Main Menu

Alan Moore's Jerusalem +++SPOILERS+++

Started by Frank, 26 September, 2016, 07:55:23 PM

Previous topic - Next topic

Frank

.
Despite visits from three Amazon associates in white vans, two of them wielding parcels the size of unusually lengthy books, my walk home from work was unencumbered by 1000 pages of psychogeography, ill advised rape scenes, and ranting against Northampton Town Council.

Undaunted, I thought I'd pave the way for this thread of exhaustive literary analysis - which I expect to receive as many as three (brief) replies - with the first Moore interview I've read in ages that lets him speak affably and entertainingly on the vast range of topics he knows more about than almost everyone else, rather than bear baiting him to have a go at superhero comics and their readers.

Works on a tabloid level too. There's a hilarious dialogue with a tramp about Dave Gibbons/DC, and Dominic Wells identifies the 'girlfriend' Moore and his first wife shared - whose familiar surname was a revelation to me at least:


Quote"I continually monitor the possibility that I might be going mad."

Moore and I are holed up in an Italian restaurant in Northampton to discuss the culmination of a lifetime's work, research and philosophy. "Bigger than the Bible and I hope more socially useful", is how Moore describes his sprawling magnum opus, Jerusalem, with his customarily deadpan humour.

Moore hasn't lost the astonishing verbal felicity with which his every sentence emerges fully formed, sub-clauses and all. It's as though he were writing rather than speaking; or as though he already knows how each sentence will end before he embarks upon it.

In 1994, Moore experienced an "absolute, crystalline understanding" during a magical ritual. Since then, Moore has believed, as Einstein supposedly did, that time is a solid in which our lives are embedded; it is only our perception of it which makes it appear linear.

"The thing is," says Moore, "we don't have free will, or at least that's what I believe, and I think most physicists tend to think that as well, that this is a predetermined universe. That's got to pretty much kill religion because there aren't any religions that aren't based on some kind of moral imperative. They've all got sin, karma or something a bit like that.

In a predetermined universe how can you talk about sin? How can you talk about virtue?"

"We're talking here about heaven and hell, we're talking about them as being simultaneous and present, that all the worst moments of your life forever, that's hell; all the best moments of your life forever, that's paradise.

So, this is where we are. We're in hell, we're in paradise; both together, forever. I'm saying that everywhere is Jerusalem. That in an Einsteinian block universe, where all time is presumably simultaneous, then everywhere is the eternal heavenly city."

This is why, as in Alan Moore's first novel, Voice of the Fire, almost all the action in Jerusalem takes place within a small geographical area of Northampton, but ranging across different historical eras, each centring on different protagonists who end up interconnecting in surprising ways.

It's part social history of Northampton, part thinly fictionalised history of Moore's own family, part philosophical treatise, part rip-roaring adventure in which a gang of kids maraud through the afterlife in a central section Moore describes as like "a savage, hallucinating Enid Blyton".

As if that wasn't hard enough to pull off, Moore adapts his writing style to the inner voice of whoever is the chapter's focus.

One is written as a play, in the style of Waiting for Godot, and throws together the spirits of Thomas Becket, Samuel Beckett, John Clare and John Bunyan – all of whom have some connection with Northampton – as they observe and comment on a husband and wife wrestling with a terrible family secret ...

Another chapter, described from the point of view of James Joyce's mad daughter Lucia who was institutionalised for 30 years in a Northampton mental hospital, is written in a mangled, pun-filled gibber-English as a homage to Joyce's Finnegans Wake. It was so laborious to compose that Moore took a year's break after finishing it.

If this makes Jerusalem sound like hard going, it isn't. It's gripping, full of stylistic fireworks, frequently laugh-out-loud funny, sometimes terrifying, occasionally frustrating. Could it have been shorter? Of course. But it's the digressions and bizarre connections that make the book, the nuggets of pure gold that Moore has sifted from the silt of local history through prodigious research and banked in his near-photographic memory.

"Nearly everything is historical fact," says Moore, before deadpanning: "I'd take all the angels and demons with a pinch of salt. A lot of it is actually 100 per cent materially true, but I think all of it is emotionally true.

We are not just our bricks and mortar, we are not just our flesh and blood, we are not just our material components. Everything in our world has got an imaginary component. As individuals, we're always telling people the legend of us. The same goes for our houses, our streets, our towns, our country – there is a huge imaginary component to human life and if in the interests of scientific realism you ignore that, you are not describing reality.

"But science cannot measure the bit that isn't material. Science is a brilliant tool for analysing our material universe, but science cannot talk about what is inside the human mind: it's beyond the realm of proof, it's beyond the realm of science. So I say they should be left to art and magic, which are pretty much the same thing."

One of the most moving aspects of the book is how Moore exhumes the oral working-class history of Northampton, resurrecting and giving voice to those who had none when they lived, such as a homeless teen who died of exposure, whom Moore makes a key character, or "Black Charley", who emigrated to Northampton from America.

"These are the things that need to be preserved. Because they are wonderful. And yet, who cares?

