The Fifth Desk · Evaluation
Act I · The Map
Alan Moore · a prose novel in three books, The Boroughs, Mansoul and Vernall’s Inquest, well over a thousand pages · first published in September 2016 by Knockabout in the United Kingdom and Liveright in the United States · scored as the whole novel as published, one work, on Moore’s English, read from knowledge; no text in hand, and nothing quoted
Mode
The encyclopedic novel turned on one small, poor place; family chronicle, afterlife adventure and visionary cosmology in one book
Mythos
The holy city built in an English town; Bunyan’s town of Mansoul made the afterlife; the descent to the underworld and the return
Phase
A first book of lives in the Boroughs from the early medieval to the present; a second of one child’s death for minutes in 1959 and his adventure in the upper town; a third of lives again, converging on the child grown and on his sister’s exhibition
Presentation
Fiction in three books, published in one volume and in a three-volume slipcased issue, 2016; each chapter centred on a different person, many in a different period and a different style
Register
Ornate and alliterative description, historical voices, a children’s adventure register, the present-day speech of the Boroughs, and one chapter in a language modelled on Finnegans Wake
Scale
One working-class district of a provincial English town, its families, trades and lodging houses, its clearance, and the afterlife over it
Governing Proposition
A poor district of Northampton, cleared after the war and scattered, is held across more than a thousand years in one long novel, and above it, in the same streets, stands an upper town where the dead keep every moment present. The wager of the book is that nothing in so low a place is waste: that if every moment persists, no life is disposable and no demolition is final, and that the holy city may be built in an English town.
Act II · The Essay
Movement I
The Boroughs are a real place: a working-class district of Northampton, largely cleared in the slum clearances after the Second World War and its people dispersed. Alan Moore’s Jerusalem, a prose novel of well over a thousand pages and about a decade in the writing, was published in September 2016, by Knockabout in the United Kingdom and Liveright in the United States. Its author’s standing lay in comics. This book is not a comic, has no co-author and no pictures, and is scored as prose, on Moore’s English, with no translation between the reader and the text.
The desk scores the whole novel as published, three books taken as one work: The Boroughs, Mansoul and Vernall’s Inquest. It was issued in a single volume and, alongside it, in three volumes in a slipcase; the text is the same, and the division into three is the author’s. The reading is from knowledge. The book’s architecture, its setting, its family and its cosmology are known; its sentences are known less well, and no passage of it is quoted here.
The first book is a book of lives. Each chapter is centred on a different person in a different period of the Boroughs, from the early medieval to the present, and the reader is given the district one century at a time, without being told how the centuries bear on one another. That is deliberate. The lives are the proof by accumulation of what the book will argue, that every moment of an obscure place has weight, and the argument is not yet stated. The reader holds them as a scatter, and the rest of the novel is spent showing that the scatter is a single thing.
Movement II
In 1959 a child of the Boroughs, Michael Warren, dies for minutes and is revived. In those minutes he is taken upstairs, into an upper Northampton, Mansoul, by a gang of dead children, the Dead Dead Gang. The name comes from Bunyan, whose Holy War is fought over a town called Mansoul, and the title of the whole book comes from Blake, from the claim that the holy city may be built in an English town. Michael’s death and return is the descent to the underworld and the return from it, the oldest of the stories the book takes up, and it is the frame of the whole.
The governing cosmology is eternalism. All moments exist at once and persist; nothing passes, and the dead go up into a Northampton where every time of the district is present together. Over it stand the Builders, its angelic overseers, who settle the affairs of the world below. It is a real conception of the sublime, comic and vast at once, and it gives the book its law: the sacred is in the low and overlooked, and the low is never lost.
It is also Moore’s own system. The cosmology is largely announced and explained, by characters who tell the boy, and the reader, how time and the afterlife work, and only partly found in what happens. The myth is built, and the structure carries it; but much of it is told, and the inheritances from Blake and Bunyan sit beside an equal debt to the children’s adventure story.
Movement III
The second book is the longest of the three, and it is a children’s adventure: the gang, the den, the escapade, one episode after another through the upper town and its times. The romp is not outside the book’s law. It is that law seen by children, the persistence of every moment made into a playground, and its comedy is part of the book’s range, which runs from the nursery story to the asylum.
