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Jerry Cornelius #7
The Entropy Tango: A Comic Romance
The Entropy Tango is a late 20th century Grand Guignol. Its mise en scene is a climacteric world in revolutionary upheaval, its players refugees from the Cornelius tetralogy— The Final Programme, A Cure For Cancer, The English Assassin , and The Condition of Muzak. The archetypes are Harlequin, Columbine and Pierrot.The basic theme of the Cornelius mythos is the obsessive search for identity in a rapidly changing cityscape. Entropy is the metaphor for identity failure. Jerry Cornelius is no longer a force for Chaos, he is its victim—he is unable to control the megaflow. The city decays and the revolutionaries age, while the temperature falls. The twin leitmotifs of the catastrophe are alienation and paranoia.Essentially a romance, The Entropy Tango incorporates anarchistic, paradoxical and apocryphal material. Moorcock abandons classical symbolism in favour of images containing the optimum number of associations—metaphors capable of many meanings. The novel is conceived in terms of tone, pace and mood, and quotes from earlier work or newspapers, magazines and pop songs (either directly or in terms of images, atmosphere and style). Written with Moorcock's characteristic bravado, The Entropy Tango is witty, lyrical and allegorical. The iconography is kaleidoscopic and the irony penetrates like a shot from a needle gun.
160 pages, Paperback
First published October 1, 1981
2 people are currently reading
114 people want to read
About the author
Michael Moorcock
1,204 books3,690 followersMichael John Moorcock is an English writer primarily of science fiction and fantasy who has also published a number of literary novels.
Moorcock has mentioned The Gods of Mars by Edgar Rice Burroughs, The Apple Cart by George Bernard Shaw and The Constable of St. Nicholas by Edward Lester Arnold as the first three books which captured his imagination. He became editor of Tarzan Adventures in 1956, at the age of sixteen, and later moved on to edit Sexton Blake Library. As editor of the controversial British science fiction magazine New Worlds, from May 1964 until March 1971 and then again from 1976 to 1996, Moorcock fostered the development of the science fiction "New Wave" in the UK and indirectly in the United States. His serialization of Norman Spinrad's Bug Jack Barron was notorious for causing British MPs to condemn in Parliament the Arts Council's funding of the magazine.
During this time, he occasionally wrote under the pseudonym of "James Colvin," a "house pseudonym" used by other critics on New Worlds. A spoof obituary of Colvin appeared in New Worlds #197 (January 1970), written by "William Barclay" (another Moorcock pseudonym). Moorcock, indeed, makes much use of the initials "JC", and not entirely coincidentally these are also the initials of Jesus Christ, the subject of his 1967 Nebula award-winning novella Behold the Man, which tells the story of Karl Glogauer, a time-traveller who takes on the role of Christ. They are also the initials of various "Eternal Champion" Moorcock characters such as Jerry Cornelius, Jerry Cornell and Jherek Carnelian. In more recent years, Moorcock has taken to using "Warwick Colvin, Jr." as yet another pseudonym, particularly in his Second Ether fiction.
Moorcock has mentioned The Gods of Mars by Edgar Rice Burroughs, The Apple Cart by George Bernard Shaw and The Constable of St. Nicholas by Edward Lester Arnold as the first three books which captured his imagination. He became editor of Tarzan Adventures in 1956, at the age of sixteen, and later moved on to edit Sexton Blake Library. As editor of the controversial British science fiction magazine New Worlds, from May 1964 until March 1971 and then again from 1976 to 1996, Moorcock fostered the development of the science fiction "New Wave" in the UK and indirectly in the United States. His serialization of Norman Spinrad's Bug Jack Barron was notorious for causing British MPs to condemn in Parliament the Arts Council's funding of the magazine.
During this time, he occasionally wrote under the pseudonym of "James Colvin," a "house pseudonym" used by other critics on New Worlds. A spoof obituary of Colvin appeared in New Worlds #197 (January 1970), written by "William Barclay" (another Moorcock pseudonym). Moorcock, indeed, makes much use of the initials "JC", and not entirely coincidentally these are also the initials of Jesus Christ, the subject of his 1967 Nebula award-winning novella Behold the Man, which tells the story of Karl Glogauer, a time-traveller who takes on the role of Christ. They are also the initials of various "Eternal Champion" Moorcock characters such as Jerry Cornelius, Jerry Cornell and Jherek Carnelian. In more recent years, Moorcock has taken to using "Warwick Colvin, Jr." as yet another pseudonym, particularly in his Second Ether fiction.
