r/AlanMoore • u/johnxii24 • 19d ago
I finished reading ‘Jerusalem’ …
… a couple of weeks ago and it easily entered my top three favourite novels of all time. Now I wrote a short review and posted it on Instagram almost 24 hours ago. I received zero likes and comments! I’m shocked about how little resonance I receive when I post about literature, especially good literature like ‘Jerusalem’. It’s so disappointing.
I’d also be happy to discuss it here with people who have read it too or on Instagram (I’m also open to connecting and DM).
Edit: Thank you to everyone who actually took the time to visit my Instagram post. From zero to 37 likes and 15 comments is amazing! I finally feel heard. 🙏
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u/hammerandpikl3 19d ago
Loved it, but bloody hell that massive section of made up psychedelic language frazzled my brain.
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u/Ok_Broccoli_7863 19d ago
Same. I actually switched to an audio book for that part. I found it easier to listen to than read.
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u/johnxii24 19d ago
I made a one-time exception for that chapter by reading the ‘translation’ that can be found here: https://alanmoorejerusalem.wordpress.com/alan-moore-annotations-index/j3-03-round-the-bend/
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u/dbree801 19d ago
I tried that and it made it harder for me. I ended up reading a summarization of the chapter somewhere online lol.
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u/Successful-Tie5386 19d ago
My interest in Joyce got me through that chapter, worth it for the ambition and the hidden cameo from Herbie creator Ogden Thingy.
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u/Jolly_Chops 18d ago
It really is one of the best ever, I read it and listened to the audio book at the same time, depending on if at home or on the move, during a time of going through an sudden loss of a lifelong best friend, it really helped me move through that grief in one piece, it was exactly what I needed in my soul as someone with no religious beliefs. I burned through it in like 6 weeks.
It inspired in my at 40 year old to finally go make art, and in fact ended up with me getting in touch with Moore and getting his permission to sample him reading from ‘Clouds Unfold’ chapter in a bit of music I made - https://youtu.be/03Uh6YV_fTQ?is=bLP7f8hKEPUh9w5j
“Thats what art is for, it rescues everything from time”
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u/raelianautopsy 19d ago
I appreciate your sharing a review of Jerusalem. I've read a lot of Alan Moore, but honestly I'm intimidated by his prose work. Perhaps one day I'll have time to read this one...
If appropriate on the Alan Moore subreddit, may I share that I did a review of Grant Morrison's prose novel?
One thing you didn't say, is if you've read Alan Moore comics and compared to this novel's style. I am curious what you'd think of Grant Morrison's prose work as well especially if you've read the comics.
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u/johnxii24 16d ago
Thank you for your message. Actually I haven’t read anything by Alan Moore before Jerusalem and I didn’t start reading anything from him after finishing Jerusalem. I do know about the existence of Watchmen, From Hell and Voice of the Fire but I don’t know more than that From Hell is about Jack the Ripper, Voice of the Fire is a prototype for Jerusalem and Watchmen is a superhero antithesis. They are all on my list, plus The Long London series that someone here recommended to me. I’m not a huge comic reader, although I grew up with Donald Duck and Scrooge McDuck comics. The only comic/graphic novel I read is Prince Valiant. So I’m not familiar with Grant Morrison. The reason why I read Jerusalem without being familiar with Alan Moore before? I stumbled across it and felt extremely intrigued. I’ve just read and liked your review on Luda.
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u/Sea_Pianist5164 19d ago
One of the greatest modern novels. I was given a signed copy as a present and it's better than gold to me.
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u/Prestigious-Type6107 19d ago
good on you ! i started 6 months ago and am only halfway through Book 1 ... really enjoying it though and cant wait to get really stuck in.
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u/Greyhound-Executive 18d ago
Good on ya!! For reading it AND writing about it. I read it earlier this year and it blew me away every day. Right now I’m calling it the best novel I’ve ever read. Astounding, engaging, and playful prose. A modern masterpiece!
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u/NickInMersey 15d ago
I'm on my second reading, and have given copies to my reader friends as well. It's one of the best things I've ever read in English.
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u/AgreeableOil1035 18d ago
I was thinking about this book only yesterday. It has to be one of the most memorable books I’ve ever read. I lost count of how many times whilst reading it I would have to put the book down and meditate over what I’d just read. A pure joy from start to finish.
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u/Resident_Character35 19d ago
Is it available to read elsewhere? I'd like to read it but I can't open it without installing the IG app, and I'm not doing that.
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u/johnxii24 19d ago
Here you go: The siblings Michael and Alma Warren grow up in the 1950s in the Boroughs, Northampton’s working-class district. When Michael is five years old, he nearly dies—he stops breathing for several minutes—and has a near-death experience. When, in his mid-fifties, he regains his memory of the experience, he begins to question not only his own life, but life itself. While his body was dead, his spirit spent several weeks in Mansoul, or the Second Borough, where he joined the notorious Dead Dead Gang and witnessed fantastic and horrific things. This is merely the starting point of this extraordinary 2016 novel, which runs to almost 1,300 pages. Alan Moore spent ten years working on his magnum opus. In Jerusalem, the run-down and gentrified Boroughs become a myth. The very first pages of the book establish its tone, and thus the story unfolds. Strange things are happening in the Boroughs. Things that are generally imperceptible to the human senses, but sometimes are perceived nonetheless. The story is told from the point of view of characters from different eras, and their paths sometimes cross seemingly by chance. The book thus resembles a vast mosaic that, chapter by chapter, comes together to form an overwhelming panorama. A panorama not only of the Boroughs, but of an imaginative vision of the world grounded in scientific theory. Jerusalem is a work that, despite its seriousness, is entertaining and eccentric. Above all, Moore’s autofictional novel is both a declaration of love and an unvarnished portrait of his birthplace, the Boroughs, as an eternal, sacred city.
