YOUR 6 CENTS WORTH Michael Moorcock 87 Ladbroke Grove London WII Thanks for sending me No-Eyed Monster with the long review of The Fireclown. I think you wasted too much time on a not very good book that was written rather desperately and very cynically in 1962 shortly after I was married and needed money badly. I have always regarded it as my worst book -- it deliberately dealt in stylistic and situational cliches and, as you suggest, was written in the spirit of 'Okay, if this is the sort of shit they'll buy, this is the sort of shit I'll do'. Things were very different in 1962 -- few of us could get what we regarded as our best work published. There were ideas there but, as you point out, they were never developed. It's a book that was surprisingly well-received by several reviewers at the time it first appeared in its Compact edition -- Judy Merrill in F&SF, I remember -- and I've always argued that it was my worst book. I've written some other books that could have been better, but The Fireclown is one that didn't succeed on its own terms (the way the 'Bradbury' books, in my opinion, succeeded in their own terms -- as juveniles)... It's something of a shock to see a book as old as that suddenly resurrected! It should be a lesson to us all not to write crap... [pp. 27 - 28, NO-EYED MONSTER #19, Spring 1974]
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