A fabulous interview/analysis in the Guardian by a guy named Hari Kunzru. Moorcock looks a lot like Fidel Castro these days... Cool quotes:
In contrast to the rural decencies of Tolkien, Moorcock's writing belongs to an urban tradition, which celebrates the fantastical city as a place of chance and mystery. The wondrous spaces of M John Harrison, China Miéville, Fritz Leiber, Gene Wolfe and Alan Moore are all part of this, as are Iain Sinclair's London, Judge Dredd's Mega-City One, the part-virtual cyberpunk mazes of William Gibson and the decadent Paris of the Baudelarian flâneur. Like these other urban fantasists, Moorcock delights in a kind of sublime palimpsest, in imagining an environment that through size, age, scale or complexity exceeds our comprehension, producing fear and awe.
.......
Elric, a decadent albino weakling, is amoral, perhaps even evil. As a not-so-metaphorical junkie, Elric allowed Moorcock to revel in unwholesomeness, and helped return fantasy to its roots in the late romanticism of the decadents, a literary school close to Moorcock's heart. ... Elric is part Maldoror, part Yellow Book poseur and part William Burroughs; within a few years of his first appearance in 1961, British culture suddenly seemed to be producing real-life Elrics by the dozen, as Keith Richards, Jimmy Page and others defined an image of the English rock star as an effeminate, velvet-clad lotus-eater. Moorcock was very popular among musicians, and it's tempting to see him as co-creator of the butterfly-on-a-wheel character, which still wanders the halls of English culture in guises ranging from Sebastian Horsley to Russell Brand.
Posts
3 comments:
Wow. If the books really live up to this description...maybe time for another look?
There should always be time to read more Moorcock.
The Jerry Cornelius books have always seemed to me to be as dated as an old army jacket worn with Indian feathers... But with this analysis in mind, The Cornelius Quartet -- which can be had most places for about a dime -- might be worth looking up.
And, keeping the decadent Moorcock in mind, I liked Dancers at the End of Time a lot...
BTW: This, from the comments, is worth noting:
It's a pity you didn't see fit to interview Barrington J Bayley before he died last year. Out of all the british New Wavers, Bayley was the true pioneer. Moorcock may have his millions of words, but Bayley had the ideas.
Post a Comment