Pegging the President: A Jerry Cornelius Adventure

This was better than ‘Firing the Cathedral’ and at 150 pages it wasn’t too painful to read but at the end you know you’ve only read it because you’re such a fan of his other works. Mildly entertaining.

As a huge Moorcock fan since the end of the 70s I have to say I was massively disappointed with this novella featuring Jerry Cornelius, for me the most important of MM's characters. Having said that, I have found Moorcock's writing inconsistent since the dawn of his Second Aether Trilogy in the 90s, loving some of his books (notably 'The Metatemporal Detective', 'Fabulous Harbours', 'The White Wolf's Son') while finding others -often from the same sequences (such as 'The Skrayling Tree' and 'Firing the Cathedral') massively disappointing.My issue with much of MM's writing since the mid 90s is that he so often does everything he can to shy away from making direct statements except in the epigraphic chapter headings of his books and 'Pegging the President' is particularly guilty of this. While I'm a firm believer that you cannot attribute an author's beliefs to his characters, MM is on record as a social/moral novelist who uses characters such as Colonel Pyatt to comment on the political excesses of the right.Trouble is, 'Pegging the President' as a Jerry Cornelius adventure is singularly dull - there are lots of the usual arch, sophisticated statements from the offtime ambiguous characters of Moorcock's Commedia but very little action or directness. There are reassuring nods to the elements we loved from the past - mentions of Hawkwind etc- but very little actual meat.Moorcock, like Malzberg from the mid-eighties on seems to have become so hung up on being indirect that the polemical power of his storytelling has been lost alongside the pleasure of strong plotting. Both have become self-indulgent as writers and fall into that trap of not actually saying anything- and their championing of often very limp, self-indulgent writing that lacks excitement and structural strength to offset such weaknesses of prose style.As a great admirer of New wave SF, I like ambiguity as much as the next man, but I know flabby, self-indulgent writing when I see it. Compared to masterworks like the initial Cornelius tetralogy and 'The Alchemists' Question', this new novella simply undermines Jerry's legacy.

Well… God knows what that was all about. The usual plotless meandering narrative, fragmented and going nowhere at it’s own pace. The only thing I’ve been able to gather from all this verbiage is that Mr. Moorcock seems to be very pro Brexit... and is a big supporter of Donald Trump... Unless he's failed to make himself sufficiently clear.