Customer Reviews

The Lives and Times of Jerry Cornelius: Stories of the Comic Apocalypse

5 star:		(5)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

Jerry Cornelius, a product of sixties hip when Moorcock's name never seemed to be out of the papers, died, was resurrected and died again, certainly in terms of his fashionability. Now here he is with a bunch of the best of his earliest adventures coupled with a quartet of his best new ones, dealing with Clinton's foreign policy, Lady Diana's death-cult, Middle Eastern Politics and, in what is probably the best story in the book, events around the catastrophe of 9/11. And, to this reader's surprise at least, he seems even more relevant today than he did when he first hit the pages of New Worlds, that magazine of early post-modernist senisbility, some forty years ago. Moorcock's fingers were definitely on the pulse of our times and this collection proves it. Elegant, fast and sardonic, these are tales that are, like Scott Fitzgerald's,
distinctly of their time and yet retain a universality lacking in most other contemporary fiction. This is the best value on the literary market. As he proves in his McSweeney's Mammoth
Treasury story, Moorcock is also provides great entertainment while making us think a lot deeper than, for instance, the Matrix's rabbit hole. Totally recommended!

Jerry C. is a Mod gone mad: he is the ultimate manifestation of English 60's style. So anti-cool he's completely cool, so immoral he teaches by anti-example -- got that? -- as when he cheerfully kills a young boy who seems to be the earthly manifestation of the Buddha...shocking when he first appeared, even now he retains his appeal. In fact, in the post-James Bond era of Austin Powers, Jerry is more intriguing than ever...and Moorcock is simply one of the most important writers of fantasy, or writers period, up there with Harlan Ellison, Ursula K. LeGuin, and Doris Lessing.

Seems best to have read the "Cornelius Quartet" first. The novels provide a good introduction to Jerry as well as other characters who appear in these stories: his brother Frank, sister Catherine, Miss Brunner, Bishop Beesley, Una Persson, Major Nye, Professor Hira,...

These short stories focus on commentary by Jerry and company against a backdrop of world events:

"I'm not interested in being right. I'm interested in what happens."

"This is the age of the lowest common denominator. I blame America."

Jerry here seemed more detached, more amoral than in the novels. Some of his coolness slipping into coldness. Perhaps because the world he protects himself against has become harsher. Moorcock's writing is at least as good as in the Quartet. It took some adjustment going from the novels to the short stories. Instead of going into Jerry's world, as the novels did, these short stories take Jerry into the world. Jerry's escape and our escape are over.

Toward the end of this first reading, I began to let go of my expectations based on the Quartet and accept the short story format. I'm looking forward to a second, fresh reading.

Out of all the Eternal Champion manifestations, Jerry Cornelius always seemed to be the aspect that fascinated me the most. Part of it was because his key novels were unavailable in the US for some time without scouring used book shelves (and White Wolf's Eternal Champion series putting all the multiverse novels in groups totally skipped him for the US version, which I imagine was intentional for some reason) and that inaccessibility somehow made him more alluring by becoming more remote, a constantly shifting clown dancing at the edge of his own sense of cool, wedded to fashion and good times the same way that the rest of us cling to a liferaft going all the way down the drain. Except the drain was the twentieth century and if Cornelius was going to take that plunge he'd refuse to hesitate, even if it brought him to tears. The famous Quartet of Cornelius novels only deepened the aspect, turning him from a clown obsessed with an amoral cool (so distant from the heroics of the other novels or even Elric's morose soul-searching) to his gradual reconstruction as living metaphor, his form defined by self-delusion that was half staring into the distorted mirror of the century and the other half the century staring into him and causing the warping in the process.

So here we have some short stories featuring our favorite metaphysical mod messiah. How can anyone resist? The stories range from his roots in the sixties to the last set written less than ten years ago, giving us a cross section as Cornelius careens his way through the back end of a century that more and more seemed bent on tripping over its own feet and leveling the landscape in the process.

Those looking for the strict thematic concerns of the original Quartet have to let go of those notions before they even start. What he did there was singular and it seems he has no desire to repeat it. Cornelius remains a character but seems much less defined here, sometimes acting as a mere placeholder inside his own narrative and other times acting as a man disgusted with his own actions but going through with them anyway as if the century expects nothing less of him. The zip and swagger of the novels have been replaced with a sort of downcast amorality, where nothing and everything is cool. He kills without care and cares too much when he kills, attempting to sift through events with a careless ease but at the same time feeling the weight of events bearing down on top of him. Things have become screwed up but it seems the only way out is through and he's going to embrace that path even if it means he becomes a different person at the end of it. But he's a different person almost every time we see him.

