The English Assassin

Jerry Cornelius #3

by Michael Moorcock

The English Assassin is the third of Michael Moorcock's Jerry Cornelius novels. It looks through a many-sided lens at English assumptions about themselves, about class, and about the Empire over the past seventy years. It includes all the familiar characters from previous Cornelius novels (Miss Brunner, Bishop Beesley, Frank Cornelius, etc) and introduces us to a host of colourful new ones (especially Jerry's unforgettable mother). The philosophical and moral themes of the book touch on a profusion of problems - violent revolution, the responsibilities of colonialism, racialism, sex and superstition - while the novel as a whole is always highly readable and entertaining.

Genres: Science Fiction, Fiction, Fantasy, Speculative Fiction, Dystopia, Novels, Science Fiction Fantasy

256 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1972

About the author

Michael John Moorcock is an English writer primarily of science fiction and fantasy who has also published a number of literary novels.

Moorcock has mentioned The Gods of Mars by Edgar Rice Burroughs, The Apple Cart by George Bernard Shaw and The Constable of St. Nicholas by Edward Lester Arnold as the first three books which captured his imagination. He became editor of Tarzan Adventures in 1956, at the age of sixteen, and later moved on to edit Sexton Blake Library. As editor of the controversial British science fiction magazine New Worlds, from May 1964 until March 1971 and then again from 1976 to 1996, Moorcock fostered the development of the science fiction "New Wave" in the UK and indirectly in the United States. His serialization of Norman Spinrad's Bug Jack Barron was notorious for causing British MPs to condemn in Parliament the Arts Council's funding of the magazine.

During this time, he occasionally wrote under the pseudonym of "James Colvin," a "house pseudonym" used by other critics on New Worlds. A spoof obituary of Colvin appeared in New Worlds #197 (January 1970), written by "William Barclay" (another Moorcock pseudonym). Moorcock, indeed, makes much use of the initials "JC", and not entirely coincidentally these are also the initials of Jesus Christ, the subject of his 1967 Nebula award-winning novella Behold the Man, which tells the story of Karl Glogauer, a time-traveller who takes on the role of Christ. They are also the initials of various "Eternal Champion" Moorcock characters such as Jerry Cornelius, Jerry Cornell and Jherek Carnelian. In more recent years, Moorcock has taken to using "Warwick Colvin, Jr." as yet another pseudonym, particularly in his Second Ether fiction.

Reviews

[Glenn Russell]

The English Assassin - Book Three of Michael Moorcock's The Cornelius Quartet: novel strutting with Clockwork Orange cool, steaming with I, Claudius heat, thumping with Barefoot in the Head mind drums.

Grab a copy. Settle in. Open the book to Shot One and prepare to skyrocket into a futuristic, hip, alternate history-style 1960s London turned psychedelic land of Ob-La-Di.

Kablooey! The sound of Michael Magic Mushroom Moorcock exploding any reader's expectations.

What does the British author's version of chaos look like here? For starters, unlike the vast majority of book series - The Raj Quartet and Lord of the Rings come immediately to mind - with The Cornelius Quartet, nothing is lost if one reads the cycle of four novels out of order.

Oops. Did I really say 'order'? Kablooey! Blown to shimmering, 60s smithereens.

Of course, one of the prime ways to establish order in a novel is plot, following a story's characters through a recognizable arch of action from beginning to end. If you're one of those readers requiring plot as a necessary ingredient for your novel reading pleasure, I'm afraid The English Assassin will simply not cut it. With his William S. Burroughs-style nonlinear quick shifts and Donald Barthelme-like insertions (news bulletins, alternate apocalypses, reminiscences), Michael Moorcock is way too swingin' 60s experimental to settle for stiff, button-down boundaries. There's good reason why The Cornelius Quartet has attracted a cult following.

Speaking of quick shifts, allow me to conduct my own rapid pivot to an array of English Assassin hot shots:

Action Fashion
Una Persson makes her entrance, "a beautiful girl in a black military topcoat and patent leather boots with gold buckles (from Elliotts)." One of the novel's prime movers, Una possesses many talents, including being handy with all sorts of handguns. "She slipped out her Smith and Wesson and accurately shot off the bolts on the coffin's four corners."

The coffin contains Jerry Cornelius and in exchange for delivering Jerry to one Prinz Lobkowitz, Una will have her skinhead ex-POWs haul crates loaded with M16s to her SD Kfz 233 armored truck.

