Quote:
Originally Posted by Morthoron
The term "brilliantly" as a descriptor for Moorcock is very subjective, particularly since most of his literary work I've read is banal in the extreme, as were his collaborations with the band Hawkwind (an equally mediocre band). It sounds more like sour grapes from a pulp-fiction author who will never attain Tolkien's stature. It is rather difficult to accept Moorcock's dismissive attitude when the majority of his literary corpus sits in the bargain bin of the local bookstore.
Of course, that is merely my opinion. You may keep to yours as well.
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Opinions is exactly what we want in this topic, and lots of them! With regards to Moorcock, I have a volume of his stories sitting on my shelf titled "Elric"; I have heard his Elric themed stories are quite good. Then again a friend recently told me about another of his stories involving 19th Century gentlemen explorer who timetravelled in order to have sex with women of different epochs. Or something like that. Suffice to say, apparently it was terrible. Nonetheless Moorcock has often interested me. He seems to regard himself as a kind of litarary arbiter; in a collection of his short stories he wrote a preface (I only read that far) in which he said something to the effect that he and Martin Amis were setting out to reverse the course of English literature. Some hubris...
Clearly Tolkien is still more popular and more widely regarded, so I'm not sure he succeeded in his efforts!