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In which Neil Gaiman is discussed and we learn a startling secret.
robotbebop
Registered User regular
Registered User regular
Well, no startling secret. I just like the way he opened his chapters in Marvel 1602 
I'm writing this post to continue what I was about to start in the Stardust thread over on D&D, but I did not want to derail it. (I basically stated my utter disgust with the movie.)
Now, the disgust does not come from an elitist view on Gaiman's work. To date the only Gaiman books I've finished are Marvel 1602 and Stardust. The movie was just well... dumb. I felt that it dumbed down quite a bit. Way more than was necessary.
But I did touch upon the fact that - while I enjoyed Stardust - I found that the book contained too much exposition than it needed. however, I'm not sure if it was intended since the book is written a lot like it came out of the 1920s. But then I started American Gods and found myself noticing and disliking the same things.
I find myself hearing the cries of this very forum while reading American Gods. Show! Don't Tell! Is there something sophisticated that I'm missing or am I over-analyzing it? Or am I not seeing things and Neil Gaiman just gets a free pass?
The story in American Gods is very interesting, but I find myself very disinterested in it. The writing just isn't holding me.
I guess the main thing that is bothering me is that so many people on these forums pant over Neil Gaiman while holding him to some pretty high standards. I end up telling myself "This is Gaiman, so many people like him. So you have to." .. I do know that this isn't a healthy way to form my own opinion.
Do I just need to read more in general to appreciate his writing or is he really just over-appreciated? Maybe I just spoiled myself by reading too much Dune and Arthur C. Clarke.
I'm writing this post to continue what I was about to start in the Stardust thread over on D&D, but I did not want to derail it. (I basically stated my utter disgust with the movie.)
Now, the disgust does not come from an elitist view on Gaiman's work. To date the only Gaiman books I've finished are Marvel 1602 and Stardust. The movie was just well... dumb. I felt that it dumbed down quite a bit. Way more than was necessary.
But I did touch upon the fact that - while I enjoyed Stardust - I found that the book contained too much exposition than it needed. however, I'm not sure if it was intended since the book is written a lot like it came out of the 1920s. But then I started American Gods and found myself noticing and disliking the same things.
Spoiler:
I find myself hearing the cries of this very forum while reading American Gods. Show! Don't Tell! Is there something sophisticated that I'm missing or am I over-analyzing it? Or am I not seeing things and Neil Gaiman just gets a free pass?
The story in American Gods is very interesting, but I find myself very disinterested in it. The writing just isn't holding me.
I guess the main thing that is bothering me is that so many people on these forums pant over Neil Gaiman while holding him to some pretty high standards. I end up telling myself "This is Gaiman, so many people like him. So you have to." .. I do know that this isn't a healthy way to form my own opinion.
Do I just need to read more in general to appreciate his writing or is he really just over-appreciated? Maybe I just spoiled myself by reading too much Dune and Arthur C. Clarke.
robotbebop on
Do not feel trapped by the need to achieve anything, this way you achieve everything.
Oh, hey I'm making a game! Check it out: Dr. Weirdo!
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Neil Gaiman's comic books are Top-A.
His books suck so much balls is not even funny.
Serious? I love Gaiman's books, Anansi Boys was fantastic.
The Sandman is okay (so far, I bought the first Absolute volume) but it's still just a comic book superhero fantasy. I'm not sure what I was expecting.
He's certainly worth reading if you haven't, but otherwise consider that he's not really the be-all / end-all and there are some other awesome awesome writers doing good stuff in magic realism and contemporary fantasy.
Perhaps it's just me but I'm closer to those who 'pant over Neil Gaiman.' I can't get enough of his writing. Occasionally it can be a bit grating but it sure beats out a lot of contemporary fantasy I've read so far.
Ruzkin, we need a new homework thread! Sorry I didn't post in the old one, real life was in the way, but now I'm free for a week or two.
The most important thing is to just not get hung up on one author, even if you do love his or her stuff, in favour of reading new books that are exciting and challenging! Otherwise you'll miss out on heaps and you won't be able to give me suggestions, which is the important thing, right?
