"As long as I get my huge, cripplingly heavy book to put on my shelf and gloat over, then I'll be happy."

Big Al talks to the New Statesman's Helen Lewis Hasteley about Jerusalem, not having a television, and the end of the universe as we know it. (Hey - it's Alan Moore. You were expecting maybe football scores?)

New Statesman interview with Alan Moore

A Portrait Of The Artist As A Young Bohemian

***

I've been looking for a pre-beard photograph of Mr. Moore for a very long time. Many thanks to otium longum for posting.

[It's funny - I thought that without the facial hair he'd be unrecognizable, but there's no mistaking the demonic intensity of that gaze.]

Some Folks Who've Been Kind Enough To Link To This Blog

Quercivorous

Enjolrasworld.com

Jinxworld

Thanks all. I appreciate the exposure.

No WATCHMEN Prequels Or Sequels With Moore's Involvement

Hi. Yes, I'm still alive. How are you?

From zikkir.net:

Alan Moore: 'I Don't Want Watchmen Back'

I'll try to remember to post a link to the Wired interview when it comes out.

Off-Topic: Nice Awesome Universe Alan Moore Comics Previews Available On Google Books

Just came across this and thought I'd post it: I found some decent previews of a few of Alan Moore's Awesome Universe titles at Google Books earlier this evening. Here are the links:

Supreme: The Story Of The Year

Supreme: The Return

Judgement Day

These are definitely worth a look if you haven't had the pleasure - there's a nice Silver Age DC vibe to the Supreme stuff that old school comic book geeks like myself will find especially charming.

(Semi-)Off-Topic: Excellent Steve Ditko Documentary (w/Alan Moore Interview) On YouTube

Thought I'd share a great BBC documentary on eccentric comics genius Steve Ditko that I discovered on YouTube recently.



The Alan Moore interview alone makes it worth the price of admission, particularly his inspired ode to Ditko's Randian superhero Mr. A via a reworked version of the Velvet Underground's
"Sister Ray" (which, incidentally, has had said song stuck on "repeat" in my head for the last week or so).

Off-Topic: "The Architects Of Fear" At Hulu.Com ***Possible Spoilers***

Check out this old episode of The Outer Limits and tell me if it doesn't remind you of the ending of a certain critically acclaimed superhero graphic novel. (Note: If you haven't read Watchmen, you may not want to watch this - it may spoil the ending for you.)




Interesting, eh? (I had actually never seen that episode before today, and particularly enjoyed the beautifully noirish cinematography of Conrad Hall.) Apparently, Alan Moore only noticed the resemblance after he had already came up with the ending. There's a reference to the episode in the last chapter of Watchmen in what Moore referred to as "a belated nod".

Off-Topic: William S. Burroughs Documentary On Google Video

Found an interesting documentary on literary icon/Alan Moore hero William S. Burroughs on Google Video; I thought I would post it in case anyone wanted to have a look.



There's some charming footage of him goofing around with Allen Ginsberg and other friends, which is nice to see - Burroughs seemed to have such a grim affect all the time. Perhaps that was just sort of his default public persona. Then again, Burroughs probably had more to be grim about than most of us.

***

Multi-screen viewing is seemingly anticipated by Burroughs' cut-up technique. He suggested re-arranging words and images to evade rational analysis, allowing subliminal hints of the future to leak through... an impending world of exotica, glimpsed only peripherally.

Adrian Veidt (Ozymandias)
"Look On My Works, Ye Mighty..."
Watchmen

PS The music you hear at the very beginning of the film is from "Another Green World" by Brian Eno.

Vice Magazine Interview With Alan Moore

James Knight was kind enough to post a longer version of his interview with Alan Moore for Vice Magazine over at his Name Me Someone Who's Not A Parasite blog (good name, that), in which The Bearded One discusses Jerusalem, its connection to Voice Of The Fire, and other esoterica (Einstein a theosophist? Getthafuckouttahere). Anyway - worth checking out.

Off-Topic: Howard Zinn, 1922 - 2010

Howard Zinn, Historian, Dies at 87

I read A People's History Of The United States in 2000 and it completely turned my head around. Professor Zinn will be missed - not by everybody, but certainly by me.

