Alan Moore's (one million word) novel, Jerusalem, to be published this Spring

[GLASSJAW]

This won't interest many, but it will REALLY interest some. Alan Moore, the infamous comic writer (V for Vendetta, The Watchmen, Batman: Killing Joke) has a very long novel to be released this Spring. Publisher calls it "his best work" and calls it "rich and glorious"  -- including chapters which are "sub-(James) Joycean" and influenced by Samuel Beckett and are supposedly borderline incomprehensible. 

I find this very interesting because we live in a time where very, very, very few people are willing to pick up something like Ulysses and give it a go (do many young people even know what Ulysses even is?), but because of Alan Moore's large fanbase, within which there is a cultish passion for his work, I can see a lot of people at least TRYING to read it. 

 

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Alan Moore’s second novel Jerusalem – a fantastical exploration of his hometown of Northampton which runs to more than a million words in draft form – is slated for publication next spring.

Describing the novel as Moore’s “best work to date, rich and glorious”, Tony Bennett at UK publisher Knockabout Comics said: “We expect that it will be a spring 2016 title, published in the UK at the same time as in North America.” A “firm announcement” about publication date will be made late this year, Bennett added, with the book “currently undergoing editing and proofreading”.

Liveright will publish the book in the US, according to the New York Times, and Bennett said that “rights have been sold to Italy and Brazil with other territories in discussion” at present.

The acclaimed comics writer began work on Jerusalem in 2008 and finished his gargantuan draft last September, as his daughter Leah Moore announced on Facebook.

The novel is said to explore the small area of Northampton where Moore grew up, ranging from his own family’s stories to historical events to fantasy, with chapters told in different voices. The author told the New Statesman that there would be a “Lucia Joyce chapter, which is completely incomprehensible ... all written in a completely invented sub-Joycean text”, while another chapter would be written in the style of a Samuel Beckett play, and a third would be “a noir crime narrative based upon the Northampton pastor James Hervey, whom I believe was the father of the entire Gothic movement”.

He told the BBC that the “middle bit” is “a savage, hallucinating Enid Blyton”, and the Guardian that the last “official chapter” was being written “somewhat in the style of Dos Passos”.

Moore is best known for comics such as Watchmen and V for Vendettawhich have expanded the possibilities of graphical storytelling. Readers looking for further indications of what Jerusalem may hold can turn to his 1996 novel in prose, Voice of the Fire, which is also set in Northampton. Weaving together the stories of 12 different characters over a period of 6,000 years, from a cave-boy to a Roman emissary to a crippled nun, the novel opens in 4000BC.

“A-hind of hill, ways off to sun-set-down, is sky come like as fire, and walk I up in way of this, all hard of breath, where is grass colding on I’s feet and wetting they,” writes Moore, as he sets in motion a novel described by Neil Gaiman as the work of a “master storyteller tak[ing] the voices of the dead as his own”.

 

Another article from a while back from The New Statesman (referenced above):

 

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Alan Moore can't be accused of playing it safe. In his 40-year career, he has written a genre-busting superhero comic (Watchmen); a graphic novel in which the hero is a terrorist (V for Vendetta); and one of the most beautiful -- but scandalous -- pieces of pornography ever produced (Lost Girls).

Since 2008, he has been occupied largely with writing his second novel, Jerusalem, due for publication next year. It could easily be the oddest novel ever written. Ostensibly a history of Moore's home town, Northampton, it features his favoured technique of appropriating characters from other literary works; the author describes its middle section as being like a "savage, hallucinating Enid Blyton".

Its wider purpose, Moore says, is to "disprove the existence of death" -- but that is if he can get it into print at all: it will clock in at 750,000 words, making it longer (by far) than Vikram Seth's hefty A Suitable Boy and David Foster Wallace's Infinite Jest. The book is so long that the only printers who might be able to tackle it are Bible-makers.

“It is a very big book -- but it's very readable," he assures me when I call to ask how it's going. "Apart from the Lucia Joyce chapter, which is completely incomprehensible." How so? "It's all written in a completely invented sub-Joycean text. I read it through again and I can actually understand most of it -- well, all of it. But it's the only way I could have written that stuff. It's an experiment."

Then there's chapter 29, composed in the form of a stage play by Samuel Beckett, based around one of the times the playwright visited Northampton to take part in a cricket match. (I'm not making this up: the 1925 and 1926 matches appear in Wisden, which records that Beckett was "a useful, left-arm, medium-pace bowler".) While his team-mates took off in the evenings to patronise the city's pubs and prostitutes, Beckett decided instead to go on a "church crawl". It is this event that Moore is restaging.

