Surfing the internets this Friday night. (Another wild weekend for the Komrade. Next weekend kicks off the Xmas party circuit.) Surfing away and I come across Michael Moorcock's Recommended Reading List.
The anarchist creator of sword-and-sorcery anti-hero Elric of Melnibone, Michael Moorcock is the anti-Tolkein. His reading list proves it. Some wonderful. Some interesting. Some puzzling.
Moorcock definitely reads a lot of new work, so I haven't read or heard of a lot of the authors on this list. A good sign though. Adventurous and up-to-date. A good to-read list.
I would definitely agree with him about China Mieville who is probably the best fantasy writer out there today. Perdido Street Station is one of my favourite books. If you like steampunk and horror, you will love that one. Mieville creates one of the most in-depth and multifaceted and believable fantasy worlds I have ever encountered.
The inclusion of Bertolt Brecht would be intriguing on its own. The reason though makes it downright fascinating. Moorcock recommends Threepenny Novel by Bertolt Brecht as a proto-steampunk work. Never mind as a precursor to dark cabaret. Cool enough. But also as an 'influence on Elric'! Now really. I have got to read that!
Moorcock also recommends quite a number of non-fiction works. Of these, I can only say ditto to King Leopold's Ghost by Adam Hochschild and Empire by Antonio Negri and Michael Hardt. (I haven't read the others.)
King Leopold's Ghost is the best book about the horrors of imperialism I have ever read. Compelling and unputdownable. It covers the little known decimation of what would become the Congo in the late 1800s and early 1900s by--wait for it--Belgium! Who would have thought the worst imperial power in recent history would be wee wittle Belgium? Just plain evil. Around 20 million Congolese lost their lives because of fucking Leo.
Empire is a strange work. It reads like it was unfinished or haphazardly put together but the ideas are so fecundant perhaps because they are only half-formed. On every page, you find a thread to unravel and spin away with. So many embryos. So many. It's like an IVF clinic in your head.
The oddest and most intriguing recommendations Moorcock provides are for books by Andrea Dworkin. But then, apparently, she was a friend. Which probably doesn't mean much other than he was attracted to her and to her work. It definitely makes me want to read her. Anyone hated like she was has gotta be worth it.
Moorcock is a wonderful writer and a wonderful thinker. If he recommends it, then it is probably a great book.
So read on, gothlings!
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