In my early teens, I was a fan of fantasy and science fiction. I still am, though now I’m more of a science fiction fan. I played Dungeons & Dragons. I read a lot. I’d get in trouble at school for reading novels “hidden” in my lap rather than paying attention in class. I spent a lot of time at libraries, because I read so much the cost of new books was too much.
A friend recommended that I try reading some Michael Moorcock material. My friend was strongly influenced by Moorcock’s style, and my friend and I had similar tastes, so I gave it a shot. As an added bonus, Moorcock did a lot of his writing in the 60s and 70s, so his material was available at the library for free. Sweet!
Very spontaneous. Very Instagram-worthy!
I started with Elric of Melnibone, who is probably Moorcock’s best-known character. I also read many of the others in the Eternal Champion somewhat-connected stories. I loved them, voraciously reading as much as I could acquire. At this point maybe I should point out that Moorcock was often termed the “anti-Tolkien,” because his stories were firmly rooted in the counter-culture. His heroes were anti-heroes. Elric, in particular, was a very moody, grim, pessimistic character who was a physically weak albino who sustained himself using energy given to him by his sentient demonic sword that fed on the souls of those he killed. A bit of a freakshow when it’s all laid out like that at once! This was in my early teens, so perhaps it was inevitable that I, a bookish nerd in a time when bookish nerds didn’t yet rule the world, would find something in them that resonated with me as a reader. I also went on to read more explicitly D&D related material, such as the Dragonlance and The Dark Elf Trilogy series.
Since then, my taste in reading has become more open, although for a “fun” read I still turn to sci-fi. Besides reading that which was assigned to me in school, I also developed a taste for All Things Dumas: The Musketeer books, The Count of Monte Christo, and so on. This wasn’t a departure; the first books I ever read that contained no pictures at all were the Tarzan novels by Edgar Rice Burroughs, closely followed by the Barsoom novels. So I was already familiar with the somewhat archaic style of writers from the past. (In case you are wondering, yes: the movie John Carter was a crushing disappointment for me, made even worse because I know Mark Strong from when we worked together back around the turn of the century. It’s never fun to see a friend in a bad movie!)
In my late teens, I started a determined effort to read The Classics, which led me to Les Miserables (I’ve never seen the musical or movie, so can’t compare them), the complete works of Mark Twain, Thomas Pynchon, Umberto Eco’sThe Name of the Rose, The Illuminatus! Trilogy, and many others. Which is to say, I read actual literature as well as more commercial “popular” fare. I suppose my tastes matured to some extent.
Ladies and Gentlemen, I’m here to tell you that I could barely read them. They’re awful! The characters are two-dimensional when they aren’t one-dimensional, but at least they’re vivid. Or maybe “memorably weird” would be a more accurate phrase. The plotting was a bit formulaic (literally), but generally well-paced. But the writing itself, the diction (which, btw, primarily means the choice of words, and not the pronunciation of them), was just terrible. To call the prose purple would be an affront to over-worked adjectives everywhere. I suppose I shouldn’t be too surprised. Moorcock himself said, “I think of myself as a bad writer with big ideas, but I’d rather be that than a big writer with bad ideas.” I didn’t know that when I first read them, of course.
That experience pretty much scrapped my idea to re-read some of the other books I read as a kid. I’ve re-read much of the Burroughs material, and it still works for me (with the caveat that a reader must be prepared for jaw-dropping racism when reading anything written more than forty or fifty years ago; see also Dumas and Hugo’s Les Mis), but I’m concerned about the Dragonlance and Dark Elf Trilogy material. My memories of those are too fond to jeopardize this late in the game. However, I do think some re-working of beloved material is actually superior in some cases.
Some things can withstand the test of time. But there are so many new works of art being produced, from books to movies to TV, that I think I’ll be better off to try out the new material, rather than risk being disappointed by things I remember fondly.