As details began to emerge from Alan Moore’s long in-development second novel, Jerusalem, it seemed unlikely, if not impossible that it would ever see the light of day mainly due to its length—a purported million words (nearly twice the length of David Foster Wallace’s Infinite Jest by comparison). Moore, however, is a self-professed “magician,” and appears to have used some form of witchcraft in order to convince Liveright, an imprint of W. W. Norton & Company, to put out the book in the US in fall of 2016 (Knockabout Comics will take on the challenge in England).
According to Bleeding Cool, the novel “looks at the stark ramifications of ideas on love, tragedy, and morality in a work of space-time bending historical fiction centered in [Moore’s] hometown of Northampton,” and “hosts a rich cast of characters from the living, the dead, the celestial, and the infernal.” Reportedly, each chapter represents a different style, including one that takes place in the fourth dimension, according to a BBC interview with Moore in 2008.
How exactly this book will be designed and packaged remains a big question mark, of course, but Moore has expressed support for an electronic version of the text for those who aren’t interested in carrying the physical version around. At press time, copyeditors across the world could be heard groaning.
(via The New York Times)
