Day 1 (DDRD 1,473) November 13, 2021
It's 7 am, and I don't know where my DDR is. Is it Alan Moore's Voice of the Fire? Neal Stephenson's 3 (possibly 4) volume The Baroque Cycle? The Jonathan Edwards book? The short history of Ukraine? The H.G. Wells thing? Still others.... Well, it's not going to be Ulysses, since I haven't been able to find my copy. (Surely I wouldn't have sold it, right?) Oh...what about The Iliad? Reading László Krasznahorkai's Chasing Homer did put me in the mood for another run at The Odyssey, and you can't do that without reading The Iliad first. And of course, I've never read The Aeneid, and there is that lovely translation by Daniel Day-Lewis's dad somewhere on one of my shelves....
I really need to start planning ahead.
Oh, speaking of Voice of the Fire, whilst wandering around The Internets yesterday I found out that a 25th Anniversary Edition of Alan Moore's first novel is coming out February 28th, 2022. (I found three different release dates, but this is the one that's given on the Thrift Books website...and that's the place to buy it. For one thing, its not Amazon. For another, it's actually a few cents cheaper than Amazon...and shipping is free because that's the way they do it at Thrift. They also give you a free book once you've bought a couple. This really should be your default setting for books...especially used ones, but we're talking brand spanking new this time around. Unless your default setting is Better Worlds Books, which is also a lovely place.
All of which reminds me, for no logical reason, that arriving sometime today (God Willing & TCDR) is Isaac Asimov's In the Beginning (from Better World Books)--his examination of and commentary on the first eleven chapters of Genesis. I would really like that to be my next Daily Devotional Reading. Maybe I'll just hold off until the afternoon and see if it shows up.
Hmmm.
HOWEVer...the mail service hasn't been all that trustworthy of late, and I've found that doing my Daily Devotional Reading as early in the morning as possible is usually the best thing for me. Once the day begins, the hours slop down the hill like a ferocious mudslide.
So I picked up
and had a look at it. My copy (Indigo, 1997) is not in great shape. In fact, it looks like if it's not read gently (don't open it too wide, turn pages carefully) that pages will fall out. As far as I can tell, this was the second edition of the book--following the initial publication in 1996 by Victor Gollancz. I was surprised to see that the book had gone through quite a few other editions: 22 of them if you count all of the foreign editions plus the forthcoming 25th Anniversary Edition. (18 without the foreigners.) Also interesting that all 4 of the foreign editions were published in Barcelona, Spain. One of the English editions comes via Subterranean Press, and is a limited edition, signed by Alan Moore, with a cover by Dave McKean. Be still my beating heart. It's sold out from Subterranean Press itself, but you can get a brand new copy on eBay for a mere $350. Plus shipping & handling. Which is why you should probably buy Subterranean Press books as soon as they come out. I mean, that's better than blue chip stocks.
Anyway...although Amazon says this book is the #1,229,226 seller in Books, it must have done a lot better than pretty okay to warrant that kind of publishing history.
The first 8 pages of the book are
and then the first chapter of the novel begins on Page 9. So pretty light on the "reading" there. But (1) Alan Moore counted them as pages and (2) there are a total of 320 pages, which is nicely divisible by 20, so I set my sights on reading the first 20 pages as numbered and started rowing.
It was not easy work.
This is the chapter written from the Stone Age Man's point of view (4,000 BC), and Mr. Moore decided to put us into the narrator's head more firmly by limiting his vocabulary to a couple of hundred words (or so...I remember he actually named the number in an interview, but I can't remember it and can't find the interview, so I'm estimating). It makes for difficult reading...but not nearly so difficult as the "sub-Joycean" chapter of Jerusalem, so there's that.
And by the way, some folks not only did annotations for this book, but also "translated" this first chapter into modern English. If either of those sound like things that would be useful or fun, then go HERE and/or HERE.
As for me...I felt that I followed most of what Stoney had to say, so I didn't go for the annotations or translation. Might do so at some point. Probably not.
At any rate...it looks like we're off for a 16 day journey, doesn't it?
It could be worse. It could be raining.
⛈
P.S. So guess what? The Post Office came through after all.
But it was a long day (first ballet since 2019...Swan Lake), and I didn't even get home until 5:30...and besides, the die is cast, and I'm going to go ahead and ride this Alan Moore wave for the next couple of weeks. Then we'll see about The Good Doctor. Assuming I don't polish it off on the side before then.
