#i've been reading every comic by neil gaiman i can get my hands on

[maddiesbookshelves]

Blurry Ramsès blessing a book, once again

[grandhotelabyss]

One more video from the same channel, on the "Who follows Cormac McCarthy?" question.

(Sometimes formulated as the "Who follows Cormac McCarthy and Toni Morrison?" question—an uneasy literary truce in the culture war, where conservative white men and radical women of color each get a representative great novelist, thus missing the radicalism of McCarthy and the conservatism of Morrison. Philip Roth seems to have been forgotten entirely. But I digress.)

Of our YouTuber's candidates, I fully endorse DeLillo and Ishiguro, two of my all-time favorites, never mind "living."

(With a gun to my head, I might even choose DeLillo over McCarthy and Morrison, despite the potential Italian-American identity politics involved. Or at least, in those three oeuvres, of which DeLillo's is admittedly the most uneven, the single book I'd choose for the proverbial desert island is probably Underworld.)

I agree that Erdrich and Silko are in the running, especially for those interested in McCarthy's own subject matter and regional commitments, even if I have quarreled with Silko's politics and sometimes found Erdrich a bit, well, middlebrow. Except for the visionary Housekeeping, written before her puritan turn, I dislike the preachy Marilynne Robinson.

I've never read a word of James Ellroy; please let me know if I must. For other "genre" candidates—I dabble in science fiction and comics, not crime fiction—one might propose Samuel R. Delany or Alan Moore. I read one book of Murakami's, The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle, sometimes acclaimed his masterpiece; I liked it, didn't love it, and it did not and would not occur to me to rate him above DeLillo.

Our YouTuber flippantly dismisses Joyce Carol Oates. I've advanced only inches into her vast oeuvre—a handful of short stories and essays, one book on writing, two short novels, one long novel—but it was enough to convince me that she's serious, her admittedly discrediting late turn to the genre of the Twitter shitpost notwithstanding. His dismissal of Stephen King may go without saying; I hate George Saunders; I agree that Franzen, along with David Mitchell, Neil Gaiman, and even to some extent Louise Erdrich, failed to follow through on their early promise.

I insist on the inclusion of Cynthia Ozick, not least because she does something like Marilynne Robinson's project right, with a much fuller, more anguished, and more properly abrasive acknowledgement of what happens in the soul of the believer-artist when an iconoclastic faith confronts the artistic imagination. Now 95, she released her most recent novel at age 93; I thought it was excellent. I concede, though, that it's probably her body of work as a whole—encompassing essays, stories, and novels, and possibly giving essays and stories pride of place—that is great rather than any one novel, great as some of her novels (The Cannibal Galaxy, Foreign Bodies) are.

(For at least one essay of my own, and often multiple essays, on every writer named above save Ellroy, please see the REVIEW INDEX on my main site.)

All of these writers are elderly or near enough—the youngest are in their 60s—and greatness is perhaps not stirring as obviously as we'd like in the under-60 set. It's harder to identify, though, due to the diminution of mainstream publishing, the proliferation of self-published work, and everything's having moved online. The novel isn't dead, but it is elsewhere. Some of us are doing what we can, and I concede I am probably too immersed in my own vision to judge adequately my more exact contemporaries.

[maddiesbookshelves]

Coraline, by Neil Gaiman & P. Craig Russell (Illustrator)

When Coraline steps through a door in her family's new house, she finds another house, strangely similar to her own (only better). At first, things seem marvelous. The food is better than at home, and the toy box is filled with fluttering wind-up angels and dinosaur skulls that crawl and rattle their teeth. But there's another mother there and another father, and they want her to stay and be their little girl. They want to change her and never let her go. Coraline will have to fight with all her wit and all the tools she can find if she is to save herself and return to her ordinary life.

I've been wanting to read the book for a while, and then during my internship I started reading every Neil Gaiman comics I could get my hands on (minus Sandman and his work for DC). I really love the movie so seeing this version of Coraline was weird, but it helped me see them as two separate things, which was a plus. I've got to admit, I don't really remember my reading experience, I only remember liking it a lot and it making me want to rewatch the movie and finally read the book, haha

French version under the cut

Lorsque Coraline passe une porte dans la nouvelle maison de ses parents, elle découvre une autre maison, étrangement semblable à la sienne (mais en mieux). Au début, tout semble merveilleux. La nourriture y est meilleure qu'à la maison, et le coffre à jouets est rempli d'anges mécaniques volants et de crânes de dinosaures qui rampent et claquent des dents. Mais il y existe aussi d'autres parents, copies conformes des vrais avec des boutons cousus à la place des yeux. Coraline devra employer toute son intelligence et tous les outils à sa disposition pour se sauver et retourner à sa vie ordinaire.

Je voulais lire le livre depuis un moment puis pendant mon stage je me suis mise à lire tous les comics de Neil Gaiman auxquels j’avais accès (sauf Sandman et ses comics pour DC). J’aime énormément le film donc voir cette version de Coraline était bizarre, mais ça m’a aidé à les voir comme deux choses séparées, ce qui est un plus. Je vous avoue que je me souviens pas bien de ma lecture, je me souviens juste avoir beaucoup aimé et avoir eu envie de revoir le film et d’enfin lire le livre, haha