It is also where the book is weakest. Once the cosmology is learned, the episodes add incident more than knowledge, and the eternalist argument is stated again in dialogue after the reader holds it. The middle book gives up the instrument of the other two, the scatter of persons and periods that the reader must gather, for a linear adventure in one register, and it runs a looser, comic physics than the realism of the books on either side.
Length as such is not the charge. A book arguing that every moment matters must give its moments their weight, and the scale of the first and third books is compelled by that. The charge is that a quarter or more of the novel, much of it here and in the restatements and the long descriptions of streets and weather, is permitted rather than compelled, and could go without what the book knows being changed.
Movement IV
The third book returns to many persons and periods, and here the change of style from chapter to chapter becomes the book’s most visible instrument: each consciousness, in its century, gets its own English. The inheritance is plain. The chapter of many styles is the method of Ulysses, behind it are Blake and Bunyan, and nearer at hand is the London psychogeography of Iain Sinclair and Peter Ackroyd. What is new is the object, a provincial district that history wrote off, and the scale at which the method is turned on it.
Among the set pieces is a chapter on Lucia Joyce, James Joyce’s daughter, confined at St Andrew’s Hospital in Northampton, written in a language modelled on Finnegans Wake and sustained over the whole chapter. It is a feat few novelists could attempt and the book’s one broken, singing height, the law of the cosmology given in a mind that has broken out of sequential time. It is also homage, and it shows where the swerve lies: in what the means are turned on more than in the means.
The making is uneven in the way the book’s ambition makes likely. The architecture is well made: more than a thousand pages that close on one another, figures in one century reappearing in another, objects and places recurring. The prose is ornate and alliterative to excess, the descriptive sentence overloaded, the catalogue of decay and the lyrical street repeated until they harden, and the dialogue too often carries exposition.
Movement V
The book converges on the adult Michael and his sister Alma Warren, an artist, and on her exhibition of paintings made from Michael’s recovered memory of his minutes upstairs. There the book gathers its times: the medieval chapter at the founding of the town’s sacred centre and the present-day gallery obey one law, and the reader, who has held the district as a scatter, comes to hold it as the dead hold it, all its times present at once. The three-book shape, ground, upper town and inquest, is the cosmology made structure.
What the book discloses can be stated. The poor district that planning and history treat as waste is as dense with meaning as any cathedral city, and its erasure, the clearances, the dispersal of its people, the deaths of its children from poverty, is an act done to something sacred. If every moment persists, no life is disposable and no demolition is final. Labour, class, the family, the state, a millennium of one town, the afterlife, art and madness are held as faces of that one claim. The limit is the same consolation: a book that tells us nothing is ever lost blunts the injury it has just shown, and much of its meaning is said aloud.
Ten years is a short test. The text survives whole and in print, it was widely reviewed with a divided reception, and it is read chiefly by Moore’s readers; it is known by name far more widely than it is read, and its length keeps it out of teaching. No practice or later novel can yet be shown to have turned on it. The book was built for return, and its depth is a forecast. What stands now is the span: one small place, held across a thousand years and an afterlife, under one law.
Act III · The Twelve
The subtractive test bites hard. The case for scale is real: a book arguing that every moment of an obscure district persists and matters must give those moments their weight, and the chapters of The Boroughs, each a life in a different century, are its proof by accumulation. Length is not the charge. The charge is that much is permitted rather than compelled. Mansoul, the longest of the three books, runs as a children’s adventure of episodes that add incident more than knowledge once the cosmology is learned; the eternalist argument is stated again in dialogue after the reader holds it; streets and weather are described at a length the argument does not need. A quarter or more of the book could go without the knowledge changing, and that holds the axis lowest of the twelve.
Score: 7.3 / 10
The disclosure can be stated: the poor district that planning and history treat as waste is as dense with meaning as any cathedral city, and the erasure of such a place, its clearance, the dispersal of its people, the deaths of its children from poverty, is an act done to something sacred, not to nothing. The Warren family, the lodging houses and the derelict streets carry it, and the cosmology gives it its edge: if every moment persists, no life is disposable and no demolition is final. It is a meaning, not a mood. Held well off the top for two reasons. Much of it is spoken outright, by characters who lecture on time, class and the sacred; and a book that tells us nothing is ever lost blunts the injury it has just shown.
