Inkwell: Authors and Artists

    
So, when my dad was a boy he and a friend exchanged Harry Stephen
Keeler's book THE 16 BEANS on their birthdays. Same copy going back and
forth. He wound up with it, and I read it as a boy. It was very
peculiar. Strangely written, bizarrely plotted. I still have it.

And I thought today, wouldn't it be a fun thing to find him some Harry
Stephen Keeler books at bookfinder.com? They'll cost a few bucks each,
I thought, and make him smile.

Wrong. It turns out that Harry Stephen Keeler has a manic cult
following. Most of the books were on sale for $250 and up. None for
less than $100.

I don't know what's stranger -- a world in which Harry Stephen Keeler
books are that much to buy, or the knowledge that I have a $300 copy of
The 16 Beans (in dustjacket) somewhere in the basement library.
  

    
http://xavier.xu.edu/~polt/etexts/index.html

has some Keeler books up as e-texts...
  

    
I think I stay home for a bit now, yes.

And Martha, you do so know all 499 of them...
  

    
Do not.  I've heard of a lot of them, so you've been very very busy getting
these pretend books and CDs and stuff by them out there.  Very very busy
indeed.
  

    
Hey, Neil,

Rachel Pollack is over, so I asked if she wanted to say hi; here she is.

Hi, Neil!  How have you been?  I still remember the last times I saw you,
though they were definitely too long ago.  I'm on one of my lightning visits
to twin cities land, going to look over the shoulders of gthe color scanning
people at Llewellyn, in hopes they get the tarot cards right.  What are you
up to, besides wandering the globe and being wonderful?
  

    

From the Internet comes a message from Tori Bat:

Hello Neil and All...
                       I just wanted to peek in and say Hi! I know its been a 
little while since I last did... Things have been good lately, overall you 
know? There are things like a dissolving friendship which I wish I could 
change but its not in my hands anymore.... but that aside home and school are 
going great and I got a job today! so... everything seems to be in place! 
*laugh* I guess bats are good luck! (and cleaning my super messy room helped 
too!) anyway I wanted to comment about 2 probably very outdated things... 1. 
I was watching jepordy (sp?) today and was reminded of the last time I 
watched it maybe a year (or so) ago when I was watching it just by chance and 
it was a teen/college episode and one of the questions showed a picture of 
Dream and asked from what the character is from and I was screaming at my 
tv--> ha ha... I forget what value it was but....thats very old...something I 
just found interesting was I read online the October 99 article interviewing 
you (Neil) and Tori (the Other one ;-) about how you two met and your 
friendship.... it made me smile~ and I liked the picture of you guys 
together! So, that's my outdated news...*smile* --- I was thinking about this 
the other day... if anyone has any interesting turning 21 birthday 
stories.... I am turning 21 next month (I know--> who would have guessed cuz' 
I keep getting carded at the movies!) so if anyone wants to share...that 
would be fun! anyway I must be off... 
                                             Bats Need Friends....
                                                                         Tori 
Bat!
  

    

And, from the Internet, comes a response to Tori:

From OpheliaB@aol.com Thu Jul 20 23:01:03 2000
Date: Thu, 20 Jul 2000 22:09:24 EDT
From: OpheliaB@aol.com
To: inkwell-hosts@well.com
Subject: Neil Gaiman - SANDMAN:THE DREAM HUNTERS

Tori Bat - Congrats on the job!  I saw that episode of Teen Jeopardy too in a 
friends dorm room last year.  :-)  They had a category of 'new goths' and in 
the other round 'old goths'.  I looked up at the screen and saw Dream and got 
probably too excited.  My friend was on the phone so I was whisper/yelling 
"Mike look, it's Morpheus!  It's Moooorpheeeuuuusss!  Looklook!  Ahhhh!  No 
one got it!  Arrgh!"

Neil - I was wondering at the time... what's it like to have one of your 
creations show up on Jeopardy?

Jen
  

    




From: BatsNeedFriends@aol.com
Date: Fri, 21 Jul 2000 08:59:39 EDT
Subject: please post to #73 Neil Gaiman-thanks!!! :-)
To: inkwell-hosts@well.com

Hi Jen~ Thanks--> I was super surprised when I got it! but I am looking
forward to it (the job) anyway....yeah I got all the answers right on that
jeopardy(I *knew* there was an A in there ha ha) catagory(s) I thought wow-->
*I* should be on there...but then the next group of topics came up and I was
like well thats enough of that!
Yikes--> I am late for class! see you soon jen (dont be a stranger!)
                                        *hugs*
                                             Tori Bat!
  

    
Mr Gaiman would like to announce that he appears to have Fifth Disease
(erythema infectiosum caused by parvovirus B19), a childhood illness
that has turned up rather late in the Gaiman household but which was
brought home by Miss Maddy Gaiman age 5 who got it first. The symptoms
are a rash and aching joints and nothing much else, and it should go
away pretty soon.

.....


Martha -- well some of them you could have met if only you'd gone
backstage or something when I told you to. But I'm quite sure you're
one of the real ones.

Rachel!! -- well, this is the nearest I get to keeping a diary. Today
I wrote the outline for the Day I Swapped My Dad For Two Goldfish
animated cartoon, but apart from writing and wandering out to say hello
to the garden and having Fifth Disease (see above) life is quiet.

Toribat -- I never saw the Jeopardy thing, but am sorry they didn't
guess it. I liked the Tori and me picture -- I think that there were
better ones, and I should bug Tori's management for the contact sheets
while I think of it... (thanks for reminding me). happy upcoming
birthday...


