London peculiar and other nonfiction

401 Pages·2012·6.085 MB·English

by  Moorcock, Michael(Editor);Kausch, Allan(Editor);Sinclair, Iain(Foreword)

MICHAEL MOORCOCK
Winner of the Nebula and World Fantasy awards
August Derleth Fantasy Award
British Fantasy Award
Guardian Fiction Award
Prix Utopiales
Bram Stoker Award
John W. Campbell Award
SFWA Grand Master
Member, Science Fiction and Fantasy Hall of Fame
‘A major novelist of enormous ambition.’
— Washington Post
‘Moorcock’s writing is top-notch.’
— Publishers Weekly
‘He casts a heady, enslaving spell.’
— Daily Telegraph
‘He is . . . [in his nonfi ction] scathing about “the anaemic, phallocentric
self-advertisements of Notting Hill colons or East Anglian clones”, but full
of aff ectionate enthusiasm for such friends as JG Ballard, Angela Carter,
Iain Sinclair, Peter Ackroyd and Andrea Dworkin. He writes movingly and
at length about Jack Trevor Story . . . and about Mervyn Peake . . . “who
made me realise it was possible to confront real human issues through the
medium of fantasy”. He writes wittily and perceptively about such elective
literary forefathers as Aldous Huxley, HG Wells, George Meredith and W
Pett Ridge, author of Mord Em’ly . . .
‘These days he lives with his American wife in Lost Pines, a liberal
enclave of Texas, and deplores the way in which England seems to be shed-
ding her virtues as fast as she can, celebrating her vices . . . as class-bound as
ever, and in some ways far more repressive than similar Oriental cultures . . .
‘Moorcock is elegant and aggressive (“badly educated people are suspi-
cious of ambiguity”), consistently entertaining, and frequently wise and
generous. One applauds the louder when he adds: “Our scientifi c advances
will be merely obscene unless they help the large part of our world’s popu-
lation emerge from miserable uncertainty and debilitating terror”.’
— Spectator
‘Moorcock’s . . . book is an astounding compilation, displaying a panorama
of sympathy and engagement over a lifetime’s reading and writing. The
Monument Valley which is Moorcock’s mighty imagination here provides
us with the background reading to his career. Many of these encounters
are not merely intellectual engagements, but personal ones too. In a poign-
ant account of the life and times of Jack Trevor Story we learn that on the
Christmas night which became the hinge of that troubled writer’s existence,
he had been spending the evening with Moorcock before setting off home
with his girlfriend. The forces of law and order banged him up, unjustly,
and eff ectively drained him of hope for many years to come. In his account
of Philip K Dick we learn how Moorcock intervened to try to help that
author make more money, though it came to nothing. He then looked on at
a slight distance as Dick became famously loopy. Moorcock does not merely
befriend Mervyn Peake’s highly distinctive imagination; he befriends the
Peake family too. He writes of Iain Sinclair, a writer he admires, who is also
a personal friend. And so it goes on. This isn’t name-dropping, because
Moorcock is as big a name as any of the ones he mentions . . .
One of the most striking things about this prodigiously gifted and
productive writer . . . is the unexpectedness of some of his liaisons and alli-
ances. Like New Worlds under his editorship, he seems to exist to demolish
boundaries. I had the constant sensation of being accompanied through
the metropolis of modern culture by the most engaging companion I could
hope to meet.’
— Alan Wall, ReadySteadyBook.com
‘Moorcock is a throwback to such outsized 19th-century novelistic talents
as Dickens and Tolstoy.’
— Locus
‘No one . . . is doing more to break down the artifi cial divisions that have
grown up in novel writing—realism, surrealism, science fi ction, historical
fi ction, social satire, the poetic novel—than Michael Moorcock.’
— Angus Wilson
‘He is the master storyteller of our time.’
— Angela Carter, author of Nights at the Circus
London Peculiar and
Other Nonfi ction