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u/Individual99991 18d ago
Scientific theory seems a bit much. Yeah, you've got Einstein's block theory of time and a joke about carcinisation, but much, much more is Alan's occult-infused noodlings.
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u/johnxii24 16d ago
I see what you mean. It’s probably because I originally wrote it in German and translated it with DeepL. The original text sounded more like: most of it is Moore’s fantasy but there is also some science to it.
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u/Individual99991 18d ago edited 18d ago
Nice, I have a big chonky one-volume hardback, but I think yours is nicer.
My feeling on finishing it was that Moore kind of bit off more than he could chew, and that by the end he'd given up on trying to make it a cohesive work and was just doing what he wanted and hoping the editor would be too exhausted to argue. The final chapter at the art exhibition felt like him throwing up his arms in a big hairy shrug with a shit-eating grin on his face.
I know Jerusalem is literally three books, but it really felt like three barely connected volumes that would have been best printed apart from one another: the ghosts/ghost kids stuff (the best bit, for sure), the "everyday life of Alan's mates" stuff, and the 101 Things You Didn't Know About Northampton's History! fact book. The crossovers between these sections were not always successful. The bit where the ghost kids turn up at a tent in the past and stand around and do nothing while Oliver Cromwell and his mate have a conversation then fuck off out of the story forever felt like an outright pisstake.
Also, his prose in this is absurdly overwrought. It was like he was entering a competition to cram as many similes and metaphors into a paragraph as possible.
Just looked up a PDF and chose a sentence at random; here, a caterpillar is glimpsed:
Dangling in the cold crystal of the morning air it curled and shimmied like an escapologist, albeit one whose act worked in reverse and hinged upon secreting his own straitjacket.
An escapologist in a crystal, is it, Alan. Right you are.
I dunno, there's a ton of incredible stuff in here, it's just that there's also about 15 tons of good-to-unnecessary-seeming stuff too, and while even the most tiresome sections have wonderful passages and moments, it weighs down the book as a whole for me. Especially compared with the tightly constructed Voice of the Fire, which remains one of my favourite books of all time (probably helped by a plethora of different narrative voices, rather than extended opening hours at Alan's Simile Emporium.
Still, I do dig Jerusalem out from time to time just to read that opening bit with the angels in the dream market, which captures the uncanny significance of seemingly random dream events better than anything I've read in prose form, and maybe better than any fiction I've experienced outside of a David Lynch film.
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u/johnxii24 16d ago
Thank you for your message. I totally agree about your first point (the overloadedness) It’s the novel’s biggest weakness, in my opinion.
About the second point (the prose): I actually was worries sometimes about not getting the metaphors etc. Good to see that I’m not alone.1
u/johnxii24 16d ago
The only thing i don’t agree with you about is your stance on the final chapter about the exhibition. I actually think the whole book was building towards that, although I think there are plenty of better chapters than that one.
Why do you think the Oliver Cromwell scene was a pisstake?
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u/Individual99991 15d ago
I don't mean that Moore was consciously taking the piss with the Cromwell bit - I think he wrote that entirely earnestly and honestly, and it fits his intention for the book to capture the essence of Northampton.
But I was really getting into the ghost kids story, and having it grind to a halt so Moore could labouriously work through a historical curio really felt like an imposition on my fun.
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u/johnxii24 11d ago
I see. I think Moore can‘t stop himself of doing what he feels like instead of what is more reader-friendly. To be honest, I loved that chapter and felt like it perfectly fit there. I had a wayyyy bigger problem with the Robert Goodman chapter in Book 3. What the hell was that even for?!
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u/Individual99991 11d ago
Same thing. Alan wanted to do something and nobody was prepared to stop him. 🙂
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u/joy3r 18d ago
Thanks for posting, i havent read any of his books
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u/johnxii24 16d ago
I, on the other hand, haven’t read any of his comics. 😃
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u/literatomorph 16d ago
I started really optimistic and later struggled with the language.( english is not my mothertongue). So I got a german translation. That sadly misses a lot of atmossphere an wits. I still want to read it, but I must start fresh...maybe on a long vacation
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u/johnxii24 16d ago
Ich habe nur das erste Kapitel auf Englisch gelesen, und weil ich vieles nicht verstanden habe, habe ich mir eine deutsche Ausgabe gekauft und das Ganze auf Deutsch gelesen. Ich kann nicht beurteilen, wie viel von der Atmosphäre gesamtheitlich verlorengegangen ist. Das erste Kapitel habe ich ja auf Deutsch ein zweites Mal gelesen und gefunden, dass es in etwa die gleiche Atmosphäre einfängt.
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u/_jamais_vu 19d ago
Loved it. Read it almost three years ago and I still consider it one of my favorite novels and one of my most unforgettable reading experiences. Can you post your review here or on r/readersofjerusalem ? I don't have Instagram so I can read what you've written about it.