# The God & His Man / Authors

*The Urth list — 1 messages, 1 voices, 17 Dec 1999*

<https://urth.darkrealm.vip/thread/urth/2042>

> Exported from an unofficial mirror of a public mailing list. Copyright
> in each message remains with the person who wrote it.
> Email addresses are obscured as `user at host`, the form the original
> archive published. This file was rebuilt from parsed fields rather than
> retained headers, so it is faithful in content but not byte-exact.

---

### Alex David Groce
*17 Dec 1999, 13:29*

mantis says:

> Speaking of authorial context, if this story was written by Michael
> Moorcock my interpretation of it would be relatively cut and dry--I have
> read enough Moorcock work that is a variation on this theme, so that I
> wouldn't give it a second thought.  Elric and Arioch, that sort of thing:
> we might call it "Elric's Revenge."  When Moorcock takes a swipe at Big
> Religion it is often targeted at Roman Catholicism, but sometimes all of
> Christianity.  The name of the god seems rather close to a swipe at the
> Jews, which seems uncharacteristic of Moorcock, so I'd transfer this to the
> early Christian church (and we're back to Catholic bashing).  (I can't
> think of a case where Moorcock writes positively about any religion.)

I tend to think of "Behold the Man" as being less anti-religious than a lot
of Moorcock that seems less directly critical of religion.  Certainly not
positive, per se, but more nuanced than a first reading indicates.  


In general, the author is alive and kicking until the day people cease to
use information about what the author has written/said/claimed to desire/etc.
in the past to help them shape their conception of anything he writes/says
afterwards.  Since we automatically do this with other people, and unless we
all become Latros are probably going to keep doing so, I suspect the author
will be in good shape for many years to come.  Certainly the "author" of
publishing/etc. is a "new" thing, and different with the changing media of
the ages (insert random mandatory Marshall McLuhan observation) but the 
creating force behind a text/story is a very old concept--it's not as if
post-Gutenberg thinkers made up Homer.


"And ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free." John 8:32

```
Alex David Groce (agroce+ at cs.cmu.edu)
Ph.D. Student, Carnegie Mellon University - Computer Science Department
8112 Wean Hall (412)-268-3066
http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~agroce
```

---