'Letters from Melnibone'?

[Zax]

MM, the ongoing discussion here about the Elric movie (and movies in general) prompted me to re-dip into 'Letters from Hollywood', which I'd always enjoyed, while also being aware of the upheaval going on behind it. I'd always thought it should have been shelved with the Rayner Banham/Hugo Williams travel-with-some-sort-of-motive stuff, but I was living in rural Wales at the time and got my copy by mail order. I never found out if that's how it was sold, or whether the bookshops just shoved it in with your other stuff (although some of what you described wouldn't have been out of place in the Carnelian books). It was also alarming, if quite funny, to be reminded that the events in LFH took place a quarter of a century ago! Here we were discussing your daughter Kate's achievements and then I'm reminded of the hair dye/chlorine episode - a bit like your mother bringing out the photo album...

Anyhowever, I've always enjoyed the reportage-type things you've done and wished you would do more. If the Elric movie goes well, could you be tempted to give an account of this bookwise, perhaps mixed in with some of your views on fantasy cinema in general? A kind of Law antidote to the Chaos of LFH, perhaps with some cinema-specific extensions of the ideas you put forward in 'Wizardry and Wild Romance'. Of course, by that time we'll already be onto the 94th version of the LOTR boxed DVD set ('The Director's Chiropodist's Analyst's Cut') and will be in dire need of an antidote. Who better to supply it than the exterminator of talking vermin ('No rodent too small') himself?

[Michael Moorcock]

LOVE, A MEMOIR OF MERVYN AND MAEVE PEAKE will have autobiographical material, but I'm very reluctant to write any direct autobiography, unless in relation to something else. I got a bit leery of it after I'd given my account of various events re. Ballard's CRASH. He was very upset by my version of events. Memory being what it is, I've no intention of insisting on my version, as it were, but I will try hard to do an honest job around the Peake book. Letters From Hollywood did pretty well. I know a lot of copies were printed and it's fairly hard to get second hand now.
I suppose I'll continue to answer questions in interviews, which amount to fragments of autobiography, but I can't see myself doing much else than what's described above. Kind of you to be interested.