This Week Recomends Alan Moore

[Will I. Cooling]

Was watching This Week (the only political show that matters :) ) and they had a novelist (I think Ian Sinclar, but don't quote me I'm not a prose fiction person) to suggest his top 10 works of political fiction, and he nominates V for Vendetta as part of his top 10. What's more he said that Moore was the nearest we have today to an Orwell or Trollope. What made it all the more impressive is that you got the feeling that he didn't really know much about comics (he very annoyingly completely ignored David Lloyd's contribution) but had just been struck by the excellence of the Moorish one.

[Dudley]

At the Meltdown Festival last year curated by Patti Smith, they had a celebration of William S. Burroughs, part of which was Moore and Sinclair reading passages of Burroughs? work.  The event was a bit of a damp squib ? the Americans starting ululating and playing freeform jazz, encouraging the audience to join in the ?happening?, while the British sat there politely, hoping to god nobody dragged them on stage to be ?happened? at ? but Sinclair and Moore seemed to get on uncommonly well.  I think Moore turns up as a character in one of Sinclair?s books, too.

[I, Cosh]

Bit of a mutual appreciation society going on there, methinks. I read an interview with Moore fairly recently where he described Sinclair as "the best living writer of English."

Naturally I took this recommendation to heart and snapped up one of his books, only to find it virtually unreadable.

[longmanshort]

Moore appears in Iain Sinclair's Edge of the Orison.

Recommended to me by Moore himself, the book follows mad Northamptonshire peasant poet John Clare's walk from the madhouse in Epping Forest to his home in north Northamptonshire. From where he was carted off to another madhouse in Northampton.

It is, quite possibly, the best book I've ever read. More profoundly moving than most of the 'poetry' poetry I've read, and a real insight into Clare's mind.

[paulvonscott]

The Culture Show are apparently filming Mr Moore sometime soon, so keep an eye out for that.