Unfortunately, I haven’t had a chance to read Carter Kaplan’s new novel, Tally-Ho, Cornelius! However, I intend to do so as soon as the semester wraps-up, because it sounds like an interesting postmodern tale with characters and names borrowed–with permission–from Michael Moorcock’s Jerry Cornelius Quartet. Also, it should be noted that Kaplan is a rara avis–an academic and SF author. Here’s the blurb about his novel:
Jerry Cornelius comes back to life as a most improbable Anglican theologian in this lively tale of love, God’s will and the New World Order. Set against the pulsing background of New York City rebuilding at the dawn of our young and uncertain century, this happy and charming novel bubbles over with the myths and ambitions that feed the hallucinating classes as they compete with each other and make love, very often to vague purposes and with only figurative ends in sight. Jerry Cornelius is our affliction and our respite. Michael Moorcock writes, “Rev. Dr. Jerry Cornelius remains an enigmatic and at the same time wholly transparent figure amongst modern media brands, at once instantly recognizable and invisible.”
Visit the author’s blog here, or buy the book on Amazon here.
I just finished Carter Kaplan’s Tally-Ho, Cornelius! What a ride it is–and it is hard to label: it is fantasy and science fiction, but it is also the most literary novel I’ve read since taking English courses in college. I have also read Moorcok’s Jerry Cornelius quartet and the first book in his Second Ether trilogy, both of which Kaplan draws on for this novel (evidently with Moorcock’s permission: Moorcock has contributed a very strange blurb to the back cover). I thought Kaplan’s novel went well with what Moorcock has previously invented, and Kaplan’s new incarnation of JC is completely original but also fits in some weird way with Moorcock’s original hippie anti-hero. Kaplan (who is an English professor) offers up a JC who is an anti-hero from the intellectual world. The Rev. Dr. Cornelius is an Anglican priest and a theologian, but you can’t help wondering if Kaplan really has college professors in mind. This book is a trip!
Hey Larry,
Thanks for posting the mini-review of Carter Kaplan’s Tally-Ho, Cornelius! When the semester is over, I’ll have to bump this one up my reading queue.
-Jason
Hi Jason:
Your blog gets a mention at Michael Moorcock’s site:
http://www.multiverse.org/fora/showthread.php?p=158298#post158298
vb, CK
[...] Kaplan, who I have mentioned here, here and here, and who is the author of the Michael Moorcock blessed novel Tally Ho, Cornelius!, [...]