(no subject)

[learnedax]

Finished V for Vendetta this morning. It's good. It's very good. I disagree, however, with jducoeur and alexx_kay that it is Alan Moore's best work. My central issue with it is that the story is, odd as this might sound, traditional to the point of not saying much. I had no foreknowledge of this book, and nothing in it surprised me. Great art can of course be made as process rather than product, and this is quite good art on those terms, but it also seems to go to great lengths to shake up the reader and tell them something interesting and new. I really wanted it to be both, but for me at least the latter aspect winds up coming off rather weakly.

Mine may also be a less than typical perspective. I'm a rabid fan of The Prisoner, and I saw a lot of parallels between it and this book (sure, all dystopiae look similar, but I see far more large and small echoes of McGoohan here than Huxley or Orwell).

Comments

[solipsistnation.livejournal.com]

Taken in the context of its time-- Thatcher's Britain-- it was quite a different experience. V for Vendetta is very much of its time, though, as much as any of Alan Moore's other works. He tends to write about what's going on around him, and captures the times in his books-- V for Vendetta and Watchmen are both about the 80's, although they take on different aspects.

Re:

[learnedax.livejournal.com]

I can see that the effect would be notably different in the right context, much as the nuclear aspects of Watchmen connect very strongly with the fears of the mid-80s. But on the other hand, truly great art should be timeless or at least longevous, right?

Re:

[solipsistnation.livejournal.com]

Well, yes, which is why I think you're a total heathen. 8)

Actually, V wasn't my favorite of his-- I think it's interesting, but is really more of a relic of its time than even Watchmen. I think it's a good story, though, but, as others have noted here, much more heavy-handed than later works...