Moorcock blasts Tolkien

[Mark Hope]

Let's talk about Moorcock. This is a guy who has made his career criticizing the testesterone-laded barbarian hero archetype, attacking "safe" politics, and generally snarking at genre fantasy.

Actually, he has made his career writing, fantasy and otherwise. He just happens to have strong opinions which he expresses in addition to his fiction.

Yet Elric is a sword-wielding killer who solves most problems by attacking with a demonic sword or making evil bargains, who emobides despotism in both its benign and tyrranical forms, and has come to embody an entire branch of the epic fantasy genre. The phrase that springs to mind is "people who live in glass houses should not throw stones."

Elric is far from despotic. The very genesis of his character arc derives from a dislike of despotism and the consequences of its overthrow. Yes, he frequently responds with violence and demonic pacts, but is frequently portrayed as doing so reluctantly. If you accept Tolkien's message that the LotR characters have the ability to do good yet fail, you must also accept Moorcock's message that Elric is similarly flawed.

It's very easy to read Elric as a Teddy Roosevelt analog, an ultra masculine character who fulfills egoistic fantasies of being awesomeness incarnate, a patriarchal ruler-hero,, and further, a cosmic "Everyman" who embodies a (masculine, Western, individualistic) essential quality of humanity.

Easy, perhaps, but incorrectly, I would argue. Elric is anything but "ultra masculine". His effeminacy is well portrayed, as is his physical weakness and lack of "awesomeness", save through the crutch of drugs or murder. Maybe those are your fantasies, but they aren't mine. Patriarchal ruler-hero? Hardly. He is anything but patriarchal and eschews rule at the first opportunity. He embodies a search for a personal humanity, far more than embodying a standard everyman. Elric would probably love to be an everyman, but must literally sacrifice everything he holds dear in order to achieve that goal.

In short, the champion of the universe, the embodiment of balance, is a privileged aristocratic male who wields terrible powers of destruction through a phallic symbol.

Moorcock is everything he rails against in that except: comforting (to the ego of Elric fans), idyllic (though the Melniboneans give way to humanity, the humanity they give way to basically suck), hypermasculine, and complicit with European classism.

Gibberish. Pure gibberish. Well, except for the bit about the phallic symbol maybe ...

I won't question whether you have read the Elric books or not, but I would argue that your interpretation of them is pretty unusual and not really supported by the text or the author's claims about how and why he wrote them.

 

[eyebeams]

I haven't read that one, but it seems to me that people who are members of an underclass often attend parties despite being discriminated against. I'm not seeing the big mental disconnect between "downtrodden underclass" and "attending a party". I find it interesting too, that you level a criticism based upon a relatively obscure and early work of Niven's, while ignoring Protector, Ringworld, Ringworld Engineers, The Integral Trees, Smoke Ring, and all of the other, much more prominent works that have made him well-known.

Not any party at all. A Southern California-style cocktail party. It really is jarring. As for his other work, I've always found Known Space a combination of gameable and silly. Mostly silly.

And, do you really think that people need scarcity and profit motive to rape and kill? A fair number of people probably would, but for some, there is certainly no need for that sort of motivation.

Unfortunately, the short story in question is not about one borderline psychopath struggling with temptation. It's about everybody going crazy because OMG NO COPS.

Actually, I quite liked Friday, at least in part because the protagonist was an african-american woman, unlike many others in science fiction.

That's super. Maybe we can have a novel where the black, female protagonist doesn't get a nipple sawed off.

 

[Raven Crowking]

If you accept Tolkien's message that the LotR characters have the ability to do good yet fail, you must also accept Moorcock's message that Elric is similarly flawed.

Well, I do buy it, but not because I have to.

Tolkein is a lot better at conveying this idea (IMHO) than Moorcock is. Tolkein's subtlty is better than what I would term the "bombast" of Moorcock in this regard. As someone once said, "Understatement is more effective than hyperbole."


RC

 

[Storm Raven]

I'm not necessarily disagreeing, but where is it stated that Friday is black? I read it ages ago, and I recall that the cover of my copy portrayed a buxom white woman with short hair.

The cover was inaccurate, and Heinlein was very annoyed by it. I'd have to get my copy out to find the passage in which she is described.

EDIT: Now that I think about it, I am fairly certain that Friday is not any kind of minority or else she would not have been able to marry into her original S-group (the one that didn't want one of its daughters marrying a Tongan).

Being prejudiced against Tongans is not the same as being prejudiced against african americans. Her original S-Group shows itself, ultimately, to be quite narrow minded in other ways, so the apparent hypocrisy should not be surprising.

Friday is also interesting because it, in many ways, presaged the development of cyberpunk, being published a couple years before Gibson put out Neuromancer, and yet dealing with many of the themes that Gibson became famous for talking about: the decay of the traditional state, the rise of megacorporations, genetic and surgical manipulation of humans, a deprived underclass, and so on.