In subsequent chapters, stunning Una also performs as star singing actress on the stages in London and beyond - in those theaters still standing during all the bombings, that is. If a directer wanted to turn The English Assassin into a chic film, Sasha Luss would make the perfect Una Persson. Methinks lovely Una could be seen as the authentic English assassin. Love ya, babe - go get 'em.



The Eternal Aesthete
Where do we find our main man Jerry Cornelius, a version of Michael Moorcock's Eternal Champion, a fighter for Cosmic Balance in the struggle of Order vs. Chaos? Firstly, as a large shapeless object drifting in the sea and then spending most of the novel in a coffin. Now that’s what I call a New Wave SF author concocting a fresh literary brew!

Although, it must be said, there’s the time in a theater where Una Persson catches a glimpse of a dapper young chap in a dark yellow frock-coat and matching bowler with a gold-topped walking stick. “His black, soft hair hung straight to his shoulders in the style of the aesthetes of some years earlier.” Hey, if you’re going to pop up and make an Eternal Champion’s cameo appearance, no better way to do it than as a refined, debonair connoisseur of impeccable taste.

Swashbuckler Saga
Sound the alarm! An anarchist army of 8,000 in Argyll, Scotland hoists the Black Flag. These bloodthirsty anarchists will soon be joined by a sizable force of warmongering Frenchmen. A Captain Nye knows what must be done – travel via airship to this savage encampment, a veritable den of barbarity, to give their diabolical leader, the Red Fox, one last chance to abandon plans of revolt against the Chief-of-us-All.

Caution, Captain Nye! “Throughout the half-mile radius of the camp the savage warriors stood and looked as their leader talked with the soldier who had come from the sky. Each of the men had a naked sword in his hand and Nye knew that if he made one mistake he would never be able to reach the airship before he was slaughtered beneath those shinning blades.”

Ah, a Swashbuckling tale reminiscent of Terry Gilliam’s famous Baron Munchausen. Can the forces of law and order win out? When good Captain Nye espies a hundred massive aerial men-o’-war ships complete with the black flag of Anarchy alongside the blue cross of Scotland painted on their gigantic shark hulls, he has his doubts.

Apocalypse Posthaste
The English Assassin features eight varieties of apocalypse, each variant serving as sufficient reason why the novel carries the subtitle A Romance of Entropy. What's a lady or gentleman to do in the face of such disintegration? Perhaps appropriately, a closing line from one apocalypse: "Jerry stared reflectively at the shit on his boots."

Time as Elastic as Silly Putty
James Wood notes a critical decision any novelist faces is how to structure time. Michael Moorcock proves himself master of the craft by expanding and contracting past-present-future as if time itself can be manipulated like silly putty, even moving from chapter to chapter in reverse chronology.

Gala Ball
What's a 60s novel without a ripping party? Assassin kicks ass with a mind-blower, among the revelers: Kingsley Amis, Peter O'Toole, the Dalai Lama, Karl Glogauer (of Behold the Man fame), Oxford dons who wrote children's novels, Miss Joyce Churchill (pseudonym used by M. John Harrison) and men and women highlighting other chapters - Jerry's brother Frank and sister Catherine, Jerry's mother, Bishop Beesley, and (gulp) Miss Brunner.

Reality Most Real
As violent and tragic as the novel's fiction, dozens of actual news clips hovering around 1971 appear throughout, recording children beaten, shot, stabbed or murdered in other gruesome ways. A sole instance will suffice: "A three-year-old boy was found dead in a disused refrigerator last night." -- Guardian 29 June, 1971.

Reader as Co-creator
Back when the novel was first published, Michael Moorcock informed an interviewer the last thing he wanted was to tell a reader what to think. Rather, via his fiction, the British author's goal is to empower a reader to engage their creative imagination, to fill in the fictional gaps, to create the story with him, to arrive at independent judgements.

Up for the challenge? If so, The English Assassin is your book.


Photo taken around 1968, the time when British author Michael Moorcock first began writing The Cornelius Quartet

"He took out his needler and turned it this way and that to catch the light on its polished chrome. Is there anything sadder, I wonder, than an assassin with nobody left to kill?" - Michael Moorcock, The English Assassin

[Wreade1872 · Rating 2 out of 5]

...that was painful. I really want to give this 1 star, but i’m going to restrain myself. The basic writing isn’t bad and if i cared even a little bit about anything happening i’m sure it might have been passable.
For me i feel like its problems sort of amplified each other. Firstly, at times it seems to be a grand celebration of the Cornelius books... except there have only been two and only one of those was any good so all those bits felt completely unearned.