Score: 8.2 / 10
The book rises often and in many keys. The vision of Mansoul, the upper town where the whole history of the district is present at once and the Builders, its angelic overseers, settle the affairs of the world below, is a real conception of the sublime, comic and vast together. The Lucia Joyce chapter reaches a broken, singing height that the book reaches nowhere else. A child’s death in the first book, and its rendering from the other side, give terror and tenderness at once. What holds the axis is frequency across the length: the heights are spread over more than a thousand pages, and the long stretches between them, the adventure episodes and the restatements, are flat by design and by excess.
Score: 8.2 / 10
The myth is built, not merely evoked. Three inheritances bear load: Blake’s Jerusalem, from which come the title and the claim that the holy city may be built in an English town; Bunyan’s town of Mansoul in The Holy War, which names the afterlife; and the descent to the underworld and return, which is Michael Warren’s whole story and the frame of the book. The particular stays particular: a terraced street, a family of named people, one district. Held below the gate because the cosmology is largely Moore’s private system, announced and explained more than found in the action, and because the Builders and the Dead Dead Gang draw as much on the children’s adventure story, the gang, the den, the escapade, as on anything archetypal. Much of the myth is told.
Score: 8.3 / 10
The inheritance is the encyclopedic modernist novel, above all Ulysses, each chapter a new style and one city held through one day, and Finnegans Wake; behind them Blake and Bunyan, and nearer, the London psychogeography of Iain Sinclair and Peter Ackroyd. The turn is in the object and the scale: a whole cosmology built on one small, poor district of a provincial English town, and the afterlife given as a literal place in the same streets. The stake was real: about a decade of work and more than a thousand pages, from a writer whose standing lay entirely in comics, published into a market that had no place for it. Held below the gate because the instruments are inherited. The chapter of many styles is Joyce’s method, the Wake pastiche is homage, and the swerve lies in what the means are turned on.
Score: 8.2 / 10
Change the form and much of what the book knows goes. The three-book shape is the cosmology made structure: the ground in The Boroughs, the upper town in Mansoul, and the inquest that gathers them in Vernall’s Inquest. The chapters of the first and third books are scattered across centuries and persons and then shown to touch, so that the reader comes to hold the district as the dead hold it, all its times present at once; the change of style from chapter to chapter is the change of consciousness across the centuries. A family saga told in sequence could not say that time is a block in which every moment stands. Held off the top because the middle book leaves that instrument for a linear adventure in one register, and because many chapters within the frame could be reordered or cut without the form losing its argument.
Score: 8.4 / 10
Evidence, and ten years supply little of it. The book is built for return: its chapters cross-refer, minor figures in one century reappear in another, objects and places recur, and a second reading changes the chapters of The Boroughs once the cosmology of Mansoul is known. That is the promise of depth, and a promise is credited only as a forecast. The demonstrated yield is small: some critical and academic attention and a devoted readership among Moore’s admirers, but no body of scholarship like the one that has grown around his comics. The questions readers come back with are largely about the intricacy of the connections, which is difficulty before it is depth. That holds the axis low.
Score: 7.7 / 10
The field is the English novel of the 2010s. The intrinsic force is real but bounded: the book showed that the encyclopedic modernist method could be turned on a provincial working-class place and made to carry a metaphysics, and it brought a comics writer’s mythmaking into the long novel. It does not reorganise what the novel can do, since its methods were Joyce’s, Blake’s and Sinclair’s. Achieved reach is scored with intrinsic force: in ten years no practice, school or later novel can be shown to have turned on it. It was widely reviewed, with a divided reception, and it is read chiefly as a Moore book by Moore’s readers. Reach that belongs to the author’s comics is not credited to the novel. The axis stands a tenth above the lowest of the twelve.
Score: 7.4 / 10
Survival is weighed over ten years and no more, and the axis credits survival shown, not foreseen. The text survives whole, as published, and has been in print since 2016, in one volume and in three. Ten years is short evidence, and it stands below what a longer test would allow. Presence is charged: the book is known by name far more widely than it is read, its length keeps it out of teaching, and its readership is concentrated among Moore’s admirers. The surface is little fixed to a technology or a topical moment, since its subject is a past already gone, and that lightens the charge. A whole text in print with a steady readership is not lower than this; a decade does not show more.
