And having a hell of a time keeping one eye on the skyline

[sovay]

Oh, right, and I read the trade paperback of Alan Moore's Neonomicon (2010), which did not impress me. It wasn't the rape scenes, although there is a substantial duration of them (the book opened to one when I picked it up). It was the fact that if I want Lovecraftian body horror—if I want sex with Deep Ones, unimaginable, mind-breaking violation, congress with things that are nothing so comprehensible as callous human predators and that leave their object waiting coolly for nothing more than the hastening obliteration of a world which allows these and so many other atrocities to occur—I can pick up any of a dozen issues of Sirenia Digest and get it done better. I'm not being shown anything I haven't thought of. Ditto the sex cult whose ultimate goal is the birth of the apocalypse, because I have seen horror films made in the '70's. If there was some kind of meta-commentary going on—an indictment of Lovecraft fandom, the reduction of women in horror to their sexual physiology—I missed it. Mostly I was left wanting to read some Caitlín R. Kiernan or Gemma Files. Or e-mail Paula Guran and ask her to edit, for real, that anthology of weird erotica that was batted around after the panel at Readercon 2012. The point here is not a-ha! I am too edgy for Alan Moore!; I don't have time for that kind of nail-buffing weirdo pride any more than I think I should get a British history pat on the back because I liked George VI before The King's Speech (2010). It was just the blank, slightly nonplussed feeling of picking up something acclaimed and putting it down in confirmed knowledge of the fact that there is better cosmicist fishsex in this world.

Comments

[handful-ofdust.livejournal.com]

Well, thank you. I think.;)

[teenybuffalo.livejournal.com]

I also read it and was underwhelmed. Yet another case of an author throwing around Lovecraftian names and furniture and saying, "Now I have written a Weird Tale! Look! Tentacles! Cthulhu ftagn! Dunwich! Arkham!" I think people tend to forget Lovecraft wasn't about the tentacles, he was about the creation of a certain atmosphere of dread. Which he sometimes achieved with tentacles.

Alan Moore is so overhyped that it's hard for me to see what's so great about him. "Watchmen" and "V for Vendetta" were good reads, mind you, and groundbreaking for their time I suppose, but you'd think they were the complete works of William Shakespeare, the way people discuss them.

Also I owe you an e-mail. I am sorry for dropping off the earth and will haul myself back in a day or so.

[spatch]

I think the fact that you opened up an Alan Moore graphic novel to a random page and got a rape scene speaks volumes about Mr. Moore's artistic intent.

[rushthatspeaks.livejournal.com]

I am very sorry to hear that it was that bad. Especially since it was 2010, and anyone who wrote Lost Girls should have known better. Was it one of his Contractual Obligation Comics? I thought he'd done all those earlier, though.

Sigh. Moore is a writer who could and should have done that particular direction of deconstruction well and I am sad.

[shewhomust.livejournal.com]

Ah, now I came to this with low expectations, having really not liked any of Moore's recent work, and was surprised to discover that I didn't hate it.

File, with much of the Avatar Moore, under 'throwaway stuff done after he lost interest in comics'.

Don't email me :-)

[paula guran (from livejournal.com)]

Sorry, "that anthology of weird erotica that was batted around after the panel at Readercon 2012" is not going to happen. It was a great panel, I had tentative clearance to do the anthology, but now it is not to be.