“Very often I am writing about writing,” he says.

September 8, 2016 3:26 PM

No, Alan Moore Isn't a Recluse [Publishers Weekly] “Speaking in intimidatingly long and thoughtful sentences, Moore is affable, relaxed, and eager to talk about his new novel, Jerusalem [Amazon], to be published in September by Norton’s Liveright imprint in the U.S. and Knockabout in the U.K. It’s a 600,000-word opus that has been lurking, Cthulhu-like, behind his last decade of work. Remixing the most-reader-challenging tricks of writers such as James Joyce, Roland Barthes, and Mark Z. Danielewski, Jerusalem is an astonishing collection of words and ideas that weaves a hypnotic spell.” [Previously] [Previously]

- Alan Moore and Literature’s Fascination with the Fourth Dimension [Maclean's Magazine]

The exploration of this fourth dimension is the central concern of Moore’s exceptionally long, 600,000-word book—at least inasmuch as a tome of such varied indulgence, epic scope and sheer heft can be said to have a “central concern.” As he told The Believer in 2013, when he was in the final throes of completing Jerusalem, “pretty much all of the book is predicated upon the assumption, which seems to be implicit in the work of most modern physicists since Einstein, that we inhabit a universe that has at least four spatial dimensions.”

- Alan Moore Confirms He is Retiring from Creating Comic Books [The Guardian]

The decision came, Moore explained, when he realised he felt too comfortable in the medium. “I think I have done enough for comics. I’ve done all that I can. I think if I were to continue to work in comics, inevitably the ideas would suffer, inevitably you’d start to see me retread old ground and I think both you and I probably deserve something better than that,” he said. “So, the things that interest me at the moment are the things I don’t know if I can do, like films, where I haven’t got a clue what I am doing, or giant literary novels. Things I wasn’t sure I’d even have the stamina to finish … I know I am able to do anything anyone is capable of doing in the comic book medium. I don’t need to prove anything to myself or anyone else. Whereas these other fields are much more exciting to me. I will always revere comics as a medium. It is a wonderful medium.”

- Alan Moore: By the Book [The New York Times] [Interview]

How do you organize your books?
Huh. Yes, I suppose I could organize my books, couldn’t I? That might actually work a lot better than my current method, which is to tell myself that I know roughly where all my books are according to a kind of literary form of proprioception; a psychic gift which, glaringly, I don’t possess.
If you could require the president to read one book, what would it be? The prime minister?
You can bet that if I could compel the president or prime minister to read one book — other than “The Very Hungry Caterpillar” — then I definitely would.

- A Party in a Lunatic Asylum: On the mundane mysticism of Alan Moore. [The New Yorker]

Now that revisionist interpretations of the superhero genre are the Hollywood norm (in large part thanks to Moore), he has abandoned the form. “I would rather do things that nobody wants,” he said, of his decision to spend the past decade on a metaphysical, postmodern novel. “It’s the most interesting thing to do, to find the areas of culture that are not being paid attention to.” Characteristically, with “Jerusalem,” he has refused any intervention from his publisher. “What I wanted was to do something that was so completely unmediated and undiluted. I thought, I don’t want anybody making helpful suggestions.”

posted by Fizz (33 comments total)

Well, I suppose I'll read it until the sexual assault scene happens, then I'll find something else to read.

Anyone wanna lay bets for how far I'll get? 70, 80 pages maybe?
posted by happyroach at 3:46 PM on September 8, 2016 [3 favorites]

I am waiting for the film and possibly the staged musical, hip hop ala Hamilton
posted by Postroad at 3:49 PM on September 8, 2016

Voice of the Fire was pretty good.
posted by GenjiandProust at 3:50 PM on September 8, 2016 [6 favorites]

"an astonishing collection of words" = red flag
posted by gertzedek at 4:05 PM on September 8, 2016 [3 favorites]

I love how Alan Moore comes across in interview, he almost makes me want to use the word "avuncular". He's so much not the joyless ruiner-of-things that he's often characterised as.
posted by comealongpole at 4:21 PM on September 8, 2016 [2 favorites]

>"an astonishing collection of words" = red flag

Especially in connection with mention of James Joyce...
posted by Sing Or Swim at 4:23 PM on September 8, 2016 [1 favorite]

Jerusalem sounds like a rebooted Big Numbers.
posted by 1970s Antihero at 4:29 PM on September 8, 2016

Btw, is there a hebrew translation of Finnegans Wake? Maybe yiddish?
posted by sammyo at 4:49 PM on September 8, 2016

Btw, is there a hebrew translation of Finnegans Wake? Maybe yiddish?