Conclusion

Well, that's about it for Deciphering Hob's Hog, believe it or not. I plan on keeping it up on the net (for as long as Blogger lets me, anyway) for those who are reading/writing about Voice Of the Fire, and on putting up occasional posts regarding any news I get regarding VOTF, Alan Moore's "sequel" prose novel Jerusalem (still a work in progress the last that I've heard), and any other Moore-related items I find interesting enough to post. But as the stated mission of Deciphering Hob's Hog is, well, deciphering "Hob's Hog", and said mission is completed, you can consider this blog to be, at present, in semi-retirement. I'll continue to post my reviews at Amazon, and may start another blog in the future (probably through Blogger again, because they're so easy to use), but for now I'm taking at least a week off from doing anything net-related that's more complicated than checking my e-mail. Many thanks to those of you who came along for the ride, especially those who commented. I learned a lot and had a lot of fun - I hope you did, too.

Page 45, Paragraphs 3 - 5; Notes ***SPOILER ALERT!***

***SPOILER ALERT! If you haven't read the end of "Hob's Hog" yet, you probably won't want to read this post, as part of the ending of the chapter is revealed. Don't say I didn't warn you.***

(btw - I'm honestly not trying to tease this out - I just haven't had a lot of opportunities to sit down and work on this blog for more than a half-hour or so.)

***

Page 45, Paragraph 3:

I cry hot tears and try to say I'll do anything for Hob if he doesn't hurt me. I'll go away. I won't see the girl. I try to say all of this, but my mouth is full and I can't say anything. Hob takes me around the pigpen, in front of the white-skin hut, where there is light as from a little fire, and now I see his black face and his wooden horns, and see that there's blood on him.* As there is with me. Oh no.

Paragraph 4:

Now he lays me down, like a baby, on the prickly thing in front of the aurochs hut. I feel a lot of pokes on my back and legs, which is where I understand he's putting me on the hill of branches that I saw him make. Now he takes his hand off me. I lie on the hill of branches with nothing to hold me, and I try to get off, but I can't move. There's no strength. I don't have the strength. I can't move anything, just my hand to rub my neck.

Paragraph 5:

There's a hole in my neck, where liquid's coming out, where blood's coming out, which isn't stopping. Hob. Hob put a hand-axe to my neck while I wasn't paying attention [?]. Oh! All of my blood is coming out onto my belly, my neck, and the branch hill beneath me. I don't smell flowers. I smell nothing but blood.**

* And just who is Alan Moore trying to evoke with his depiction of Hob? (Dana Carvey voice) "Could it be... Satan?" Baphomet? Cernunnos? It's interesting to look at the history of the Horned God archetype in terms of this and speculate as to whether Moore had a particular deity in mind when he created this image. It's also interesting to note that "Old Hob" is apparently another term for the Devil.

**And that's almost never a good thing.

Off-Topic: DESTINO

This is wonderful - just discovered it on YouTube.



It's like walking around inside a Dali painting!

You can find more information on the film here.

Muchas gracias to Mr. Door Tree of the fantastic Golden Age Comic Book Stories for the heads up.

Off-Topic: It's Not Hobbit Porn - It's Ballantine Adult Fantasy!

[Apologies to Steve K. Baum for stealing his joke for my title]

One of my big projects of the last couple of years (ever since picking Big Al's League of Extraordinary Gentlemen series back up in 2008) has been exploring the roots of modern speculative fiction, and one of the best resources for this has been looking at the list of books in Lin Carter's Ballantine Adult Fantasy series.

The short version of the BAF story (as short a version as I know how to tell, anyway): in the 1960s, Ballantine Books founders Ian and Betty Ballantine noted the rise in popularity of J.R.R. Tolkien's Middle-earth series of books (it would be hard not to, with every third baby boomer picking up a complete set) and, deciding that classic fantasy was the current "thing", hired the aforementioned Mr. Carter to edit a new imprint for them featuring the genre.

Now, Carter may not have been much of a fictionist (that's a little unfair of me, as the only fiction of his that I've read have been his Conan pastiches - perhaps there are some Carter fans out there that can inform me of some masterpiece of his I've missed out on), but the guy sure knew his fantasy. Given pretty much carte blanche to publish whatever he saw fit, Carter brought out classic after classic by Lord Dunsany, James Branch Cabell, the amazing Clark Ashton Smith, and many other forgotten fantasy masters, presumably blowing many a hippie's and/or erstwhile Shire-dweller's mind.

