Inkwell: Authors and Artists

    
On the prickly topic of GAIMAN-SHAVE signs, er, BURMA-SHAVE signs,
here's two potentials for Neil-related signs:

"IF YOU WANDER/FAR FROM HOME/TO A SIGNING,/BRING A
GNOME./GAIMAN-SHAVE"
or
"IF NEIL GAIMAN/SIGNS ON YOU,/HAVE IT TRANSFERRED/TO
TATTOO./GAIMAN-SHAVE"

(chortle)
  

    
Rocky - I'm sure you've seen versions of it... it's the wide-eyed,
mouth agape, drink stalled halfway to the lips look, with glimpses of
confusion, amazement, and abject terror flashing in the eyes.

Depending on the moment, various sentences cause that reaction:

"Do you all want to meet Bob Weir?"

"Dont. Move. Or. He. Will. Attack."

"How do you feel about children?"

"Were you the owner of a 1997 black Firebird?"

...and yes, there's a story for each of those.

-- Walker --
  

    
Neil -- The Toshiba Libretto L1 looks nice, with decent specs and all,
and "subcompact" isn't the half of it.  Good luck getting it in time! 
I am all-too-familiar with the aggrevation of trying to get something
shipped to an address other than my billing address.  (I tend to try to
have books I order delivered to me at work so the wife doesn't find
out. tee-hee.)

Walker -- I so want to ask about #2 on that list. ^^
  

    
Email from Jouni Koponen:


DanGuy - Yay! A baby! Always knew I'm reading the topic too sloppy! All
the best for you and your wife! Actually we (me and my wife that is) are
almost in a same situation ourselves (the little person should be born
around july 15-27). Very excited/ scared/ nervous/ happy about it.

Neil - So there seems to be atleast two soon-to-be-daddies. Any parental
wisdom you could share (could use some)?

Jouni
  

    
Neil-  I was thinking of getting Libretto, mostly because I intended
to write libretti on it, which I thought was only appropriate.  Guess
I'll wait.

Will-- sorry for late response... yes, I'll be at the MF show (I think
that's what you asked me, right?)

Danguy-- wait, did I miss something-- is the baby born?
  

    
SUSHI ROLLS
CANADIAN CLEAR
AFTER SIGNING
HAVE A BEER
GAIMAN SHAVE

BOOKSTORE SIGNINGS
SHOULD BE FUN
WATCH OUT FOR
MAD FAN WITH GUN
GAIMAN SHAVE
  

    
Jouni -- Thanks, and congrats to you as well!

Len -- No, the baby still has yet to show up.  The wife and I are
going to the doctor's today for a consultation and a sonogram and
whatnot.  I fully expect to see Alexander clinging for dear life to
Lori's ribs or something, obstinately refusing to be born.


Speaking of authors' work being misused after death, I ran across
another sad item in the NY Times recently.  It seems that HarperCollins
plans to produce a series of new Narnia novels.  That in itself is bad
enough, I think, but what's more they intend to strip any religious
symbolism from the land.  It's an attempt to capitalize on the Harry
Potter craze, supposedly.  I think new books in an established series
whose author is dead, particularly ones that intentionally deviate so,
are a Very Bad Idea.
  

    
Danguy-  WAWAWHAAAAT?  Stripped of ... new... capitalizing on... Oh,
Christ.  I need a drink.  
  

    
DanGuy - Oh, Aslan, you've got to have read that wrong! The whole
thing... the whole point... Adriana, pour me one, too!


Len Schiff -  those are great! I'll be back with more later; this
diversion combines three of my favorite things: trying to get people to
laugh, writing poetry, and teasing Neil...

ANY SEASON/
ANY WEATHER/
WEAR SUNGLASSES/
AND BLACK LEATHER/
GAIMAN-SHAVE
  

    
What are they thinking?

"hmm... if we remove the Christian symbolism and add in some good old
fashioned witches and magic, then all the fundamentalists will
yell and scream about the Satanic books their kids are reading...
meaning more people will buy them to see what the fuss is about..."

Sigh.
  

    
New Narnia novels, explicitly secular...
Well, that rather misses the point now, doesn't it?
I can't think of anything that could possibly more completely violate
an authors vision for his creation. 
And what's more... why? Why do a non-religious Narnia in the first
place? That symbolism was part of what made Narnia unique from other
fantasy worlds. 
My mind is reeling...The Emperor Beyond the Sea, Aslan... oh....
  

