Moorcockery

[calimac]

Testing the proposition that Michael Moorcock can no longer write SF criticism without sticking in a gratuitous dig at Tolkien, we have his article in the September NYRSF on R.C. Sherriff's 1939 disaster novel, The Hopkins Manuscript. An unlikely occasion to criticize Tolkien, you might think, but Moorcock is up to the challenge. He writes:

I'm not a great reader of most genre fiction. I usually prefer stories written before they could be identified as genre ... There is something stimulating about exploring unknown literary territory, whether it be that of Defoe, Swift, Austen, or Woolf. By the time the generic process has taken place, there seems to me to be a falling off of originality, of intensely imagined metaphor and of narrative inspiration. No matter how good the writing, one begins to hear a chorus rather than an individual voice. That's why ... I still get something out of Beowulf, but Lord of the Rings is a defeating struggle.

There might be many good reasons why Moorcock does not enjoy reading Tolkien - and if he finds it "a defeating struggle," that would certainly help explain the poor grasp he's shown over the years over the content of The Lord of the Rings - but that the novel is a weak generic photocopy of Beowulf is unlikely to be one of them. SF reviewers are usually pretty good at discerning when something in their field has been done before and better. Elsewhere Moorcock compares P.D. James's unintentionally hackneyed The Children of Men with Brian Aldiss's superior Greybeard. Non-SF reviewers thought James's book wasn't SF, as Moorcock notes; but SF reviewers had seen it before. (Norman Spinrad, as I recall, was particularly corruscating on this one.)

But I've read the early reviews of The Lord of the Rings, including ones by discerning genre figures like Anthony Boucher, and nobody said anything like, "What a tiresome rehash of Beowulf" or "of Norse saga." (Even Groff Conklin, who did compare it with Norse saga and didn't care for the book, didn't think it was a worn-out genrefication.) The closest I've found was Edmund Wilson being grumpily reminded of Edwardian boys' adventure fiction. Instead, the reviewers cast about ineffectually trying to find something, anything - William Morris? E.R. Eddison? - with which they can possibly compare this stunningly original book.

Speaking of early reviewers, Moorcock also writes:

The disaster story is a peculiarly English form refined in recent years by the likes of Ballard and Aldiss. Indeed, when they first appeared, critics attempted, to the consternation of Tolkien and Peake, to fit both The Lord of the Rings and Titus Groan into this genre!

They did? I've read many of the early reviews of Titus Groan also, which likewise featured desperate attempts to find something to compare it to - Dickens? Chatterton? - and I don't remember either book being subsumed into the disaster novel category. Moorcock knew Peake personally, so perhaps he remembers something the author said; but I do not recall coming across any published comments by Tolkien about this, though he did have mixed feelings about his book being called SF (Letters p. 181-2).

Am I going to submit this as a LoC to NYRSF? Nah: Tolkien doesn't need me to defend him against the likes of Michael Moorcock, and Moorcock doesn't need me pursuing him as the chicken man did Poppy Bush. I'll just vent here and leave it at that.

Comments

[sartorias.livejournal.com]

Moorcock does persist in grinding his axes on that one note, doesn't he?

[milwaukeesfs.livejournal.com]

Moorcock is one of those authors who ought to leave pontification alone. Certainly, Sword and Sorcery existed before Elric, although he added an number of orginal tropes to the genre. He also did not scruple to write "Kane of Old Mars," which is a pretty blatant homage to Burroughs.

The bit about trying to slot Tolkien in with disaster novels baffles me: other than those of Wells, novels like like "Day of the Triffids," " Midwich Cuckoos," "No Blade of Grass," "Earth Abides," are distinctly post-Tolkien.

[kalimac.livejournal.com]

"Earth Abides" (which is American, not British) and "Day of the Triffids" were both published before LOTR; "No Blade of Grass" and "The Midwich Cuckoos" were published in 1956 and 1957 respectively, soon after LOTR.