London Peculiar and
Other Nonfi ction
By Michael Moorcock
Edited by Michael Moorcock and Allan Kausch
With an Introduction by Iain Sinclair
For Jean-Luc Fromental and Lili Sztajn
London Peculiar and Other Nonfi ction
Michael Moorcock
© 2012 by Michael Moorcock
This edition © 2012 PM Press
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be transmitted by any means without permission in
writing from the publisher.
Bibliography reprinted with the kind permission of Moorcock’s Miscellany (www.multiverse.org)
ISBN: 978–1-60486–490–8
Library of Congress Control Number: 2011927964
Cover by John Yates / www.stealworks.com
Interior design by briandesign
Cover photo by Linda Steele
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
PM Press
PO Box 23912
Oakland, CA 94623
www.pmpress.org
Printed in the USA on recycled paper, by the Employee Owners of Thomson-Shore
in Dexter, Michigan.
www.thomsonshore.com
Published in the UK by Green Print, an imprint of The Merlin Press Ltd.,
6 Crane Street Chambers, Crane Street, Pontypool NP4 6ND, Wales
ISBN: 978–1–85425–106–0
Contents
THE MAN ON THE STAIRS: INTRODUCTION BY IAIN SINCLAIR xi
EDITOR’S FOREWORD BY ALLAN KAUSCH xvii
Scratching a Living 1
A Child’s Christmas in the Blitz 5
LONDON
Heart and Soul of the City 26
A Place of Perpetual Rehearsal and Audition 30
Building the New Jerusalem 34
City of Wonderful Night 39
London Peculiar 42
Introduction to Gerald Kersh’s Fowlers End 48
A Child of Her Times 52
Mysteries of London 55
Benglish for Beginners 58
Cockney in Translation 60
OTHER PLACES
Diary: 13th October 2001 64
Diary: 30th August 2003 67
Diary: 7th January 2006 70
Diary: 26th October 2007 73
Diary: 12th April 2008 76
Diary: 4th October 2008 79
Diary: 28th March 2009 82
Diary: 31st October 2009 85
Diary: 15th May 2010 88
A Review of Another Fool in the Balkans: In the Footsteps
of Rebecca West by Tony White 91
A Construction Site of the Mind 93
ABSENT FRIENDS
The Patsy 98
Jack’s Unforgettable Christmas 101
When the Political Gets Too Personal 107
Andrea Dworkin: Memorial 111
JG Ballard Introduction 113
Time Made Concrete 115
The Voice 120
The Atrocity Exhibition 123
JG Ballard: In Memoriam 125
Introduction to The Secret of Sinharat by Leigh Brackett 129
James Cawthorn: 1928–2008 134
Fascination with Mortality: The Late Thomas M Disch 136
Tom Disch Tribute 139
A Constant Curiosity 141
Introduction to Expletives Deleted by Angela Carter 147
Ted Carnell 153
A Review of No Laughing Matter by Angus Wilson 155
Mal Dean 158
The Ego Endures 160
MUSIC
Adding to the Legend 164
Phil Ochs 166
The Deep Fix 169
Death by Hero Worship 172
Living with Music: A Playlist 176
Signs of the Times 179
Rewriting the Blues 182
POLITICS
To Kill a King 186
Before Armageddon 189
A Million Betrayals 202
INTRODUCTIONS AND REVIEWS
The Cosmic Satirist 210
Dark Continents, Dying Planets 214
A Fiercer Hen 218
An Introduction to The Babylonian Trilogy by Sébastien Doubinsky 221
Like a Fox 223
Button-Holed by Erudition 226
Cricket by Moonlight 229
Introduction to The Aerodrome by Rex Warner 242
Les Livres Dimanches 248
Echoes of Peake 255
Breaking Free 257
The Time of The Time Machine 260
Ubu C’est Moi? 272
What to Buy for the Grown-Up Boy 276
Yesterday’s Tomorrow 278
A Review of Mythago Wood by Robert Holdstock 281
North Pole Ghetto 284
Wagner and Wodehouse, Together at Last 287
Homage to Cornucopia 289
Forever Dying, Forever Alive 292
Introduction to Lud Heat and Suicide Bridge by Iain Sinclair 295
Norton Goes to the Seaside 298
How to Poach Magpie Eggs 301
The Triumph of Time 310
Conan: American Phenomenon 314
Learning to Be a Jew 322
Introduction to The Hooligan by Rudolf Nassauer 327
When Worlds Collide 333
Kit Carson Rides Again 336
The Undertaker and the Actress 338
The Spaces in Between 340
Bites at the Red Apple 343
The Water Maze 347
Sexton Blake, Detective 349
A Review of The Manual of Detection by Jedediah Berry 359
Paraxis Introduction 361
Frances Bret Harte 364
AFTERWORD BY MICHAEL MOORCOCK 371
BIBLIOGRAPHY 374
ABOUT THE AUTHOR 381