He’s rock’n’roll.” Lord Dunsany’s words, meanwhile, sing “like those of a poet who got drunk on the prose of the King James Bible, and who has not yet become sober”. This means that Dracula is a book that forces the reader to fill in the blanks, to hypothesise, to imagine, to presume."Įlsewhere, HP Lovecraft is described as “a resonating wave. None of the people who are telling us the story knows the entirety of what is actually going on. It is told entirely in letters, telegrams, press cuttings and the like. And Bram Stoker's Dracula, he contends, "is a Victorian hi-tech thriller, at the cutting edge of science, filled with concepts like dictation to phonographic cylinders, blood transfusions, shorthand and trepanning. Those who find Edgar Allan Poe's baroque prose a little rich for the eyes, he maintains, should read him aloud. Gaiman is also good on reframing canonical works. Eventually the prospect of doing nothing becomes so odious that it makes writing the preferable option.Ĭheap Seats is particularly handy to have around if you need a primer on the early days of comics and speculative fiction, with towering figures such as Will Eisner, Harvey Kurtzman, Jack Kirby, Harlan Ellison, Gene Wolfe, Brian Aldiss, Alfred Bester and Samuel R Delany – the Tuatha dé Danann of the fantasy form.
He allows himself a choice: write or do nothing. Several years ago, over a post-event dinner, Gaiman was asked how he manages to maintain such apparently blithe productivity. Moreover, he never seems to stress or strain or question his own motivations or abilities. His tone is that of the odd but kindly uncle explaining, in soothing tones, why you shouldn’t go down into the cellar after dark. This is probably why his work is so widely read and easily digested. Gaiman’s prose always favours congruence and coherence over density and complexity. Photograph: Steve Black/Rex Featuresīut one thing he has never been is obtuse. Neil Gaiman: his first published anthology of nonfiction contains 500-plus pages of essays, speeches, reviews, reportage and even the occasional interview. In three decades he's published comic strips, novels, novellas, graphic novels, short stories, children's literature, verse, screenplays, journalism, television series, Doctor Who scripts, video games, Hitchhiker's Guide handbooks and even a Duran Duran biography.
From high Gothic to English whimsy, from mythic works such as Sandman and American Gods to elegant chamber pieces such as Coraline or The Graveyard Book, Gaiman has worn so many shades of Technicolor dreamcoat that it's almost impossible to read everything he's done, never mind profess allegiance to it. The poet’s answer was succinct: speak clearly.Ĭlarity of thought and expression is a virtue Neil Gaiman has taken as a first principle since his apprentice years in the early 1980s. The present writer once asked a poet renowned for his public speaking style what his secret was.
0 kommentar(er)
