[j. d. worthington]

There's a certain amount of truth to the complaint, yes; but I'd say that's partly because it's such pronouncements that tend to get people to notice. When a writer praises someone's work, it's usually used by the publisher as a blurb, and everyone else forgets it within minutes; but when they have something harsher to say, that gets people's attention. Moorcock has had a lot of very positive things to say about writers over the years (Ed Hamilton, Leigh Brackett, Fritz Leiber, M. John Harrison, Jorge Luis Borges, J. G. Ballard, Pamela Zoline, Alfred Bester.... the list goes on and on), but those simply don't get much of a reaction. These do.

There's also the fact that Moorcock is an old polemicist, so when he comments on such things, he expresses himself in very strong terms -- a bit hyperbolically, in fact; so one has to balance such broad statements against other things he's said elsewhere, as these statements are intended not only to express his opinion, but sometimes also to rouse debate and get discussion going as well.

I've been a fan of Moorcock's since I first discovered his work in the early '70s, so I'm always interested in what he has to say ... which is not the same as always agreeing with him, by any means. But he usually has something worth thinking about, at very least, so I'm always interested....