    
While one might quite possibly read the Narnia books and never pick up
on the religious subtext, I think that it is that subtext which lends
the series a greater resonance which makes the experience richer, even
for those who miss it consciously.

My wife just forwarded me a bit about it:  "According to The New York
Times, a recent memo from an executive at HarperCollins suggests that
the publisher of the new books will ''need to be able to give emphatic
assurances that no attempt will be made to correlate the stories to
Christian imagery/theology.''"
     What, are all of the Harry Potter loving parents going to be
outraged if they find out that their kids Narnia books contain
Christianity?
  

    
Am I the only person  who is utterly unfazed by the "not explicitly
Christian Narna" stuff...?  With the possible exception of the
embarrassing Aslan turns into a Lamb bit in Voyage, and the appearance
of Father Christmas, the power of Narnia is that it is deep, pagan
storytelling, in which Bacchus and Silenus rub shoulders with Giants
and fallen stars. No-one said Narnia wouldn't be religious. just that
it wouldn't be explicitly Christian. Which the Narnia books aren't.

Aslan dies on the table and gets better. He's not the first god or the
last to do that. 

Aslan is NOT Christ. He's an incarnation of god in the form of a Lion
-- and not a tame lion, and not a man-pretending-to-be-a-lion. (Were he
actually, specifically, the Jesus Christ of the New Testament,
reincarnated as a Lion then I think the Narnia books would have to be
seen as blasphemous. )

i think sharecropping narnia is an abomination of sorts,  but find
that bit of it and the fuss made about it frankly silly. What power the
Narnia books have is not about Lewis's Chrsitianity; it's about his
ability to tell tales.

(Now if someone were to start sharecropping Screwtape without the
christianity -- THAT i'd find offensive.)

Rereading the narnia books to my daughter -- the first time I'd read
them aloud since my older kids were her age -- I was struck by how
badly constructed Prince Caspian is, how badly written (not the same
thing at all) The Last Battle is, and how much I wished for a woman 
who could be sexual without being evil (or in one case, stupid). Susan
was denied heaven for her interest in Nylons and lipstick and boys, and
she got off easy compared to  Jadis, the lady in the Green Kirtle, and
co...

And also how, basically, these are solid stories in a deeply pagan
tradition, and that place is where the fun is -- witches and fauns and
the  imps from the underworld, and the Arabian Nights, and Puddleglum.

As I say, I seem to be a minority about this one.


...

Jinx -- just wondered if any of the one day laydown hardbacks had
crept out into the world.

Grey is a good name.

So, Janell, is Rowan.  It's the name of my friend Chris's daughter, in
the UK,  and I'd have called a daughter Rowan if one who looked like a
Rowan had ever turned up. Instead I settled for planting a tree.

Joseph -- I think the ones with the signed prints are the limited
edition, so you made out like a bandit.

Rocky -- I think so.

Dan -- yes. databases are cooler. But chapter-by-chapter annotations
a) won't give away chunks of plot still to come, which databases will
-- they aren't smart enough to figure out what chapter you've read up
to; and b) let you check stuff as you read along. 

And if something happens to a document, another copy of a document can
be posted. If something happens to a database, a bunch of people with
day jobs are going to put off repairing it until they have time. 

I like simple. It's harder to break.

(See the TOUR page at Americangods.com which is connected to a
database, and keeps turning out wrong, useless, or damaged information.
All I wanted was a text page that could be modified and wouldn't 
suddenly forget what cities the Canadian signings were in.)

Will -- hmm. maybe.

Adriana -- nope. Mostly I don't think I'm a very good actor. But I
like reading my own stuff.

DanGuy -- well done!

JOuni -- parental wisdom? Sure. Enjoy each it while it's going on,
don't wait for the next bit, the 'when's he going to walk/talk/drive'
etc thing. It goes really fast, so just enjoy the bit you're on.

And if you listen to your kids, you learn things.

Len -- I'll let you know how the libretto works out.
  

    
JaNell -- happy birthday
  

    
I wasn't bothered by the Christianity in Narnia until _The Last Battle_, and
part of that, as you point out, is because it's badly written.  I'm not
bothered by the Christianity being remove, either, as much as I am annoyed
that Narnia isn't simply being left alone.

The only other women that I can think of as being sexual and good were the
Maenads, and they weren't so much women as forces of nature.
  

