Over a year ago I saw the preview for Stardust, a new feature film. I was intrigued by the fantasy elements as well as the humor in the trailer. A few girls (literally, high school age) at church praised Stardust the movie as well as the book.
I picked up a copy of Stardust (novel version, I did not know it was also available in graphic novel/picture book format) at a buy 1 get 1 free promotional table. I put it on my bookshelf and it waited.
I saw the movie Stardust on a plane ride...or was it train ride....I cannot remember. Either way, I saw the film and liked it.
I went home and saw the copy of the novel on the bookshelf. I walked past it. It waited.
This summer, on a whim, I pulled the copy of Stardust off the shelf and put it in the summer-reading-stack by my bed.
Here was the stack:
The Guy Not Taken
Good in Bed
Mrs. Dalloway
Wuthering Heights
Crime and Punishment
Stardust
Sense and Sensibility
Perhaps you have read my review of 71.4% (approx.) of this initial stack and know I was on the look out for more Neil Gaiman. And I think I mentioned it in a previous post. Anyhow, Crime and Punishment goes unread (see, I threw on the stack S & S because I couldn't get past the first chapter of C & P...I was hoping to read them simultaneously because I needed to balance the angsty Russian literature with some dry English wit. Well, it didn't work. I moved on.)
I actually read Decline and Fall by Waugh (what? I was waiting for Brideshead Revisited to come up on my queue at the library!). It is a REALLY funny novel and even MORE FUNNY if you are a teacher. Good times! (Though I am not sure if that was Waugh's goal in writing this particular novel...)
Well, to keep my ramble short, I read Stardust, liked it (kinda, click here) and wanted to read more by Neil Gaiman. At a trip to Powells, Kate recommended I read Smoke and Mirrors, a collection of his short stories. I thought I would give that a go rather than wait till fall to get my classroom in order and find my copy of Coraline.
Smoke and Mirrors is....good...um...interesing...actually... good. In The Guy Not Taken, Jennifer Weiner has this section at the end where she writes a little bit about each of the short stories in the book. Neil Gaiman does the same (but at the start) and it is REALLY fascinating for me to read what inspired his work and to read about his process.
One story, fairly...uh...er...
Ahem.
Ok, he describes one particular story as...well... Either way I was INCREDIBLY UNCOMFORTABLE reading it. It was like reading The Secret History of the Pink Carnation.
I thought TSHotPC was going to be a HISTORY NOVEL...but there is a reason historical romances are filed in the ROMANCE section. I was EXTREMELY UNCOMFORTABLE reading it because there was very little history and a lot of...yeh. (In my defense I found the book in the fiction section and not on the shelves with airbrushed Fabio pictures.)
So, I read this VERY uncomfortable story thinking "oh crap, what the heck is this? I was happily reading about werewolves and other totally messed up...what the heck? I mean the shrunken testicles on the beach in that one sea-monster vs. werewolf story was messed up but this is...whoa, do people really do this kind of stuff?"
Then I read his author's note. HAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!!!!!!!! HA!
Neil Gaiman said he blushed most of the time writing it and it took him four years to finish it due to the blushing. So glad I am not the only one who has difficulty writing scenes like that. I have a story in my head about Severus Snape and I REALLY don't want to write it because there is some really messed up $#*! happening and other...things...that I don't feel comfortable writing about.
(The Truth: I was hoping Crime and Punishment would help we write that story, but it has not. I just got depressed by the first chapter.)
And I KNOW I READ JENNIFER WEINER and she has some scenes that are WAAAAAAAY "whoa!" but for some reason I can read those and be ok. She is writing from a woman's perspective and I can understand that. Neil Gaiman on the other hand...
He writes well. He writes so well in fact that I am...unnerved? Disgusted? Shocked? I don't know quite how to describe the squirmy sensation and slight nausea that comes with reading the male perspective of intimacy. It is so...ew.
Seriously: EEEEEEEEEWWWWWWWW!
Is this really how guys think? If so, my thoughts of what how Severus Snape would react are TOTALLY off.
What was equally fascinating about Neil Gaiman is an essay he wrote about writing have a gender. He assigns a gender to his work. He saw Stardust as a girl's book. Well, as a girl, I was not entirely satisfied by the characterization in the novel, but that only helps my thoughts on how gender works in writing.
The best writing is writing that comes from one's experience. You take in an event or lifestyle and you write about it and try your darnedest to write it well and vividly so that someone can pick up your writing and understand your experience, whatever large chunk or small grain of it you have put into the piece.
Some writers have the gift of writing any character, male or female. They can put themselves in any pair of shoes and write brilliant stories.
Others, and I put myself in this category, are not so great at it. But we try...and sometimes we succeed. And those who write the sensitive, romantic Draco "emo!" Malfoy fanfics are plain dillusional.
I tried to read C & P (with a bit of S & S) for the Snape angst and wit, but reading Neil Gaiman has given me a better understanding of the English male perspective.
But I still don't know if I can write the story...
Agh, I just need to go write it and see what happens.
End babble/review.
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