Score: 7.8 / 10
Judged on Moore’s English, and chiefly on the book’s architecture and its range of pastiche, since the judgment of the single sentence is the least secure part of it. The range is wide: the language modelled on the Wake, sustained over the whole of the Lucia Joyce chapter, is a feat few novelists could attempt, and the chapters move between historical voices, a children’s adventure register and the present-day speech of the Boroughs. The architecture of more than a thousand pages that close on one another is itself well made. The charges are as real. The prose is ornate and alliterative to excess, the descriptive sentence is overloaded, the same effects, the catalogue of decay and the lyrical street, recur until they harden, and the dialogue is often a vehicle for exposition.
Score: 8.2 / 10
Take the two most distant elements: a medieval chapter at the founding of the town’s sacred centre, and the present-day exhibition of Alma Warren’s paintings; or, in tone, the romp of the Dead Dead Gang and the Lucia Joyce chapter in the asylum. They obey one law: every moment persists and is present to every other, and the sacred is in the low and overlooked. The romp is that law seen by children; the asylum chapter is that law in a mind that has broken out of sequential time. The range is very wide and one physics holds across it, which is the book’s strongest achievement. Charged: Mansoul runs a looser comic physics than the realism around it, and the consolations of the cosmology sometimes contradict the grief the realist chapters establish.
Score: 8.5 / 10
Many orders, held by one place and one law. Consciousness, in chapters set inside many minds. The family, the Warrens and their forebears across generations. Labour and class, in the trades, lodging houses and poverty of the Boroughs. The state and its planning, in the clearances. History, more than a thousand years of one town. The sacred and the afterlife, in Mansoul and its Builders. Art and its making, in Alma’s paintings. Madness and genius, in the asylum. They are integrated, not listed: each is a face of the one claim that a poor district holds everything. Held below the top because the integration is often asserted through the cosmology rather than achieved in the action, and because the world beyond Northampton is present only as it touches the town.
Score: 8.7 / 10
Act IV · The Reckoning
8.1 / 10 · Final Average
Placement: Tier IV · Canonical
Strongest Dimensions
The Encompassed at 8.7, The Inner Law at 8.5 and The Living Form at 8.4. Family, labour, class, planning, a thousand years of history, the afterlife, art and madness held by one district and one law; a range from a children’s romp to a chapter in the language of the Wake, under one physics; and a three-book shape that makes the cosmology a structure the reader comes to inhabit.
Limiting Dimension
The Inevitable at 7.3, where a quarter or more of the book, much of the middle book and the restatements of its argument, is permitted rather than compelled. Then Pressure on Tradition at 7.4, inherited methods turned on a new object, with no later practice yet shown to turn on it; The Bottomless Well at 7.7, depth promised by the book’s cross-references but little demonstrated in ten years; and The Imperishable at 7.8, a whole text in print, charged for a presence narrower than its name.
The Necessity Cap is unmet: The Inevitable at 7.3 falls two tenths short of the threshold of 7.5. The Coherence Floor clears: The Inner Law at 8.5, The Living Form at 8.4, The Made at 8.2, each against 7.0. The Epochal Gate is unmet on all five: The Archetypal Deep at 8.3, The Unconcealment at 8.2, The Swerve at 8.2, The Imperishable at 7.8 and Pressure on Tradition at 7.4 each fall short of the bar of 8.5. The Universal Minimum is unmet at The Inevitable, 7.3, and Pressure on Tradition, 7.4, both below 7.5; The Encompassed, which it exempts, clears its own floor of 6.0 at 8.7. Two of the five summit conditions are met. The work stands where its aggregate places it: 8.1, in the band of Tier IV, below the 9.0 that the summit requires.
Basis · a reading from knowledge of Alan Moore’s Jerusalem, the prose novel first published in September 2016 by Knockabout in the United Kingdom and Liveright in the United States, scored as the whole novel as published, its three books, The Boroughs, Mansoul and Vernall’s Inquest, taken as one work. It is a prose work with no co-author and is scored as prose; Moore’s English is the text, and no translation is involved. Blake’s Jerusalem, which gives the novel its title, is a different work with its own page. No text was in hand and nothing was measured. Knowledge of the book’s architecture, setting, family and cosmology is firmer than knowledge of its sentences and single scenes, so no passage is quoted and the judgment of the prose rests chiefly on the architecture and the range of pastiche. Matters that could not be verified, among them when the writing began, the exact page count of the first editions, the word count, the number of chapters, how Michael Warren dies, how far the Warrens and Michael’s death are drawn from Moore’s own family, particular scenes of the upper town and its Builders, the form of particular chapters, and any prizes, are not given.