Modem Times 2.0 - Michael Moorcock [43]
I don’t know. Americans seem to place a higher value on politesse than the British. We’re far more savage toward public figures. This is odd since Free Speech isn’t in our Bill of Rights.
I always have found it strange that Americans have to signal irony or humour in general by adding “joke” at the end of whatever they’ve said. Or by signalling quote marks. I’ve found I have to do it too sometimes or people take what I’ve said seriously. This spelling out of an ironic or sarcastic remark doesn’t happen in England or France.
What do you read for fun?
Sexton Blake “story papers” (equivalent of dime novels) and others from between the wars. P. G. Wodehouse and a whole bunch of Edwardian comic/realist writers like Zangwill, Pett Ridge, Barry Paine, F. Anstey, Jerome K. Jerome. Scott, Q, Stevenson.
Do you read or write poetry?
Yes. Most of the poetry in my fiction, though, is parody (as in “Ernest Wheldrake,” Swinburne’s pseudonym under which he attacked his own work, as “Colvin” attacked mine). Otherwise I’m a crap poet.
You have written series novels, standalones, and short stories. What do you think is the distinction between short story writers and novelists?
Do you want me to be facetious? I suspect short story writers are temperamentally less patient than novelists.
Do you ever outline? Do you work from plot or character?
Not an outline as such, though I had to do one for the BBC when writing the Doctor Who novel they commissioned. I make extensive notes and then hardly ever refer to them. I tend to work from character, even with my fantasy novels. Writing Doctor Who was awkward in this respect since there’s only so much you can do to work up his character.
Have you ever written a conventional screenplay? Do you like the form? (I do.)
I wrote one for The Land That Time Forgot and rewrote The Final Programme, and I’ve written a few that were never made. Usually I don’t enjoy working with directors, though.
I’m used to doing a story and then standing or falling by it, whereas I get frustrated when I finish a job and someone comes along to tell me it’s not quite right (“It’s wonderful, Michael. There are just a few changes we thought of …”) My theory is that having to work this way didn’t help Fitzgerald or Faulkner stay (or even get) on the wagon. I’d be a drunk in similar circumstances.
The money’s good but there’s a reason for that.
Your narratives are known for their velocity. Does this mean they are speedy to write as well?
I used to feel, as a journalist, that over three days on a book was uneconomical, so all my fantasies took three days to write. I’d support myself with journalism. Behold the Man took five days. The Final Programme took ten. The longest it took me to write a book before Byzantium Endures was six weeks (Gloriana). Byzantium took six months.
These days it can take maybe a month for a first draft of a fantasy, with about two weeks for revision. Until Byzantium I rarely did more than one draft.
You describe yourself as an anarchist rather than a Marxist. What does this mean politically? Personally? Artistically?
It’s a philosophical/moral position from which I can easily make quick decisions of pretty much every kind. My anarchism informs my pro-feminism, for instance.
I happen to believe as a writer that words are action and that we have to be able to stand by our actions and accept any consequences of our actions.
Therefore if someone tells me they have been, for example, raped by someone claiming to have been encouraged by my work, I feel I have to examine that work to see if it can’t be changed.
If someone tells me they hate or are dissatisfied by a book of mine, I tend to send them their money back.
I modified the Cornelius books as I went along because too many young men were poncing about thinking it was cool to pose around being “amoral.” Like many writers attracted to SF, I’m intensely moralistic.
What has living in the United States brought to your work as an artist?
A little more understanding of a country which is often baffling to