Alan Moore Writes 1 million-word novel

Damn... So, he's gone and raised the bar... I'm only up to half a million...<heavy sigh>... oh well, back to work...

CrastersBabies said:

It's craaazy! Someone on another forum said he'd never let it go digital for some weird reason that probably only Alan Moore can understand. How does one bind a book like this?

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Well there goes any chance of me reading it. (I would give it a chance, otherwise.)

CrastersBabies said:

It's craaazy! Someone on another forum said he'd never let it go digital for some weird reason that probably only Alan Moore can understand. How does one bind a book like this?

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He said this about publication (2011):

I have doubted that people will even be able to pick it up. I’m not averse to some kind of ebook, eventually – as long as I get my huge, cripplingly heavy book to put on my shelf and gloat over, I’ll be happy.

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Earlier, he said this (2008):

I wanted it to be one volume. I was hoping the technology would catch up with my vision...It will probably end up as three volumes in a slipcase.

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Although what he's thinking in 2014 might be quite different.

Impressive feat. An entry for Ripley's to be sure.

Brings to mind this famous quote. (Attributed to numerous writers.)

"I'm sorry that this was such a long letter, but I didn't have time to write you a short one."

I don't know if I could make such a long term commitment as a reader. Is it available in Cliff Notes?

HeavilyMedicated said:

We are talking about Alan Moore.

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Which name means nothing to my benighted soul. But from this thread, I ain't in a sweat to read anything with his name on it.

caw

CrastersBabies said:

It's craaazy! Someone on another forum said he'd never let it go digital for some weird reason that probably only Alan Moore can understand. How does one bind a book like this?

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It's possible. Clarissa (see the Wiki link I posted on the last page) is a single volume in the UK - 984870 words in 1534 pages. That comes to about 642+ words a page, which would mean small print and thin margins.

Zettels Traum (see the same list) fits 1100000 (estimated) words into 1536 pages, but you'll see on the list that those are particularly large pages - 14.1 x 10.8 inches.

So it is possible. Whether or not the publisher will find it economic to publish in one volume remains to be seen.

At least with an e-book version you can adjust the font size to spare your eyes.

Hot damn! My partner does an amazing Alan Moore impression. I can't wait to see what new material he comes up with because of this.

eyeblink said:

Clarissa

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Great book. Read it twice. Has one of the most endearing characters in all of literature. As well as one of the most vile. And not a single word too long.

TheNighSwan said:

There's been a few novels over a million words long before; not many, but still enough that we can remember them and even still see some of them as genuinely good. So I am not sure why everyone acts all so shocked and surprised.

As for printing it, well, that's what bible paper is for, cramming 5000 pages in the space of 800, with the result not even being heavy or too small to read!

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Can you name some million word novels? I can think of only one that's close, and none that actually reach a million words.

Even the Bible falls short by about 220,000 words.

Alan Moore is the Honey Badger of the literary world.

Jamesaritchie said:

Can you name some million word novels? I can think of only one that's close, and none that actually reach a million words.

Even the Bible falls short by about 220,000 words.

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In Search of Lost Time, by Marcel Proust, considered one the greatest French novels of the 20th century, is well over 1 million words long (around 1.2 million, I believe).

Though the absolute record is another French novel, Artamène ou le Grand Cyrus, published in the mid 16th century, which reached over two million words.

Both these works were extremely successful in their time.

TheNighSwan said:

In Search of Lost Time, by Marcel Proust, considered one the greatest French novels of the 20th century, is well over 1 million words long (around 1.2 million, I believe).

Though the absolute record is another French novel, Artamène ou le Grand Cyrus, published in the mid 16th century, which reached over two million words.

Both these works were extremely successful in their time.

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Is the second one still in print? Sounds interesting.

As for Proust, he's now considered a classic and I believe his work is published in volumes not one huge manuscript. Classics are consistent sellers that publishers can depend on. It's a tenth of Proust, actually a bit more, but Pride & Prejudice has been in print for 200 years. It has been making publishers money for that time.

I doubt that whatever Moore has come up with is in the same vien as Proust or Austen, or that French novel you mentioned. Any reasonable modern publisher would do the thing in volumes, even when on Bible paper. That is, unless they printed it in a huge thing like this:
Globe Illustrated, Shakespeare The Complete Works

TheNighSwan said:

In Search of Lost Time, by Marcel Proust, considered one the greatest French novels of the 20th century, is well over 1 million words long (around 1.2 million, I believe).

Though the absolute record is another French novel, Artamène ou le Grand Cyrus, published in the mid 16th century, which reached over two million words.

Both these works were extremely successful in their time.

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Proust's novel was the one I had in mind, though I thought it came in around 960,000.

Haven't read Artamène ou le Grand Cyrus.

I suppose you could consider some series as single novels, since a single story is told over many books.

Lillith1991 said:

Is the second one still in print? Sounds interesting.

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French novels of yore 1600's & 1700's are infuriatingly frustrating to get as I've found. Maybe they just didn't get translated that much. I've had to give up on reading several titles I wanted b/c they simply weren't available, anywhere :-(

CrastersBabies said:

It's craaazy! Someone on another forum said he'd never let it go digital for some weird reason that probably only Alan Moore can understand. How does one bind a book like this?

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He actually said in an interview that he has no problem with a digital version, as long as he gets a hard copy to sit on his shelf.

Lillith1991 said:

Is the second one still in print? Sounds interesting.

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Browsing through amazon does return some results, but they seem to often be second hands, and since the book is printed in several volumes, getting a hold of the complete thing in print might be difficult.

On the flipside, the entire text is public domain and can be found for free on this site (in the original French) and on this one (in the English translation, I'm not sure if this is free on this site however).

I've read V for Vendetta and have meaning to pick up Watchmen as well. But maybe not this one. And I think this quote from 2011 sums Moore's own attitude up nicely:

"Any editor worth their salt would tell me to cut two-thirds of this book but that's not going to happen. I doubt that Herman Melville had an editor -- if he had, that editor would have told him to get rid of all that boring stuff about whaling: 'Cut to the chase, Herman.'"

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