Jen -- it's nice knowing one is part of pop culture, I think.
  

    
Well, like _one_ of them I could have met, but like I'm gonna go backstage
after a concert.

Having the Big Brother feed on so much is affecting my speech patterns.
Sorry.  I did a Salon piece about Big Brother on the Internet, and because
they might need more, now I have it on in the background even more often.

Hmm there are other birthdays in the world.
  

    
Oddly enough today is Mike's birthday. I am now the father of a 17
year old...
  

    
I remember being 17.  I was going to conventions and had met some of those
few hundred people by then.

Yoiks.

Happy birthday to Mike.
  

    
HBD to Mike from here, too.
  

    
I wrote awhile back about my students reading Sandman (among others)
and have decided to join the Inkwell.  I’ll take the time at some point
to see if it’ll be worth it.

I wanted to thank Mr. Gaiman for something that, oddly enough, I haven
t thought about in a very long time.  September 9, 1993 was my
introduction to the Sandman series.  The technical director had leant
me the hardcover “Seasons of Mist” book.  I remember it being a good
deal thinner than the paperback, but could be wrong.  It’s the one with
the key on the cover so subtly engraved that to see it you had to hold
it to the light correctly.  It was more something to be felt.

After three long years my best friends’ battle with cancer had ended. 
I was wandering in a daze, looking for something, anything, to focus
on.  I had a lot of books on my shelves but I had read those, they
wouldn’t help.  I picked up the book the Tech Director gave me and
flipped it open.  I didn’t know what Sandman was, didn’t know who you
were and didn’t care.  I just needed a distraction.
        
I was thrilled to read it.  I was excited because what I saw was along
the lines of the things I wanted to do with comics.  The story
fascinated and excited me.  The next three nights I worked myself to
collapse but I read “Seasons of Mist” more times than I can remember
that night.  I hadn't thought about that for years.

I later discovered “Signal to Noise” which touched very close.  It
also helped me in a theatre class, when I suggested it to a student, to
show someone that there was another person who’d gone through this
hell and understood and was able to help.  Sandman and the short story
collections helped me get a few students to enjoy reading something.  

I’ve finished up teaching and am now looking at the future ahead of me
and am in hyper-introspective mode at the moment.  I apologize for the
length of this but it’s not often you get a chance to thank someone
who has been able to make such a difference.  You brought desperately
needed relief when it was most needed and helped me help someone
realize that they weren’t alone.  You’ve been an inspiration.
  

    

There's really something called Fifth Disease?

(Why do I have the feeling I will be sorry for asking this question?)
  

    
 lol
  

    
The strangest thing happened to me this morning.  My alarm clock
stopped and I ended up sleeping in, missing my bus to the train (and
therefore to work).  Anyway, I managed to catch the next bus and when
we reached the station...there was my train.  The strange bit is that
it was just sitting there, the barriers up, about three minutes late
for the next stop.  I wasn't running because I was on the other side of
the tracks and I was sure it was about to pull away but it didn't. 
Stepped on board and the doors closed behind me.  It was really eerie
  

    
My mother was wrong...the world really does revolve around me:P
  

    
LOL!
  

    
Mikel -- you're very welcome. That made me very happy...

Amanda -- of course the world revolves around you.

Linda -- Fifth Disease is the english term for a disease whose latin
name translates as "infectious redness". It's a kids disease, mostly.
It came at the end of a list of diseases that make you go red, like
scarlet fever. There were four others, although the third has been
deemed imaginary.

I am not making any of this up.

...

Won the Eisner for SANDMAN:THE DREAM HUNTERS for best related book,
I've been told. Hurrah.
  

    
So I'm reading Maddy J.P.martin's book UNCLE as her bedtime story. And
I thought "I should get her some of the sequels" so I went onto
bookfinder.com and discovered

a) that you can't get the sequels on bookfinder (except for Uncle
Cleans Up which goes for around $250) and

b) that the copy I'm reading to Maddy would sell for about $300 if I
was a bookdealer.

Which troubled me a little. BUT Amazon.co.uk lists "Uncle" Stories by
J.P. Martin, which is the first two books in the series as being
published right now. So I ordered it, and can now read Maddy the sequel
for something less than $250...

So there. I unreservedly recommend that you all buy Uncle Stories.

And I don't unreservedly recommend Harry Steven Keeler (see previous
post) but would love to know what Martha Soukup thinks of him. And
Scraps.
  

    
Martha thinks she doesn't know Harry Steven Keeler....

I just went back and looked.  "The 16 Beans"?  I don't think I've ever heard
of it.
  

    

Congratulations on the Eisner, although I confess (yet again) to my
copious ignorance at not knowing what it is, exactly, although I am
assuming something about Michael Eisner.

And thanks for the info about Fifth Disease and for not laughing at me.  I
fully expected the answer to be something like, "Well, say it out loud,
silly!"
  

    

It's named after the great Will Eisner, elder staesman of comics, author
of the comic book =The Spirit=, as well as =Comics and Sequential Art=,
probably the only significant book-length technical study of the creation
of comics before Scott McCloud's =Understanding Comics=.
  

    
Martha -- somehow I thought you'd know the Harry Stephen keeler story.

(Tom who is called Scraps? Are you a Harry Stephen Keeler
afficionado?)

Linda -- you're welcome.

Just killed a very major character in the book, which came as rather a
surprise. Well, the how of it anyway... I always figured he was going
to be seriously challenged in the living department by the end.