Live too long and you will witness the hero become the villan.In social media that time is shortened to minutes, as a body bleeds from one insight to another. Jerry Corneilius never had to contend with such notions, born an anti-hero he was and is immune to the changing vagaries of societal or cultural approval. Cor Blimey hes a good boy is Jerry, not."The creator of Jerry Corneilius has been compareds by reviewers to Tolkien and Raymond Chandler, Charles Dickens and James Joyce. I could throw in Nabokov and Borges" so said the Sunday Times, brackets; Lomdon. (Huh?) I do not know if this reviewer pointed these authors out because he had read them and could see parrelels or if it was because he ran his eye down the book shelves of a better read pal. I could make no such comparison, I am not that well read. And also because reading Michael Moorcock's work is really like nothing else I have read.
take for instance, this collection alone; eleven contributions, just shy of a dozen, the lives and times Jerry Corneilius lived through.All the changes he saw and the changes he caused. And what a mind bending mis-mash of ideas these stories are. Not so much breaking all rules of narrative construction as not even noticing such rules are even necessary. All literature seems to exist in the liminal spaces between what we are and that which we make. The written word not much more than a visual code producing noises in our minds. Yet, there is no point handing someone who cannot read or right a book and intructing them; "Now appreciate this work of art." You have to understand something about basic form before you celebrate deconstucting it or smashing it against a wall.
Is Jerry Corneilius an assassin with a heart of gold? In short, no. He is a killer who revels in what he does as he knows all the world is a fiction and that rules only come into their own when they are being broken. He does so with all the aplomb of someone who could pull off the charm of wearing a safari suit choose he to do so. "Zaphod Bedelbox is just this guy" for want of a better expression. So thats assassin , physicist, rock star and cosmic sly boots. Jerry Corneilius is many things but forgettable is not one of them. From weapon of class destruction to cosmic greek chorus, this collection is like a message sent bouncing back through time from the library at the end of all things. From his appex as beautiful murderous youth to his chaotically charged older age, we see Jerry Corneilis stagger as he grows up and grows down. Its weird and surreal and resonates from humour perhaps found at the end of some olde schoole Pier. If the pier was on fire at both ends and wobbled on glass stilts over an acid sea. "Its into the sea we go, Flo."
When I finished reading it I felt as though I had arrived at a mad party and found myself in a corner of the kitchen, next to the rattling bottles of wine and trays of chocolate buscuits. Eaves dropping on a conversation between William Burroughs and Nick Cave. Only to be noticed by Nick Cave who not trusting my feeble awkward grin promptly punced me in the middle of my face. Egged on by William Burroughs; "Thats it, Nick my boy, show that sum'bitch not to eavesdrop on his worsers". Michael Moorcock kindly picked me up and dusted me down and I thanked him in a coy embarrassed fashion. Only after he left did I realise he had lifted my phone and my wallet. The money in the wallet he left with me, seemingly only interested in the peripharils of this word, all that does not define but mirrors our frantically groping along our own DNA spiral, trying to fake sense.
As Jerry Cornelius once said; "I used to think I had all the answers, now I know I am only beginning to understand the right questions..."
Or was it Jon Finch who once said it.
Or perhaps it was Michael Moorcock who actually said it.
