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Voice Of The Fire
There's no question about it - this book is formidable. It is formidable in its complexity, formidable in the connective leaps it expects you to make between stories and eras, and most of all, it can be formidable in its prose. Before I even read Voice Of The Fire, I'd heard that the first chapter of the book is enough to put many casual readers off, and that's not far wrong. The story of a cave-boy called Hob -- confused, immature, possibly mentally deficient, and alone in a world of freedom, love, and, potentially, disaster -- is written in intentionally limited language that the less sharp members of mankind might be imagined to use in 4000 BC. It's not an easy read; this segment is a struggle to decode at times, but the rewards are significant, because the emotions are powerful, and the story strong.
The novel's twelve stories are woven together, but only loosely. Sometimes consecutive stories interact with each other by way of common locations, characters, or themes, as historical figures tell their stories in the first-person, one by one, from the aforementioned Hob to an inevitable conclusion in the present day. But generally, the stories don't actually interact. Some of the most memorable tales, such as the first-person tale of a severed head on a pike circa 1607, or the treacherous dealings of a lecherous court judge from centuries past, have absolutely nothing in common except for the general geographical location. But they share exceptional writing, a self-contained message, and an odd sense of foreboding hovering over the entire proceedings, like someone or something is watching over every single sin committed.
And, let it be said, there are a surfeit of sins -- violence, and senseless murder, and lust, and witchcraft, and plenty left over. But that's how real history is -- bloody. Or, at least, that's how Moore wants us to believe history is, and there's clearly been significant research into many of the real-life historical figures whose lives are embroidered and colorized in Voice of the Fire. There's no doubt that some passages are tricky to digest, particularly those with odd language such as 'The Sun Looks Pale Upon The Wall,' the haunting 1841-set meanderings of another poor citizen who's not quite there. However, if you can wade through the occasional story featuring difficult prose, dense layout and strange language, the rewards can be significant. Plus, the gorgeous new full-page color illustrations/photos, courtesy Jose Villarrubia, add a little visceral flavor to the mix no matter how dense the prose.
Comparisons in terms of genre or content are tricky, though, among the stories that make up this book. What Moore definitely shares with the writer of the introduction to this new version, Neil Gaiman, is a sense of myth, of half-remembered deities and supernatural forces existing in the real world, as Gaiman depicts in American Gods . But Moore's supernatural forces are much more shamanic, much darker, and largely less substantial, except for a truly scary vision unearthed from a medieval burial chamber.
As for Moore's previous work, in as much as Promethea is a set of musings on his faith in the mystical, Voice Of The Fire gives those mystical feelings a more sinister edge and spreads them out over centuries. And it might be said that From Hell contains some similar ideas about the mystical significance of geography. But Voice Of The Fire draws no easy comparison even to Moore's own work -- being in a different medium, and focusing on the place he's lived all his life, it's much more personal than much of his other material, almost as if the dark places of his home town's past are being passed down to him.
Moore spent five years writing this book, and even refers to that torturous stretch in the final chapter, which is written by him in the first-person, in which he ties his experiences of Northampton's history to the stories. A daring move, to be sure, and one that Moore himself admits puts him close to the edge, as he muses:
'There are some weak points on the borderlines of fact and fabrication, crossing where the veil between what is and what is not rends easily. ... Walk through the walls into the landscape of the words, become one more first-person character within the narrative's bizarre procession... Obviously, this is a course of action not without its dangers... always the risk of a surprise ending with the ticket to St. Andrew's Mental Hospital.'
But what is Voice Of The Fire really about? Well, the thirteenth character in the novel, and almost certainly the most important, is the town of Northampton itself, looming large over every single character's experience. This is something that Moore has dealt with before -- there's a moment in the massive, monochrome, mystical From Hell where there's an odd 'flash forward' moment - contemporary office buildings intruding on the goings-on of 19th Century London. The same idea of geography subsuming history is true for Voice Of The Fire -- that the people are not a permanent fixture; the location is the only sure thing. Time layers burial ground on murder site on shiny new office development until there's such an odd mixture of old, new, and indescribable that some kind of sinister magic is created.
[There's plenty more about Moore at the comprehensive Alan Moore Fan Site, and the Alan Moore Yahoo group is both knowledgeable and friendly.]
You can purchase Voice of the Fire from bn.com. Slashdot welcomes readers' book reviews -- to see your own review here, read the book review guidelines, then visit the submission page.