(Gaiman seems to be the kind of writer who accumulates fans who think he's just the greatest, and will look no further for their subversive fantasy / magic fix, or even look no further at all. I mean there's so much more to literature!)
Of course, I don't do that, but I really do like Gaiman. Especially certain stories in Fragile Things, namely Monarch of the Glen, A Study in Emerald and Forbidden Brides... <snip>.
Incidentally, I'm wondering when I should post my short story. I don't know if I want to. D: It was easier before, when it was just satire, but this is a serious short story and now I'm apprehensive. Eesh, I'm an idiot.
Edit: I know how you feel ruz. I know how you feel
Yeah, I really liked Marvel 1602. That was a neat book.
Oh, hey I'm making a game! Check it out: Dr. Weirdo!
that is all.
yeah.. we're not d&d, but there's really no reason to be posting these things
i'm looking at you, everyone else who said something without backing it up
(NOT A MOD STANDPOINT JUST A PERSONAL ONE)
I like Neil Gaiman a lot, especially his short fiction, which seems very concise, well-written, and does exactly what he intends it to do. I think his poems are too light and airy, but hey, that's just me.
His novels? I loved everything I read by him the first time through, but I couldn't even finish Stardust on rereading - it's just so general. American Gods depresses the hell out of me.
I have read Neverwhere about five times, though, largely because of the dynamic between Croup and Vandermar.
I think an important thing to remember, OP, is that published authors are people too. They ain't perfect all the time.
Isn't that like... Blasphemy?
never read Hemmingway
Oh, hey I'm making a game! Check it out: Dr. Weirdo!
Oh, and here he is kissing Jonathan Ross for anyone that hasn't already seen it.
when the indigo children come
you know very well that you hurt me when you do this kind of thing.
as for gaiman,
i really enjoyed american gods when i read it a few years back. more for the ideas and sense of intrigue than for the writing. personally, i liked the romanian folklore stuff.
Depends: Do you prefer Leprechauns and Zombies, or Evil Twins and Spiders? Norse, or Native?
Oh, hey I'm making a game! Check it out: Dr. Weirdo!
Are you serious? Cause that sounds awesome.
Er...no it's not. It features superheroes, yes, but it's in no way a "superhero" story.
Though I don't know how far the first Absolute goes. If it's the first six issues, then I can sort of understand your having that impression. But after those initial set-up issues what Sandman is really about comes into much clearer relief.
Actual Play: Mage: the Awakening - At the Edge of All Things
Eh, there's lots more. Wesley Dodds (the Golden Age Sandman) turns up a few times, Doctor Fate shows up sans costume, John Constantine or his ancestors pop in every now and again, Hippolyta Hall (possibly the most important character in Sandman after Dream and Death) is the real name of the little-known DC heroine Fury, and Clark Kent shows up at the end.
So the story definitely has superheroes. But it should, because it's a story about myths and legends. But it's not a "superhero story" in any useful sense of the term, because it doesn't follow the tropes of that genre, just like a romance novel with a detective in it doesn't suddenly become a "mystery."
Actual Play: Mage: the Awakening - At the Edge of All Things
I think it's not so much that he's bad, per se, as that he hasn't really shown evidence of any artistic growth or deepening since Sandman ended. Sandman was - I can't even describe it for those of you who weren't there, but it was a big deal. It revolutionized comics. A lot of that wasn't so much the content of the story as the format - aimed at mature readers, with lots of plot strands and a finite lifespan - but the actual story made almost as big a splash. It had interesting things to say about culture (both "high" and "pop" - a reader is helped by knowledge of both Shakespeare and Superman) and put it in a cool contemporary framework, with lots of tattoos and piercings and homosex and popular music.