Day 2 (DDRD 1,474) November 14, 2021
Read to page 42. I was thinking that I'd like to finish off this "HOB'S HOG" chapter, but there are still 14 pages, and I don't think I have it in me to push through all of them. It's not easy going. Moore's technique here is effective, for sure, in placing you in the mind of The Other, but that doesn't make for fun reading. Fortunately I know that after this chapter the diction and syntax will shift appreciably, plus we move forward 1,500 years, so sometime tomorrow the going should be easier.
As for this chapter...well. Stoney wanders around, meets a girl. That's really about it.
You know, for a moment I was thinking that I needed to buy that 25th Anniversary Edition, but now that I'm 40 (-ish) pages in, I'm thinking I probably don't need it after all.
Day 3 (DDRD 1,475) November 15, 2021
Read to page 60, so out of "HOB'S HOG." And glad to be out, although it wasn't all that difficult, really. Plus there was a bit of weird sex, which always makes things interesting. The second chapter gets off to a pretty disturbing start, though, as (so far as I can tell) a guy (not sure it's a guy, but the main narrator) murders a woman, seemingly for no reason. Unless it's because he wanted her beads and clothes. And since he's wearing her clothes afterwards, I'm not sure it is a man. But since we had a boy pretending to be a girl in "HOB'S HOG," wearing a woman's clothing doesn't preclude masculinity here.
Actually felt like reading on a bit just to let things straighten out (hopefully), but morning duties call. Maybe later?
Day 4 (DDRD 1,476) November 16, 2021
Read to page 100...and it was pretty effortless. Now that I'm past that first hard chapter, I'm thinking that I might be able / want to do more than twenty pages a day. In addition to being easier in terms of diction and syntax, this chapter also is moving beyond the purely physical realm. The Not A Guy After All (did I assume the she was he because of the murder?) is dealing with some pretty big questions ...the biggest, actually: the existence of God, the cruelty which seems to negate that possibility, the purpose of life, the possibility of life after death. So yes, I am more than game for this. Also the very real possibility that the old man (Hob's successor as voice of the fire, it seems) feels what happens to the "willage" in his body...when there's a fire he has a burn on his chest, etc. Which is pretty interesting, isn't it? So yeah, I can see this going to more than twenty pages a day.
Day 5 (DDRD 1,477) November 17, 2021
Read to page 161...which is (1) a Big Reading Day of 60 pages & (2) past the halfway point of the novel. Also means I finished Chapters 3, 4 & 5 today. 3 & 4 were quite interesting and compelling. 5 was confusing, as the narrator seemed to be at least two different people in one, and that made no sense to me. Had time for the extra reading because my babysitting gig was on hold while baby had a doctor's appointment, then napped. Did some of the reading in the park, and...
Mmm-hmm.
Day 6 (DDRD 1,478) November 18, 2021
Read to page 201.
The "Limping to Jerusalem" chapter had such a terrible and unpleasant narrator--bitter and nasty man who was formerly a knight in the crusades, but who did not disdain rape, pedophilia, and other blasphemies. This chapter also had brief references to the first chapter and the fifth, linking them to the narrator of this chapter via a dream. (About a leg. All three narrators had leg problems.) I was tempted to stop for the day here, so as to digest the bitterness of the speaker, but the next chapter was titled "Confessions of a Mask," and I felt compelled to begin it in honor of Yukio.
Afterthought: so far as I can tell, this chapter had nothing to do with Mr. Mishima. But it was a very good chapter...one of if not THE best, actually.
Also, clearly the "November" noted yesterday was not an anomaly...
...(from different chapters) which makes me wonder if it's been November in every chapter. Of course, Stoney wouldn't know November from a torus, but my guess is that if I went back to the other chapters (not going to, so it's yours if you want it) that I'd find that it was November in all of them. Which is a kind of interesting coincidence, in that I just happened to finish Jerusalem and decide to begin Voice of the Fire in November, and will finish reading it in November as well. Just another meaningless coincidence, I know, but still....
P.S. Or I could have just checked with Wikipedia. Check this out: "The narratives take place around Moore’s hometown of Northampton, England, during the month of November, and span several millennia – from 4000 B.C. to the present day.
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voice_of_the_Fire)
Those Wikans really DO know everything, don't they? Glad I didn't go back on my own November hunt.
Speaking of chapters...
1 "Hob's Hog" 49 pages5 "November Saints" 17 pages 774 years since last chapter
Day 7 (DDRD 1,479) November 19, 2021
Read to page 233.