Readers have to be prepared for a barrage of stories with no set narrative, or a narrative that lurks somewhere in elusive metaphor, where the concern of the story isn't what happens but what shape the events make and how they came to make that shape. Often times it will seem episodic or carefree, galloping in aimless abandon straight into absurdity as SF tropes meld with political concerns and it's not sure which, if either, is being taken seriously. It's only with the progression of one story into the next that the purpose becomes clearer, it becomes a history of political texture, a front row seat to the decadence of our own collapse and Cornelius is both catalyst and dupe, spectator and player. Moldable, he lets events shape his attitude even as he attempts to draw events with his own pen. Moorcock peppers each narrative with quotes from articles and songs, all voices where each one ranks with its own importance. Everything is a symptom when everything is diseased. Sometimes the quotes tell too much of the story, letting the story itself fall by the wayside and acting as a strange pantomime for what the author really wants to say. This is more of a concern in the earlier stories where Jerry is still trying to be mod and cool and the rest of the characters are just window dressing. Later this changes and the last few stories gain more focus as the century races to crash through a barrier it didn't even see coming, splintered glass and gritted teeth the only signs that anyone noticed the changeover.

Sometimes the tone is hard to sustain over the course of the tale but when he does it becomes searing. Starting with the last four ("The Spencer Inheritance", about the reaction and fallout to Princess Diana's death), the politics becomes more incisive, Jerry becomes more desperate, the narrative becomes sharpened into the shape of an arrow pointed directly at the heart of the absurdity. What happens may not be what you perceive and it may take a few readings to get the general gist of it. The story is the least important part of it, it's the action that dances just out of view. These stories may not be for everyone and may not even for fans of the original Quartet (especially if the weary meta-narrational feel of "The Condition of Muzak" threw you) because it's not that he has a target, he has too many targets and Jerry only has so many needles in the gun. Read all together, it becomes nothing more than an absurdist circus, featuring a clown who keeps changing costumes, trying to turn wars into film shows and films into war and keeps asking us when he started crying and does he want it to stop because he's not sure anymore. Jerry has to live in a world we don't recognize, or only vaguely so, because if we did then it's not clear whether we could handle the revelation. It's not like Jerry is going to help us. He's got other concerns.

This is a bit of an odd collection of Jerry Cornelius stories. While fans of the writer and lead character will enjoy it, it's probably a bit confusing for new readers (which is why I give it three stars but would give it higher marks for old friends of Jerry).

Cornelius is one of Michael Moorcock's funniest creations--a strange combination of secret agent, rock star, time hopper in an ironic, charming package. Yet another incarnation of Moorcock's Eternal Champion, Jerry was used to reflect the late 60s and early 70s. In this collection, Moorcock showcases a number of stories from that era before jumping to the late 90s and first years of the 21st century.

There are some solid stories--and Moorcock takes aim at a series of targets including George W. Bush, England's reaction to the death of Princess Diana, Tolkien, Bill Clinton, etc. Moorcock is always a solid writer but there are some uneven stories here. While some critics have called Jerry Cornelius an attempt to stage an alternate history of the 20th century--and there are signs of that in some of the earlier stories--a little too much is missing here to take that concept seriously. Still, there are some fun stories even if Moorcock's views are not always subtle.

Recommended to Moorcock fans though those who are new to the Eternal Champion and Jerry may want to look at the "Cornelius Quartet" first.

Michael Moorcock is at his best and good to see more adventures in "The Life and Times of Jerry Cornelius

Michael Moorcock turns out some of the best-realized short fiction in years in this collected analogy devoted to his time-tripping, homicidal genius hero Jerry Cornelius. "The Lives and Times of Jerry Cornelius: Stories of the Comic Apocalypse" is an excellent introduction to Moorcock's enduring character, even if you haven't read the four novels comprising the "Cornelius Quartet". Surprisingly, Moorcock's fine literary quality remains consistently quite good throughout, especially with his latest stories, which are hysterically funny alternate history takes on the Princess Diana phenomenon and the aftermath of the 9/11/01 terrorist attacks on the United States. Indeed, these latest stories merely prove just how enduring a creation Jerry Cornelius has been for both Moorcock and highly literate science fiction.

Let me start out by saying that I am a huge fan of Mr. Moorcocks, going back to his Elric of Melinbone days. Unfortunately I have discovered evidence of Mr. Moorcocks weaker writing abilities. These short, scattered, stream of consciousness stories, held together by newspaper and magazine clippings are not worthy of Mr. Moorcock.
You have a music loving, switch hitting, physicist, poet, assassin, who tries to keep the world from slipping into the abyss through his sexual encounters, blackmail, murder, assasination, self mutilation, voodoo as well as math.
Its hard to describe this mess, except that as it gets closer and closer to the 2005 published dates it gets darker, meaner, more nonsensical and basically it sadly turns into an low brow anti american tirade on how we have ruined the world at all levels. If it had been well done with a clear focus, it may have been worth reading but it seems that Mr. Moorcock must have been on some happy herbs when he started the project back in the 1960's and he has kept that stash all these years for each chronological update of this character. Said herbs, which he dipped back into with each later addition when he sunk his pen in the ink well for this character, did not age well.
I was so stoked to read this when I picked it up and I am so glad I did not buy the "Quartet" as well as this since is so poorly written and ill conceived. An interesting character that could have been a modern Elric but is instead a flat concept from start to finish.