Can someone remind me what the (supposed) difference between graphic novels and comic books is again? I mean besides the age of the readers...
"Formidable" is an interesting way to describe prose. I'm not sure if I'd be willing to tackle something labeled as formidable (Joyce's Finnegan's Wake comes to mind). I guess from the review, I don't really get if the book is worth trudging through. What is its captivation?
Six Thousand Years?!?!?
Neal Stephenson, eat your heart out.
$7.95/mo, 200 GB disk, 2TBxfer, MySQL, PHP, RoR.
That publishing company is infringing on my Slashdot nic! Somebody get me a lawyer, ASAP!
Stop by my site where I write about ERP systems & more
"if you can wade through the occasional story featuring difficult prose"
Are you referring to the book or your review?
No man is an island, but Gary is a city in Indiana.
Alan Moore is a cinematic genius who doesn't care whos toes he steps on. From George Bush to Charlton Heston, Alan Moore shows them for what they are, bigoted, rich white men!
Oh wait, that's Michael Moore. My bad.
Alan Moore is probably best known as the writer of some of the best graphic novels of all time - Watchmen, From Hell, and The League Of Extraordinary Gentlemen, to name but three.
Finally. A review that doesn't assume we're all super sci-fi geeks and explains who the person is and why we should care about them.
This sounds a lot, at least on the surface, like Ernest Rutherfurd's London, a novel (in this case spanning 2000 years) that tracks the development of the eponymous city and a few families thereabouts. It's a good read, provided you don't have to finish it on a deadline.
This is the single greatest piece of literature I've read in recent years. The subtle interplay of the esoteric vs the prolific, the intertwining of melodic paradigms, the juggernaut of the plot had me in trepidations!
A+++! Highly recommended if you enjoy calibrating fiction that redefines genres even as it spans them.
I also like his comic books.
I don't need no instructions to know how to rock!!!!
Looks nice:
v oiceofthefire&page=1
http://www.topshelfcomix.com/preview.php?preview=
What does some city is GA have anything to do with comic books?
Post: Sigged, for your pleasure.
The first chapter, set around 6000 BC, is difficult to get into initially because of the unusual "voice" that Moore's narrator uses. Still, it's worth persisting, because the first chapter is the best of the bunch.
Most of the book is quite good, but the last chapter (written in Moore's own voice) is far, far too self-indulgent (and, frankly, uninteresting) to be worth reading.
It's a good book, but not in the same class as, say, Neil Gaiman's writing.
Honesty. Loyalty. Kindness. Laughter. Generosity. Magic!
[snip]
But what is Voice Of The Fire really about? Well, the thirteenth character in the novel, and almost certainly the most important, is the town of Northampton itself, looming large over every single character's experience. This is something that Moore has dealt with before
from the ooh-make-it-stop-oooh dept.
Read on for GillBates0's review:
There's no question about it - this site is formidable. It is formidable in its complexity, formidable in the connective leaps it expects you to make between stories and comments, and most of all, it can be formidable in its prose. Before I even read Slashdot, I'd heard that the first FP comment of the site is enough to put many casual readers off, and that's not far wrong. The rants of a typical Slashdotter -- confused, immature, possibly mentally deficient, and alone in a world of freedom, love, and, potentially, disaster -- is written in intentionally limited language that the less sharp members of mankind might be imagined to use in 2004. It's not an easy read; this segment is a struggle to decode at times, but the rewards are significant, because the emotions are powerful, and the group-think strong.
But what is Slashdot really about? Well, the anonymous character on the site, and almost certainly the most important, is Anonymous Coward itself, looming large over every single character's experience. This is something that CmdrTaco has dealt with before -- there's a moment in the massive, monochrome, mystical From Hell where there's an odd 'flash forward' moment - contemporary office buildings intruding on the goings-on of 19th Century London. The same idea of geography subsuming history is true for Voice Of AC.
Thanks for the applause *bow*
An Indian-American Hindu committed to non-violent thought/speech/action alarmed by the global explosion of radical Islam
- Supreme -- It's the disilation of everything "Superman", but with a distinctly self-aware narative and art.
- Top 10 -- Comics of done the multiverse thing to death, and it's the standard explanation for a world "just like ours", but with super-heroes. Moore speculates on what the extreme endpoint of this sort of fantasy story-telling is by describing a world where EVERYONE (and their pets) are supers. It then follows the pain that this causes for one particular metropolitan police dept.
