{ "export": { "source": "https://urth.darkrealm.vip/thread/urth/3952", "note": "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.", "addresses": "obscured as 'user at host'" }, "archive": "urth", "thread": { "id": 3952, "subject": "Moorcock", "messages": 6, "voices": 5, "first": "2003-04-18T16:17:24+00:00", "last": "2003-04-20T06:21:22+00:00" }, "messages": [ { "message_id": "", "from": { "name": "Dan'l Danehy-Oakes", "address": "katbarx at hotmail.com" }, "date": "2003-04-18T16:19:35+00:00", "subject": "(urth) Moorcock", "in_reply_to": null, "reply_link": null, "blocks": [ { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "I would agree with much of what Blattid said about Moorcock, and plead\nguilty to oversimplifying with that \"serious non-Elric\" tag. But I\ndisagree concerning Moorcock's \"moral vacuity\"." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Clarification: I refer to the books, not the man. The Cornelius books,\nthe S'n'S megaseries, the Pyat books, the Dancers ... all Moorcock's\nwork seems to me to breathe the thick atmosphere of a rather facile\nmoral nihilism (his fascination with real nihilists is especially clear\nin the Cornelius books) that I can't even find offensive, it's so ...\nempty. That's what I meant by vacuity." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "He has admitted that if he wrote \"Gloriana\" again he would not\nhave included the rape scene" }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "And what would that leave? A book with no climax -- no pun intended\n-- whatsoever. Plus, if it were only GLORIANA, I could accept that,\nbut there's also ... Oh, I've forgotten it, the one where the Fireclown\nrapes Miss Mavis Ming and solves all her troubles. Once is a mistake,\ntwice is something else entirely." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "and has written extensively on Feminism, against pornography," }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Oh. So now he's in favor of censorship too? That can't be right,\nnot if he's still" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "... in favour of his own brand of radical anarchy." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "After all, anarchy and censorship simply don't work well together.\n\nH'mmm. It occurs to me that I'm being awfully harsh on Moorcock.\nAfter all, I've read dozens of his books and will doubtless read\nmore of them in the future ... So what's my point here? Wish I\nknew ..." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "In fact, as\nBlattid mentions, he has written extensively on just about everything.\nHe holds a discussion forum at www.multiverse.org where he shares his\nviews on almost any subject you care to bring up, and his deep moral\nconcerns, especially with world politics, are expounded with passion." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "I'll have to check this out." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "These views are embedded in his books to varying degrees, but I\nwould again recommend \"King of the City\" as showing his deepest\nmoral sense." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Based on your recommendation I will definitely check it out." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "Moorcock's multiverse can be infuriating, but is mostly a game that\nhe plays." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "There is no such thing as an innocent game.\n\nBy playing this game, Moorcock puts all his work into a specific\ndialectical relationship with all his other work; \"Mother London\" is\nin dialog with \"The Black Corridor,\" both are in dialog with \"The\nWarhound and the World's Pain\" (my personal favorite Moorcock, btw);\nall three are in dialog with \"The Stealer of Souls\"; etc. The\nmechanism of the \"Eternal Champion\" provides a specific framework to\nthat dialectic -- each text contributes something to the master-concept,\nwhich in turn reads itself into the text.\n\n(The only possible exception is \"Postcards from Hollywood,\" which\n-- as a naturalized Californian -- I enjoyed immensely.)" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "Most of his various series can be read alone, with the recurring\ncharacters playing very different roles." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Well, yes; but the fact that the \"same\" characters are playing\n\"different\" roles is vital to finding meaning in those characters,\nin those roles. This is nowhere more explicit than in the Cornelius\nbooks, where the characters dance from one set of roles to another\nin a way that brings the entire concept of \"character\" into question." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "Mike would be deeply insulted to be compared in any way to Heinlein," }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "That's a pity, because to refuse such comparison is essentially to\ninsist on situating himself outside the SF/F genre entirely; RAH is,\nso to speak, the elephant in the room. Like every SF/F writer from\nthe 1950s on, Moorcock uses (consciously or not) rhetorical techniques\nand moves invented or improved by Heinlein to establish the nature of\nhis discursive pseudo-realities." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "whose politics are anathema to him." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "... nor are their politics actually that far off. Heinlein was a\nrightist anarchist*, Moorcock a leftist anarchist: but anarchism\nis a place where the political spectrum bends around and meets\nitself. What is anathematic to Moorcock is the received version of\nHeinlein's politics, a version based on a highly-motivated and\ncolored reading of his various fictional positions into a unified\nmodel of \"the conservative enemy.\"\n\n-----\n* Though adopted by the minarchist and libertarian movements, RAH\n clearly regarded government of any sort as never anything better\n than a necessary evil, but an evil nonetheless. I do not derive\n my understanding of Heinlein's politics, by the way, from his\n fictional writings -- which are far more polyvocal on the subject\n than most critics are willing to recognize -- but on published\n nonfiction statements, including a book-length interview by Neil\n Shulman (sp?).\n\n His attitude towards government was probably best summed up in\n his fiction by the Professor in \"The Moon is a Harsh Mistress,\"\n who said -- I paraphrase from memory -- \"Make any laws you need\n to feel safe. I will either obey them or break them and accept\n the consequences.\"\n-----" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "The motives of the two writers in bringing in repeated characters is\nvery different, Heinlein seeming to do it just to say \"Look, all\nthese heroic guys with amazing sex-lives are really good old RAH\"." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "You are, of course, talking about a guy who was monogamous -- with,\nadmittedly, his second wife -- for more decades than most of us on\nthis list have been alive. This is exactly the kind of thing I mean\nby the received opinion: Somehow it got decided that \"all\" Heinlein's\nprotagonists were (a) identical and (b) projections of himself, and\nit's heresy to question this." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "(As an aside, did anyone ever write worse about sex than Heinlein." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Yep. Asimov. But not _much_ worse." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "My wife still won't believe that anyone could call nipples \"those\ntwin spiggots of desire\" or claim that one woman's \"nipples went\nspung\")." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "These are classic, aren't they ... Up there with \"five minutes of\nsquelching noise.\"" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "But you may be right about Moorcock not being suitable for\nrecommendation to Wolfe fans." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "That really wasn't what I was trying to say -- after all, of the two\npeople sampled so far, who have read substantial amounts of both\nwriters, 100% thought both were worthwhile writers.\n\nMy point, rather, is that Moorcock is not _necessarily_ suitable for\nrecommendation to _all_ Wolfe fans. As someone noted on here, Wolfe\n\"contains multitudes.\" Ditto for Moorcock, though his multitudes are\nrather more like to one another than Wolfe's are. Depending on _what_\nyou like in Wolfe, you might find something ... not similar, but\nsimilarly appealing ... in some of Moorcock's work.\n\nFair 'nuff?" } ] }, { "message_id": "", "from": { "name": "Josh Geller", "address": "dclxvi at dclxvi.best.vwh.net" }, "date": "2003-04-18T20:09:05+00:00", "subject": "Re: (urth) Moorcock", "in_reply_to": "", "reply_link": "subject", "blocks": [ { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "On Fri, 18 Apr 2003, Dan'l Danehy-Oakes wrote:\n[Heinlein] was monogamous -- with, admittedly, his second wife [....]" }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "She was his third wife, and they had an open marriage.\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n." } ] }, { "message_id": "", "from": { "name": "Alice K. Turner", "address": "aturner6 at nyc.rr.com" }, "date": "2003-04-18T16:17:24+00:00", "subject": "Re: (urth) Moorcock", "in_reply_to": "", "reply_link": "subject", "blocks": [ { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "From Dan'l. quoting somebody:" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 2, "text": "(As an aside, did anyone ever write worse about sex than Heinlein." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "Yep. Asimov. But not _much_ worse." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 2, "text": "My wife still won't believe that anyone could call nipples \"those\ntwin spiggots of desire\" or claim that one woman's \"nipples went\nspung\")." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "These are classic, aren't they ... Up there with \"five minutes of\nsquelching noise.\"" }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Wrong. No one ever, ever, including hack porn writers, EVER, EVER wrote\nworse sex than Heinlein. With possibly the momentary exception of a\nlong-forgotten 9-day wonder of the 60s or 70s called -The Harrad\nExperiment-. And I am something of an expert here. I should probably say,\nfor members of this group, that IMO Sturgeon wrote bad sex too, though not,\nby leagues, in the same abysmal class.