Then, this book has almost no Cornelius in it, instead we follow all those other memorable characters from the previous books.. like whathisname, whosthat, weretheyinitbefore and waitwasthatheonewhoorwasthattheotherone . To clarify, i had a hard time distinguishing the characters or caring about them.

The first and even the second book are quite surreal at times and so all of this extra detail material on characters.. even if i cared... can only undermine the surreal elements by grounding them. So even if/when it works the surreal is undermined by the grounded bits, or the grounded bits are undermined by the surreal.

But to reiterate, since i didn’t care about any of the characters i simply failed utterly at the mental effort which was needed to follow the tortuously convoluted timeline of flashbacks and flash-forwards. Leading of course to caring even less about what was happening.

There were moments when i thought this could turn into something, mostly those moments when Jerry made his brief appearances but ultimately it went nowhere for me and meant nothing.

Note: There's also one really vile scene towards the end.. which in another book would barely have made me blink but here is so incongruous and pointless that it leaves a bad taste in the mouth.
I suppose all the chapters openings with news headlines of real deaths where also in poor taste.. really thought they would mean something or be earned in some way.. maybe for some readers they were but not for me.

[Graham P · Rating 4 out of 5]

"Goodbye England" pretty much sums up Moorcock's 3rd installment in the Jerry Cornelius opus. While the first two novels, 'The Final Programme' and 'A Cure for Cancer' were madcap attacks on SF and espionage fantasies, 'The English Assassin' plays a sad farewell to not only England but the world altogether. And here Jerry spends most of the time off-page, to make an appearance in the sporadic chapters named 'Alternate Apocalypses'. The focus here is on the supporting players and how they deal with a rapidly crumbling war-torn Europe and Middle East - shit, America is rarely mentioned, and when they are, word is that they aren't the world power that they used to be. Characters like Catherine Cornelius, Mrs. Cornelius (as lewd and gluttonous as always), the two-timing Frank Cornelius, the sloth-candy-eating slob, Bishop Beesley, and his equally grotesque daughter, Mitzi. And there's Major Nye (the last pride of England, and quite a somber character), Corporal Nye, Miss Brunner, and poor Una Persson, one of my favorite characters in 'English Assassin' (f'in hell, her fate is quite relentlessly brutal). Of course, Jerry makes an appearance completely transformed as always, but is it too late. What a glorious asshole he is.

Not since reading Thomas Disch's 'The M.D.' and his 'On Wings of Song' have I read such an eloquently sad apocalypse. Not for the hardcore purists by any means, nor those demanding linear structure, but a classic entry into the New Wave of SF and modern Fantasy.

Long Live The Eternal Champion, Jerry Cornelius!

[Rick · Rating 2 out of 5]

Clearly Jerry Cornelius does not quite work for me. I'm not sure if it's cultural or temporal or conceptual or merely the execution of the narrative - this is the second volume that I just found tedious to work through. Mind you, I'm not bored with it. In many ways Moorcock is doing some really inventive work on deconstructing the traditional narrative workings of the English novel. It's interesting, it's just all a bit too exhausting to slog through. There are some wonderful sequences (the ball comes immediately to mind), but they are few and far between. This wasn't, at least for me, one of Moorcock's better works.

[Christopher Ruz · Rating 3 out of 5]

I don't get it?

And maybe that's okay?

The English Assassin is less a story and more a collection of vignettes - some of which form a loose narrative, some of which are 'alternative futures' and contradict the others - that explore the potential collapse of the UK into war, anarchy, and rebirth. Jerry Cornelius himself takes a back seat, allowing the supporting cast from previous novels to come to the fore in all sorts of bizarre interludes.

Some I enjoyed. Some I was just baffled by. Sometimes I wondered whether Moorcock was laughing at me. Other times I felt like I was missing a period-specific metaphor that would've been incredibly biting and insightful in 1970's Britain, but was totally alien to me in 2020's Australia.

Even so, Moorcock's prose is always fantastic. He can do more in a paragraph than others do in a chapter, and more in a chapter than others have managed in entire books. A brilliant wordsmith who, this time, went a bit too avant-garde for my taste.

[Kek-w Kek-w · Rating 5 out of 5]

Re-reading this for the first time in over 40 years. But I don't remember any of it, apart from a line said by Mrs. Cornelius! Wondering whether I actually did read it back in the day - or perhaps my younger self just couldn't process it or take it in!

