A Fool for Moore

Christopher Moore has a new book out – Fool. In it, he’s taking Shakespeare’s King Lear and re-telling it in his amazing Christopher Moore style. And it’s brilliant and funny. And I find myself in awe of his writing style, again.

I first found him through his book Lamb and I’ve read that book no less than 3 or 4 times. Most of his other books are written a bit differently than Lamb and now, Fool. They are still brilliant and hilarious, but the stories are different and the overall tone is just a wee bit different. With these two books, it’s as if he opens up this entirely other place within him as a writer. And takes his storytelling to a whole other level.

I mean I would give just about anything to be able to write a passage like this:

“I found Drool in the laundry resolving a wank, spouting great gouts of git-seed across the laundry walls, floors and ceiling, giggling, as young Shanker Mary wagged her tits at him over a steaming cauldron of the king’s shirts.
‘Put those away, tart, we’ve a show to do.’
‘I was just giving ‘im a laugh.’
‘If you wanted to show charity you could have bonked him honest and there’d be a lot less cleaning to do.’”

And that’s just what I found by picking a random page and typing the first thing I found. If I spent some actual time combing through to find something, the intrigue of his word play just goes through the roof. There’s just an utterly wonderful wit about his writing that I simply adore.

He’s crass and more than a little rude and at the same time manages to string the most romantic relationships through the stories he spins. In the end, I guess that is what gets me the most about his writing. His ability to not only speak to the witty and intelligent sides of me, but also the absolutely hopeless romantic in me.

“’You lying tart,’ said I. ‘A fool is no more born with bells than a princess with fangs, both must be earned.’”

Man I would love to be able to write like that.