Apart from these literary jeux d'esprit, the main thrust of the book explores Moore's belief that time doesn't work the way we think it does. "I've come to think that the universe is a four-dimensional site in which nothing is changing and nothing is moving. The only thing that is moving along the time axis is our consciousness. The past is still there, the future has always been here. Every moment that has existed or will ever exist is all part of this giant hyper-moment of space-time."

Confused? Moore puts it this way. "If you think about a standard journey in three dimensions -- say, being in a car driving along a road, the houses you're passing are vanishing behind you, but you don't doubt that if you could reverse the car, the houses would still be there. Our consciousness is only moving one way through time but I believe physics tells us all those moments are still there -- and when we get to the end of our lives, there's nowhere for our consciousness to go, except back to the beginning. We have our lives over and over again."

 

I'm pretty excited for this.

[GLASSJAW]

completely unrelated note, Cormac McCarthy, the guy widely considered to be the greatest living American author (The Road, No Country for Old Men, Blood Meridian) has his new novel slated to be released in 2016 too. Could actually have two things ready for release. 

 

[The Bookie]

'borderline incomprehensible' is right up my alley. I'm just going through a massive tomb phase (how many pages would a million words be?) - finished the latest David Mitchell the other day, just starting in on Roberto Bollano's 2666. Anyhow this sounds intriguing, I'll see what reviews are saying once it's out. Strange how they make it sound like it might not be physically possible to print it - couldn't they just halve it and release it in two parts?

Don't know about the Cormac. Blood Meridian was a pretty disturbing read, but I find his writing style annoying. Dude needs to come to terms and start using commas. I've never seen so many run-on sentences held together by 'and's.

[Offensive Threat]

53 minutes ago, The Bookie said:

'borderline incomprehensible' is right up my alley. I'm just going through a massive tomb phase (how many pages would a million words be?) - finished the latest David Mitchell the other day, just starting in on Roberto Bollano's 2666. Anyhow this sounds intriguing, I'll see what reviews are saying once it's out. Strange how they make it sound like it might not be physically possible to print it - couldn't they just halve it and release it in two parts?

Don't know about the Cormac. Blood Meridian was a pretty disturbing read, but I find his writing style annoying. Dude needs to come to terms and start using commas. I've never seen so many run-on sentences held together by 'and's.

 You are good with "borderline incomprehensible" but are bothered by a lack of commas.... The Road is one of my favorite books of all time so any new McCarthy gets my attention.

[The Bookie]

I like incomprehensible plot and confusing or enigmatic characters, yes, hence my love of Pynchon. I just find McCarthy hard to read at a basic level. I did really enjoy Blood Meridian despite this, and several scenes from that book are still in my head, 10+ years after reading it. Similar with No Country. So I'm aware that his writing is worthwhile, it's just difficult for me to punch through it.

The Road on the other hand, that just bored me. Meh. Literature is the most subjective of the arts imo.

[GLASSJAW]

cormac is super polarizing. i really enjoyed the 4 or 5 of his books i've read, but i feel like his weird style requires intense concentration otherwise i just start daydreaming

the million word count is pre-final edit, mind you. so maybe they will sort all of that out, i dunno. but i think one million words is about 1500 pages

[GLASSJAW]

35 minutes ago, The Bookie said:

I like incomprehensible plot and confusing or enigmatic characters, yes, hence my love of Pynchon. I just find McCarthy hard to read at a basic level. I did really enjoy Blood Meridian despite this, and several scenes from that book are still in my head, 10+ years after reading it. Similar with No Country. So I'm aware that his writing is worthwhile, it's just difficult for me to punch through it.

The Road on the other hand, that just bored me. Meh. Literature is the most subjective of the arts imo.

I was super into Blood Meridian for a long time, I even tracked down some of his source material for it. I can't remember the book off the top of my head, but the man who Judge Holden was based on wasn't far from McCarthy's representation: freakishly tall, had an incredible talent with violence, spoke like 6 languages or something, and was an all around devil of a person.

 

as much as I love McCarthy, I didn't care for No Country much. good, but not McCarthy good. I think I like the movie more

[Offensive Threat]

A movie version of Blood Meridian has been in development twice now with Ridley Scott being attached to it before it fell through the first time. Some scripts/books sit around for decades before the movie gets made, if it ever gets made.

[The Bookie]

Maybe that's for the best - I like Ridley Scott for the most part, but after The Counselor I don't know if I want another McCarthy-Scott team-up.

who would I want to see do Blood Meridian ... Tommy Lee Jones maybe? Terry Gilliam? Or Guillermo del Toro. Or maybe he should just keep trying to get At The Mountains of Madness made into a movie.

ah! Iñárritu!