Moorcock and Entropy and Pynchon and Carvill

[Great Quail]

John, I always value, admire, and respect your opinions, but sometimes your
tone evokes the image a professorial lioness protecting her cubs from
imaginary threats! While I appreciate that you believe that genre fiction
and comic books cannot occupy the same artistic and critical plane as
novels, your use of quotation marks around words like "shared" and your
overall tone during this discussion radiate a certain level of
suspicion...one might even say, why, *paranoia.* What barbarians are at your
gates, Brother Carvill?

> Moorcock says he and his cohorts 'shared' Pynchon's appreciation of entropy as
> metaphor, again this is ambiguous - did they share it before they'd read the
> story, in which case they were on to it before Pynchon (had published it)?

Moorcock is one of my favorite "genre" writers, and I have read almost
everything he has written. Trust me -- he did not steal the idea of
entropy-as-a-theme from Pynchon! Moorcock is *obsessed* by the idea of chaos
vs. order, and uses the notion of "chaos" in quite different ways than
Pynchon. And by that I mean, usually, much less subtle. Or in academic
terms, considerable more...reified. (Or perhaps "deified" would be most
appropriate, with respect to Lord Arioch!)

I also know a bit about the man, and he is frighteningly honest, caring, and
generally uses his clout to help out younger writers. He's "one of the good
guys," so to speak, and if his essays come across as pissy or wounded at
times, it's just a reflection of life in the genre ghetto. You get that a
lot from science fiction and fantasy writers, who tend to (justifiably) wave
Kafka and Borges around as they rail at the very establishment they
(somewhat less-than-secretly) long to be a part of.

Also -- I am currently re-reading "Against the Day," and it really does
remind me of Moorcock at times. And not just the airships and sandships and
constantly shifting alliances and mythical cities and time-travelers; but
the sex, too. Cyprian is a very Moorcockian character, a bit Jerry
Cornelius/Jherek Carnelian, and the rampant, fluid bisexuality present among
the mathematicians and spies is very reminiscent of Moorcock's work,
particularly "The Cornelius Chronicles" and the "Dancers at the End of Time"
series. (Moorcock is credited with having introduced a more vibrant sexual
palette to science fiction and fantasy -- part of the largely-British "New
Wave" of the sixties.)

To be clear, I am not saying that Pynchon lifted from Moorcock -- but I
would be shocked if TRP had never read him. Nor am I saying that "The
Cornelius Chronicles" are on the same literary plane as "Against the Day." I
am merely comparing similar ideas....

--Quail