Moorcock, Michael: The Cornelius Quartet 1/2007 Michael Moorcock's The Cornelius Chronicles contains 974 pages of absurdist, non-linear, psychedelic-era science fantasy featuring as its protagonist Jerry Cornelius, "a sexually ambivalent, amoral (but exceedingly oral) portmanteau anti-hero who was part saint and part devil, an instant myth of the pop sixties whose tastes in music, clothes, cars, drugs, wombs, technology, and apotheosis all seemed to make him an authentic emblem of Swinging London and (more narrowly) of the New Wave in sf which Moorcock had instigated" (vii-viii). Originally published as a quartet of interlinked, though non-sequential novels, The Final Programme (1965)*, A Cure for Cancer (1971), The English Assassin (1977), and The Condition of Muzak (1977), The Cornelius Chronicles is, at turns, a queer manifesto (1), a celebration/critique of the modern city (2), a biting political parody (3), and a treatise on the costumes and characters of the Commedia dell'arte (4).
The Cornelius Chronicles would be nearly impossible to summarize, as the plot, such as it is, recklessly veers from tangent to tangent like a tilt-a-whirl carnival ride. Elements of Moorcock’s Elric novels (among others, including the Nebula Award-winning time-traveling bisexual Jesus novel Behold the Man) saturate the narrative, making Jerry Cornelius, by extension, an aspect of Moorcock’s Eternal Champion.
The collection is quite entertaining, and is filled with the sort of intrigue, titillation, and flash that makes sf exciting. Unfortunately, however, Jerry Cornelius himself has not aged well, and today reads less like the libidinous messianic archetype Moorcock intended than as a silly sixties satyr closer to the vein of Austin Powers. Perhaps The Cornelius Chronicles is best considered as a literary artifact of its time (and as such I’m considering it for inclusion in the syllabus for a planned class dealing with sexual identity and science fiction – hopefully the Four Walls Eight Windows Cornelius Quartet edition remains in print long enough for me to actually assign it to a class). There's plenty of fun to be had here, from Jerry Cornelius’s constant pop music references (The Beatles, Pink Floyd, Dr. Hook, Hawkwind, and The Deep Fix all make notable appearances) to his colorful costumes to his exquisite collection of weapons, cars, and gadgets, stuff that might even make James Bond jealous.
While I wouldn’t exactly call The Cornelius Chronicles an easy read, there’s plenty to enjoy here for the adventurous fan of sf and fantasy as well as more scholarly readers interested in the psychedelic era or depictions of changing sexual attitudes in literature.
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(1) "Jerry sighed and thought that the true aristocracy that would rule the seventies were out in force: the queers and the lesbians and the bisexuals, already half-aware of their great destiny which would be realized when the terms male and female would become all but meaningless" (66).
(2) "He had all the primitive's respect for Nature, the same tendency to invest it with meaning and identity, only his Nature was the industrial city, his idea of paradise was an urban utopia...." (877)
(3) "We're not Europeans, after all. Never have been. We're British. That's why we have so much in common with India." "They seem to hate us just as much as any other—non—Indians—sir." "Of course they do. Why shouldn't they? Good for them. But they won't beat us" (831).
(4) "It was all so much more comfortable than the stockings, suspenders, and girdle of his earlier disguise, so much more tasteful than the bright colours of a vanished youth. Indeed, it was the nicest of any of the disguises he had assumed since his boyhood. Nobody made any demands on a pierrot" (743).
* Adapted into a feature film in 1974. I haven't seen it, but it's on my Netflix queue.
