Afterword to Michael Moorcock's Wizardry and Wild Romance

Some free nonfiction while I'm cleaning out my files: my afterword to Moorcock's Wizardry and Wild Romance, MonkeyBrain Books edition from 2004..."Believe me, pards, we're living in an age of myths and miracles."- from King of the City by Michael MoorcockIf you've read Wizardry & Wild Romance before turning to this afterword, you will have already recognized the book's many virtues. Primary among these, Moorcock, more than most writers I know, achieves a balance between heart and head. In Wizardry, Moorcock's passion is matched by a good humor (including barbs that are somehow generous enough to make the point without being sarcastic), and the examples and analysis to back up his assertions. His passion becomes our passion, so that even when (or if) we disagree with his conclusions or his slant on a particular author or book, it is difficult not to agree while reading.The passion draws you in, but it is the evidence Moorcock presents that forces you to consider his position. When he calls Lovecraft an "inadequate describer of the indescribable," it's both funny and true, his position shored up through use of well-chosen excerpts. When he points out that Fritz Leiber's Grey Mouser stories are superior to comparable material by L. Sprague De Camp, among others, you immediately understand why because Moorcock has grounded his discussion in analysis of their predecessors.Moorcock is also not afraid to take on sacred cows. Not having revisited Winnie the Pooh or The Narnia Chronicles for quite some time, I was struck by how much I agreed with Moorcock on their inadequacies--in part because careful excerpts from both series make deficiencies glaringly obvious, in part because Moorcock provides alternatives (like Susan Cooper's The Dark Is Rising series) that seem infinitely more interesting to me as an adult.Moorcock's unique juxtapositions and re-appraisals of writers seem crisp, reasonable, and well-argued, while his theories on epic fantasy are unusually insightful. Moorcock's ruminations on the importance of setting to fantasy--the way in which setting becomes a kind of character--has a usefulness to more than just the reader of fantasy. Writers who include fantastical elements in their work, or hope to rise above genre tropes, would be well-advised to read and re-read that section.One of the statements in Wizardry & Wild Romance that most resonates with me is:Their work may be judged not by normal criteria but by the "power" of their imagery and by what extent their writing evokes that "power", whether they are trying to convey "wildness", "strangeness" or "charm"; whether, like Melville, Ballard, Juenger, Patrick White or Alejo Carpentier, they transform their images into intense personal metaphors.Too often, reviewers, writers, and readers fail to understand the vital link between resonant imagery and characterization, the way in which the landscape is not just a reflection of the writer's concerns, but also those of the main character. Further, the (understandable) emphasis on characterization that typifies modern fiction sometimes robs us of the ability to fully appreciate the other virtues of a story or novel.I also find Moorcock's comments on the use of humor instructive and important, particularly:Comedy, like fantasy, is often at its best when making the greatest possible exaggerations whereas tragedy usually becomes bathetic when it exaggerates. Obviously there is a vast difference between, say, Lewis Carroll and Richard Garnett but the thing that all writers of comedy have in common is a fascination with grotesque and unlikely juxtapositions of images, characters and events: the core of most humour, from Hal Roach to Nabokov… Jokes are not Comedy and stories which contain jokes are not comic stories. The art of ironic comedy is the highest art of all in fiction and drama but it is by no means the most popular art.Although Moorcock has always known this to be true, it is a truth that many popular writers today, even those already into their early thirties, may not recognize until too late. Beyond "irony," "unlikely juxtapositions," and "exaggerations," humor, or comedy, especially of the black variety, allows the true seriousness of a story or novel to strike home. To be without this element is, in a sense, to be a body without a vital organ.Each of you will have your favorite sections of this book, sections that speak to you personally. However, although the sections on landscape/imagery and humor spoke on an intimate level to me, it is difficult for me to select one essay over another, because of the two separate but equally compelling ways in which they acted upon me. In the first case, some essays brought me knowledge and insight I lacked before. In the second case, Moorcock clarified and brought into focus thoughts and ideas I had had before reading Wizardry & Wild