This...

Quote from: Melan;423005I actually like Moorcock's criticism even while I consider many of his political conclusions false.

...and this...

Quote from: Benoist;423063I love Moorcock's writings, still do, and I very much like the guy, his humour and personality as a human being, but sometimes he just is such a cliché leftist-anarchist intellectual (I suspect because he yearns to be recognized as a valid intellectual to begin with, despite all that 'fantasy tripe' he used to write) that I can do nothing but smile.

...both sound spot on.

I like Epic Pooh, and agree with him in regards to romanticism, but man, there can be no forgiveness for his Michael Kane mars stories. None. I don't mind a bit of pastiche here and there, but the author needs to make a genuine effort to entertain me, and in the case of the Kane books, Moorcock doesn't even bother. They are the worst kind of hackery, and there is a flat quality to them that is, in my opinion, present to some degree in everything I've ever read by him.

Quote from: Akrasia;423093Meh.  Corum kicks both of their arses!

I like Corum. I like the aesthetics of the characters and cycle, for sure.

Quote from: Akrasia;423093(I find Elric whiny and grating -- although I like the first few Elric stories, namely, the stuff before 'Stormbringer'.  Hawkmoon is a rather shallow character IMO, but the setting is cool.)

You mean the stuff before Stormbringer, in order of writing, correct? Assuming that's what you mean, I too prefer Mike Moorcock's earlier Elric stories. The original saga, up to Stormbringer. In particular Bane of the Black Sword, anything having to do with his insane feud with Theleb Kaarna, really.

Hawkmoon is deliberately shallow, and I like that about him. The character mostly exists through his many proxies, friends, enemies and love interests, and that makes him... very Arthurian indeed, when I think about it.

Quote from: Benoist;423097Hawkmoon is deliberately shallow, and I like that about him. The character mostly exists through his many proxies, friends, enemies and love interests, and that makes him... very Arthurian indeed, when I think about it.

If there's one real failing I can attribute to the Hawkmoon stories, it's that the "Almost...too sane" issue was resolved before Moorcock developed the potential there.

I could never get through Hawkmoon.  It just did not grab me.

I know most people don't connect with Hawkmoon because they see some blandness there that they really have a hard time liking or disliking. It's just not grabbing them, like you say, Aos.

I guess what I'm seeing is a lot of subtleties there that make me love it very, very much. Like indeed Dorian Hawkmoon being so bland that he exists through his proxies, the fantastic imagery used to depict the Empire of Granbretan, the sheer mind-bending cosmology of it all, the Grail-like Rune Staff, the Warrior in Jet and Gold and the ghostly knight errant he is, the hilarious Chirchill and Adulf allusion, that kind of things. There's some richness there that I really love.

Quote from: Aos;423100I could never get through Hawkmoon.  It just did not grab me.

De gustibus, etc.

I have to give it to you on the Old Mars books, though. As I've said before, even MM's taken the attitude "If you absolutely must, here they are, but don't say I claimed they didn't suck."

And btw, as for the Hawkmoon role playing games, I love the first edition, because it doesn't try to fill in the blanks left by Moorcock in the tapestry like other editions try to do with their own post-apocalyptic/metaplot stuff. In a sense, Hawkmoon, the novels themselves, are very "Old School" in the role playing sense, to me, and wanting to build a fully fleshed out universe out of the Tragic Millennium steals some of its thunder in a major way, IMO.

Quote from: Benoist;423103I know most people don't connect with Hawkmoon because they see some blandness there that they really have a hard time liking or disliking. It's just not grabbing them, like you say, Aos.

I guess what I'm seeing is a lot of subtleties there that make me love it very, very much. Like indeed Dorian Hawkmoon being so bland that he exists through his proxies, the fantastic imagery used to depict the Empire of Granbretan, the sheer mind-bending cosmology of it all, the Grail-like Rune Staff, the Warrior in Jet and Gold and the ghostly knight errant he is. There's some richness there that I really love.

I am not going to pretend Moorcock doesn't have flaws as a writer - most I think, due less to the ravages of ideology on his works and more due to a "better done than good" attitude, but his wild creativity almost always more than makes up for it - and I'm sure his fast-and-loose approach to writing helped liberate his imagination even if it sometimes hampered his characterization or plots. Maybe Elric is whiny and grating. So is Achilles. So are the hobbits.

I completely agree, Cole.

Quote from: FrankTrollman;423049Tolkien was BORN IN AFRICA. The views and peculiarities of the African colonies are very much the point, considering that his mother was a colonial in the darkest continent.

It would be great to see a cite from a reliable source that described slavery in Northern Nigeria in Tolkien's time as something condoned by the British colonial administration. I can well imagine it may have existed in backwater areas where the British authority could not eliminate it, but that's like saying slavery exists in modern London - it sure does, but not by consent of the Cameron-Clegg government.

Quote from: FrankTrollman;423049Those are apparently the conclusions of L. Sprague de Camp, who I trust on this subject more than you.

On a general principle, I would rather have something by S. T. Joshi than de Camp, whose reputation is a tad dubious in Lovecraft scholarship. Nevertheless, even take him at face value, it is those pesky details again. Not "fascist atrocities", but "the realities of concentration camps", which resulted in him "discouraging people from supporting the Axis".

Quote from: Aos;423100I could never get through Hawkmoon.  It just did not grab me.

I could not take it seriously after the section where Hawkmoon was camping in the mountains of Future Bulgaria, and encountered a character described as "short", and wearing a "broad hat" and "soft leather boots". Right at that moment, I knew that little runt would be the current Companion. Except for the details, the novel read like a botched copy-paste job modelled after the other Eternal Champion novels, and never got further than the first volume.

Granbretan and the jewel in the skull were cool,though.

Quote from: Cole;423104De gustibus, etc.

I have to give it to you on the Old Mars books, though. As I've said before, even MM's taken the attitude "If you absolutely must, here they are, but don't say I claimed they didn't suck."

And you're right, but man, there is suck and there is SUCK!  I made the mistake of not reading the introductions* before buying/reading them. It took a while for the banality of them to become apparent to me and I kept expecting some kind of improvement. In my own defense, I wised up around page 20 of book three.


*as is my custom.

Quote from: Melan;423114I could not take it seriously after the section where Hawkmoon was camping in the mountains of Future Bulgaria, and encountered a character described as "short", and wearing a "broad hat" and "soft leather boots". Right at that moment, I knew that little runt would be the current Companion. Except for the details, the novel read like a botched copy-paste job modelled after the other Eternal Champion novels, and never got further than the first volume.

Granbretan and the jewel in the skull were cool,though.

Yeah, I stalled in the first volume as well.

Quote from: Aos;423116In my own defense, I wised up around page 20 of book three.

Your fortitude as a reader seems to outstrip my own.