    
As someone who hasn't read Lewis' books in far too many years to
discuss intelligently, I'm just gonna cover my eyes when this
duscussion hits full force.

But one quick question for you Neil before I go.
With all the talks about past and the upcoming signings, I wonder if
many authors remember the first autograph they were asked for by a fan?
It seems like that would stick out in my mind as sort of an epiphany,
but no one except the IRS has ever seemed very determined to get me to
put my name on anything. :)

So how about it, is there a specific first fan that you remember
asking for one, or has it pretty much faded into the rest of the lord
knows how many sigs you've made through your career?
  

    
Walker - but nothing compares to the look on a particular gal's face
when asked "Hey Jinx, JINX! Um, wanna meet Bob Weir?" Tell us, Jinx,
was the "what" that followed because you didn't hear us right? or
because you didn't believe us? :P (d'oh, and I still owe Mike email!)

re: Narnia - Having been completely oblivious to the full concept of
religion until I was about 12 (honest, I thought it was just a really
cool story that a lot of people were really into, like faerie tales or
Rocky Horror), and having first read the books before then, I was kind
of surprised when people told me it was a metaphor for Christianity and
so I re-read them a couple of years later. Huh. What do you know? 

I dunno. As long as you can write the stories well and still have them
played out in a manner that still make them fun and interesting...
Still, I think it would be much better to come up with something new,
rather than capitalize on such a classic without following the original
guidelines of said classic.

squeaks, off to the comic shop to spend money she doesn't have. :o)
  

    

Didn't Aslan, way towards the end of The Last Battle, specifically equate
himself with Christ? I'll have to check when I get home.
  

    
E-mail from Glen Seymour:

Whenever possible, I like to double check information given on the
net.  Therefore, I found this post on SCIFI.COM

"The Times also reported that an internal HarperCollins memo
suggested that an effort should be made to downplay the novels'
Christian imagery and theology--a suggestion that HarperCollins
executives subsequently rejected, the Times reported."

I didn't feel like registering to read the Times, so I guess I'll
take SciFi's word on it.

- The Other Glen
  

    
Shawn -- let's see -- first signings were probably on the mini-tour
for GHASTLY BEYOND BELIEF, with Kim Newman, in 1985. I think the first
booksigning was at Andromeda books in Birmingham.  That was a long time
ago and around 250,000 people ago, I guess...  

The ones that stand out tend to be people like the girl in New York
who said, very shyly, "could you sign my breast," and when I did said
simply "Now you'll never forget me" and walked away. And I haven't
forgotten her, although I've forgotten most of the other people and
body-parts I've signed, but it was what she did and said, not where I
signed, that made her memorable.

Robynne -- yes,  I thought of the Maenads (and the nymphs and such),
but they had no dialogue (except for the nymph whose tree was cut down)
and were more or less window dressing.

The only one I could think of , trying hard, was the Star's Daughter,
and she's offstage for most of the book she's in.

Michelle -- but the original guidelines of the classic aren't "Let's
hide Christianity in a book" -- they were "I want to know who this faun
is under a lamppost, carrying packages," and that was the story C.S.
Lewis set out to write.

I think the New Narnia stuff is a VERY bad idea, and wrong. But it's
not wrong because Harper are saying they shouldn't be explicitly
Christian --  the Narnia books aren't  -- but because he told his
story, and that was that.

madman -- not that I recall, no. 
  

    
Neil, I have to strongly disagree. ALL of his works are Christian
allegory. It's his thing. Now, there are some aspects of the novels
that could be considered pagan, but these are also the parts
assimilated from older religions into Christianity. The
sexuality-in-women-is-evil thing is always a give away. Many older
religions considered sexuality as part of the life-force, and as
natural as eating.
Finding women who are sexual but not evil or stupid isn't all that
hard. Finding them in literature and movies is, unless there's a psycho
killer near by. 'Cause they need to be punished or something.

Re: memorable signings, see, I was paying attention at some point; I
wrote you a Gaiman-Shave about the person who had your sig tattooed
immediately after. 
  