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Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews
October 31, 2014
A massive, epic alternative history of the twentieth century, but told in brief elliptical, ambiguous fragments, eschewing plot and linear storytelling. Una Persson and a large cast of real and imagined figures, including Jerry Conrnelius, Colonel Pyat, Joseph Conrad and Trotsky all rub shoulders and exchange cryptic remarks and ponder philosophy and politics and the nature of time or perform plays and songs dressed as a harlequinade. There is very little for the reader to grab hold of here in terms of traditional narrative, but the very treatise of this sharp, sad little book is that it is the mystery and the ambiguity and the uncertainty that makes life worth living.
This is a secret history, but it is a secret history that reveals the conspiracies and machinations and vast, intricately plotted schemes are projections of those with linear imaginations on the people who move through history. As the century flattens and simplifies and becomes colder, the wonder and mad idealism and passion wane, become coarser and more mechanical. From the glorious anarchists revolutions in Ontario, to a final dance in a fog bound cruiser as the ice closes in, The Entropy Tango traces the falling arc of the time operatives through this world as as Empires crumble and war becomes business.
But I could be wrong about that.
This is a secret history, but it is a secret history that reveals the conspiracies and machinations and vast, intricately plotted schemes are projections of those with linear imaginations on the people who move through history. As the century flattens and simplifies and becomes colder, the wonder and mad idealism and passion wane, become coarser and more mechanical. From the glorious anarchists revolutions in Ontario, to a final dance in a fog bound cruiser as the ice closes in, The Entropy Tango traces the falling arc of the time operatives through this world as as Empires crumble and war becomes business.
But I could be wrong about that.
March 9, 2016
If I was back in my teens or younger this would have been better. Now this is no fault of the writer but mine, I am older and the brain cannot except Moorcocks unusual fragmented way with words. The youthful mind could easily have defragmented the political jabs at various world systems, intergrated the scenes with others in the Cornelious books to make a coherent whole, but having left it for so long to read this, the jaded old brain can no longer fulfill the mental gymnastics required.
The book comes across as ungainly written postmodernism... NO.
Damn you stupid brain for not grasping what once would have been a simple pleasurable read.
The book comes across as ungainly written postmodernism... NO.
Damn you stupid brain for not grasping what once would have been a simple pleasurable read.
November 5, 2016
The Bottom Line - Should you read this book?
YES - If you can find it, you should buy it, read it, savour it.
Michael Moorcock is one of the most multi-faceted writers I know. The Entropy Tango is, in my opinion, his most interesting work. What it lacks in lucidity the book makes up for in a sense of authenticity that permeates every step of the ladder up to the height of madness, as Moorcock shows us a brief history of a world that never was, with a writing style that makes me want to call The Entropy Tango an "anti-novel." It's so different from what you'd expect and so far out of my comfort zone that I can't help but read it from cover to cover in one sitting, even on my second reading. The illustrations and poems seem random at first glance, but I'm convinced the book wouldn't work without the delicate touch Moorcock has wielded when he distributed them throughout the narrative. At times it almost brings to mind the old illustrated works of Howard Pyle, though much less refined.
The Bottom Line - Should you read this book?
YES - If you can find it, you should buy it, read it, savour it.
YES - If you can find it, you should buy it, read it, savour it.
Michael Moorcock is one of the most multi-faceted writers I know. The Entropy Tango is, in my opinion, his most interesting work. What it lacks in lucidity the book makes up for in a sense of authenticity that permeates every step of the ladder up to the height of madness, as Moorcock shows us a brief history of a world that never was, with a writing style that makes me want to call The Entropy Tango an "anti-novel." It's so different from what you'd expect and so far out of my comfort zone that I can't help but read it from cover to cover in one sitting, even on my second reading. The illustrations and poems seem random at first glance, but I'm convinced the book wouldn't work without the delicate touch Moorcock has wielded when he distributed them throughout the narrative. At times it almost brings to mind the old illustrated works of Howard Pyle, though much less refined.
The Bottom Line - Should you read this book?
YES - If you can find it, you should buy it, read it, savour it.
October 31, 2008
what is this book? Just found it used...another dose of Jerry Cornelius madness...and I do mean dose.This starts out as an alternative history in the tradition of the author’s Bastable stories, but then the cards start getting shuffled, the time line is mutated, and all the characters (Joseph Conrad briefly reprising his cameo as a submarine commander) from the Cornelius and Bastable stories beginning acting in play after play from worlds of inevitable violence and conflict. Songs are sung, cities are bombed, airships and submarines abound, the author himself appears, and quotations and news articles are planted in the text. Fans of W.S. Burrough’s cut ups will feel uneasily at home here. So this typical (somehow this word doesn’t fit) Cornelius fun that is not as distinguished as the black comic nightmare onslaught of The English Assasin or the gothic science fiction/apocalyptic/mod romp of The Final Programme, but what reader would wander here with out reading those, its just more weird fun.
August 10, 2022
A polemic whose rhetorical points are obscured by the very imagery it uses. Full review: https://fakegeekboy.wordpress.com/201...
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August 23, 2008isbn,original
Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews