Posts Tagged ‘Gaiman’

15
Dec

Literary Meditation

   Posted by: Dawn    in Literature, QotD, Random Thoughts

I’m doing that thing again…

You know, the one where I have a ton of things to post about like visiting friends, new homes, delicious food, good times, and the holidays (oh yeah! And early Christmas presents!  WOO!), but I haven’t the time to do it.  Strangely, for me, the Christmas holiday has been tied to sad feelings for a long time, so I constantly battle self reflection and social examination with the desire to put up a Festivus pole, celebrate the Solstice, Decorate trees, bake cookies, and wrap more gifts than I should because wrapping with wire ribbon and shiny paper makes me happy… it’s the simple things, folks.  So I’ve been doing some literary and musical meditation, and what better way to share my holiday spirit than to get you all thinking? I intend to post more, but we’ll see how the travel-crazy holidays effect that.  

On with the quotes, my darlings… can you detect a theme?

 

“If it’s true that every seven years each cell in your body dies and is replaced, then I have truly inherited my life from a dead man; and the misdeeds of those times have been forgiven, and are buried with his bones.”
— Neil Gaiman “Murder Mysteries”

~*~

 

“There are a hundred things she has tried to chase away the things she won’t remember and that she can’t even let herself think about because that’s when the birds scream and the worms crawl and somewhere in her mind it’s always raining a slow and endless drizzle.

You will hear that she has left the country, that there was a gift she wanted you to have, but it is lost before it reaches you. Late one night the telephone will sign, and a voice that might be hers will say something that you cannot interpret before the connection crackles and is broken.

Several years later, from a taxi, you will see someone in a doorway who looks like her, but she will be gone by the time you persuade the driver to stop. You will never see her again.
Whenever it rains you will think of her. ”
— Neil Gaiman (accompanying text for Tori Amos’s album Strange Little Girls)

~*~

 

“I am not unique in my elegiac sadness at watching reading die, in the era that celebrates Stephen King and J.K. Rowling rather than Charles Dickens and Lewis Carroll.” 
— Harold Bloom

~*~

 

“Then you should say what you mean,” the March Hare went on.

“I do,” Alice hastily replied; “at least–at least I mean what I say–that’s the same thing, you know.”

“Not the same thing a bit!” said the Hatter. “You might just as well say that “I see what I eat” is the same thing as “I eat what I see”!”
— Lewis Carroll, Alice in Wonderland

~*~

 

“Do you know, I always thought unicorns were fabulous monsters, too? I never saw one alive before!”

“Well, now that we have seen each other,” said the unicorn, “if you’ll believe in me, I’ll believe in you.”"
— Lewis Carroll, Through the Looking-Glass

~*~

 

“I wonder about all the roads not taken and am moved to quote Frost…but won’t. It is sad to be able only to mouth other poets. I want someone to mouth me.”
— Sylvia Plath
~*~

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20
Jan

Book Review: Fragile Things by Neil Gaiman

   Posted by: Dawn Papuga    in Book Reviews, Lyrique Tragedy Reviews

Fragile Things: Short Fictions and Wonders by Neil Gaiman

As with most things in the Gaiman-verse, you never know what to expect. Certainly there are shared elements of fantasy, horror, myth, and legend, but in every work he produces Gaiman manages to twist and mold these elements in entrancing ways. This collection of “short stories and wonders” blends short stores, poetry, and ballads to great effect.

“The Fairy Reel” is a haunting poem about the dangers of music and magic, and how a fairy’s priorities are not to please you. Beautifully written, and not necessarily expected. Another poetic work, “Inventing Aladdin” recounts the anxiety that Scheherazade experiences night after night.

Gaiman’s short stories comprise the bulk of the book and have themes as varied as his characters. “The Problem of Susan” is a reaction to the Narnia tales and the frustrating notion of Susan returning. The story approaches the problem (as many children and adults see it) from the opposite direction–not from Narnia, but from the workaday world years after the experience, while “The Sunbird” is a retelling of the Phoenix legend that places the rare mythological bird at the center of a hunt by a group of epicurians who are not prepared for what their least impressive member cooks up for them. Closing the book is a novella, “Monarch of the Glen,” featuring Shadow, the bodyguard from American Gods, two years following the events in the novel. For American Gods fans, this story alone is reason enough to pick up the collection.

All in all the collection is varied, enjoyable, and well written. Touching on as many corners of the mythological universe as we can imagine, every Gaiman book is a treasure trove of allusions, retellings, and extensions of ideas and concepts most readers only wonder about. The style is markedly different from his graphic novels, and offers a glimpse into Gaiman’s range. Through all of the incarnations of his writing–children’s books, graphic novels, comics, screenplays, novels and short stories–the same underlying themes are present, only told through various different voices. Even if his other forms of writing don’t move the reader, it is certainly worth investigating Gaiman’s other styles. A nice feature of the book is the collection of brief biographies of each piece in the collection. Sometimes they offer insight into the story itself, other times they make the reading that much more interesting because the nativity of the work is hovering around while you’re reading. All in all, a wonderful collection of stories.

~Dawn Papuga

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20
Jan

Book Review: Good Omens by Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett

   Posted by: Dawn Papuga    in Book Reviews, Lyrique Tragedy Reviews

Okay, I’ll admit it. I avoided this “cult” classic for as long as I could. I like both Terry Prachett and Neil Gaiman quite a lot individually, but collaboratively? I was skeptical. In fact, I was worried for them. I would pass the book in bookstores, each volume glaring back at me, taunting me, tempting me, and numerous times I would pick it up and look at the blurbs on the back and put it back down. I was terrified of disappointment from two of my favorite authors. I should have been tied down and forced to read this book 10 years ago. The collaboration I had so feared didn’t only bring laughter on every page, but smart jokes and allusions that don’t care if you understand them. They assume you’re intelligent enough to look it up if you don’t immediately recognize it. Even the footnotes (admittedly, some of my favorite parts of the text) are unappologetic.

The concept isn’t entirely new–there have been plenty of books and films about averting the apocalypse all done with different motivations and with different outcomes. This book, however, makes the approach of the four horesemen something to look forward to, if only to see how they fair against the very young, very normal, Antichrist and Them. From Sister Loquacious, to the hellhound named Dog, this text pits the reader against the ineffable plan to root for an angel and a demon who have been friends for over 6,000 years and have been tarnished just a bit by their interactions with each other and humanity. After all… Hell has all the good musicians!If you haven’t read it, I can’t give this a more positive review than to say you’re not allowed to borrow mine. I know I wouldn’t get it back!

~Dawn Papuga

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