- Tom Strong -- The 50s all over again. This is the sense-of-wonder storytelling you thought was dead.
- V for Vendetta -- Not to everyone's liking, but if you have never had anarchy as a political point of view explained to you, it suits as a starter. Don't try to take it as the ONLY viewpoint on anarchy however.
What he does best is re-interpret various aspects of the comics genre to write his own stories that feel new and interesting, even though you know all the players (in Watchmen, for example, he was simply pulling from golden age heroes that DC had just acquired rights for).Ellis does this same sort of thing in Authority and Planetary, and to a lesser extent in the non-super-heroic Transmetropolitan which is brilliant, and you should read it ASAP!
It's sure got 24 beat for time.
Can you imagine how screwed up Jack Bauer would be if he took that long to find a Presidential assassin/rogue nuclear device/killer virus? And can you imagine how torturous watching the scenes with his wife/daughter/girlfriend/whoever being inept and all girlie woud be if they lasted a few centuries each? You'd kill yourself before the next episode...
"Accept that some days you are the pigeon, and some days you are the statue." - David Brent, Wernham Hogg
Top Shelf Comix, if you prefer to not deal with B&N. They have signed copies too! http://www.topshelfcomix.com/
With the exception of fire and "smoke heavy with human fat" that's how I felt when I finally broke away with the (fear of) God I had been brought up with.
What a relief it was to accept that there is no good or evil - just us human beings doing fucked up things to each other while the universe really does not care. Then, the void breathed hard on my heart, turning its illusions to ice, shattering them and it felt good to be free.
I would say that comic is the medium. I personally will use the two terms as a reference to the format- namely I call a comic book the stapled pamphlet or floppy or whatever it wants to be called. Generally, telling the stories in serialized form. Hence, Watchmen # 1-12 are individually a comic books, but Watchmen is a graphic novel to me.
But comic book and graphic novel are basically the same thing, but comic book is so much a pejorative that the term is often avoided in polite company.
Coinciding with his fifitieth birthday, he's also said that he's retired.
And I'd like to pipe in with Promethea. Its not everyone's cup of tea, being an extended look into Moore magical theories, but its very interesting, and has one of the best artists (JH Williams) in the business who continually astounds me with what he does with layouts and illustration and style switching...
Namely, and very simplistically, catalogueing the very interesting things that happen in time in the space, and mapping out ideas like they're places.
I think the Moore comic that best illustrates it is Snakes and Ladders, with Eddie Campbell (always mention the artist!) which is a comic version of a performance piece he did. From Hell's more mystical bits (namely, the long carriage ride through london history) is another great example of it, again with Eddie Campbell.
Anyone with interest in the Alan Moore should read the verbose extended version of his Onionavclub interview, where I almost understood it.
For a long time there was a difference, mostly of format. Graphic novels tended to be the larger, more substantial tomes. Often original work not released in the more common "comic" format. Comic books were the floppy things that come out monthly or bi-monthly.
Today, between continual collecting of monthly comics into compilations and the like, the difference is so blurred that the terms are allmost interchangeable. Pity. It used to be a useful distinction.
Slashdot now says its political correct to call comic books graphical novels...What next, them making us call text adventures interactive fiction? Oh... Wait...
You missed the phrases "Stupid kids" and "By God, we LIKED it!" Also, you did not use the term "newfangled." You should have offered some highly restricted and uninteresting yet valid use for graphic novels^W^Wcomic books that indicates that the "traditional" format is more versatile, though more difficult. Your old-man rant is substandard. No cookie for you!
Can anyone confirm for me whether Alan Moore was Alec Trench in that great old 2000AD one-off in-joke?
:)
Alec Trench was the "frustrated unappreciated writer" who--IIRC- it was QUITE a while ago (prog 100 or thereabouts?)-- attempted to leap to his death with his typewriter chained round his neck and then headed off to seek his fortune and reward for true worth in America, silhouetted against the horizon in the last panel, shaking his fist at the unappreciative ingrates he was leaving behind. Beardy, wild-haired...
I really hope it was-- it'd make it a delightful double in-joke-- he's proved he was right!
