Finished V for Vendetta last night. I still feel that Alan Moore tends to glorify perversity. However, his technique is effective, and literate—the layering of meaning through text that contrasts or mirrors the imagery while literally applying to something not pictured.
By the time I finished, I think the political aspect of the story, the themes of it, had grown larger than the specific perversities. It had meaning, or at the least implication. Next up from Moore will be From Hell.
Reading through The Forms of Fiction as a sort of primer on short fiction. I have not been particularly excited by these examples of the form, although the stories have been well written. It’s just that they don’t catch my fancy.
Poe’s Ligeia seemed overwrought, giving the trappings of the Gothic story and not real emotion. But then GB Shaw thinks that the story is unparalleled. What am I missing? Gardner takes it for an allegory of idealism, artistry, killing the actual. And if this is so, then artistry also shares its domain with the effects of opium.
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