Not trying to derail my own thread, but here is some more information from the Finnegans Wake wiki. Joyce's work only recently lapsed into the public domain so for the longest time, his works were held with a tight fist and very few publishers/academics were given access to his works in any form.

As far as I know, there has been no official hebrew translation. I would imagine that it would be very difficult to translate because so many of the words in Joyce's Wake are made up or mashed together to create new ones.
posted by Fizz at 4:59 PM on September 8, 2016

Moore isn't a joyless ruiner of things at all. What's funny about the idea of making Watchmen the retroactive impetus of DC's New 52 (don't ask) is that if Moore had rebooted the DC Universe, I'm guessing it would look a lot less like Watchmen and a lot more like America's Best Comics.

I'm...not sure Jerusalem is the book I need to read right now, but I do applaud Moore for stretching himself. I think Moore and Jack Kirby are the two greatest creators to ever work in comics, and Kirby was the same way, always changing, always making new things, well past the point where any reasonable person might begin to coast. That said, for all that Moore has brought to the comics medium in terms of technique, and for all that he may well be right that he has done all he can to innovate within the form itself, the content is what always matters most. As there are always new stories to tell, if not new ways to tell them, I hope this retirement is as rich with new comics as the last several have been.
posted by kittens for breakfast at 5:01 PM on September 8, 2016 [2 favorites]

Assuming you can get through the inevitable sexual assault mentioned above, there's still the fact that all of his previous work has been in dire need of an editor to identify something of a narrative work - regardless of how "clever" he's trying to be with the language. This sounds like 600k words of chaos. If I want to read a modern author with a good grasp of the English language and how to do clever things with it in the purpose of telling a compelling story, I'd read Danielewski or Noon. In conclusion: I have axe-grindy opinions of an author.
posted by combinatorial explosion at 5:07 PM on September 8, 2016 [4 favorites]

Sigh. "narrative arc".
posted by combinatorial explosion at 5:08 PM on September 8, 2016

The last thing I need is Alan Moore without a page limit.
posted by lownote at 5:43 PM on September 8, 2016 [2 favorites]

Mark Z. Danielewski

noooooooooooooooooo
posted by beerperson at 5:56 PM on September 8, 2016 [2 favorites]

I'm not sure that I'll read Jerusalem--the way it's being described, I'm not sure that I really could if I both wanted to and had the time--but I'm glad that he's getting out of comics. While I admire some of the things he's doing with Providence, it overall seems relatively dry, and I'd rather he not do something like his participation in the Crossed franchise again. Still, I do hope that he completes The Moon and Serpent Bumper Book of Magic.
posted by Halloween Jack at 6:43 PM on September 8, 2016 [2 favorites]

>"an astonishing collection of words" = red flag

"writing about writing" is much worse
posted by thelonius at 7:03 PM on September 8, 2016

Sorry for the pseudointellectualwakianlanguageishlyderail, was not actually asking seriously, but you knew that. I had not groked that this was the (deep hollow voice) famous comic book author. I had quite a short authentic comic phase (should kept the box of first season xmen away from my little brother) but always assumed that the writing in the bubbles came after the drawings and was impressed that they were clever enough to come up with a phrase that fit.

Jerusalem is certainly a topic with more than 600k words of potential interesting stories but from the comments here it'd be good to have some discussion of the authors relationship with the city rather than his meta-writing.
posted by sammyo at 7:18 PM on September 8, 2016 [1 favorite]

through the hardscrabble streets and alleys of his hometown of Northampton, UK.

ohhhh, different city, (metaphorical??) title?
posted by sammyo at 7:21 PM on September 8, 2016

$22 for a slipcase with 3 paperback volumes seems highly reasonable... and less likely to provoke an RSI relapse.

okay, yeah, I still haven't read Voice of the Fire either.
posted by Zed at 7:59 PM on September 8, 2016

sammyo: I'd guess it's an allusion to the William Blake poem set to music as a patriotic hymn. Particularly now, with various levels of crisis of national identity and a largely post-religious population the old idea of a religious calling to build the city of god not just on earth, but in England, seems like a reasonably fertile metaphor for Moore to work with.
posted by Grimgrin at 8:19 PM on September 8, 2016 [1 favorite]

Thanks for this post, Fizz! It's very well put together and interesting.
posted by Kevin Street at 9:43 PM on September 8, 2016

