The Sunset Perspective - A Moral Tale takes its place as number five of eleven adventures within the cycle of stories comprising The Lives and Times of Jerry Cornelius.
We're
given ten short chapters and Michael Moorcock keeps in the spirit of
allowing a reader to take on the role of co-creator, filling in the
gaps, expanding this Jerry saga with one's own imagination.
All
of the many news clips and news references are from that most wild 1960s
year – 1969, the year of the Woodstock Festival, the year when the
United States involvement in Vietnam was at its peak as was public
outrage against the war.
Sidebar: I myself recall just how wild - I was a college sophomore in 1969. Publishing note: The Sunset Perspective
first appeared in a 1971 London avant-garde poetry magazine edited by
John Sladek and Pamela Zoline, a poetry magazine with the wickedly
satiric title Ronald Reagan: A Magazine of Poetry.
Here's a batch of Sunset Perspective
tabs in the form of direct quotes coupled with my comments. In swingin'
69 spirit, let these tale tabs brighten up the sun for you:
"Jerry
sighed. He reached the field where his Gates Twinjet was parked. He
climbed in, revved the chopper 's engine, and buzzed up into the
relative peace of the skies over Cornwall, heading for London."
As
it turned out, Jer was the only customer for this Lear Jet Corp luxury
helicopter - the company scotched production in 1970 and Gates Twinjet
never reached the market. Meanwhile, Jerry C keeps on chopping, proof
that, once again, fiction wins out over fact. 
“Jerry
finally managed to track Miss Brunner down. She was burying a goat in
the Hyde Park crater and didn't see him come up and stand looking over
the rim at her.”
Why would Miss Brunner be doing such a thing?
Predictably, Miss Brunner seeks power, this time from the “Total Energy
Concept.” And since Miss Brunner tells Jerry she also has eight toads
and four newts buried in the park, Miss Brunner sounds like her means of
accessing power shares much in common with occultist and ceremonial
magician Aleister Crowley. By Miss Brunner's calculations, there are
strong energy emanations vectoring from New York.
Ah, the Big
Apple. Jerry is on the move somewhere along the New Jersey Turnpike. Our
Eternal Hero has traded in his Gates Twinjet for a Cadillac limousine
and carefully licks his upper lip with a black mixture of oil and blood
from the nail of his little finger (a concoction from Miss Brunner's
alchemy?) as he roars down the turnpike, sirens blaring, escorted by six
outriders in their red and orange leather (I envision six menacing
Hell's Angel-types), their arms raised high, gripping their ape hanger
handlebars as if they're tightening their fingers around the throats of
any onlookers daring to challenge Jerry's power.
"On the George
Washington Bridge Jerry decided to change the Cadillac for one of his
outriders' BMW 750s....He kicked the starter and had reached eighty by
the time he hit Manhattan and entered the island's thick haze of
incense."
Jerry zooming into Manhattan at 80mph from the GWB says
it all - Jerry has assumed the mantle of a Dell Comics Superhero. And a
good thing too: there's corpses piled on the streets, the occasional
pop-pop-pop of distant gunfire and "faggots, sporting the stolen
uniforms of the Tactical Riot Police, were lobbing B-H5 gas grenades
into the tangled heaps of automobiles."
The violence escalates.
In addition to Miss Brunner, other familiar names make their way to the
scene, among their number: Mr Alvarez, Colonel Moon, Shaky Mo Collier
and New York Mets playing in the World Series.
"Once history ceases to be seen in linear terms, it ceases to be made in linear terms."
With
this line, I hear echoes of Bishop Berkeley's "to be is to be
perceived." 1969, the year when massive numbers of young people began
dropping LSD and started to dig the rising counterculture - suddenly all
those fixed, static conventional categories, including what passes for
history, take on the consistency of Jell-O. Grove on, grove on, Jerry
Cornelius! There's good reason Michael Moorcock entitled this one The Sunset Perspective.
"So
it's a morality syndrome?" So Miss Brunner asks Jerry. As well she
should since the Vietnam War is referenced repeatedly in this chapter,
including news clips on how Vietnam is a "testing ground" for a wide
range of weapons and "Peace rallies drew throngs to the city's streets,
parks, campuses and churches yesterday in an outpouring of protest
against the Vietnam war." And let's not forget many Americans called
Vietnam an "immoral war."
All through The Sunset Perspective I had the distinct sense Michael Moorcock anticipated such anti-war novels as Gustav Hasford's blistering The Short-Timers and The Phantom Blooper,
the later novel beginning: "This book is dedicated to the three million
veterans of the Viet Nam War, three million loyal men and women who
were betrayed by their country."
The tale ends with Jerry laying
down on the grass and closing his eyes. "He listened to the lazy sound
of the distant traffic, he sniffed the scents of autumn." Jerry C's
final reflection on his Big Apple adventure is a ten word golden apple. Pick up a
copy and take a tasty bite.
British author Michael Moorcock, born 1939
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