Jerusalem

[JayzusB.Christ]

I've gone from not reading anything for way too long, to tackling this fecking Odyssey of a book.  It's been a few months now, but according to my Kindle app, I'm exactly halfway through.

It's been worth it though.  At first, we go from slices of kitchen sink drama (albeit in many different time periods throughout Northampton's history) to a brief glimpse of the afterlife.  Now, I've discovered that what we saw was only a tiny sliver of a way, way bigger afterlife, peopled by a kind of dead Famous Five that get up to all kind of adventures amongst its dizzyingly huge architecture, outside of time though offering brief glimpses into the chronological world, in which time is a kind of jelly holding every event that every happened. Christ, my brain.

Like pretty much everything I've read by Alan Moore, I'm looking forward to finishing it then rereading it, forearmed with the knowledge amassed from later chapters that will put the earlier stuff into context.

[Funt Solo]

Interesting - I bought it, because Moore, and it's been sitting on my shelf, absorbing reality, for months. Or has it always been there?

Anyway - I haven't started it. Partly, I'm worried that I'll just not be able to get into it - like Lanark. (The book: I can enter the town.)

[Dark Jimbo]

I have the three-volume slipcase edition, and that really helps with the endurance-test aspect of things (I know that it's technically split into three books whatever version you buy, but there's a not-inconsiderable psychological boon in seeing and holding those seperate volumes and thinking 'I can probably manage this one.') I also read a different book in between each volume of Jerusalem, just for a bit of lighter fare to help break things up, and give me time to mull and ingest what I'd read.

All of which I suppose is set-up to say - it really clicks together, I think, with that second volume, Mansoul. The Boroughs was incredible, but I was a good 150 (dense) pages in before any sense whatsoever emerged of a linking hand guiding it all (specifically the bit where you read the Freddy Allen/Peter the monk meeting, but this time from Peter's point of view). Individual chapters were incredible, but that nagging 'Where the hell is this going?' held my enjoyment back slightly. In Mansoul, however, you've got Moore laying out his whole cosmology - Heaven, Hell, Life, Death, Time - and it's just stunning stuff. Probably the best of the three volumes.

[The Mind of Wolfie Smith]

i love how moore interrogates and understands form so intricately. in other words it's difficult to imagine his prose as comics (and vice versa). this is probably why the film adaptations of his work - even the very few decent ones - don't seem genuine at all.
just a couple of months to go now until the illuminations short story collection!