Alan Moore's Jerusalem. As in the William Blake poem.
It's quite long! More than 1200 pages stuffed to the gills with 600k+ words about the creation (historical and theoretical), past, present, future, end, and afterlife of the land and people of Northampton coming at you in chapters of sci-fi, fantasy, realistic, western, stageplay, screenplay, poem, noir, true crime, romance, thriller, gothic GET FUCKED Matheson. King could never. Bradbury wishes!
There are points where I cheered "FUCK YEAH!" and "OOOH SHIT!!" aloud and where I had to pull myself together in the middle of my lunch break. It's very funny, sad, gross, stupid, purposefully confusing, uplifting, and full of wildly creative ideas.
Took him 10 years. Seems like he wrote the book to console the poor workers of the world and make sense of their struggle assuring them it is much more natural and fulfilling to be yourself, a fully realized individual of character warts and all in a community that accepts you than it is to be a financially successful one, because life is fucking hard and we need eachother; all we got is eachother. That and to put his town on. I know at least a few of the non-historical or mythological characters for sure are based on people he knew/knows if they aren't just blatantly that actual person, probably all of them. Full disclosure, not one mention of Radlands, sadly.
One of the characters has a nearly 50 page chapter written like so:
Dewnacht the bossom av the slorpe the groind is wincemare flut end liffel faresome destince. Lucia beleaves dis iraea afder waldwords ars aboutted tae a goltcurse, fur ther gress arand her slappered faet ascut shart us a malletory herrsteel. Nibbelung her finngonill she wagnders unwoods intel she arriversit on inDantetion unther greend, a shwallow dup dissending tua wade onriffled pend, urmosst cumfretely sychular ound shlaped ossif atvar a joyan'ce woddeng rong. Deliciately-kellered pattles undid liffs er flatrin onder surfish luke a flit of timely girlleons, ich von exquicitly perflected oin daddiamonde merrer off d'waughter. Hcetanzly, she wakes her may doone the gential glardient tother wetter'sage.
Translation, as far as I can tell:
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The reasoning behind it makes sense. Aside from a writing device to make you come up with your own conclusions about what is happening while influencing that through puns and rhyming, it's a labor of compassion, alienating the reader much in the way the historical figure probably felt through much of her life. it started getting easier to flow with after a while and the whole thing is quite trippy, but goddamn.
It's not the best book I ever read but it's quite good, absolutely it's own thing, and I don't think anyone else could have written it. Tons of little secrets and loose threads he doesn't let you off the hook for until the last few pages.
You can get it as 3 books instead of the big boy. If you aren't strictly reading at home or wanting to flex on randos by cracking open something that looks like a children's bible the size of a 1990s tricounty phonebook, that would be the way to go. Or if you're a proper dork, Moore once again demonstrates that he doesn't care about money.
https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/alan-moore-jerusalemFreddyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy!!
Topic: books to read (Read 507316 times)