The fact that, in the end, Moore's first novel is unlike any other novel, ever. Something about his art up until then and the transformation of graphic novel writing into novel writing translates into something daring and unprecedented. mainstream" literary readers and critics who would wet themselves with pleasure if they gave this book a Any idea I derive from magic that doesn't have an application in the material world, I discard. If the ideas are good, it doesn't matter if the gods are there, does it? If I act like they are, I get a response." Voice of Fire is an acrylic on canvas abstract painting made by American painter Barnett Newman in 1967. It consists of three equally sized vertical stripes, with the outer two painted blue and the centre painted red. The work was created as a special commission for Expo 67. In 1987 it was loaned to the National Gallery of Canada in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada.

Voice of Fire is an 1967 acrylic on canvas abstract painting made by American painter Barnett Newman in 1967. It consists of three equally sized vertical stripes, with the outer two painted blue and the centre painted red. The work was created as a special commission for Expo 67. In 1987 it was loaned to the National Gallery of Canada in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada.

Violence, madness, lust, and ecstasy all weave together in patterns of recurring visions, restless apparitions, and gut-wrenching narrative that offer an unprecedented voice to one of the country’s most enigmatic regions. A prehistoric boy learns a deadly lesson, a murderess dresses up as her victim, a Roman emissary confronts an unbearable truth about the empire, two lovers burn at the stake for witchcraft, and a poet begins his doomed walk from one incarceration to another. By the second chapter you're well and truly immersed in this world, but at least now you're behind the eyes of someone who can speak and think with clarity and cunning. One of the most fascinating things for me was the way Moore interpreted human interaction in a time before recorded history (we're at 2500BC now): there are no words for the number of things, and people will say something like 'as many houses burnt down as there are talons on an owl's foot'. In this time, from the perspective of a woman who's fallen on hard times and become a hardened criminal, the idiot boy's tale has become fable, myth, part of the religion of the area, and this is a theme that will crop up again and again, a thread running through the book that the reader can grasp onto. It was in this chapter that I noticed Moore's prose, the way that every sentence fits a rhythm and a beat, and could almost be read as poetry. It becomes mesmerising to the point where I almost stopped paying attention to the story being told as I let the words run through my head. Trust in the fictive process, in the occult interweaving of text and event must be unwavering and absolute. This is the magic place, the mad place at the spark gap between word and world.” Another recent Moore comic, The Birth Caul, also criticises society, but ends more optimistically. Rewinding the life of a man not unlike Moore, tearing away the compromises he's accrued, it's about our potential. "One of the prettiest things Aleister Crowley ever said is, 'Every man and woman is a star.' I believe that," Moore says with passion. Alan Moore is the reason I read graphic novels today. Many years ago I had given up on comic books, although a good

Durante las primeras páginas de este libro se narran las vivencias de un infante con retraso mental y dificultades para distinguir los sueños de la realidad. Habla un inglés primitivo, siempre en present perfect tense y desconoce de muchas palabras. Al final de ese relato hay una visión: la cabeza de un soldado romano, un padre que perdió a su familia en una invasión, las últimas brujas quemadas en la hoguera, el juez Augustine Nicolls, Francis Tresham, Simon de Senlis, John Clare y todos los acontecimientos que hicieron a la ciudad. Desde sus cimientos como aldea de distintas tribus pre-célticas hasta imponente ciudad de la post guerra que es hoy. Las cenizas de todos los fuegos que se alzaron en la colina de la bestia resuenan una y otra vez por las páginas. Todas las voces que contribuyeron a la historia geográfica del lugar están presentes. Es así, Voice of the Fire, un viaje histórico que reconstruye desde la ficción los cimientos de lugar especial del que no se habla tanto como uno esperaría. There’s an episode of Friends where after hearing Joey elaborate on the meaning of something being a “moo point” Rachel says “Am I going crazy or did that just make sense?” It took me a while to realise that most of the stories are in fact historical and that the book is the mindspawn of deep and passionate research. Moore sits so snugly in the minds of his deranged heroes it just felt like it had to be fiction. But it's so much more than this or that; it is an ambitious interweaving of both to better explore the soul of Northampton, its myths, its vices, its cycles of violence. In a story full of lust, madness, and ecstasy, we meet twelve distinctive characters that lived in the same region of central England over the span of six thousand years. Their narratives are woven together in patterns of recurring events, strange traditions, and uncanny visions. First, a cave-boy loses his mother, falls in love, and learns a deadly lesson. He is followed by an extraordinary cast of characters: a murderess who impersonates her victim, a fisherman who believes he has become a different species, a Roman emissary who realizes the bitter truth about the Empire, a crippled nun who is healed miraculously by a disturbing apparition, an old crusader whose faith is destroyed by witnessing the ultimate relic, two witches, lovers, who burn at the stake. Each interconnected tale traces a path in a journey of discovery of the secrets of the land. A-hind of hill, ways off to sun-set-down, is sky come like as fire, and walk I up in way of this, all hard of breath, where is grass colding on I’s feet and wetting they.'

