Well, huh. The only complaint I have as of yet is that he didn't continue Sandman for forever! But at the same time I knew it had to end....I mean, it's always sad when something that starts off brilliant, and then by it's billionth issue, everything has turned to pot.

Yeah, by this point, we'd be complaining, "Oh no, not ANOTHER Superman vs. Morpheus storyline."

__________
AJGraeme

That, and he wouldn'tve had time to write the saucy literary stuff he's been doing.

quote:

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Originally posted by Dweller in Darkness:
Yeah, by this point, we'd be complaining, "Oh no, not ANOTHER Superman vs. Morpheus storyline."

__________
AJGraeme

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Oh god... i had this sudden vision of Murphy jobbing the Supes, who now has heat vision that can deflect Omega Blasts...

See you, space cowboy.

~~~~~~~~~
"Embracing death together. Now that's a day I'll wait for."-- Inuyasha

http:://lon.blogspot.com-- Its a slightly less eloquent me

Can I justify complaining that there hasn't been another short story collection like Smoke and Mirrors? Seriously, I want to see more of his short stories, since I felt he did an excellent job with tales like "Chivalry," "The Wedding Gift," and "Murder Mysteries." I happen to love shorter fiction a lot and I think it's generally overlooked these days, to my chagrin. So yeah, that's my "complaint."

***

My baby's got a heart of stone,
Can't you people just leave her alone?
She never did nothing to hurt you
So just leave her alone - The White Stripes, "Truth Doesn't Make a Noise"

quote:

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Originally posted by Aldarion:
Can I justify complaining that there hasn't been another short story collection like _Smoke and Mirrors_?

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no, because there's another one planned, and there was Adv. In The Dream Trade to hold you off

Cool. Now for one more question: Have any tentative dates been released? I haven't checked this part of the site very often and I probably have overlooked it, if a firm monthly/season timetable has been announced.

***

My baby's got a heart of stone,
Can't you people just leave her alone?
She never did nothing to hurt you
So just leave her alone - The White Stripes, "Truth Doesn't Make a Noise"

quote:

---

Originally posted by Sparker:
Neil also seems to have trouble with description. His paragraphs are too short, too filled with action and not enough exposition -- this might be the result of his years writing comics, where the script requires only the bare bones of description.

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That's an incredibly asinine, stupid and ill-informed thing to say, considering that Gaiman writes some of the most descriptive scripts in comics, much like Alan Moore does.

I think that was about Neil's prose, not comic scripts, which are guidelines rather than autonomous descriptions.


@)--,--'--,---

'Cause it's not going to stop
'til you wise up.
No it's not going to stop
so just
give up.

Wise up, Aimee Mann

I think that my complain is that Neil has a writer, sometimes forces images in the head of the reader. For example if you are reading something you are bound to imagine it. So, when I´m reading some of his work (AG, Smoke and Mirrors) sometimes I get images of pedophiles priests, and the opening of a body.
Can someone explain me wahy he does this?? Maybe is something that I´m missing. But it strikes me as a cheap resolution to shock the reader.

Greetings

I whole-heartedly agree. Ever noticed it was nearly the same ending in one of the Death comics and Good Omens? Neil is wonderfully talented, but his themes are like... a motif that has been overly stated. I also think that some readers could get a little left out if they arn't well versed in mythology-- I think that limits his audience.
I think the best example of this was the ENDING of American Gods. Good book, hated the ending. I felt it got pretty lost...[/QUOTE]

I haven't read American Gods, or the other text novels. But the point of mythology is to resonate with the human heart, not to give clues to the story lines necessarily.

quote:

Originally posted by Frodo:
I think that my complain is that Neil has a writer, sometimes forces images in the head of the reader. For example if you are reading something you are bound to imagine it. So, when I´m reading some of his work (AG, Smoke and Mirrors) sometimes I get images of pedophiles priests, and the opening of a body.
Can someone explain me wahy he does this?? Maybe is something that I´m missing. But it strikes me as a cheap resolution to shock the reader.

Greetings

-----

Honestly, I can't understand what you're referring to, so I can't respond. I've not had the same mental images to any of his works. Also each reader is going to naturally react differently.

g

An old vaudeville joke: Psychiatrist shows ink blot to patient. What do you see? Patient: naked women. Next picture, what do you see? Patient: naked women. Psychiatrist: You seem to have an obsession with naked women. Patient: Well, you're the one showing all the dirty pictures.

Sometimes it's true, sometimes it's a projection.

quote:

Originally posted by Dr Bruce:
I haven't read American Gods, or the other text novels. But the point of mythology is to resonate with the human heart, not to give clues to the story lines necessarily.

Curious that you'd choose to make a definitive statement and then qualify it at the last possible opportunity.

The point of mythology is to tell a purposeful story. That is, after all, pretty much what "myth" means. The purpose can be to explain where lightning comes from, why the mountains are jagged or why the Greeks don't get on with the barbarians to the North.

After the Age of Reason, we no longer need myths to explain things. Lightning happens because of ions dancing, mountains are jagged because they're young and unweathered, and Greeks still don't like the French, now more over arguments about cheeses and old wounds from long-dead wars.

Consequently, all a myth does now is "resonate with the human heart." What Neil manages to do is find ways that the old myths and stories can still be purposeful, but not everyone will see it that way. That doesn't make those people wrong, incidentally, any more than an Egyptian priest who doesn't understand Semitic monotheism is wrong,but it doesn't mean that the writing's flawed.

There are two uses to the term "myths." One is as a concrete story line, e.g., fire come from Promethius and he was punished for it. It is in this sense that I used the word "necessarily." The other sense of 'myth' which can include the first, but doesn't have to, is as an explanatory scheme, a narrative which provides an interpretive framework.