Romance. To be both validated and taught by a book is a wonderful experience.Still, I did have two regrets after reading this book. First, that Moorcock's skillful depictions of and excerpts from some of my favorite books brought back a kind of nostalgia for a mythic age of First Reading now long past…and thus the regret that some books are forever lost to me because of the vagaries of time and experience.Second, and more importantly, I regret that Moorcock's authoring of Wizardry & Wild Romance precluded him from using some of his own work as exemplary of the best of epic fantasy, or fantasy in general. (It might not have stopped another author, but modesty is among Moorcock's many virtues.)As a result, and through no fault of Moorcock's own, Wizardry & Wild Romance is, by definition, incomplete. Moorcock's presence permeates it at a sub-atomic level, yet he is not allowed to take up his proper place in its hierarchy.The world certainly does not suffer from a lack of writings about Moorcock's work, and an afterword cannot hope to compete with such works. However, it is worth reminding ourselves just how pervasive, how ubiquitous, Moorcock's presence has been for more than forty years. (That very quality--of dependability and excellence over a long career--creates a sense of familiarity too close to taking him for granted.)Whether as editor for New Worlds, and champion of the New Wave, or as a writer who benefited from the influence of both the grittiest pulps and the loftiest canonical literature, Moorcock has consistently demonstrated a talent equal to his ferocious ambition. This talent has taken so many forms that it seems there must surely be several Moorcocks, not just one. It is difficult, perhaps, to reconcile the writer of the Elric stories with the writer of Mother London (until you recognize the primacy of the individual over systems that has been the one constant in all of Moorcock's fiction), and yet both are exemplary of their type. From the sublime, complex Gloriana to the brilliant, funny Dancers at the End of Time series, to the audacious, controversial Pyat books, Moorcock has never shied away from a constant exploration of genres--usually by exploding or subverting them (or by writing outside of genre altogether).As Angela Carter famously wrote in the Guardian, in her review of Mother London:Posterity will certainly give him that due place in the English Literature of the late twentieth century which his more anaemic contemporary begrudges; indeed, he is so prolific that it will probably look as if he has written most of it anyway.As to the question of influence, this book itself is evidence of that influence. Since its original publication in the 1980s, Wizardry & Wild Romance has long been cited by critics, readers, and writers as an important text. It has been taught in universities, referenced in several critical studies, and been appreciated by those general readers for whom it provides a compass, or map, into epic fantasy.It is also no coincidence that appreciations of Moorcock on the occasion of his sixtieth birthday came from such diverse sources as Peter Ackroyd, Brian Aldiss, Jonathan Carroll, David Britton, Andrew Dworkin, William Gibson, and Iain Sinclair. Carroll's appraisal of Moorcock represents a common sentiment among many from his generation: "If there were a Mount Rushmore for writers, he'd be on it. I would kill to have written some of the books he's written."Promising younger writers also continue to be influenced by Moorcock, including K. J. Bishop, China Mieville, and Rhys Hughes. Hughes, in particular, points to Moorcock's protean talent as to why the man has been so influential, and says it in a way I can't better:I guess the most important things I admire about his work are its broad scale, vast range, technical invention, its generosity, its refusal to market or expound a political or religious system, its rare willingness to accept humans as they are (saturated with contradictions and paradoxes), its love of life as it is, coupled with a blistering social and philosophical conscience, its energy and drive, its wit and color and richness.But perhaps the observation most relevant to Wizardry & Wild Romance occurs in Supernatural Fiction Writers: Contemporary Fantasy & Horror, edited by Richard Bleiler: "While many of his contemporaries seem intent on narrowing down the outside world to fit their opinions and desires, [Moorcock] prefers to expand himself in an attempt to fill the world."Wizardry & Wild Romance represents one of Moorcock's expeditions to expand the world, and readers' understanding of it. As with all of Moorcock's efforts, it is an act of generosity. Wizardry rewards, as they say, repeated re-reading. Monkey Brain Books should be commended for bringing it back into print. And you should acquire enough copies to send to anyone you know who cares about fantasy, epic or otherwise.