John C. Wright's Journal

So I am reading a description by a well-read science fiction bigwig about Michael Moorcock’s early work, COUNT BRASS. It is a series I remember reading and liking as a youth; I don’t know what I’d think of it today. I do admire how the ‘Eternal Champion’ motif allows the author to tell and retell the same stories in slightly different versions over again–the idea of a Multiverse is simply sublime.

The writer is giving a sum-up of JEWEL IN THE SKULL, and complimenting (and rightly so, in my opinion) the ease and economy of the writing. But then I stumble across this line:

Brilliant? What, treason? Contempt for one’s fathers? Spitting in one’s own face?

(Besides, didn’t Orwell in 1948 cast his own country as an evil empire? Didn’t Chesterton in 1904? Didn’t Swift in 1726?) 

I would not comment on this, except that I have seen it before, elsewhere, many times: a spontaneous burst of admiration and enthusiasm for what, at first glance, would seem to be the rather unnatural sentiment of hating one’s own. I think of it as a phenomena related to the gushing love that surrounded critical attention of V FOR VENDETTA; it is always somewhat unearthly, like seeing your own people stand up and boo when our team wins an unexpected victory over the Russians at the Winter Olympics.

Why in the world would what seems (to me, at least) to be trite moral retardation be lauded with the appellation of intellectual accomplishment? Brilliant, really? Like you have to be Einstein to mock your own? And all this time I thought that ‘biting the hand that feeds you’ was the by-word for being as stupid as a chicken.

Someone explain the philosophy or psychology of it to me. I really don’t get it.

This is from an interview Tangent Magazine held with Leigh Brackett (you know, NORTHWEST SMITH, EMPIRE STRIKES BACK, and some non-SF flick called THE BIG SLEEP) and Edmond World-Wrecker Hamilton (my idol). It touches on a point I’ve noticed before.

Those of you unfamiliar with the thoughtful and elegant pen of  are invited to correct the defect:

Ad effigiem
The strawman fallacy in Utopian fiction
Of all the habitual fallacies and prejudices that have poisoned the wells of reason in our time, none, perhaps, has been so destructive as what Owen Barfield christened ‘chronological snobbery’.

Moorcock, Saruman, and the Dragon’s Tail
A second look at ‘Wit and Humour in Fantasy’
I have before me an essay of Moorcock’s, ostensibly an argument for the natural and necessary alliance between humour and fantasy. But he makes his argument very badly, because his real purpose is to attack his arch-enemy, Tolkien.

The Problem of Being Susan
Religious experience and the will to disbelieve
In comments on R.J. Anderson’s essay ‘The Problem of Susan’, several people expressed their frank disbelief that Susan Pevensie could ever forget her time in Narnia to the point of thinking it had all been a silly childhood game. Actually this is the most grimly plausible of the suppositions behind Lewis’s treatment of Susan in The Last Battle.

The latest column from my lovely and talented wife, Mrs. John Wright:

http://arhyalon.livejournal.com/111904.html

I see I am mentioned in the opening paragraph.

" What is the number one thing that people skip? (Come on, admit it, you probably skip stuff, too…unless the “you” in question happens to be my husband, who probably never skips anything.)"

She is correct. I cannot imagine reading a book and skipping any of the paragraphs. It would seem to be an insult to the writer, if not a disservice to yourself, to do so. If the book bores you, put it back on the shelf. I cannot tell if my wife is more patient than I am, since she is willing to keep reading a book that bores her, or more impatient, since she is willing to skip paragraphs and chapters that might be crucial.

Maybe there is more boring description in books of the type she reads (WAR AND PEACE by Tolstoy or  GONE WITH THE WIND by Margaret Mitchel) than in the books of the type I read
(THE VORTEX BLASTER by E.E. ‘Doc’ Smith or THE COMET KINGS by  Edmond ‘World-Wrecker’ Hamilton or THE SHADOW LAUGHS! by Maxwell Grant or TOM SWIFT AND HIS TRIPHIBIAN ATOMICAR by Victor Appleton II).

I think it is clear that science fiction is more intellectually evolved that there mere romance novels my wife reads, and perhaps therefore attracts a higher caliber of writing.

Now, if you will excuse me, I have to return to my own very original and highly artistic science ficiton masterpeice I am writing, AMAZON GLADIATOR SLAVE-GIRL OF MARS VERSUS SPACE-DRACULA. She is writing some sort of sequelto to a guy named Shakespore or  Dainte or something, or some other hack writer I never heard of. Jeesh.

One thing I like about being Christian is that I find a greatly expanded scope to who is with me. I have more brothers and neighbors than I once did. Allies turn up in unexpected places, such as in jail in Birmingham.

http://www.africa.upenn.edu/Articles_Gen/Letter_Birmingham.html

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