THE EXAMINED LIFE
The singing assassin
By Joshua Glenn, Globe Staff, 11/9/2003
"MOST PEOPLE TRY to stop things happening. I try to make them happen quicker," boasts the title character of "The Lives and Times of Jerry Cornelius" (Four Walls Eight Windows), a new collection of British-born author Michael Moorcock's far-out tales of a swinging, singing political assassin who travels across alternate realities. Though they've influenced everyone from cyberpunk novelists William Gibson and Bruce Sterling to the trippy, bombastic rock bands Hawkwind and Blue Oyster Cult, none of these stories (written between 1965 and 2003) has seen print in America before. Ideas e-mailed the 64-year-old Moorcock at his home in Austin, Texas.
IDEAS: By the time you invented Jerry Cornelius in 1965, your fantasy novels about a drug-abusing, sword-wielding, mythic antihero named Elric had a sizeable cult following. Why did you turn your attention to the present?
MOORCOCK: I wanted both to study and participate in the popular mythology of the 1960s. The Jerry Cornelius character, who reflected my own celebration of sexual and social ambiguity, and whose enemies reflected my rather amused bafflement at pompous authority, was consciously intended to become a contemporary myth figure, one who would act out his times as well as comment on them. I had come to believe that shared myths exemplify without simplifying, thus telling us what people are really thinking.
IDEAS: Like your heroic fantasy characters, Cornelius is unpredictable: He acts now for one side, now for the other.
MOORCOCK: Jerry feels it's primitive to have moral or political convictions, but most of the Cornelius stories are riffs on imperialism and authoritarianism in some form or another. Jerry's enemies generally represent the old world, and he represents the new -- they aim at stasis, while he tries to speed up change. Over time, the stories have proven popular with both left and right libertarians, which means I've succeeded in my aim as their author.
IDEAS: Cornelius's feelings are also unpredictable -- he tends to laugh when others cry, for example. You've related the "black farce" of the Cornelius stories to your own childhood experience of the Blitz.
MOORCOCK: When the V-2 bombs were raining down on us in London, British culture laughed. Jerry is a true Wildean dandy, never revealing the subtle seriousness with which he sees the world. That said, black farce is no defense against authoritarianism. Ezra Pound, the greatest, funniest, most influential poet of our age, was a fascist. Black humor is dangerous, fascinating territory -- I guess someone has to go there.
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