Well, it's utterly wonderful. A joy to read on every level. Smart, funny, touching... it surfs / shifts between different genres, eras, places.

A complete delight to read!

[Hans · Rating 1 out of 5]

Barely readable, way too experimental for me. A plot is pretty much a bare minimum requirement for my enjoyment.

[Shannon Appelcline · Rating 1 out of 5]

I seem to have less patience with each of these than the one that came before. This one is almost entirely incoherent thanks to its lack of a plot and mostly grates as a result.

[Simon Mcleish · Rating 5 out of 5]

Originally published on my blog here in October 1999.

The third novel in the Jerry Cornelius tetralogy explores the series themes of dissolution and anarchy in a rather different way from the earlier books. Here, protagonist and storyline fragment as well as the background.

The novel starts with the discovery of a dead body in Merlin's Cave, beneath Tintagel Castle in Cornwall. The body belongs to Cornelius, but he doesn't stay dead long. Each section of the novel sees Jerry initiating a different apocalypse set in a different version of the Earth. Moorcock establishes each background quickly, in a manner clearly learned from the best science fiction short story writers. Recurring characters (from earlier novels) crop up again and again in slightly different guises, and Mrs Cornelius, Jerry's monstrous mother, takes a more central role than she did before. Self references (and external ones) abound; characters from other Moorcock novels, ideas from The Final Programme and A Cure for Cancer - particularly the idea of total destruction as a cure for the cancer eating away at society - reappear.

Realism is brought back by the use of real newspaper quotations about violent death, mainly of young children. This is an effective method of stopping the effect of each catastrophe being like Hollywood special effects - a spectacle which does not have any real consequences.

The English Assassin is one of Moorcock's best novels, admirably fulfilling its role as the penultimate volume in a series by never quite containing a satisfactory conclusion, always leaving the reader wanting a bit more.

[Ben Moore · Rating 4 out of 5]

A much more enjoyable book that the previous one in the series (A Cure for Cancer). It’s a fair bit more coherent though not entirely linear. Defining the story is not an easy task as it’s sort of a collection of sequences rather than a single piece.

It fits between the first two in terms of style but is darker in tone. As usual with the Jerry Cornelius stories, it’s quite hard to say what exactly is so compelling about it but I thoroughly enjoy the series picking up again after the second book.

[Colin · Rating 3 out of 5]

The third volume of the Cornelius Quartet is, if anything, even stranger than the first two - a version of the story in which the supposed protagonist, Jerry Cornelius, scarcely appears - the other characters associated with Cornelius take the center stage and drive most of the . . . "plot"? The writing is good, but the story is even less coherent, and I found I enjoyed this volume less than the others in the series. This one also made no overt reference to the Multiverse, or the place of this story in it. Bizarre.

[Andy · Rating 2 out of 5]

I've been working my way through Moorcock's Cornelius Quartet, reading them in chronological order, and this one seems the weakest of the bunch. All so far have had a somewhat jumbled plot line and The English Assassin seemed to provide back stories for the main characters. Some of the darkness, via altered London-area crime press clippings from the early 1970's and violent scenes throughout the novel seemed a bit gratuitous - the only purpose being to shock the reader.

[Dirk Lapere · Rating 1 out of 5]

40 pages in, and still no idea what the story is about, or who is who. A good story should pull you in within the first 40-50pages (except when it is 700+p), not play riddles and hide & seek with you. Sorry, but no patience for this. Perhaps because this was the 3rd "jerry Cornelius" novel? But then, why doesn't it say so on the cover?
Not recommended.

[Scott · Rating 2 out of 5]

Pretty much what I wrote earlier. I am down with Moorcock, but this book really had no plot, merely a series of events. Some of them were interesting which is why I gave this two stars instead of one. I really like the idea of what this book could have been, but am not too enamoured with what it is.

[Jesse Russell · Rating 2 out of 5]

Of the three parts of the Cornelius Quartet I've read this was my least favorite. It seemed to lack the direction of the first two and felt like I was spending most of the book waiting around for something to happen.

[Brandon · Rating 2 out of 5]

Finished this a few weeks ago. Thought I'd have more to say about it if I let it sit for a little bit, but I think I have less. Couldn't even write a synopsis now. I don't think I could have wrote a synopsis immediately upon finishing it either though.