Mark Z. Danielewski

noooooooooooooooooo

[blue]House[/blue] Of Leaves was one of the most deeply affecting and engaging reads I have ever encountered that I never want to go through again.
posted by hippybear at 12:31 AM on September 9, 2016

Alan Moore, By the Book, in the NY Times.
posted by newdaddy at 2:56 AM on September 9, 2016 [1 favorite]

I saw someone on Twitter mentioning the upcoming release of this and they said they had had a hand in editing it. Which surprised me as Alan Moore doesn't normally do editing. Which is fine with me. Loved Voice Of The Fire and have been awaiting this for nearly a decade it seems like.
posted by gnuhavenpier at 4:40 AM on September 9, 2016

“pretty much all of the book is predicated upon the assumption, which seems to be implicit in the work of most modern physicists since Einstein, that we inhabit a universe that has at least four spatial dimensions.”

So it seems Mr Moore believes that because spacetime is curved, it must be embedded in some higher-dimensional space.

This is false.
posted by hexatron at 5:49 AM on September 9, 2016 [1 favorite]

What's funny about the idea of making Watchmen the retroactive impetus of DC's New 52 (don't ask) is that if Moore had rebooted the DC Universe, I'm guessing it would look a lot less like Watchmen and a lot more like America's Best Comics.

He already did, after a fashion, by way of using Rob Liefeld Superman knock-off Supreme.
posted by Eikonaut at 2:03 PM on September 9, 2016

I loved Moore's run on Supreme so much! It was like a flower growing in concrete, a beautiful thing flourishing in a place where you wouldn't expect to find anything worthwhile at all.
posted by Kevin Street at 2:15 PM on September 9, 2016

This must be an odd-numbered Alan Moore Metafilter thread, huh? I always wonder where you lot are in the even numbered ones.

But it's good to know you're still there being angry about a writer.
posted by howfar at 2:54 PM on September 9, 2016 [2 favorites]

hippybear:

[blue]House[/blue] Of Leaves was one of the most deeply affecting and engaging reads I have ever encountered that I never want to go through again.

Did you listen to Haunted while you read it?

House of Leaves was published "shortly" after I graduated from college and had way more time than money, so for me, it was an enriching read. I don't think I could finish it a second time, either. I "tried" recently. I read a few pages before going to sleep and now the book is probably somewhere underneath the bed.

That's probably the most apropos place for it.
posted by a non mouse, a cow herd at 6:09 AM on September 10, 2016

House of Leaves is a book that is best read with a group. We had a House of Leaves reading group during undergrad and it made for an easier read, having a discussion to look forward to each week, a place where you could tease out questions and answers from the text. It was enjoyable but not sure I could do it again a second time. I only managed to read half of the book and then became distracted with something else and stopped attending the reading workshops.
posted by Fizz at 7:17 AM on September 10, 2016

My copy arrived today. I've just read the first two chapters and have laughed out loud three times and had to stop reading a couple of times to squee and have a cup of tea. At this early stage it seems it was worth the wait.
posted by gnuhavenpier at 2:28 PM on September 12, 2016

>"an astonishing collection of words" = red flag

Especially in connection with mention of James Joyce...

Meanwhile, it's catnip to me. Both are creators of perfect sentences, and those are what I read for - surreal gold.

I recently watched The Mindscape of Alan Moore. It's very dated and a bit silly, but even that exposure to Moore's charisma turned somebody I knew into a disciple, ready to move to Northampton to follow that Magus.

The best exegis of Moore and his magickal rival is, of course, The Last War in Albion.

Alan Moore, By the Book, in the NY Times.


I'm surprised how pedestrian his tastes are in that interview.

So it seems Mr Moore believes that because spacetime is curved, it must be embedded in some higher-dimensional space.

This is false.

'False' and 'true' don't matter, but it's strange that he mentions that, since 5th Dimensional Time seems to be the territory of his Exalted Rival, Grant Morrison.


Previously.
posted by Charlemagne In Sweatpants at 11:42 PM on September 12, 2016

I would have liked Moore doing a bit more "classical" works. I think he has a super power that turns me into a jelly-like fanboy re his work, but the latest outputs have not made me tick as much as it did previously... Jerusalem may be the camel-back-breaking straw

Oh well, if I'm in need of Jerusalem, a Spider may help :)
posted by vrittis at 4:40 AM on September 16, 2016 [1 favorite]