\n\n-alga" } ] }, { "message_id": "", "from": { "name": "Roy C. Lackey", "address": "rclackey at stic.net" }, "date": "2003-04-19T04:04:49+00:00", "subject": "Re: (urth) Moorcock", "in_reply_to": "", "reply_link": "subject", "blocks": [ { "kind": "quote", "depth": 2, "text": "Dan'l quoted and wrote:\nMike would be deeply insulted to be compared in any way to Heinlein," }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "That's a pity, because to refuse such comparison is essentially to\ninsist on situating himself outside the SF/F genre entirely; RAH is,\nso to speak, the elephant in the room. Like every SF/F writer from\nthe 1950s on, Moorcock uses (consciously or not) rhetorical techniques\nand moves invented or improved by Heinlein to establish the nature of\nhis discursive pseudo-realities." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Amen! I don't think I've ever been so entirely in agreement with Dan'l about\nanything so much as his eloquent defense of a man who shouldn't need\ndefending.\n\nPerhaps the most conspicuous instance of Heinlein in Wolfe is \"The Last\nThrilling Wonder Story\". From my first reading of it to today, I have always\nthought that Wolfe was making some sort of dig at Heinlein -- putting him\ndown in some way -- that I've never been comfortable with. Maybe it's just\nme.\n\n-Roy" } ] }, { "message_id": "", "from": { "name": "Dan'l Danehy-Oakes", "address": "katbarx at hotmail.com" }, "date": "2003-04-20T01:27:21+00:00", "subject": "Re: (urth) Moorcock", "in_reply_to": "", "reply_link": "subject", "blocks": [ { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Oh, good lord, I remember THE HARRAD EXPERIMENT. Leon Urine,\nwasn't it? Or packaged to look like his stuff anyway (I remember\nseeing it on the racks next to MILA-somethingteen). My parents\ntended to buy a lot of schlocky novels of the sort at that time\n-- I guess that's why they were bestsellers, eh? -- and I'd\nsneak them. My introduction to the Giants, as the Trek movie\nput it ... Suzanne, Robbins, etc. (On the other hand, I sneak-\nread THE GODFATHER the same way, and that's not a half bad\nread.)\n\nI guess what defines bad sex writing is partly what you're\nlooking for ... I don't think RAH (or Asimov for that matter)\nwas trying to write stiffener stuff, the way (say) Delany\nsometimes does. But they both managed to write sex scenes\nthat were gratutitous, dull, and offensive at the same time\n... something of an accomplishment, actually.\n\nSturgeon? Well, yeah, but then, with Sturgeon, sex ain't\nnothing but love misspelled, and he could write _about_ sex\n(from \"If All Men Were Brothers...\" to GODBODY to SOME OF\nYOUR BLOOD to ...), even if he couldn't write sex scenes." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "From: \"Alice K. Turner\" \nReply-To: urth at urth.net\nTo: \nSubject: Re: (urth) Moorcock\nDate: Fri, 18 Apr 2003 12:17:24 -0400" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 2, "text": "From Dan'l. quoting somebody:" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 3, "text": "(As an aside, did anyone ever write worse about sex than Heinlein." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 2, "text": "Yep. Asimov. But not _much_ worse." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 3, "text": "My wife still won't believe that anyone could call nipples \"those\ntwin spiggots of desire\" or claim that one woman's \"nipples went\nspung\")." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 2, "text": "These are classic, aren't they ... Up there with \"five minutes of\nsquelching noise.\"" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "Wrong. No one ever, ever, including hack porn writers, EVER, EVER wrote\nworse sex than Heinlein. With possibly the momentary exception of a\nlong-forgotten 9-day wonder of the 60s or 70s called -The Harrad\nExperiment-. And I am something of an expert here. I should probably say,\nfor members of this group, that IMO Sturgeon wrote bad sex too, though not,\nby leagues, in the same abysmal class.\n\n-alga\n\n\n\n--" } ] }, { "message_id": "", "from": { "name": "Jeff Wilson", "address": "jwilson at io.com" }, "date": "2003-04-20T06:21:22+00:00", "subject": "Re: (urth) Moorcock", "in_reply_to": "", "reply_link": "subject", "blocks": [ { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "From:\n\"Alice K. Turner\" \n(As an aside, did anyone ever write worse about sex than Heinlein." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 2, "text": "Yep. Asimov. But not _much_ worse." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 3, "text": "My wife still won't believe that anyone could call nipples \"those\ntwin spiggots of desire\" or claim that one woman's \"nipples went\nspung\")." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 2, "text": "These are classic, aren't they ... Up there with \"five minutes of\nsquelching noise.\"" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "Wrong. No one ever, ever, including hack porn writers, EVER, EVER wrote\nworse sex than Heinlein. With possibly the momentary exception of a\nlong-forgotten 9-day wonder of the 60s or 70s called -The Harrad\nExperiment-. And I am something of an expert here. I should probably say,\nfor members of this group, that IMO Sturgeon wrote bad sex too, though not,\nby leagues, in the same abysmal class." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "I don't find sprunging nipples to be an inappropriate idiom, and neither \ndid my ex-wife. The spiggots remark I will give you, but I find Clarke's \ndepiction of sex to be poorer storytelling than Heinlein's overall." }, { "kind": "sig", "depth": 0, "text": "Jeff Wilson - http://www.io.com/~jwilson\n\n\n-- " } ] } ] }