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Underground > Books, Criticism & Writing >

Cornelius

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lord nuneaton savage

10:12 / 05.05.05

I always though that Captain Kananga from Raiders of the Lost Ark was very Cornelius-esque.

Nicholas Van Hoegstraaten (Brighton slum landlord and all round bad-egg) as well.

And...well, me, obviously.

20:49 / 10.05.05

if we're talking about stuff with a Cornelius vibe then I'd like to mention the second Austin Powers movie. Don't know why know but when I first saw it I thought "How very JC".
Don't know if Moorcock has latched onto this, maybe it's just a wierd thing I've made up...

15:46 / 11.05.05

Surely though, Moorcock taps into a very specific type of character-the dandy hero-which is perpetuated throughout post 60s lit. and film, chiefly because it serves as an exaggerated parody of the sort of genre t.v. (Jason Wyngarde et al), and even real-life characters that existed.

Now I'm not saying London in the 60s was awash with needle guns and time travel, but maybe Jerry has endured (or has he?) because he's an image of how those of us who didn't live through them, would like to dream the 60s were?
I know that's a big part of the appeal for me...

03:08 / 31.05.05

so where am that URL? me wanna drive me interweb engine to visit.

m.

03:48 / 31.05.05

Not sure which URL you're after, but www.multiverse.org might be a good start, for Moorcock and Jerry stuff.

04:04 / 31.05.05

And, while I'm up, helping someone else stay up and keep them working, I might as well kill time by addressing the issue of 'tired sixties tropes recycled to enjoy by proxy commercialism,' yes I will.
Quite simply: I don't buy it.
Moorcock lived through the sixties, in London and elsewhere, so he's got that in his favor, for the angle. The Jerry C. stories started publication in the sixties, so they weren't a nostalgia, emo-rebellion recovery attempt, but something of the time(s). Moorcock is pretty much about affect-with-little-effect open and casual rebellion/relaxation, music, music for the people, the people, and by his own admission, he didn't mean the sex and politics to distress people, as it was not him being dangerous, but just writing more or less his own atmosphere of the time. The Lemmy/Hawkwind/New Worlds thing was all very active and moving, innit? I mean, functional and happening.
I tend to find the last handful of years of my life, aside from a lack of needlegun related violence, to fall very much into the Cornelius miasma, but that might be southern California art-scene's fault more than a world (or even States) wide cultural phenomena. And the violence is mostly a sex-thrill, anyway, yes? Regardless of whatever Moorcock would claim, surely much of his audience found a sex-angle to the shootings, Frank's fucked up fetishization of the scarred secretary, or the absurd bit in one of the novels where Una slips out of the group rape after the guys sort of forget about her.
That's the core of my enjoyment of the Jerry C. stories, I guess, though I hadn't considered it before. It's like sidestepping a sort of gangrape, and just taking a nice nap/having a chat/sex in a secluded rain forest/garden/paradise that is also, right there.
Which sounds really pathetic, when put right out into words, doesn't it? Vicarious or remembered pastoral. Must I dress for mourning, write miserable poetic barbs, and talk wistfully about the good old days, now?
Except, of course, these are the good old days, just like yesterday, just as tomorrow will be.

Imaginary Mongoose Solutions

00:55 / 13.06.05

"as well as John Constantine"

Gah, I can't put my finger on it as a lot of the Hellblazer stuff runs together (especially as I just read the whole damn run a few weeks ago); but Delano, I think, also drops a Constantine/Cornelius ref. Basicly, when discussing other possible Constantines mentioning something along the lines of "an incestous rock and roll assassin at the end of time".

Was it Delano? That's gonna drive me nuts all night.

11:49 / 13.06.05

Hmmm...
There are references, early on in Final Programme, to Jerry's dress being already outdated, along with his taste for early Beatles tracks. To me, this is both a means for Moorcock to explore the 60s cultural bubble which had just begun to burst (Miss Brunner calls it"A gift-wrapped age.. But disposable", or something along those lines), and also one of the ways in which the books parody Bond; in his out-dated attitudes, cold brutality, and sexual promiscuity, each made a little more ridiculous for the Jerry persona. I also think this is why we are often given long descriptions of expensive clothes, and records etc.

Part of the appeal of Fleming's first Bond novels to a dreary post-war Britain, still suffering at the hands of rashioning, was in the exotic, expensive meals so lvongly described in the books, which are often detailed far more extensively than the vagaries of plot, character etc.

I am right in the centre of Cure for Cancer at the moment, working my way throught the Quartet, and I must say, something about the writing strikes me. There is a real contrast between passages that are under-written, and in which vast tracts of time and crucial events pass within one sentence, and moments of great style and fluidity in which I can see the comparisons to Nabokov, Borges etc, coming through.

This may be a deliberate comment on the un-ravelling of time, or Jerry's amoral attitude, but I suspect it's a symptom of ol' Mike's prodigous typing speeds. All the same, I'm really enjoying them, and I love the disparity between the tracts of realism and long conversation, and the flights of fancy, such as Jerry borne on the backs of the crowd around Europe at the end of the first book...
Mmm,
Nice and smooth.

"Smooth stuff, professor"

15:00 / 17.06.05

I first read the JC novels at a very young age- too young probably. They left an immense impression on me, even to this day, so I'll declare my bias towards them in advance.

Every time I've revisited them I've always been impressed. They never feel dated to me. In fact, as time goes on, they seem more and more contemporary, capturing more of the feeling, if not the form, of today's world. I'm not an academic and I'm sure there's people here who can talk about the books in terms of postmodernism, literary theory and textures etc. (I'm sure the JC novels are far from seminal in these respects, but like many sci-fi fans in that era it was certainly something new and bracing for me).

