Wizardry and Wild Romance: A Study of Epic Fantasy

by Michael Moorcock

Book Overview

Newly revised and expanded by the author, this study of epic fantasy analyzes the genre from its earliest beginnings in Medieval romances, on through practitioners like Tolkien, up to today's... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0575041463
• ISBN13: 9780575041462
• Release Date: January 1987
• Publisher: Gollancz
• Length: 160 Pages
• Weight: 1.01 lbs.

Customer Reviews

A hard hitting critique and celebration of epic fantasy

Before getting into why this book is a must-read for anyone who likes epic fantasy, let me say something about the book's faults, which it wears on its sleeves. First, the book has been unevenly revised over time, starting out as it did in the 1970s. This makes the book feel self-anachronizing. For example, there will be a sentence to the effect of "The finest of the most recent spate of epic fantasy novels is Bobert's trilogy: Wow (1977), Wowwer (1979) and Wowwest (1981)." Then shortly thereafter will be a reference to Harry Potter. Is this a problem? Well, if you interpret praise for an author as encouragement to read them and are wondering whether Bobert's novels have stood the test of time and are worth reading, it is. Second, Moorcock pathologizes the popularity of books he does not like. I think it's fair game to ask why a particular author has struck a chord or found a certain audience. Moorcock, however, goes well beyond that. For instance: >I sometimes think that as Britain declines, dreaming of a sweeter past, entertaining few hopes for a finer future, her middle-classes turn increasingly to the fantasy of a rural life and talking animals, the safety of the woods that are the pattern of the paper on the nursery room wall. Hippies, housewives, civil servants, share in this wistful trance; eating nothing as dangerous or exotic as the lotus, but chewing instead on a form of mildly anaesthetic British cabbage. If the bulk of American sf could be said to be written by robots, about robots, for robots, then the bulk of English fantasy seems to be written by rabbits, about rabbits and for rabbits. <br /> <br />Or to focus this venom on this favorite target: "The Lord of the Rings is a pernicious confirmation of the values of a morally bankrupt middle-class." In the introduction, Moorcock concedes that he doesn't always back up his arguments with enough evidence, so he is aware that he is sometimes overblown but that doesn't stop him. <br /> <br />Third, Moorcock uses long passages for samples of what he does and does not like. As brief excerpts, these don't necessarily convey what he intends and some of the effects of these authors isn't well captured in bursts. (To paraphrase a comment by Gary Wolfe, a reviewer for Locus magazine: H.P. Lovecraft in small doses seems maudlin but if you read a lot of him in one sitting, he starts getting to you.) Some of these excerpts are laughably bad and one in particular is so astonishingly good that I want to read the book it came from. But quite frankly, some of what he praises doesn't seem substantially different from what he condemns. <br /> <br />None of these foibles, however, keep this from being a work of the upmost importance for those who care about epic fantasy. As readers of the genre transition from being indiscriminate teenagers to more sensitive adults, they often abandon the genre, not (only) because it focuses on coming-of-age themes but because they are disgusted by how cynically in

The Moorcock Crows - A great dawn for epic fantasy

If Michael Moorcock did not exist we would have to hire a committee of sages to invent him. But because he does exist we must hire the mob to shoot him. He is that necessary, that vital to fantasy literature as it has developed in the last century. His prose fictions suck eggs because they were so shoddily executed but he is a great myth maker - who can escape the great albino with the black sword? Combine that myth making capacity with an arch and angrily self-concious critical voice that does not quit and you have a literary personality that functions sort of like the bad concience of fantasy literature. "Wizardry and Wild Romance" is a series of shot- gun blasts of thrills. Jeff VanderMeer's piece is school-boyish and dull but China Mieville opens the book with the buzz saw roaring and when Mister Moorcock makes his absurd but grand entrance we are in for a treat - a waspish yet sometimes indolently ecstatic praise and condemnation for some of the more serious works of epic fantasy written in history. Mister Moorcock has the voice of a school master - obnoxious, superior, lazy in its magisterial conciousness as it whacks the world of fantasy into quick form. There are winners and losers here and the supremely confident Moorcock is not afraid to put laurels on heads (as in the case of Gene Wolfe and M. John Harrison) or cut or bludgeon those heads off (as in the case of the Inklings whom Moorcock despises). When it comes to Tolkien Mister Moorcock is wrong but he is wrong for all the right reasons. Somehow the pseudo-Tolkien industry spawned out of the ambiguous shadow of Tolkien forces Moorcock to thrust his school masterly charm aside in favor of a left-wing radical standing up to organized oppression (which, in fact, it is) in the tradition of a Percy Bysshe Shelley tinged by a William Blake. Peculiarly fierce is his treatment of C.S. Lewis - a minor writer. Somehow Moorcock is so consumed with his rebel's hatred of sham and inauthenticity he overlooks the few beauties that make Lewis worth reading. Perhaps Mister Moorcock has Oedipal writerly rivalries with Tokien and his clan. The book's supreme value is its knowledge of literary history pressed through Moorcock's own imaginative and critical fires - the fires of a fierce and wondrous regard for the creative imagination. I truly hope Mister Moorcock's sharp and swift little tome changes the world. Anybody who wants to write real epic literature needs to read it many times.