everything, and I haven't always enjoyed everything I've read, but for the most part he's still my favourite writer Moore sees magic as a system to understand the "cold mechanics" of an area beyond scientific reach. But he knows he is open to ridicule. "I don't think many Booker writers would want to risk talking like this. It's like Brian Eno said about artists - they're superstitiously terrified of their own talent. If you really start thinking about 'inspiration', it's uncomfortably close to being spooky. It can make you sound silly." world around him. He's unable, for example, to distinguish dreams from waking reality, and believes that clouds are

This novel is actually a collection of thematically-linked stories, 12 of them, that all take place in Northampton over None of the stories are what you would call pleasant. They deal with violence, madness, death, mutilation, betrayal, level, the final story seems somewhat anti-climactic; but on an another level it is ingeniously haunting. No sé dónde leí que el señor Moore invoca y evoca la magia y el pasado en este libro. Estoy totalmente de acuerdo con dicha afirmación. La lectura de “La voz del fuego” ha resultado toda una maravilla y un descubrimiento. Where authors such as Edward Rutherfurd emphasise the continuity of a place in their historical works by following different generations of the same family, often in the middle of sweeping epochs, Moore structures his tale by always casting different, unrelated, individuals in every chapter and each personal story often occurs at the time of wider social change (the first chapters take the structure of the changes listed above). A sense of more gradual change, happening alongside the more obvious but superficial changes already mentioned is hinted at by the developing language used in each chapter. With each written from the first-person perspective of a different character, always in the present tense, the author builds from the Mesolithic simpleton quoted at the beginning of this review, in the first chapter, through successive generations of changing language - words change, develop, some disappear and others appear. You sense that the words are not just a means for expressing ideas but things which have a life of their own - separate from the people and inhabiting their own time-scale.In The Drownings" (AD 43) - is a profoundly sad tale of a bird hunter in the swamps who dresses in a bizarre costume to catch his prey, while we piece together the damage done to his life and village by Roman troops. También es una especie de estudio de la 'magia'. Como bien comenta Moore en cierta entrevista, la magia es aquello que ocurre y que la racionalidad no es capaz de explicar. En el primer relato, el del primitivo disminuido, todo le resulta maravilloso, incluso la aparición de ciertos animales que él llama cerdos. Conforme evoluciona el raciocinio, la magia pierde poder. En el penúltimo, que ocurre en 1930, un vendedor de ligas ya domina el mundo que le rodea. El último cuento es un ensayo dónde Moore revela los "trucos" que le llevaron a idear las diferentes secciones de La voz del fuego y de dónde sacó ciertos detalles, como ahora la aparición de perros negros o la proliferación de pies defectuosos y zapatos. Resulta que en Northampton la industria zapatera fue sumamente pujante. Each succeeding story uses progressively more elegant language as each jumps ahead further in history, until the last Paradoxically, within this dark and melancholy book Moore inspires us to think again on the beauties of existence; of how precious is our time; and how, if we can just pause to remember the lessons we have learned and the bounties we possess, we may yet revive the eternal fires of history and learn from what they can tell us. Me da cierta rabia acabar esta lectura con cierto alivio, como que se acabó un viaje algo pesado y que menos mal que ya puedo poner el pié en el andén y hacer transbordo a otro tren.

great amorphous sky-beasts who occasionally devour the sun and then, presumably, spit it out again. (He isn't nearly Cerca del comienzo del poema "January" del poeta inglés John Clare (también conocido como 'The Northamptonshire Peasant Poet'), se encuentran los siguientes versos: Phipps' Fire Escape" (AD 1995) - In which, in a postmodern flourish of meta-narrative, Alan Moore himself reflects on the preceding work, his reasons for attempting it, its connection to personal history, what he hoped to accomplish (while noting recurrences that he hadn't intended) and it's irrationality as an attempted occult ritual to seal the book and send it on its way as an evocation of Northampton, his home. And from here, you need only take a small step to set you on the road to JERUSALEM....episode, which is set in 1995, the time of the author's writing. The final story appears to be semi(?)-autobiographical, As an archaeologist I’ve spent a lot of time researching peoples relationships to their environments and I’ve never read fiction that explored that concept so deeply. People and places leave traces of themselves behind, we study the physical remains via archaeology, the records of them through history, but weaving it all together is this strange world of folklore, myth, and memory. This whole novel takes place in that third zone. rich with history and deep resonance for many writers. Also nearby is Shakespeare's hometown of Stratford. Moore Writing is like a conscious trance now. I see imagination as a landscape, and if I'm imagining something that somebody else has imagined before, I go further. I might focus on a flavour, or a scent, then the conceptual detail sharpens from the fog, and I write. I can move at blinding speed from concept to concept, often without drugs and ritual.