    
        When I first read that Narnia datum, I actually did feel the need to
go splash myself some Talisker.  By the bottom of the glass I'd
realized that Neil's half-right.  Much of the problem is that here in
America, narrowminded Protestants have not only laid claim to the
entire words "Christian" and "religious" but they're working on
"spiritual" and "family" as well.  I think their eventual goal is to
have every adjective in the English language be a code term for
Protestant.  So yes, Lewis did put a little religious spin on Narnia. 
That's actually religious, mind you, not necessarily Christian.  Mind
you, there was a Christian flavor to it, but that's because Lewis wrote
it.  In short, in writing the books and making the choices that all
writers make, chapter by chapter, page by page and line by line, he
would tend to steer towards religious themes.  If these books are being
created as described, then whatever poor bastard is going to have to
spend his life admitting to having written them is, even now, pounding
away at them with his much-thumbed copies of Lewis at his elbow, but
he's steering the opposite direction.  Where Lewis would think to
himself something like "Hmmm... that'll make Aslan sound a little like
Jesus.  Heh.  Cool." our hapless semi-ghost writer will be thinking
"Ummm, that'd make Aslan sound a little like Jesus.  Fuck, they'll just
make me take that bit out anyway, then."  The result will be something
that looks pretty much like the Narnia books, in the way that Windows
looks pretty much like the Mac OS, or the New Beetle looks pretty much
like the old Beetle.  Same visible structure, fundamentally different
design philosophies.
  

    
Happy birthday JaNell.  :-)
  

    
Hello everybody! 
Had a fun weekend with the in-laws and did lots of shopping and
eating. I now have a garden on my patio and lots of plants. I did the
foil thing with the indoor ones. It seems to be keeping the cats away.
Someone complimented them and said: What a wonderful idea! Where did
you learn that?" I said: "Neil Gaiman suggested it." They said:"What?!
Wow!" Hee-hee. How often can people say things like that? lucky, lucky
me:) 

Hmmm. Re New Narnia: I agree with bits of what everyone has said.
There are always going to be people trying to bastardize, recreate,
capatalize (or all of the above) classics and of course alter things
just as people alter history. But if you don't like it, I think it's
okay to just turn your head once in a while and pretend it doesn't
exist. For instance: I refuse to beleive that there are sequels to THe
Crow or Blair Witch project no matter what people say....Let them have
their 15 minutes and quick money. The origional stories are always
going to be the ones most remembered and cherished in the whole grand
scheme of things. 

DanGuy- I was trying to send vibes to your wife, but I don't know what
she looks like, so it was hard. Hope the doctors appointment went
well. 

Neil- I love the new Stardust cover! Will definatly have to get it.
Much much better than the mass paperback one. I just found out that two
of my friends are into reading sciencefiction/fantasy stuff. I never
knew. I just thought they watched movies and got stoned. So I bought
them a Neverwhere paperback, as I'm sure they'll be hooked after that.
Who knows, maybe they'll come to the signing and perhaps you'll have
new fans:)
My ex-roommate George's girlfriend is a huge fan. But she she won't go
to the signing. "Why?" I asked. "Because I'm too scared." I have no
idea what that meant. She's weird.  

THere is an Eagle Creek Park in Indiana where I used to fly planes.
Perhaps the travel agents were thinking of that and got confused.

Janell- Happy Birthday:)

Erynn, who had better go water her plants before she forgets. 
  

    
Okay, I've got my best friend Emma on the line (who called me to tell
me how annoyed she is that her car's air conditioning broke and seeing
as how she's 9 months pregnant and moving in 2 days, this is BAD BAD
BAD) and so knowing that she is a rabid Narnia fan, I told her about
Harper.

I am being treated to "No! What? No! That's wrong! Only Clive can
write Narnia. No one else can. Okay, maybe Neil could. But this is
wrong!" etc. Lots. She's written many papers on Narnia. She's not a
happy gigantically pregnant lady.

(side note to unca neil: Em hasn't read much, but she knows enough
that you could pull off the tone and style, because she's read enough
to know how you use language but that even so... bad, wrong bad, etc.
Oh, and she's big on the part where you're English, and she has fear
that the next author might be American. Big fear. Big. Me? I just have
fear, period. But I thought I'd share.)

I was never read Narnia books when I was small, and since both Emma
and my backflip boy adore them, I've been handed them upon occasion,
but I haven't had the same affection (Emma says "lunatic obsession",
but I digress) for them that I would have had had I cherished them from
childhood. Even so, I'm not keen on books becoming a franchise when
they are so much one author's vision which cannot be adequately
reproduced.

I fear "Poodle Springs."

Fear it.