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paracyclops's review
challenging
dark
funny
lighthearted
mysterious
reflective
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
3.0
This book, an updated version of the much earlier The Nature of the catastrophe, is a collection of short stories featuring Jerry Cornelius, written by Moorcock and a number of other writers. Moorcock claims that he always intended JC to be a kind of common property—a fictional 'method' as much as a character. The other writers featured here took that up wholeheartedly, and it would be hard to distinguish their work from Moorcock's in a blind test. The method produces a particular sort of fiction, but I have to say that in a collection as large as this, it's quite hard to stay interested as a reader. The point of Jerry Cornelius stories, as satires on later twentieth-century culture, is their superficiality, their inconsequentiality, their repetitions. It's a point worth making, and a point well made, but the value of these stories, supplementary to the four novels of the Cornelius Quartet, is really their brevity. Gather them together en masse and they become a bit of a dead weight.
One common observation of the Cornelius Quartet, particularly the later novels, is that the chapters could occur in any order without changing their impact. At times, the sentences could be put into any order. As such, the contents of the stories in The New nature of the catastrophe could easily be inserted into those longer narratives, and few readers would be any the wiser. At their best, what they produce in terms of a reading experience, is a texture. The central premise seems to be that it should never be clear whether this is all just JC fantasising/hallucinating, or whether it's a (diegetically) real conflict. The aims of the characters seem to be the aims of a writer—to produce a series of scenes or situations with cascading consequences. But ultimately, the consequences are the same—a textural repetition of chaos and order. The important thing is never the 'job' or the 'mission'—after all, J.C. repeatedly assassinates the same characters. It's the style with which it is done, the poses that are struck, the atmosphere and theatre that are created.
As a series of poses, these stories are compelling ones. Michael Moorcock is an excellent writer, as is M. John Harrison, and as are the other contributors. There's a matter-of-factness to the prose that makes it hard to take a great deal of pleasure in it, however. The only story in which I found any real sense of writerly aesthetics was Moorcock's ex-wife Hilary Bailey's 'Everything blowing up'—which isn't to say that she gets at all flowery, but her sentences are things of beauty. Elsewhere, the raw material from which the book is made is all a bit lumpy and prosaic. This is of very little relevance to the creative agenda (indeed, it's a facet of it), but it makes the rewards of reading feel quite hard-earned. If you've read the Cornelius Quartet then you've heard these jokes before, and if you haven't, you'll have heard them quite a few times already by the time you're halfway through this volume.
One common observation of the Cornelius Quartet, particularly the later novels, is that the chapters could occur in any order without changing their impact. At times, the sentences could be put into any order. As such, the contents of the stories in The New nature of the catastrophe could easily be inserted into those longer narratives, and few readers would be any the wiser. At their best, what they produce in terms of a reading experience, is a texture. The central premise seems to be that it should never be clear whether this is all just JC fantasising/hallucinating, or whether it's a (diegetically) real conflict. The aims of the characters seem to be the aims of a writer—to produce a series of scenes or situations with cascading consequences. But ultimately, the consequences are the same—a textural repetition of chaos and order. The important thing is never the 'job' or the 'mission'—after all, J.C. repeatedly assassinates the same characters. It's the style with which it is done, the poses that are struck, the atmosphere and theatre that are created.
As a series of poses, these stories are compelling ones. Michael Moorcock is an excellent writer, as is M. John Harrison, and as are the other contributors. There's a matter-of-factness to the prose that makes it hard to take a great deal of pleasure in it, however. The only story in which I found any real sense of writerly aesthetics was Moorcock's ex-wife Hilary Bailey's 'Everything blowing up'—which isn't to say that she gets at all flowery, but her sentences are things of beauty. Elsewhere, the raw material from which the book is made is all a bit lumpy and prosaic. This is of very little relevance to the creative agenda (indeed, it's a facet of it), but it makes the rewards of reading feel quite hard-earned. If you've read the Cornelius Quartet then you've heard these jokes before, and if you haven't, you'll have heard them quite a few times already by the time you're halfway through this volume.
arthurbdd's review against another edition
2.0
By and large the Cornelius stories written by other hands are fairly wretched, and Moorcock's own are pretty hit and miss. Full review: https://fakegeekboy.wordpress.com/2011/07/04/the-hipster-on-the-seas-of-fate/
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