Cheering for the Rockets - tale number ten in Michael Moorcock's The Life And Times of Jerry Cornelius
A Jerry C snapper divided into four chapters: Noon, Non, None, No, where we're in 1998 and the location is a shifting somewhere on planet Earth in the multiverse. You want familiar characters? Cheering for the Rockets has a bunch in full form: Trixiebell Brunner, Printz Lobkowitz, Shaky Mo, Professor Hira, Old Lady B and, of course, Jerry C.
I
must admit reading this Cosmonaut Cornelius tale had my brain cells set
aflame with so many crackling lines to quote from. I'll contain myself
and link my comments to the following batch:
“There is this same
anti-semitism in America. I hear the swirl and mutter of it around me
in restaurants, at clubs, on the beach, in Washington, in New York, and
here at home.”
This Philip Wylie quote taken from his Generation of Vipers
opens the story, setting the tone for the entire piece – how much
current day sentiment sees the Jews are one big diabolical family,
gaining control of the media so they can control the world.
“Sudanese
pharmaceuticals they'd grabbed at random on their way through Omdurman.
The labels were pretty much of a mystery. Jerry's Arabic didn't run to
over-the-counter drugs.”
Vintage Michael Moorcock sizzling
humor. Is there anybody in the crowd (any MM fans reading my review)
that can lend our hip Eternal Champion some help in reading those labels
written in Arabic? No matter, you can join Jer as he pops some colorful
Omdurman pills and takes his chances.
“If it can't be
romanticized or sentimentalized it's denied. Fighting virtual wars with
real guns. That's why they export so much escapism. It's their main cash
crop. That's why they've disneyfied the world. And why they're so
welcome. Who wants to buy reality.”
Ha! The victory of
commercialized, cartoonish American pop culture extending worldwide to
create a colossal bubble of illusion. Read the words of philosopher
Theodor W. Adorno as they contain the undeniable ring of truth: “Walt
Disney, the most dangerous American of all time.”
“Home of the
grave. Land of the fee. You discount everything you have that's
valuable. You sell it for less than the traders paid for Manhattan. Now
all that's left are guns and herds of overweight buffalo wallowing
across a subcontinent of syrup.”
You gotta love the word play!
You gotta love how America has turned the world, including counties like
India, Pakistan and Bangladesh, into lands of syrupy moneymaking dreams
and shoot 'em up Westerns. No wonder Jer keeps popping those colorful
Omdurman pills.
“You had a vital, successful trading nation
reasonably aware of its cultural shortcomings. Which everyone liked. We
like your film stars. We liked your music. Your sentimental cartoon
world. And then you had to take the next step and become an imperial
power. Burden of empire. Malign by definition. Hated by all, including
yourselves. You're not a country any more, you're an extended episode of
the X-Files.”
Thus speaketh Prniz Lobkowitz. Sorry world. Little
did you know the mass media's pop culture was only the first step. Your
governments and politics are now primed to become tools of the big, bad
bottom line for global US corporations.
“Jillian Burnes, the famous transsexual novelist”
Hey, Julian Barnes. Give us your take on fab Jerry Cornelius and his lives and times. Come on, guy, get hip!
“Once
you get it (your market economy) in place, you'll take off like a
rocket.” Quote of Bill Clinton speaking to Russian Duma.
How did
the Russian economy actually take off? Russian author Victor Pelevin
could never understand why "it was worth exchanging an evil empire for
an evil banana republic that imported its bananas from Finland."
“It is our goal to teach every school child in Texas to read.” Quote of George W. Bush.
Sounds
good, W. But unfortunately if you teach children the mechanics of
reading without teaching them the LOVE of reading, you'll create an
adult population of semi-illiterates only capable of reading Twitter
quips, the current plight of million of Texans in 2021.
“We're defined by our appetites and how we control them. They've made greed a virtue. What on earth possesses them?”
I
suspect Jerry Cornelius could answer his own question: Greed fuels a
commercialized, global economy for both those in power (money, money,
money!) and billions of forever hungry consumers.
Cheering for the Rockets
concludes with an extended note on Philip Wyle (1902-1971) where the
final line reads, “Much of his work was a continuing polemic concerned
with his own nation, for which he invented the term momism to explain
how sentimentality and over-simplification would be the ruin of American
democracy.”
Spot-on Philip! You hit the Fox Nation bullseye.
British author Michael Moorcock, born 1939
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