The concluding irony? A series that was probably at least in part created to "cash in" on the then-current craze for fantasy fiction ended up barely in the black. No matter. A number of great authors' works were rescued from oblivion; all parties involved came as close as any published series ever has to establishing a fantasy canon (although the later Fantasy Masterworks series also does a fine job), and the Ballantines and Carter now, no doubt, have the great Dharmacakra tilting in their favor.




The original BAF logo (courtesy SF Bookworm)

BAF On The Web

There are several good sources for info on the BAF series on the web. The best by far that I've found is this gorgeous gallery of scans at skwimshmi.com. The Wikipedia article on the series is quite informative (you knew I'd get that one in there, didn't you?), and you can preview the likes of the Carter-edited anthology Discoveries In Fantasy at that other amazing Internet time-devourer, Google Books.

Page 42, Paragraph 8; Page 43, Paragraphs 1 - 3; Notes

I'm back. Hope everyone had a merry Christmas/happy Hanukkah/joyous Meán Geimhridh/whatever you chose to celebrate (or avoid celebrating).

***

Page 42, Paragraph 8:

This is better than I thought possible. She says we can leave in the early morning hours before dawn. She says, "If we're going to be walking far, it's probably a good idea to fill up our bellies before we do. I'll come back before dawn with more and better things to eat. We'll make our bellies full, after which we'll journey a long way off, just you and me."

Page 43, Paragraph 1 (first full paragraph):

She says, "I'm going to go now, because Hob will be back soon. One more night of lying in the pigpen, and then you'll sleep with me." She bends over and licks my cheek and my mouth. I lick her face back, where the taste of semen is strong, dried on her cheek. She stands and smiles. "Before dawn," she says, "we go out the gate, shut it, and go."

Paragraph 2:

The sun becomes low in the sky, and I eat the poultry* down to the bone. Hob's come back here, and I hear him and the girl whispering in the hut. Hob says something, and the girl laughs. That's good, because I think the girl wants Hob to [still] like her, so he doesn't think she's planning on going away and not coming to see him anymore.

Paragraph 3:

I smile at this. It's great that the girl can lie to Hob. If she's smart enough to do this, she'll be smart when it comes to foraging food and finding it for me. Through the reeds, across the river, the sun's become so big and low that its heat makes the world's edge smoke. The river's so still that I can look on the darkening of the other world there beneath the world there beneath the water, where another bird flies silently.**

*Probably chicken, but who knows? Maybe the girl went duck hunting or something.

**That's a beautiful little image, isn't it? I keep thinking about how much I'd like to teach this book - it's exemplary in so many ways.

Web Resources for VOICE OF THE FIRE

I thought I would post links to some of the web pages I found helpful while reading Voice of the Fire, so they're up for others to use.

Wikipedia article on Prehistoric Britain (for "Hob's Hob", "The Cremation Fields", and "In The Drownings")

Wikipedia article on fairies (for "Hob's Hog")

Wikipedia article on Bronze Age Britain (for "The Cremation Fields")

Wikipedia article on Iron Age Britain (for "In The Drownings")

Wikipedia article on Britannia/Roman Britain (for "The Head Of Diocletian")

Answers.com page on St. Ragener (for "November Saints")

Wikipedia article on the Crusades (for "Limping To Jerusalem")

Wikipedia article on Francis Tresham (for "Confessions Of A Mask")

(featured) Wikipedia article on John Dee (for "Angel Language")

Wikipedia articles on witchcraft, the "witch-cult hypothesis", and witch hunts (for "Partners In Knitting")

Wikipedia article on John Clare (for "The Sun Looks Pale Upon The Wall")

Wikipedia article on the writer Jim Thompson (Moore's most probable influence on "I Travel In Suspenders")

***

Speaking of Wikipedia, help 'em out if you can, will ya? Thanks.

My Amazon Review Of Voice Of The Fire

I finished Voice of the Fire - you can read my review of it here.

Page 41, Paragraphs 5 and 6; Page 42, Paragraphs 1 and 2; Progress Note

This is my 100th post. :)

***

Page 41, Paragraph 5:

At night, she's in the hut all alone with Hob. He's bigger than her, and he makes her do things. He puts his penis in her and has sex with her. No. No, it's worse than anything I want to think about. Maybe he makes her rub his erection with her hair, like she did with me - the thought of this is even worse still. Hob doesn't want her to have sex with any man except him - he's scared her, which is why she wouldn't let me put a hand on her. Now I'm upset. Why, it's like she's not hers - she's Hob's!