Prior to the Enlightenment (so called), the general understanding among people in the West generally was that a personal God created all things, that humans are made in the image of God, that we can do science because God made the universe rational and understandable (Newton: we think God's thoughts after him), and heroics are meaningful in a morally meaningful universe. The dominant myth of the Enlightenment is that there is no god, that the totality of all things is matter/energy in motion, also known as One Damn Thing After Another, and heroics can be nothing more than a personal preference or "choice" if you will. Any personality attributed to nature, such as calling it Creation, or by saying that evolution "selected" feature, are mere slips of the tongue, from habit. Ernest Hemingway and Isaac Asimov are pretty consistent exponents of this view. Those who import the ideas of beauty, heroics, transcendent moral standards, are merely being inconsistent.

I'm not quite sure I'm following you here. Are you meaning that from the beginning of the Prometheus myth we can see he'll come to a bad end because he's working against the will of the gods, and so the framework of the myth tells the reader how the plot will turn out? Because I certainly agree with that.

And how is the myth of Prometheus not an explanatory scheme that offers an interpretive framework? For that matter, how are my stereo instructions not an explanatory scheme that offer an interpretive framework? It's a pretty-sounding phrase and rolls nicely off the tongue, but I'm not sure it means much.

It also seems quite presumptuous to assume that because there was an age of man that had a capital letter at its beginning, we now all think that way, and all those who don't are peculiar. First of all, "the dominant myth of the Enlightment is that there is no god" is ludicrous on its face. While humanism certainly came to the fore at that time, the dominant myth, would be more like, "everything can be explained through reason, and that which can't be explained probably isn't worth noting."

If a humanist can reasonably determine that there may be a god, then he has no reason to say "there is no God."

"Final causes" are about ultimate purposes for things. This is what the abstract part of myths are about.

"Effective cause" is about A making B happen. "Material cause" is what a thing is made of. A story line, myth or comic book, is materially the story of Bad Guy A, Tremendous Guy B in city C.

The Prometheus myth is "Materially" the story of a god who heroically brought fire, to benefit mankind; but with the new technology came great injustice in its wake, for which somebody would have to pay, which turns out to be the hero Prometheus.

"Finally", Final Cause, the myth justifies the notion of 'justice' (evil does not "just happen"), and explaining how technological improvements come about (from beyond this world), and explaining why good changes bring bad results/unanticipated consequences (not just "these things happen").

A material explanation tells you how to make the stereo work. A final explanation tells you why you should bother in the first place. (Imagine someone who hates music who reads that "everyone needs a good stereo," and wants to be in the swing of things, so goes out and picks one up and unpacks it and stores the wires--why bother plugging it in?) Then his loved one tells him he has to plug it in or she's leaving. OK, OK, I'll plug it in. Then three or four years later, he discovers that music is fun to listen to, and that he would get one if he didn't already have one. (Music improves the quality of life; helps with friendships by providing music for times together.)

The Enlightenment move was to refrain from asking questions of Final Causation (including the fact that "God"=superstition for major thinkers). Science could be satisfied with description. (Middle Ages scientists sought material causes =scientific explanations, but credited God with the big Whys.) Newton's law of gravity said what would happen but not why. Driving God out of the explanations, or at least into the private sphere, was a secondary goal, a mop-up operation. (They were not worth asking about, as you noted.)

Thanks for the expansion on your ideas. I think I see where you're coming from now, and I tend to agree, although I think your interpretation of the Prometheus myth is more than a little postmodern. In the earliest versions, at least the ones I've read, the proximate cause of Prometheus' punishment is that by giving man fire he defied the will of the gods and gave man the ability to, at least in a limited capacity, survive without them.

Of course, as you say, myths are interpretive.

quote:

Originally posted by monkg:
Honestly, I can't understand what you're referring to, so I can't respond. I've not had the same mental images to any of his works. Also each reader is going to naturally react differently.

g

Perhaps I didn´t make myself very clear. I don´t say the same images by the image itself. Í mean gorey images. In American Gods I has to read about a prostitute goddes who swallowed a man trough her vagina. We also notice how Mr. Jacquel chews up a human heart, and a whole anatomy. In Smoke and Mirrors in the Snow, Crystal and Apples short Story Snowwhite masturbates a monk. Even when she is a small demon, she has the body of a young girl.
What I wanted to say was that you expect those kind of things from a gore book, I don´t know Clive Barker. Sometimes I think I´m getting myself into a modern- life fantasy novel I I read that. In the case of American Gods.
By forcing, I mean just in my case I always have a graphical representation in my head of what the writer wrote, and I think that´s the same for most people.

quote:

originally posted by Dr Bruce
An old vaudeville joke: Psychiatrist shows ink blot to patient. What do you see? Patient: naked women. Next picture, what do you see? Patient: naked women. Psychiatrist: You seem to have an obsession with naked women. Patient: Well, you're the one showing all the dirty pictures.

Sometimes it's true, sometimes it's a projection.

Ok so you want to imply that I have a certain kind of obsession?? Well read my explanation on this matter. And before that save you vaudeville jokes.

Greetings

Thanks for clearing that up. Yikes. From your original comment, along with the response, I thought you meant that Gaiman's imagery was merely suggestive to people whose minds went that way. But there's no ambiguity here. I really like most Sandmans, and the fox-monk story. Even when, maybe especially when, they are enhanced with sexual attraction. But man-eating vaginas and sexual-predator snowwhite-lolitas are the stock in trade of softporn (which I avoid).