Back when The Modern Word was starting out, the English writer Neil Gaiman was a cult-hit comic book writer known mostly to readers of cutting-edge comics. Over the past ten years, though, Gaiman has gone on to become one of the world's most popular, beloved and successful writers of screenplays, novels, and children's books. A bunch of excellent guides and resources to his work now exist on the web, so it's unlikely that there will ever be a Neil Gaiman Scriptorium page. If you have information on how Gaiman's work relates to other writers featured on The Modern Word, though, let us know and we'll feature it here.
Interesting to note:
* Gaiman has written that he "sometimes thought it would have been better to be anonymous and go the Pynchon route." He also shares a Pynchon anecdote here.
* "[Sandman is] a narrative whose central character is narrative. Among the few other writers who have dared that much is Joyce, whose Finnegans Wake is essentially one immense dream encompassing all the myths of the race ("wake" -- "dream": get it?). And, though Gaiman would probably be too modest to invite the comparison, I am convinced that Joyce was much on his mind during the whole process of composition. The first words of the first issue of The Sandman are "Wake up"; the last words of the last major story arc of The Sandman are "Wake up" -- the title of the last story arc being, naturally, "The Wake." " ~ Frank McConnell, preface to The Sandman: Book of Dreams.
* Gaiman has written, " "Show don't tell" is a useful rule of thumb, but lots of fine books and stories tell (Borges, for example, does almost nothing else, and we love him for it), and so do storytellers."
Links and Resources
The Modern Word
Borges Influence – The influence of Borges on Gaiman's Sandman comic.
Offsite
Utility
Amazon.com Search – Search Amazon.com for books and related material on Neil Gaiman.
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