But fifteen years on, he's still mining the same vein. People who read Sandman find very little to surprise them in his books, since sometimes it's practically the same stuff ("dude! what if myths were real?"), and meanwhile writing about tattooed lesbians doesn't score you nearly as many cool points as it did in 1988. Moreover, Sandman was dense and rewarded close reading: a line from issue twelve could pay off in issue sixty. It was like a thick, satisfying book, but ironically, his books are more like screenplays, plot-heavy with conventional Hollywood-friendly three-act structures and not a whole lot of added value on the reread.
Actual Play: Mage: the Awakening - At the Edge of All Things
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If I had to read ONE Gaiman book (not comic) to give me a taste of Gaiman, what book should I read?
I personally feel Gaiman's bare bones approach to story telling does at times make it seem as some of his novels would make better comics or movies, I personally think his stories have great easy reading pacing, but with not so easy reading material. Great balance in my opinion.
I've read:
Sandman
American Gods
Ananansi Boys
Good Omens
Smoke & Mirrors
Stardust
Big fan of everything I've read minus Smoke & Mirrors which had an equal amount of duds as it did big successes.
Most assuredly.
But on the matter of Gaiman's prose; I happen to enjoy it personally, but the aforementioned grievances certainly do hold water in my opinion. I think it comes from the fact that his background is rooted in comics - the scripting format used nearly everywhere stifles any amount of literate description. In other words, it is extremely encouraged that you do as little embellishing and as much straight, listed descriptions of the actions occurring in each panel as possible without bogging down the artist in frilly words. Writing a comic is a wholly different beast, separated entirely from the actual prose of a written novel.
Just my theory on his habit of listing.
And Sandman, for all its virtues (and I still love it) gets looked down on a lot by "pure" comics writers because, in pure technical terms, Gaiman wasn't that hot shit of a comics writer, cluttering the page with captions so that half the artwork was obscured. He was writing them a bit too much like prose, in other words. So it strikes me as funny that then he turns to novels and writes them like screenplays - in both cases his career ambition is, perhaps, a bit too naked.
But like I said, I love Sandman. I don't mind comics written like books, and in Sandman's case the captions were covering up a lot of assy art anyway (for every P Craig Russell or Chris Bachalo there were a bunch of generic Vertigo no-marks). And Sandman was dense and meaty. It's just frustrating knowing that he's capable of something like that but chooses to dial down his talent instead.
Not that he cares, I'm sure:
Actual Play: Mage: the Awakening - At the Edge of All Things
The thing is, Sandman was a vehicle with a setting that enabled an almost infinite number of storytelling possibilities. And, being a long-running comic, Gaiman had almost ten years to tell his story. Novels don't offer that same kind of flexibility - either in size (unless Gaiman hedged his bets with a financially risky mammoth tome) or length (unless he wanted to move from one ten year epic to the next, with no assurances that such a series would be as steady paying a gig as Sandman).
It's all well and good to express disappointment at a perceived lack of experimentation, but when the man did try to branch out a bit, American Gods was the result; a mixed offering with a number of interjections that would have been perfectly fitting in a monthly comic, but only crippled the already meandering pacing of the novel. I think (and my judgement is, of course, infallible) that Gaiman himself had to realise that writing for comics is different than writing for novels. Hence, Anansi Boys offers a far more focused and ultimately satisfying story with plenty of wry humour neatly balancing the darker fairy-tale elements the man is so fond of. His three-part-prose - conventional in form it may be - works far better than AG was ever going to turn out.
As for the screenplay comparisons, well, of his prose, Neverwhere was originally a series of screenplays for a TV mini-series, and Stardust was first an illustrated novella written to complement Charles Vess' work.
While I'm here, has anyone read Alan Moore's Voice of the Fire? If you haven't, I recommend it, with the following reservations: it's not really a novel, more a collection of short stories with vaguely similar (or at least complementing) themes, and the first "chapter" is a perfect example of when literary experimentation goes horribly, horribly wrong. The last bit, however, is worth twice the cost of admission by itself. It is a phenomenal tour of modern-day Northampton with Moore speaking as himself (with added autobiographical elements). Really amazing stuff, and quite heartbreaking.