The blending/bleeding/blurring/collapsing/shifting/decaying that is ever-present in those novels seems to be very now to me. I like the comments in previous posts about "aggressive greyness",the fractured and amorphous nature of the narratives, the way all of the books seem to blur into a miasma, with only certain scenes or characters jutting out. That's my recollection also- and it seems to be becoming more my perception of the world at the moment. The sense of displacement and fragmentation seems very very current. While my age is probably showing by saying this- when you've seen the same things (music, fashion etc.) cycle through more than once or twice, it can be very disorientating. Disorientation seems a big part of those books to me, and a sense of ennui at the seemingly endless cycles of birth/decay/death/rebirth.

I've often gotten a frisson of delight over the decades when I've seen some retro-clad youth who bears more than a passing resemblance to JC.

17:05 / 24.08.05

Having enjoyed the first two, I have to admit that I found the incoherency utterly frustrating. I feel sad, ripped off, like the victim of an "Emperor's new clothes" sort of skam. "Final Programme" has a plot, but the others, as far as I can tell, are merely a series of conversations with little apparent connection. I wanted to love them, especially after the Gideon Stargrave stuff, but perhaps Morrison's homages are more effective because they appear in short bursts, than in the novels, where they make an attempt to maintain the reader's interest.

Am I being too harsh? Is there something others think I may be missing?

18:15 / 24.08.05

Mick-Travis, I felt much the same way through most of the second and third books, and almost didn't go on, but by the fourth book it all seemed, in hindsight, quite effective and worthwhile. Not the most substantive (nor least subjective) of persuasive arguments, but there you have it.

Hmmm. There were points in the fourth book that I found very moving (like, put-the-book-down-and-sit-quietly-for-a-bit moving) that I don't think would have had the same impact without moving with JC through the various streams of the second and third books. Of course, that's only a backhanded defense of those books, which I'm not sure would have satisfied me on their own. Then again, while I didn't get that meaty narrative-continuity satisfaction from them, I did find most of the individual scenes pleasurable to read. Hmmm.

This is rambling, badly. I'm gonna leave off and go get more coffee.

17:49 / 26.08.05

I read the Moorcock books before I read the Invisibles it was part of our hippiefied cukltures. Respect, I much prefer it to Elric though alot of my peers were into that fantasy scene. Blinding good reads they were.
Hoogstraaten is an animal I know I lived near his empire where he shoots ramblers and oiks with plasma guns - hard to believe he was a major player in the local govt there and he is a bastard of a landlord, he has no respect for his tenants, he runs his estate like a bloody Hell Camp so there.

Rollo Kim, on location

13:46 / 28.08.05

Moorcock is just ace. But you can understand why he upsets so many people because of the way he points out just how right wing the sci-fi / fantasy genre can be... I love the way he points out the dodgyness inherent in Star Wars and LOTR. All that 'trust your instincts' crap is what they taught the Third Reich for gawd's sake! Shoot first, think about it later.

He hung out with Andrea Dworkin, Lemmy, The Sex Pistols, Siouxsie Banshee, and probably took a few too many drugs, went to a few too many femenist rallies etc. to earn the respect of the literally world.

I started reading the Cornelius stuff in the mid 80's. I was only a little kid and I think they saved me from a life of tedious small town boyness... 'it's OK to see the world in a different way, it's OK to be something other than vanilla / straight, it's OK to have an over-active imagination, it's OK to want to wish for a more interesting life.'

King of the City, a much more recent book, is just flippin' superb, quite down-at-heel, and very much about the mid-late 70's world of underground-London, Lemmy, The Sex Pistols, drugs, politics, sex etc. leading up to the present day. I love the way people like Lemmy and the Pistols are always cropping up in his books! The way he mixes fact and fiction. Really compelling characters. I love his non-linear stuff, I love the way you can read one of his books 40 times and still find new ideas and still not get the whole picture!

Interesting idea about Star Wars and The Crow being Moorcockian. Oddly, this reminds me of something I was thinking about earlier: Incest-Fi... What is it with sci-fi and incest? Jeff Noon, Moorcock, Morrison, Star Wars, I'm sure there are others, they all make reference to characters who are in love with their brother or their sister or whatever... which came first, the in-bred chicken or the egg?

STOATIE LIEKS CHOCOLATE MILK

18:57 / 28.08.05

It's been quite a theme for a long time- look at Arthur and Morgana, or Siegmund and Sieglinde in Die Walkure... I'm sure someone of a more classical bent (Haus?) could probably trace some sort of thread...

Rollo Kim, on location

20:20 / 28.08.05

Is it an 'eternal cycle' thing? Like if you were an Egyptian Prince you'd marry your mom so in-case you didn't make the leap you'd have the right hardware to come back to? Or am I just channeling William Henry...

09:37 / 27.10.06

Thought I'd give you all a heads-up that 'The Final Programme' - the 1973 film of the Cornelius novel - is gonna be on the telly next week. ITV4, Monday 30th, 12 midnight

It gets slagged by one reviewer on imdb for being a stripped-down, superficial version of the novel (well, duh) but TVCream says it's ace and a right good bit of entertainment.

14:47 / 27.10.06

I've got it on DVD. Haven't even made it all the way through it yet...found it to be pretty hard going.

lord nuneaton savage

11:38 / 02.11.06

"FUCK OFF YOU GREEK MANIAC!"

I love that film. The casting is perfect (especially the horribly seedy looking Frank) the locations are impressive and, well, it's hilarious. Also, always nice to see Evil Camp Nazi from Raiders of the Lost Ark turning up.

"MISS BRUNNER, HELP, I'M LOSING!"

Perfect Jerry.

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