# Jerry Cornelius

Jerry Cornelius is a fictional character created by English author Michael Moorcock. The character is an urban adventurer and an incarnation of the author's Eternal Champion concept. Cornelius is a hipster of ambiguous and occasionally polymorphous gender. Many of the same characters feature in each of several Cornelius books, though the individual books have little connection with one another, having a more metafictional than causal relationship. The first Jerry Cornelius book, The Final Programme, was made into a 1973 film starring Jon Finch and Jenny Runacre. Notting Hill in London features prominently in the stories.

## Overview

The series draws plot elements from Moorcock's Elric series, as well as the Commedia dell'Arte. Moorcock hints in many places that Cornelius may be an aspect of the Eternal Champion. Characters from the Cornelius novels show up in much of Moorcock's other fiction: The Dancers at the End of Time series has a character called Jherek Carnelian who is the son of Lord Jagged of Canaria, and there are several hints in the series that Lord Jagged may be a guise of Jerry Cornelius; the Cornelius-series character Una Persson also appears in the "Dancers" series and the Oswald Bastable books, and may also be the character Oona in the later Elric books; Colonel Pyat has his own non-SF series of books by Moorcock, beginning with Byzantium Endures.
At least five other variants of the name occur in other Moorcock works (Jerry Cornell, Jehamiah Cohnalias, Jhary-a-Conel (Corum, Runestaff), Lord Jagged of Canaria from The Dancers at the End of Time, and the anagrammatic Corum Jhaelen Irsei). A space pirate named Captain Cornelius (who like Jerry is associated with the commedia dell'arte character Pierrot) appears in Moorcock's Doctor Who novel, The Coming of the Terraphiles.

### The Cornelius Quartet

In these four novels Jerry undergoes transformations, dies, is reborn, spends one entire novel as a shivering wreck, and eventually discovers his true natures. Moorcock strenuously objects to his character being depicted as a 'secret agent'. There are almost no elements of the spy genre in the Cornelius stories.
* The Final Programme
    Jerry battles his brother Frank who has kidnapped his beloved sister Catherine. Frank dies, but Catherine is also killed. Jerry is sucked into the plans of Miss Brunner to create the perfect being by merging the bodies of Jerry and herself together. When this is done, a radiantly charismatic hermaphroditic being emerges from the machinery. All who see the new creature fall quaking to their knees. The creature itself announces that this is "a very tasty world".
* A Cure for Cancer
    Jerry is solo again, existing as negative character with black skin and white hair. He moves through a landscape of destroyed English cities and occupying American armies, a metaphor for contemporary Vietnam. He runs a clandestine "transmogrification" service for people who want to cast off their old selves, flesh and all. There is the gluttonous Bishop Beesley, and his daughter Mitzi. Eventually Jerry drives the Americans to madness, causing them to burn everything, including themselves.
* The English Assassin
    All the supporting characters, particularly Una Persson, drive this novel while Jerry is nothing more than a whimpering heap of rags washed up on a beach and carried in the back of a lorry to safety. There are episodes in settings ranging from the cockpit of a Dornier Do X, the deck of an Edwardian sailing ship, the anarchic steppes of revolutionary Russia, and Victorian music-hall. Finally Jerry is able to revive as the character Pierrot, forever mourning his lost Columbine, who is Catherine.
* The Condition of Muzak
    Taking its title from the Walter Pater quote "All art constantly aspires towards the condition of music", this is a series of vignettes that cast Jerry as a teenager in Notting Hill, a character in the commedia dell'arte, a secret agent and a fool. Particularly notable are the Notting Hill scenes, which seem to reduce all the other parts of the canon to fantasies in the adolescent Jerry's mind. Other scenes fill in detail, if any were needed, between the novels. In the final scene Jerry's foul-mouthed mother dies, and on her deathbed she reveals the family's history as a distorted version of the canon which Jerry and his now-pregnant sister Catherine seem doomed to continue.

## Main characters

* Jerry Cornelius, secret agent, superhero, adventurer, all things to all men (and women). A figure of almost complete anarchy. Typically destroys repressive authority. Later he is exposed as a false Harlequin, a tragic Pierrot at heart, or simply an adolescent fantasy.
* Miss Brunner, Jerry's opposite, representing stifling authority, also follows a more mystical path than Jerry's fatalistic realism.
* Bishop Beesley, endlessly corrupt gluttonous villain. He thirsts for power, money and pleasure.
* Una Persson, a female version of Jerry, even to the extent of being Catherine's lover. In The Condition of Muzak she is revealed to be a true Harlequin.
* Catherine Cornelius, Jerry's sister and incestuous lover. Usually dies tragically. She is often pregnant by Jerry. In some stories, she is a masochistic figure.
* Major Nye, a retired British Army officer, participant in secret missions, and Una Persson's sometime lover.
* Colonel Pyat, a Russian emigre officer, also a sometime lover of Una Persson.
* Cornelius Brunner, proclaimed Messiah of the Age of Science, a hermaphrodite amalgam of Jerry Cornelius and Miss Brunner in The Final Programme.
* Professor Hira, occasionally another of Jerry's lovers. Hira is counterpart to Jerry's character, always calm and in control.
* Frank Cornelius, Jerry's scheming brother, Cain to Jerry's Abel. Usually killed by Jerry, but always returns.
* Mrs. Cornelius is fat, libidinous, foul-mouthed mother to Frank, Jerry and Catherine. She is the quintessential urban survivor and a modern Mother Courage.
* 'Shaky' Mo Collier, a companion on many adventures, and also supplier of many and varied drugs to almost everyone. He almost acts as Jerry's right-hand man always there when needed, although somewhat unreliable in execution of tasks. The character was created by M. John Harrison, rather than Moorcock.