 

[Warbringer]

He is popular now, but I wonder for how long

Given the first Elric novel was 1961, it's not like he's a new fad (Indeed, the first novel appeared merely 6 years after Allen&Unwin finished its first publication of LotR)

The days of raving about Elric are behind us; with songs about him from Deep Purple, Blue Oyster Cult and Hawkwind. Elric was the first true anti-hero in S+S, and trust me, he's been copied as many times as the Tolkien has been regurgitated

 

[Mark Hope]

If anything deserves to be called Epic Pooh that would be the Harry Potter novels. YMMV and IMHO, of course.

Lollerskates, yes!

I'd put Moorcock on the line of early Clive Barker. IMHO, Barker is the better author.

Clive Barker is God. He just is. It can be empirically proven. And I love him in a deeply unhealthy fashion.

Well, I do buy it, but not because I have to.

You do! You have to!!

 

[Raven Crowking]

As an aside, I have to say that Storm Raven is correct. Friday was black.

 

[eyebeams]

Every single one of Tolkien's characters has the capacity to do good, and every single one of them is guilty of at least one moral failure in the face of temptation. That's hardly comfortable. Further, LOTR is a pretty stern criticism of people minding their own business.

No. It's completely comfortable because you can easily identify those failings and not feel ambiguous about them. It's the Eddas by way of Catholicism.

Let's talk about Moorcock. This is a guy who has made his career criticizing the testesterone-laded barbarian hero archetype, attacking "safe" politics, and generally snarking at genre fantasy. Yet Elric is a sword-wielding killer who solves most problems by attacking with a demonic sword or making evil bargains, who emobides despotism in both its benign and tyrranical forms, and has come to embody an entire branch of the epic fantasy genre. The phrase that springs to mind is "people who live in glass houses should not throw stones."

It's very easy to read Elric as a Teddy Roosevelt analog, an ultra masculine character who fulfills egoistic fantasies of being awesomeness incarnate, a patriarchal ruler-hero,, and further, a cosmic "Everyman" who embodies a (masculine, Western, individualistic) essential quality of humanity.

In short, the champion of the universe, the embodiment of balance, is a privileged aristocratic male who wields terrible powers of destruction through a phallic symbol.

That's the point. Elric is not supposed to be a nice man and is not supposed to be someone who bucks up, redeems himself and helps everyone because of it. Moorcock has described aspects of Elric's story as "pornographic."

Moorcock is everything he rails against in that except: comforting (to the ego of Elric fans), idyllic (though the Melniboneans give way to humanity, the humanity they give way to basically suck), hypermasculine, and complicit with European classism.

Tell me: Do they actually teach people what irony is in school still?

The funny think is that you can't really table any charge against Elric that Moorcock hasn't levelled himself -- in fact, that he hasn't actually built into the character in order to explore it. The point of Elric is that he succeeds because he is *weak* and *unhappy.* He's also a coward and engages in pointless diversions. The reason Elric wins is because he's not even good at being complicit with classism in its ultimate metaphoric form.

I think MM could at this point stand to hand the sword up, but like many working writers he's sensitive to what sells and seems to be using the genre to really tell magic realist stories. If you can catch a read of "London Bone" I highly recommend it. But I think that MM's sexual politics are somewhat retrograde (stuck in the 1970s left) and he really, really needs to explore the promise in some of his short fiction.

 

[eyebeams]

Given the first Elric novel was 1961, it's not like he's a new fad (Indeed, the first novel appeared merely 6 years after Allen&Unwin finished its first publication of LotR)

The days of raving about Elric are behind us; with songs about him from Deep Purple, Blue Oyster Cult and Hawkwind. Elric was the first true anti-hero in S+S, and trust me, he's been copied as many times as the Tolkien has been regurgitated

On that topic, the essay was written in 1978.

 

[Storm Raven]

Not any party at all. A Southern California-style cocktail party. It really is jarring. As for his other work, I've always found Known Space a combination of gameable and silly. Mostly silly.

Poor people don't have cocktail parties? I'm left to wonder about your experience with "common folk".

Unfortunately, the short story in question is not about one borderline psychopath struggling with temptation. It's about everybody going crazy because OMG NO COPS.

And? You don't think a fair number of people wouldn't? Lots of science fiction features people going nuts on a regular basis even with cops, who kill them (Brunner, Sheckley, and so on). Why is it hard to suppose that a fair number would not do so if there were none? Heck, we have examples of societies in which there are no cops, and they have all turned out to be havens for violent and vicious behaviour at the drop of a hat (Somalia, Sudan, Afghanistan, Bosnia, and so on). Maybe it is just some sort of irrational belief in the efficacy of an anarchist system that makes you so certain that society would work really well without police.

That's super. Maybe we can have a novel where the black, female protagonist doesn't get a nipple sawed off.

As part of a torture scene in which the clandestine courier of a mysterious employer is captured and her captors try to get information out of her. In which all but one participant was later killed. Because, you know, it would make a much better book if we shielded a protagonist from the perils of their profession because we don't want to have a scene in which a minority is harmed for fear of offending someone.

And you say that Heinlein and Niven took a infantile view of the world.