Now fvck off and cover something important, you tw@ts.

[alexsarll]

The John Moore concert tonight begins at seven. Does anyone attending same have any plans for the period between End:Work and then?

"Like many people I sometimes had to protect myself at school, and I did it partly through snobbery," explains [Christopher] Ricks. "And that included thinking that I must be the only person at school who was reading Paradise Lost for pleasure. But it really was the most magnificent science fiction and much better than any of the comics I was reading."
I know they weren't as good back then, but it is precisely in comparison to comics that I think Milton looks worst; they show that he simply doesn't understand how to write an omnipotent character. Mark Millar's JLA: Paradise Lost outclasses all but a few fine, isolated passages of the original.

A few days ago kgillen linked to an excellent, albeit very long, Alan Moore interview, largely about the craft of writing. It has taken me this long to read it. As ever, Moore expresses brilliantly and succinctly several notions which have been lurking, vague and inchoate, on the peripheries of my mind. And which partly explain why, this journal aside, I do so little writing.
"If you think there's a huge amount of difference between you and Paul Joseph Goebbels, you're kidding yourself. Any form of art is propaganda. It is propaganda for a state of mind rather than a nation-state but it is propaganda nonetheless, and it's best if you accept that and understand what you're doing and be honest about it: you are trying to change the mind of your target audience. You are trying to change their perceptions, you are trying to stop them from seeing things how they see things and start them seeing things the way you see things."
"Magic and language are practically the same thing, they would at least have been regarded as such in our distant past. I think it is wisest and safest to treat them as if they are the same thing. This stuff that you are dealing with - words, language, writing - this is dangerous, it is magical, treat it as if it was radioactive. Don't doubt that for a moment. As far as I know, the last figures I heard quoted, nine out of every ten writers will have mental problems at some point during their life. Sixty percent of that ninety percent - which I think works out at roughly fifty percent of all writers - will have their lives altered and affected - seriously affected - by those mental problems."

Comments

[violentbec.livejournal.com]

i have to think on that first quote for a while before replying because i couldn't disagree more....

[barrysarll.livejournal.com]

The Ricks, or the first Alan Moore quote?
He explains it in more detail during the interview, but I think he's right that it's a difference of degree rather than a qualitative difference. I mean, I hate anything that reads like a polemic - but that's generally because if it reads like a polemic, it means it's too clumsy.

[violentbec.livejournal.com]

first alan moore.
i have to think properly though and formulate a real response - ie not a typical bec dashed out mispelt half the words missing comment because it's really made me think about *why* i write. verah interesting...

[atommickbrane.livejournal.com]

I have exactly ZERO idea of any Old Street venues, but if you suggest an area closer to my knowledge I might be able to suggest a boozer (I have no plans either, can you tell).

Craft of writing - dear god. I just churned out an EXECREABLE few words on Vic Godard for the Top 100 and I appall myself. I can write critically very well, but when it comes to writing positively about something I like, I am DIRE DIRE DIRE. Gosh, I bet Marcello LOVES the last part of Alan Moore's paragraph though. You don't know Marcello, do you. Good fer yew...

[barrysarll.livejournal.com]

I do not.
Default Old Street Not-Too-W@nk Pub is The Reliance, on Old Street itself, which is fairly close to the Strongroom.

[atommickbrane.livejournal.com]

This one? I raise no objections. What time will you be there?

[barrysarll.livejournal.com]

630ish?

[atommickbrane.livejournal.com]

It's a plan.

[tintintin.livejournal.com]

For me, the brilliance of Paradise Lost is largely subtextual; the structure is superb, and the turn of phrase is occasionally sublime, but I really love the way that Milton has co-opted the classical Heroic Epic form, but perverted it so that Satan is the 'hero', described glowingly, yet his description can be bound with words and material comparisons. God, on the other hand, seems like a trapped fart in a lift, but that's the difficulty, as you say, in writing an omnipotent character.

And, unlike Mark Millar in all ways apart from metaphor, he was blind and had to dictate the lot! Imagine - (from memory) 10,000 or so lines of blank verse, all in iambic pentameter, all with lots of nice little linguistic tricks, and the blind old sod laid it all out in his head! Awe-inspiring.

Mind you, I've not read JLA: PL, so maybe I'm missing out.

[barrysarll.livejournal.com]

Borges was blind too, and I love him, so nobody's getting a free pass on that account.

Milton's OK so long as the camera's on Lucifer, but the second Jehovah hoves into view, everything turns to sh1t. This is especially bad in whichever book it is where he gives some bullsh1t explanation for his plans, only to have the choirs of angels go into interminable paroxysms of fanboy gushing at how fvcking wonderful he is.
As for the bit in Eden where the angel explains metaphysics to Adam and Eve - that's just philosophical product placement.

[tintintin.livejournal.com]

Well, old Milton was writing biblical and English propaganda, plain and simple. I like Blake's assertion that Milton was actually a subconscious Satanist.

[barrysarll.livejournal.com]

Well, that's it - as I said to Bec above, I hate anything that comes across too polemical, even if I agree with its agenda (eg The West Wing). So when I *don't*, I totally bloody loathe it.

I think Blake was too soft on Milton. Milton's another Lee, or Kirby, or Terry Nation - he may have brought a new toybox along, but his own efforts with it weren't up to much.

[euphoricstimuli.livejournal.com]

I havent read a lot of paradise lost,but isnt it like gibbons 'decline & fall' with that? So many writers about that time were peddling pagan/ anti-christian stuff, but constantly having to put stuff in to make it look christian friendly so they didnt get into too much trouble?
I always ignore that sort of thing in tems of the message presented/plot, & laugh at it a lot.

[barrysarll.livejournal.com]

Gibbon's about a century later than Milton, and where he Gibbon does make nods to Christian sensibilities, it's always insultingly obvious that they're insincere.
Milton, on the other hand, was a loyal Puritan drone.

[euphoricstimuli.livejournal.com]

fair enough, I just wondered, because after the galileo herasy thing, a load of anti christian thinkers suddenly went 'oh shit, we thought the world was too grown up for this' & changed their work to fit with the cencers. descartes being the obvious one, & the after effects of that did last for a century or so.Its hard to tell with that period.

[barrysarll.livejournal.com]

Leibniz was the worst. Fvcking sell-out.

[euphoricstimuli.livejournal.com]

dont think Ive read any leibniz...?

[barrysarll.livejournal.com]

There's a chapter about him in Bertrand Russell's History of Western Philosophy. His unpublished work was way ahead of its time. His published work was the basis for Dr Pangloss.

[euphoricstimuli.livejournal.com]

meh, that means digging book out from box at the bottom of wardrobe then.
oh well, fun project for tomorrow :)

[missfrost.livejournal.com]

I'm just trying to find out ir I am meeting The Kids early on this evening. If not I may see you in the Reliance.