Excellent Overview of fantasy lit

Traditional fantasy isn't merely 'dwarves and dragons, magical quests and prophecies and little adorable elfs going off wandering'...and this fine book, in itself, disproves that idea that fantasy is based purely on Tolkien and 'the northern thing'. Wildly opinionated, interesting, extremely well written, this is a necessity for anyone who wants to go beyond the mass media fantasy that's become a formulaic waste of time. Excellent essays by China Mieville and Jeff Vandermeer are included.

A fine overview.

Michael Moorcock, Wizardry and Wild Romance (Gollancz, 1987)Michel Moorcock would be, it seems, the obvious choice to produce a critical work on epic fantasy. After all, he's written more of it than jut about any living author, or he had at the time this book was commissioned, ten years before its release, after the publication of his article "Epic Pooh" in 1977. ("Epic Pooh," revised, appears as chapter five here, and is one of the true gems of this book.) Still an excellent choice, as most of the similarly prolific writers who have emerged in the shadow of Moorcock lack the wit and originality he displays in novel after novel. Interestingly, this is one of his main criticisms of the fantasy genre overall, not just in the moderns but going back to the earliest days of epic fantasy. The book, which is far more a survey than a critical analysis, strikes a Paul DeMan-esque note in its willingness (perhaps too much willingness) to turn many of fantasy's sacred cows into shish kebab. What is refreshing about Moorcock is that, unlike most critics, he is always willing to suggest a good number of alternatives for each piece of overwrought, mindless fluff the public is willing to take to heart. (Moorcock seems to have a special circle in Hell reserved for the Inklings, the chief fantasists of which were J. R. R. Tolkein and C. S. Lewis, both of whom Moorcock roundly despises; he spends more column inches disparaging Narnia and Middle Earth than all the other writers he castigates combined.) One wonders, idly, why a survey draws as much money as it does these days. I could probably pay a month's rent auctioning off my copy of this, a first edition/first printing. Odd, since the volume barely gets a few lines into page one hundred fifty before it reaches its conclusion. But mine is not to reason why. It's not worth the incredible sums it fetches from booksellers these days, but as a jumping-off point for readers of fantasy who are looking for ways to branch out into wider genre-specific reading, it's a pretty darned fine piece of work.Most of Moorcock's jaundiced views on epic fantasy could apply to all types of literature, which is at the same time both the book's main strength and its weakness. One expects, when reading a survey, to see the ways that the subject's lineage relates to what has come before and what has come after (see Eliade's wonderful Shamanism: Archaic Techniques of Ecstasy for perhaps the finest extant example of how to write a survey on a particular subject), but Moorcock seems to have the underlying belief that writing in a particular genre should have the same strengths and weaknesses as writing in any other, or in writing that is genreless or transcends its genre. To some extent this is true; the best fantasy writers, like the best writers of most genres, do transcend what the hacks are doing and make their work into literature. Where Moorcock goes slightly wrong, though, is in not delineating the transcendent from the more satisfy

Passionate

This is a passionate, opinionated overview of the fantasy genre - from its beginnings in Renaissance romances, through the Gothic awakening of the nineteenth century, the literary explosion of the turn of the century, the pulps of the twenties and thirties, and the Celtic boom from the sixties and on. Moorcock is heavily, perhaps not without reason, biased toward maturity, wit, complexity, and literary passion. He ridicules the idyllic, pro-status quo Tolkien and his followers: he compares his "Lord of the Rings" to Miln's "Winnie-the-Pooh", and accuses it of blatant stupefaction - "let's forget all our troubles and go to sleep". He also openly criticizes Lewis' "Narnia Chronicles" for overly obvious ideology. He shoots down any author who "writes down" to his readers - adults or children. He also dislikes imitators, dull narration, poor vocabularies, and a great deal of other things, which is precisely what makes this book such an attention grabber.Moorcock divides his book into several chapters - dealing separately with settings, heroes, humor, etc. If nothing else, "Wizardry and Wild Romance" provides an excellent grounding in the obscure classics of fantasy - but Moorcocks's disjointed narrative proves to be both thoughtful and thought-inspiring. He leaves a great deal of room for statements on tone, richness of vision, characters. He also quotes extensively from the books he is talking about. Quite literally he leaves no stone unturned - all sorts of fantasy falls under discussion: children's, Burroughs, Kipling, Lovecraft, and many others. Lastly, there is even a nice introductory list of places to look for further information. Moorcock viciously shook my preconceptions and tastes in fantasy, constantly leaving me unbalanced and on my toes. This book of bombastic discussions represents a valuable addition to any collection.