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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Jack7" data-source="post: 4783200" data-attributes="member: 54707">Huss, I'm well over the age limit imposed by the poll. Still, coincidentally I thought I would have something of interest to add to the general topic. Because of a bit of recent synchronicity.I've read them all by the way, except the two Terry(s).For over twenty years I read almost no fiction at all (save for the occasional military thriller, or detective story, like Chandler, but then only about once a year or so). After college I didn't care for it (fiction) and it bored me senseless mostly compared to non-fiction. A lot of fiction also struck me as silly and entirely unimportant compared to what has gone on before, and still goes on now in the real world. In the past four to five years however I have forced myself to read a certain amount of fiction during my daily study time. Not because I wanted to (at first it was like filing my teeth with a rusty hacksaw), but because others were encouraging me to sell my fiction writings and I figured for sake of comparison I'd best know what the modern markets were, how they functioned, what people were reading as regards fiction, that kinda thing.I didn't much care for most modern or contemporary or current stuff, not at first anyways, though some of it impressed me mightily after a time. Slowly I began to enjoy some of the more modern stuff and gradually even to respect some of it.Like the Dresden Files. (Yeah, it ain't The Sun Also Rises, or Shakespeare, but it comes awful close to The Big Sleep on occasion, and I ain't too proud to say I like it.)Now I actually really enjoy reading some fiction and even look forwards to some of it.Well the other day I was in the local library catching up on my non-fiction and technical and professional reading when I saw Moorcock's The Sleeping Sorceress. I picked it up and wondered what it would be like to read Moorcock again, the last time I'd done so being back in high school, a long, long time ago in a very different world - far, far away. I did this out of curiosity, not because I thought I'd love it or anything.In any case I was surprised. When I was a kid I liked the Elric stories, even based a high school derivative character on him, but back then he also struck me as very evil. Back then I had very different ideas about good and evil, or perhaps much more rigid ones. I've seen a lot of real human evil since then and over time I learned it didn't operate in the easy to discern pre-scribed fashion you are so sure is the obvious give-away when you're a kid. Yeah, it's as obvious as not in many cases, but many times it is also as subtle as a serpent.Well, what surprised me about reading Elric this time was I realized that Moorcock hadn't created Elric as evil at all, but rather he was a facade of evil, or a skin or skein of evil if you will, over the soul of a man struggling to be good. Struggling of his own efforts to be good, and failing often, lost and out of his depth most of the time, but not because of intention, but because of other factors. It was almost like reading entirely different stories than I had as a kid. It gave me far greater respect for the books, and the author, and the character.Now don't get me wrong, it isn't great literature or anything, by any means (though he can turn both a cantankerous and a clever phrase every now and again - he ain't so great a poet though, but he is a pretty good and a pretty observant critic), though it don't have to be anyways. But the underlying myth, the way Moorcock sort of twisted Elric into the appearance of one thing, and then skins out the soul of another, well it made for an interesting mythological and religious approach, and I finally understood what he was really saying about Chaos and Law (and it wasn't what I thought as a kid). Yeah, the supporting characters are often cheesy and bear silly names, Moonglum, and Hawkmoon, and Doctor Jest, yes the myth is often choked under a sort of juvenile and silly metaphysics, and yes the situations are sometimes well, less than well-developed (though to be fair he was writing for nothing more than stand top fantasy magazines at the time, the kind you wrapped in butcher paper and bought like it was a Hustler or something). But the character of Elric, well, I was impressed in a wholly different way than I had been as a kid. It also gave me a very different view of Elric as an anti-hero, though I think the term as it is commonly applied is a mis-nomer anyways, and that is certainly true of Elric. He really is heroic, but he's not anti what he appears to be so much, as anti what he is afraid he was born as, and should have never become. And that's a lot more interesting as a mythological, religious, and personality/psychological concept than Albino drug-addict long hair weakling sort early emo-kid kills all of his family and friends and hometown with a soul sucking rune-sword as a side-kick. Though "the Albino drug-addict long hair weakling sort early emo-kid kills all of his family and friends and hometown with a soul sucking rune-sword as a side-kick" fits him pretty good as both a facade and as a sort of "internal symbol" for the guy.I guess what I'm saying is that you come at something when you're sixteen or seventeen and you see certain things and you assume certain things (cause you don't really know anything yet) and you have certain impressions and you think certain ideas are good, or cool, or impressive, and you're sure you know exactly what the other guy (the author in this case) must mean by saying what he says. But when you get to be my age you look at the same set of ideas and they are impressive for entirely different reasons. I'm old enough now that I can grasp what Moorcock was saying about what Elric should have become if he had lived long enough to have become everything he ever wanted to be free of what he never was. And that Elric knew that too without ever being able to see his way clear enough to avoid being what he was, but was never meant to be. I'm not sure if that makes sense to some of you or not, but I reckon it might one day.In any case I guess you see what you see from where you stand when you look at a thing. And you can't see what you won't see for some time in the future till you finally get there. And by then you're looking at something completely different than what you figured you should be expecting, but couldn't find anymore. And I reckon maybe, just maybe, that's the way it should be.</blockquote>

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