What is your view of autobiographies?
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Many people have given their valuable time to create a website for the pleasure of posing questions to Michael Moorcock, meeting people from around the world, and mining the site for information. Please follow one of the links above to learn more about the site.
Thank you,
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Autobiography
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It would be an instant classic! I've ordered it already. :D\"...an ape reft of his tail, and grown rusty at climbing, who yet feels himself to be a symbol and the frail representative of Omnipotence in a place that is not home.\" James Branch Cabell
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No plans to write one yet!
Memory's a funny thing. I don't trust my own 100 percent.Pre-order or Buy my latest titles in Europe:
The Whispering Swarm: Book One of the Sanctuary of the White Friars - The Laughter of Carthage - Byzantium Endures - London Peculiar and Other Nonfiction
Doctor Who: The Coming of the Terraphiles - Kizuna: Fiction for Japan - Modem Times 2.0 - The Sunday Books - The Sundered Worlds
Pre-order or Buy my latest titles in the USA:
The Laughter of Carthage - Byzantium Endures - London Peculiar and Other Nonfiction - The Sunday Books - Doctor Who: The Coming of the Terraphiles
Kizuna: Fiction for Japan - The Sundered Worlds - The Winds of Limbo - Modem Times 2.0 - Elric: Swords and Roses
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Why not make it a fictional autobiography? Might as well be honest!\"...an ape reft of his tail, and grown rusty at climbing, who yet feels himself to be a symbol and the frail representative of Omnipotence in a place that is not home.\" James Branch Cabell
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Originally posted by Michael MoorcockNo plans to write one yet!
Memory's a funny thing. I don't trust my own 100 percent.
if jesus himself woulda wrote about his life it would have saved us LOTS of troubles
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Originally posted by Mikey_CWhy not make it a fictional autobiography? Might as well be honest!
Alexandre Pushkin once observed about personal memoires something like, "It is possible in such a form not to lie, but to be sincere is an utter impossibiity."
The form of Mann's Felix Krull is written with an awareness of the uses to which people put such a work, some of the ways they'll "spin" their recollections to their own advantage. I suspect Mann might have been making a sly comment on famous works such as Dichtung und Wahrheit.
LSN
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I do hate those autobiographies that are written in the style of a novel, complete with dialogue, as if the author has total recall of everything that has happened to them. I'd much rather people be honest and show a bit of memory lapse every now and again'You know, I can't keep up with you. If I hadn't met you in person, I quite honestly would NOT believe you really existed. I just COULDN'T. You do so MUCH... if half of what goes into your zines is to be believed, you've read more at the age of 17 than I have at the age of 32 - LOTS more'
Archie Mercer to Mike (Burroughsania letters page, 1957)
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Originally posted by Aral VilsnI do hate those autobiographies that are written in the style of a novel, complete with dialogue, as if the author has total recall of everything that has happened to them. I'd much rather people be honest and show a bit of memory lapse every now and again
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Originally posted by Michael MoorcockNo plans to write one yet!
Memory's a funny thing. I don't trust my own 100 percent.
Sometimes reading between the lines of a life can give you a clearer picture, anyway. As LSN alludes to, self-awareness of position often distorts accuracy, let alone truth.
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This site probably contains a lot of autobiography, too! Recently Dave Britton and John Davey have collected a vast amount of my old stuff, including a lot of stuff I did for fanzines in the fifties. It's surprising how I've got dates wrong but Dave believes my actual logic and enthusiasms remain consistent. Not having much material from that period myself, I suppose I haven't been able to check so readily. Once I get into the 60s things become clearer, because there are more means of checking that period from my own file copies of NW, for instance. I can at least see what I was doing at any given time, when I wrote certain things and so on. Knowing when I wrote something also enables me to check what I was doing, who I was seeing and so on. But my own levels of self-deception in certain personal relationships continue to shock me when I look back. I've always considered myself a fairly conscientious person,
though otherwise flawed, but even when I thought I was facing certain important issues, I probably wasn't really facing them at all. I know this is common and what we forgive in others we are less inclined to forgive in ourselves. The literary device, Adlerian, of revealing a character's true story through his or her lies goes back almost as far as the novel itself. As usual, in my view, the novelist anticipates the psychiatrist. Yet psychiatry has become a very useful tool in the novelist's kit.Pre-order or Buy my latest titles in Europe:
The Whispering Swarm: Book One of the Sanctuary of the White Friars - The Laughter of Carthage - Byzantium Endures - London Peculiar and Other Nonfiction
Doctor Who: The Coming of the Terraphiles - Kizuna: Fiction for Japan - Modem Times 2.0 - The Sunday Books - The Sundered Worlds
Pre-order or Buy my latest titles in the USA:
The Laughter of Carthage - Byzantium Endures - London Peculiar and Other Nonfiction - The Sunday Books - Doctor Who: The Coming of the Terraphiles
Kizuna: Fiction for Japan - The Sundered Worlds - The Winds of Limbo - Modem Times 2.0 - Elric: Swords and Roses
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Fascinating!
I have long thought any creativity, writing or otherwise a voyage of self discovery. A novel has lives lived in a made up world of dreams yet in so creating do we ever leave ourselves behind? Or are we describing another aspect of ourselves hidden deep in our psyche?
Within our minds there is no doubt for me a collective consciousness that when reached pulls on the strings of all concerned. You Mr Moorcock I believe with your fine imagination and ability to convey it in the literary form appeal to many thinkers and lovers of the fantasy and Sci/Fi arena.
Your autobiography is already written in the writings you have produced thus far. I for one enjoy immensely meeting you in your many guises as The Eternal Champion! I look forward to new incarnations you are yet to reach! Multiverse indeed!
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OK. No plans to write another one.Pre-order or Buy my latest titles in Europe:
The Whispering Swarm: Book One of the Sanctuary of the White Friars - The Laughter of Carthage - Byzantium Endures - London Peculiar and Other Nonfiction
Doctor Who: The Coming of the Terraphiles - Kizuna: Fiction for Japan - Modem Times 2.0 - The Sunday Books - The Sundered Worlds
Pre-order or Buy my latest titles in the USA:
The Laughter of Carthage - Byzantium Endures - London Peculiar and Other Nonfiction - The Sunday Books - Doctor Who: The Coming of the Terraphiles
Kizuna: Fiction for Japan - The Sundered Worlds - The Winds of Limbo - Modem Times 2.0 - Elric: Swords and Roses
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