[Chris Geary-Durrill · Rating 4 out of 5]

Reading a Jerry Cornelius novel is like turning on the news at 2 in the morning and trying to watch it without your glasses. Oh, and it's in Russian. If you don't understand Russian, you might pick out bits and pieces of coherence, but NOT FOR LONG.
Though written in the 60s, "Assassin" does of touch on a lot of current issues in the western world, including gender fluidity, alternative sexuality, and perhaps the aftermath of colonialism?
That is, if you manage to wade through the awful people, awful situations, and ummmmmm, a wandering coffin full of what appears to be a cat-eating stinky messiah?
In other words, don't expect anybody sympathetic in this and any other Jerry novels: everyone's awful including Jerry.
If you want to read this deliberate mind-#$%#$, which either reads as pure satirical genius or a really bad fan fic as written by a Cheeto-guzzling incel basement dweller too lazy to go out into the world and commit schoolyard atrocities with high powered nastiness as acquired online with no background check and no sex life, I strongly suggest, as with the unpleasantness of giving birth with or without an epidural, you sit back, power through, and try not to think about anything happening to you until the entire nasty experience is over.
Oh yeah, and David Bowie seems to have drawn from Moorcock's work in this series, while possibly influincing Moorcock and his contemporaries.

[Tone · Rating 4 out of 5]

After reading the psychedelic, picaresque novel A Cure for Cancer I felt strongly that it was indeed a book. A bizarre, disjointed book even stranger than its successor The Final Programme. Assassin is stranger still, and I expect the final book in the series, The Condition of Muzak to either bring it home or fly over the moon.
Assassin is as old as I am, and as I understand it, the early 70s were a chaotic, traumatic time that felt like the end of the world. And that’s exactly what this book is. But not just one end of the world. The world ends eight times, with the cast reassembled in different roles and relationships before every end.
I’m going to have a look around to see if anyone’s writing an equivalent text for today. Seems appropriate.
I’m looking forward to the Breakfast in the Ruins’ read, to grant a greater context for the time and place in which it was written.

[Marcus Wilson · Rating 3 out of 5]

The English Assassin isn’t my favourite book in the Jerry Cornelius quartet, it’s quite a slog to read if I’m being perfectly honest with you, and I didn’t have a clue what was going on. This is nothing out of the ordinary for Michael Moorcock, his experimental style of storytelling is something I have become accustomed to, it’s just that this was way too disjointed. That said it is darkly humorous and satirical, subversive and fantastical in places. It is like a psychedelic rock record of the sixties and early seventies set to literature form, and scores bonus points for featuring a cameo appearance from Hawkwind.

[Hugo · Rating 5 out of 5]

Jerry Cornelius lives again. And again. The Empire falls into disarray, and reality follows. Time stretches and snaps, breaks into kaleidoscopic moments, falling into and through each other, and soldiers, assassins, music hall singers, eternal champions and those who just want a good time and a bit of a knees-up make do the best they can.

It's all for the best, I suppose.

[Shannon Appelcline · Rating 3 out of 5]

Ah, The English Assassin, I never know what to make of you. This is basically a long series of vignettes, and taken in that context, they're powerful, with well-detailed characteristics and meaningful events. But if you're looking for a novel, you'll be disappointed.

[Arthur B · Rating 4 out of 5]

Largely abandons linear storytelling in favour of mood and character studies, but reasonably thought-provoking for all that. Full review: https://fakegeekboy.wordpress.com/201...

[Meredith · Rating 4 out of 5]

Did he just invent Steampunk?

[Dan Seitz · Rating 3 out of 5]

Very much "New Wave" SF for both good and ill.

[Lucas Chance · Rating 5 out of 5]

I love how this book series gets weirder and more fragmented yet thematically more clear with each book

[Devowasright · Rating 4 out of 5]

How is a story so surreal and yet so bleak?

[Joe Stamber · Rating 3 out of 5]

I read a lot of MM books in the eighties and this was one of them. It's part of a quadrilogy, I believe it's called "The Cornelius Chronicles". Anyway, I can't remember any one of the four from the other, only that they were all barmy. At the time I must have enjoyed them, otherwise I wouldn't have read the whole series.

[Dan · Rating 3 out of 5]

A relatively quick read. The episodes are disjointed, and while the characters and situations are well defined, there is little causal logic linking one scene to the next.

Acquired Mar 27, 2007
P.T. Campbell Bookseller, London, Ontario

[bluetyson]

isbn,original