Someone at Warner Books better have lost his or her job over that, along with three fingers from his or her dominant hand.
Tuesday, August 14, 2007
Incompetence such as this deserves its own post
This morning I finished reading the splendid (though NOT suitable for newcomers to the man's work) novel "The White Wolf's Son" by Michael Moorcock. The only thing worth mentioning here about this book is an amazing typographical error, without doubt the most egregious such mistake I've ever seen in a professionally published document. Some schmuck apparently conducted a "find/replace" operation on the manuscript to change "lt." to "Lieutenant" -- and then no one ever so much as glanced at the text before sending it off to the printer. In this manner conditions were created under which the reader may be treated to: "Here is one of our favorite subjects, who came to warn us of your revoLieutenant His name is Lord Olin Desleur"; "When he did smile, I responded almost with a joLieutenant I was getting used to sinister threats in ordinary gestures"; and "It was difficuLieutenant I think we shall be safe for long enough."
Someone at Warner Books better have lost his or her job over that, along with three fingers from his or her dominant hand.
Someone at Warner Books better have lost his or her job over that, along with three fingers from his or her dominant hand.
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2 comments:
Wow, that is egregious. Was it an Advanced Reader's Copy that you were reading, or had this actually (I dread to think) made it all the way to the final published version? Sigh...
As for Michael Moorcock, he is not an author I know. What of his work would you deem MOST suitable for newcomers?
No, that's the point: it was the first edition American hardcover, published in 2005 by Warner Books. Pathetic.
As for Moorcock, his work can be divided pretty cleanly into two categories: his genre work (usually heroic fantasy/science fiction) and his "literary" work.
Moorcock's a fascinating figure. In the 60s, when he was editing the lit mag New Worlds, he used to churn out incredibly popular pulp fantasy novels, apparently single-handedly reviving the sword-and-sorcery tradition. He used the funds from these books to finance the magazine and his and other writers' vanguard literary work.
Over time, the boundaries between Moorcock's "literary" and "genre" work have weakened considerably, to the point where since the '80s his "genre" work has been every bit as complex and fascinating as his "literary" stuff. These days the clearest distinction between the former and the latter resides in their differing treatments of Moorcock's most famous innovation, the "multiverse". That is: every single one of his books is diegetically interconnected with all the others. Characters from radically different milieux wind up interacting (often through interdimensional travel). Even the "literary" books all contain some sort of reference to some other Moorcock book, to tie them into the whole, but it's the "genre" books that rely on the reader's knowledge of what has gone before. The book in question with the horrendous typo, for instance, is the third of a trilogy in which, off the top of my head, I'd say about 40 previous books are referenced -- about 20 of which are in various ways important to understanding what's going on.
It's no wonder that, despite louder and louder admiration from critics and fellow genre writers, Moorcock's work is selling less and less as time goes by. It's sort of the same problem faced by continuity-heavy superhero comic books: if only the faithful can understand the latest installment, you're not likely to win many new converts. Add to that the fact that many of the "founding texts" for the multiverse include those extremely pulpy, hurriedly composed genre novels from back when Moorcock was just trying to pay the bills -- books that are inferior in quality to the newer work but whose characters and plot points now provide crucial reference points.
That said, much of the literary work is superb, and it generally does not require one to have done one's homework, so to speak. "Mother London," which was shortlisted for the Whitbread, is considered his masterpiece, although in keeping with my trend of reading lots of a writer's work before approaching his or her acknowledged best, I have not read it. (It's also now out of print in the U.S.) "Gloriana" is a wicked satire about a queen who has everything her heart desires, except one thing: she can't achieve orgasm. And his ostentatiously experimental "The Cornelius Quartet" is also a great place to start; one of the four novels it includes, "The Condition of Muzak," won the Guardian prize in 1977. (A caveat about the quartet: its first novel is by far the least interesting, so don't stop there if you're underwhelmed by it.)
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