Michael
Moorcock made his name writing high fantasies, but as he has grown as an
author, he has become more experimental and, often, more mainstream.
Moorcock continues to write fantasy, as his recent novel The
Dreamthief’s Daughter demonstrates, but he also often turns his
attention to the world in which we live. Perhaps Moorcock’s most ambitious work was his 1988 novel Mother
London, in which the main character was practically the city of
London. In King of the
City, Moorcock returns to take a look at London from the 1960s through
the 1990s.
Moorcock uses the character of Denny Dover, a
paparazzo who appears to be based, in part, on Moorcock’s own life to
examine the London scene from the 1960s to the present day.
Beginning with a look at the life of a paparazzo in the wake of the 1997
death of Diana, Danny reminisces of his life from his early days as a
street urchin and sometimes musician to a respected photographer before he
became a pariah due to his profession.
While
Moorcock's portrayal of London society rings true, it also seems to be
limited to a very specific segment of society. There are no bankers
or housewives or children in the world through which Denny Dover and his
companions move. Instead this is the London of days-long parties and
drugs. Denny's life is not merely a series of brief encounters,
however. He is firmly grounded in his relationships with his cousin
Rosie Beck, for whom he would go to the ends of the earth, both
figuratively and literally, and his more distant cousin John Barbican Begg,
for whom Denny holds barely conceived animosity.
The
London of King of the City is not as welcoming of the city
presented in Mother London, which was full of heroic individuals
who pulled together in the face of a common enemy. In King of the
City, the characters care about themselves and their immediate circle
without worrying about the common good. The London Moorcock presents
in this book has begun to take steps to become an anonymous, although
historical, city.
King
of the City will probably have a greater appeal to those who either
came of age in the late sixties and early seventies or who hold nostalgia
for the period. Unfortunately, for those who are not particularly
enamored of the period, King of the City does not entirely
work. London is the central focus of the novel and the characters
Moorcock includes are not particularly sympathetic. King of the
City does not have the strength of Mother London.
