And it will certainly be nice to know it’s done BEFORE you start the commitment to it.
Though for various reasons including warlockiness his longevity should be better than GRRM’s anyhow.
I have no conception of what 1M words looks like, but according to this site, the complete works of Shakespeare total “only” 884,421.
So bravo to Mr… Moore and his army of diligent monkeys.
I wouldn’t worry about GRRM, assuming he’s in Alan’s good graces.
I’ll wait for the movie(s) to come out.
I’m wondering how many of these words will be deeply problematic.
One million words? That photo? “Book” is not the word that comes to mind. Think “manifesto”.
Squeeeee! I got a ARC!
Bit odd to announce this, but not mention the title: Jerusalem. And the project of his that I’m really interested in, and worried about, is The Moon and Serpent Bumper Book of Magic, intended to be a sort of Maker’s manual of magic, which he was collaborating with Steve Moore (no relation) on before the latter’s death last spring–although, if it’s the real thing, Steve Moore’s death may be no hindrance to finishing the work.
To put 1 million words into perspecive, War and Peace is only about 560,000 words long.
The AV Club take on this was funny.
The book supposedly boasts some interesting features:
[quote]In addition to requiring that people risk life and limb whenever they
try and take it off the shelf, Moore will treat readers to a “Lucia
Joyce chapter, which is completely incomprehensible … all written in a
completely invented sub-Joycean text.” There will also be a chapter
written in the form of a Samuel Beckett play, “a noir crime narrative
based upon the Northampton pastor James Hervey,” and “a combination of
the ghost story and the drug narrative.” [/quote]
Also, this is Alan Moore, who was barely keeping it together in the 80’s and whom has been repeatedly critized for going off of the deep end in his later works. In other words, expect Gravity’s Rainbow multiplied by The Story of the Vivian Girls, in What is Known as the Realms of the Unreal, of the Glandeco-Angelinian War Storm, Caused by the Child Slave Rebellion.
The Wheel of Time series is 4.4 million words.
Atlas Shrugged is 645,000.
A million words is also the same as all 7 of the Harry Potter books.
Takeaway quote from the article I read yesterday: I doubt whether anyone else will like it’. G’waarn Alan.
I was present at a reading he gave in London back in 2011. He read a chapter about an angel, that was also a statue, overlooking a busy street. It was wonderful, heady and VERY stream of consciousness. Looking forward to the full book(s). Maybe we will have to read it to ourselves in his accent to get the most out of it - rather like reading Finnegans Wake out aloud with an Irish accent seems to help with the understanding of that famously dense tome.
The overwhelming bulk of criticism of Alan Moore has been by fanboys who have been deeply butthurt by some fairly mild remarks that he’s made in the course of some really long interviews in which he criticized the comics industry in general, said remarks being taken out of context and flogged by the comics press, or what passes for the comics press these days.
Another great National Treasure (not in a Nicholas Cage style).
quantity ≠quality
Instead of a book I can’t put down, this sounds like a book I can’t pick up.
Hopefully there will be a special hardback collectors volume; even though “Zettels Traum” by Arno Schmidt would still hold the record for longest single volume published novel, at approximately 1,100,000 words 
And will it be available in Large Print?