Paragraph 6:

I think about how it isn't good for her that she's kept all the time by a man that's as evil and crazy as Hob. He's older than the trees; he killed his son in this world, so that he can only see him in the other world. In the other world, where the Urk-kine sit on the shagfoal, beneath the cave-ceiling made of little boys' bones, where Hob makes his son go, as the spirits have indebted Hob to them with the thoughts that he can make his strange path-song [path-spell]. It's so bad that it can't be put into words. I can't let the girl stay here anymore. I'll make her go with me far away, and walk, and journey onwards, and not settle. It's not right for people to settle. There's no good in it.

Page 42, Paragraph 1:

By the white-skinned hut across from the pigpen I hear the girl - she's still looking for food. I think about how it would be if we ran off together. I don't think I'd be good at foraging on my own, but the girl's smarter than me and she can forage many things for us like my mother did. We can walk across the skeleton-woman bridge, and then across the world, the flower-scented girl and I. When she's away from Hob and isn't scared of him anymore, I can make her take off her clothes and open up her legs as far as they'll go.

Paragraph 2:

Inside my clothes, Old Will only tingles a bit, as he's still too weak to stand.

***

Progress note: Finished "Partners In Knitting" (probably the most darkly beautiful chapter that I've read so far) and "The Sun Looks Pale Upon The Wall" (it helped to read this first). Holy crap! I've only got about 50 pages left. What am I gonna do when I'm finished?

Page 41, Paragraphs 1 - 4

Back at it.

***

Page 41, Paragraph 1:

She and I stand up, but my legs are shaky and weak. "Come on," she says, and takes my hand in hers, and hand in hand we walk through the flowers and through trees and down the bare hill of stumps. All this time I think of nothing but her hand, our fingers intertwined. I feel better than I ever have in my life. We go down the hill, through the mud and bees, with rot in the stumps and in the air. The flower perfume on the girl draws the bees to us, so I'm constantly swatting them away.

Paragraph 2:

We go up the rise with the little thicket of trees and we're down in the reeds; this is the route we take to the hut and the pigpen. We were up on the hill for a long time - I can tell it's afternoon by where the sun's at in the sky. It's gotten cold, so that I pull tighter on Hob's son's clothes, since he's neither alive nor does he need them. The girl opens the gate and tells me to go back in the pen, so that she can find more food before Hob comes back.

Paragraph 3:

I do this, and then sit on the hay and think about a lot of things. The girl goes away to look in the white-skin hut to find something to eat. I think of how she shut her legs so I couldn't rub her vagina, and of how she wouldn't let me touch her breasts, and how she said no man can touch her.

Paragraph 4:

Now I understand everything.

***

Progress note: I finished "Limping to Jerusalem" (take that, Dan Brown!), "Confessions Of A Mask" (is it just Moore that's obsessed with Guy Fawkes, or are English folks in general?), and "Angel Language" (just when we thought things couldn't get any more disturbing...), and am about halfway through "Partners in Knitting".

Off-Topic: Thoughts On Arthur Machen's "The White People"

The following is just a touch-up of some brief notes I made a couple of weeks ago after reading the Arthur Machen short story "The White People" (in case you don't pick up on it from what I wrote - I really, really liked it) (and yes, I'll stop going on about Ulysses (for a while) after this).

***

Alice's Adventures In Wonderland meets Ulysses in Hell. Probably the most brilliant piece of horror fiction I've ever read - the only thing I can think of that comes close in Poe's "Cask of Amontillado", and this might be even more ingenious than that. I mean, come on - this anticipates the writing style of James Joyce by 15 years (it was written in 1899) and Lovecraft's by nearly a quarter-century. Why isn't this guy better known today? To be placed in the sui generis file alongside Clark Ashton Smith, I guess (i.e., too fuckin' weird for almost anyone to understand, not to mention appreciate).

***

PS It appears that Alan Moore is a Machen fan, too - check out this and this.

Addendum: I did a little editing of (and added some hyperlinks to) the second paragraph, just for fun.