Not too impressed with "Angel Language." For one thing, the Muderous Cannibal Women shtick seemed pretty tired to me. For another thing, the story seemed separate from the rest of the book —so separate that I began to think of this book as a collection of short stories, rather than a novel. And from that perspective, I saw that there was very little connection between the 8 stories that I've read so far. I find that to be a disappointing thought.
Went back and read the next chapter, "Partners in Knitting," which took me to page 250. This chapter was a little better than "Angel Language," but not by much. Sex and witches, not much of any connection to any of the previous stories.
So now I've a mere 70 pages remaining, and I'm thinking that will be two days' worth of reading. So definitely time to think about What Comes Next. Part of me thinks it's time to get away from fiction, back to some history or philosophy. In fact, yesterday I happened to catch sight of Being and Nothingness on my bookshelf, and I thought, "Now there's a book that kicked my ass HARD back in the day, and I never did get back to it." But I'm also thinking that The Baroque Cycle would be very nice...and it's Kind-a historical, right? But I have both of them close to hand...and a dozen other things besides...so I guess there's no worry. I'm also about 1/4th of the way through Stephen King's latest book, Billy Summers, and just kind of marveling at how the pages fall away almost effortlessly. Say what you will about Mr. King, but I'll bet that if you give him a hundred pages you will finish any one of his books. (Probably less than a hundred, actually.)
Day 8 (DDRD 1,480) November 20, 2021
Read to page 291, so knocked back two chapters this morning-- "The Sun Looks Pale Upon the Wall" & "I Travel in Suspenders." Neither was very pleasant. The former featured poet John Clare, who also made an appearance in Jerusalem. Here we see him as a man who is deeply disturbed...and it's implied that he has sex with a ten year old girl when he is fourteen. The latter of these chapters featured a traveling salesman who also has sex with a young girl...this one a fourteen year old...and gets her pregnant. He then goes on to recount his various affairs with women, including a couple of marriages, and then, for reasons which were not clear to me, he murders a man. By knocking him out and then burning him alive in his car. So, yes, not a pleasant morning's reading.
One chapter to go...a mere 29 pages. So easy work for tomorrow, assuming I don't just go ahead and do it today. To be honest, I'm a little tired of Alan Moore at this point. In fact, I don't know if I'm going to be able to finish The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen: Century, as I'm just bored with it. So perhaps time to bit a fond adieu for now. His next book...Brighter Than You Think: 10 Short Works by Alan Moore: With Critical Essays by Marc Sobel is due out on January 3, 2017, so maybe I'll be up for that when it comes around... but you know, only if I can get it from the library. I don't have it in me to put down any money for it.
Which is not to say that I'm sorry to have read Jerusalem and Voice of the Fire...but I've had enough to last me awhile, y'know? There's just too much reveling in the darker parts of human nature and behavior, and not nearly enough of the brighter parts.
ADDENDUM: Well, apparently I was misinformed. Turns out that Brighter Than You Think is not a new book at all...in fact, it was first published five years ago. And the LFPL actually has a copy...though only one, and it's one of those Remote Shelving items, so obviously it wasn't a high demand item. I went ahead and put in a request for it, but mostly so I wouldn't forget about it. I'm actually not planning on reading it right away...so I'll probably have to renew it a few times. I'm not worried that somebody else will be requesting it. Unless YOU do, of course. In which case I'll gladly turn it over to you and take my turn later on.
Day 9 (DDRD 1,481) November 21, 2021
Read to page 320, which means that this is the end, beautiful friend. All in all, I'm not sure that it was worth doing, and I find myself really wanting to read something more substantial...and enervating, and uplifting...starting tomorrow. But to be honest, I'm not sure what that is. But for some reason I'm starting to think it might be another go at Ayn Rand's The Fountainhead. Which I have already read. And saw the movie as well. And don't seem to own a copy of. But that can be remedied right quick.
Here's a bit from the final chapter of Voice of the Fire which kind of (unintentionally, of course) sums up what I think is wrong with it:
"One great advantage that The Pilgrim's Progress as a narrative enjoys over the current work is in its structure, with the pilgrimage progressing to a necessary ending in redemption. Here, however, there is no such tidy resolution within reach. The territory is the same, but here we have no single pilgrim save perhaps the author, or the reader, and only uncertain progress. While redemption's not out of the question, it's an outside chance at best. It's hardly been a major theme thus far." (296)
I need something more along the lines of The Pilgrim's Progress, I'd say. And by the way...what fucking hubris to compare your work to that of John Bunyan. I'd hasten to add that Bunyan's work enjoys MANY fucking advantages over Voice of the Fire. I love Alan Moore pretty dearly, but for fuck's sake, have some perspective here.
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