"These things must have happened in every little deprived area, all across the world. But we're not interested in deprived areas, it's got to be the history of Church and State and Monarchy – that's the only history that counts, apparently.  I would say that's the only history that's simplistic to keep track of" ...

... "So, yeah," he deadpans. "I am still worshipped as a God by the primitive and superstitious people of Milton Keynes."

https://londonhollywood.wordpress.com/2016/09/22/if-you-read-only-one-alan-moore-jerusalem-interview-make-it-this-one/

pauljholden

#1
Please someone change the name of this thread quick!

COMMANDO FORCES

#2
Good spot PJ. I read it as Alan  :lol:

sheridan

#3
I do hope that was accidental...

JOE SOAP

#4
Little doubt it's an intended pun based on Moore's exhaustive probing of his subjects.




Steve Green

#5
Without wanting to be Godpletoned


TordelBack

#6
If I can be a tiny bit censorious, further rummaging about in the specifics of Moore's earlier relationships might be a bit impolite on the forum of a company who publishes work from a child of that marriage. Leave the gossip to the rest of the internet.

Great interview though!  And like Frank, Raymond of Toulouse and possibly Mitchell Royce, I am now champing at the bit to get into Jerusalem.  Just one more cash infusion and the small matter of finishing a Peter Hamilton doorstop (a waffer theen meent in comparison) and I'm there. 

ZenArcade

#7
Peter Hamilton doorstop

I would derive infinitely more pleasure reading the washing instruction tag on Alan Moore's unwashed leather lion cloth than sit through one of Mr Hamiltons winding discourses. Z  :(
Ed is dead, baby Ed is...Ed is dead

sheridan

Quote from: TordelBack on 27 September, 2016, 09:05:15 AM
Just one more cash infusion and the small matter of finishing a Peter Hamilton doorstop (a waffer theen meent in comparison) and I'm there. 
We've got a few of those in our flat :-)

I, Cosh

Interesting. When it comes to bulging novels by jovial, bearded Englishmen I still haven't been able to clear the hurdle of Moorcock's Jerusalem Commands.

It seems unlikely that I will ever get around to reading this. Too much of the advance publicity has focused on the length and I already thought Voice of the Fire was too long and overwritten. What sounds pleasantly discursive when intoned in the author's richly avuncular voice seems bloated on the page.

Gets a guardedly positive review from The Guardian, but I can't help but focus on comments like this:
Quote from: TFAJerusalem contains a great many inventive and instructive cosmologies. Let me offer my humbler own. Most cultures describe an aboriginal chaos, and into this plenitude intervenes a figure – call it God, Demiurge, Artificer, Urizen – who gives it form, distinction, coherence, elegance and even meaning. An equally good synonym might be Editor.
We never really die.

Frank

Quote from: I, Cosh on 27 September, 2016, 01:13:44 PM
I already thought Voice of the Fire was too long and overwritten

Not sure about the first part but the second is fair comment. The editor gag is funny.

Turns out my parcel was delivered to the post office instead of my work. The old lady at the counter tried to hand it to me through that wee metal tray they have underneath the glass screen, but gave up and had to come out the side door to pass it on by hand. She asked if it was a pair of shoes.

I've been watching a lot of COMMANDO FORCES's unboxing videos, so I know how the next bit should go:


The packaging is a disappointment; just plain, beige cardboard. Given the cost, you would have thought they would have made a bit more effort for the fans.

The piece itself is impressive; 1/6 scale and it has a good, weighty feel to it. Just a pity you have to buy your own batteries, which I thought was ripping off the loyal fans who have kept them going all these years.

One nice touch is that the printed cover can actually be removed to reveal a second, variant cover underneath, which I thought was clever. Each page is individually numbered, which can only increase the value of the item.

I had to laugh, because someone clearly messed up. Despite being advertised as containing just 1174 pages, a factory error meant mine shipped with an extra few pages at the front and back, containing bonus material that gives a few bits and bobs about the printer and people the author is related to.

HM Treasury will be furious when they find out they undercharged me on import duty per page! I was so delighted I celebrated by buying another three copies to get signed at conventions. They will give me many hours of pleasure as they sit untouched, still in their original packing, gathering dust in my cellar




COMMANDO FORCES


Frank

Quote from: COMMANDO FORCES on 27 September, 2016, 02:49:37 PM
I think there's no import duty on books ;)

Ha! Thanks for taking my mickey taking in good part, John. It's only fitting now that you should take my mickey, as I'm sure all the Irish lads here will agree.

I'm going to dive in after the news. I can see why Link Prime was intimidated; the space between lines is about half that of Voice Of The Fire. The 1000 pages hype was misleading - if this was typeset like Voice Of The Fire, the page count would be closer to 2000 ...



ZenArcade

Oh Sauchie, sure you're the cute hoor. Z
Ed is dead, baby Ed is...Ed is dead

JayzusB.Christ

Quote from: Frank on 27 September, 2016, 05:58:58 PM
Ha! Thanks for taking my mickey taking in good part, John. It's only fitting now that you should take my mickey, as I'm sure all the Irish lads here will agree.


What exactly are you two shleeveens up to?
"Men will never be free until the last king is strangled with the entrails of the last priest"