches that aren’t going to completely capitulate when coming into contact with water are so popular – it’s a very desirable feature. But it can be daunting trying to separate the good from the bad and, more importantly, trying to understand the gulf between the inexpensive and the very expensive. That last point is something that I think about a lot. And matters haven’t exactly been simplified since I started wearing this new Longines HydroConquest in Khaki Green. In fact, this watch has well and truly muddied the waters. Here is a timepiece with no less than 300 metres of water resistance, a self-winding movement, ceramic bezel, solid build quality, arresting presentation and it comes from one of the oldest and best watchmakers in the game … and it costs $2325 AUD. Normally with these types of stories, we like to bury the lead somewhat, keeping readers in suspense until the very end. But, in the case of this…
Editor’s note: There comes a point in every collector’s journey where they wish, even if only for a moment, that they had only one watch. That all of their learning, discussing, buying and selling in the world of horology could be focused into a single piece that they could wear every day for the rest of their life. Never again would they hesitate in the morning as they decide what to wear that day, and never again would they wonder where part of their collection was. For many, that watch could be the Rolex Oyster Perpetual 39 ref. 114300. The story in a second: This could well be the only watch you’ll ever need. There’s a concept in the world of watch enthusiasts that’s referred to as ‘only one watch’. For the majority of the population, this concept is better known as ‘normality’. But if you’re the sort of person who has a watch for work, one for the weekend as well as a dedicated timepiece for special occasions, there’s a good chance the thought of committing to just one will fill you with dread. How could you choose? Can you live without a chronograph? And do you go for…
The last episodes of The Last Dance, the epic documentary series on Michael Jordan and the Chicago Bulls, have just aired. While watching, our Deputy Editor, Nick Kenyon, caught a glimpse of what looked like a vintage Rolex Daytona with a “Paul Newman” dial on the wrist of American director Spike Lee, who was a spectator at a Bulls match in 1998. Lee is known for films such as BlacKkKlansman, Do the Right Thing, Inside Man and Malcolm X. We know Lee is a watch guy, with pieces ranging from the evergreen cool Casio G-Shocks to watches from Jaeger-LeCoultre and Rolex. I did some digging through photo archives and discovered that Lee rocked a Rolex reference 6263 Daytona in steel with a white non “Paul Newman” dial back in 1992. Through further searching, I came across images from 1996 of Lee sporting a vintage Daytona with a “Paul Newman” dial, but couldn’t completely make out the exact reference due to the distance of the photograph. Rocking a vintage Daytona in the ’90s would have been a rarity, considering there wasn’t the level of interest like we have seen in the past 15 years for these timepieces, and it shows Lee was…