--
Sal
Writings: saltation.blogspot.com
Wravings: go-blog-go.blogspot.com
Hah! I work in Northampton at the moment. It's a fairly unprepossessing little place. I'm tempted to seek out the book, just to see what there is about the town that I might be missing (it does seem to have slightly more than its fair share of peripatetic basket-cases, certainly...).
Experience is a hard school, but fools will learn no other.
" is written in intentionally limited language that the less sharp members of mankind might be imagined to use in 4000 BC. It's not an easy read; this segment is a struggle to decode at times, but the rewards are significant, because the emotions are powerful, and the story strong. "
hell I'm from Northampton, what's all this "*intentionally* limited lanaguage" crap? Language full stop is a minor miracle for us Northamptonians, so you boffins can fuck off and leave us alone.
You will forget this sig before you next see it
No, seriously. Consider the book Ulverton. It's a story about a village that spans centuries in a series of 12 chapters, each set in a different time, each connected to the others through various common elements, with each chapter having a different principal character who is the narrator. Ulverton was written in 1992 and is excellent if you can get hold of it.
Doesn't it make you feel good to know that our freedoms are protected by politicans, lawyers and journalists.
What a baseless, generic, self-indulgent crock. You're expressing a judgement based on labels and I strongly disagree.
Do you invalidate cinema and television in comparison with radio? Do you prefer reading scripts to attending plays?
The comic vernacular is no more monolithic than any visual medium. The level of quality follows Sturgeon's Law, much as every creative discipline tends to.
That means that there's a lot of crap (98 percent if I remember correctly) and some stunning, original, compelling fiction that can't be told as effectively in any other medium.
If you don't like comics, that's your choice. To condemn them for being less than prose fiction when they are simply different is naive, rather shallow and highly unimaginative.
Amusing.
Whoops! Too late.
A story expressed in simple text is not intrinsically superior to one expressed in another medium.
A painting is not automatically better than a sculpture because it has fewer dimensions. Mime is not automatically better than theatre because it has no words. A modern movie is not necessarily worse than a silent movie because it provides actual voices instead of relying on the audience's imagination.
The key distinction between a simple novel and a movie or a comic or a theatrical production is that the director/artist-author/director has the opportunity to present HIS view, HIS visualisation, rather than relying on the loosely-coupled hopefully-consonant imagination of the reader.
As is obvious from your own words:
; you pretty much understand this yourself, you are just letting some odd internal reaction to the phrase "comic book" blind you to what the medium can offer.
Some examples of alternate narrative media, in case your imagination fails you:
Much of the Goon Show's humour was delightful audio tricks which can not be translated to TV or text where it relies on building up the listener's expectations of a scene then revealing something quite different. ("Oi'm the anti-climax.") Mime and ballet are narratives which use NO text at all, and have been around rather longer than the novel as an artform. Theatre uses wildly exaggerated makeup and expressions and voice-volumes to express the director's intent through the "mask" of bright lights and long distance. Movies convey a powerful sense of scene, but are very poor at conveying characters' motivations and thoughts directly, being forced to do so only indirectly through word and deed. Pictures have been used to express narratives and stories for quite some time. Cavemen sketched hunts, kingdoms sketched battles, religions sketched key events, such as the christian church's "twelve stations of the cross" displayed prominently in most churches.
In this context, a comic/graphic novel most closely parallels the movie as a narrative medium.
I believe the name "graphic novel" was introduced less to bamboozle morons into believing they're suddenly rubbing shoulders with Thackeray and Rand, and more to avoid the sort of blinkered knee-jerk reaction some people seem to get when they see pictures and words together. No offence.
It can be. So can a movie or a play.
It doesn't need to be. That's down to the particular movie/comic/play. And down to the particular watcher/reader/audience member too.
Then comics are not for you. Neither are movies, theatre, or TV.
My recommendation: don't read or see them, save your time for stuff you personally enjoy. And maybe that will give you the time and mental breathing space to build sufficient perspective not to seek to belittle those whose tastes are broader or more variable or less rigidly dictated than your own.
Personally, I take each narrative medium on its merits. If I'm not in the mood for a movie, I don't go to the cinema. If I'm not in the mood for a book, I don't read one. Each has its own strengths and weaknesses, and therefore will tend to better reward some types of narrative (and mood) than others. Doesn't mean an
I'm skeptical, too. I love Moore's shorter work but not the lengthy From Hell, a kitchen sink for everything that even remotely interested him about the Ripper data. He's a master in miniature; he can be a tyrant in maximalism.