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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