Adults deserve good fairy tales, too ~Neil Gaiman.
I have trouble being honest and critical with a well written book. Someone like Gaiman, in all his work so far, is able to create a world and characters that just pull you in and don't let you go. He is able to create the myths that make me suspend disbelief and the critical and writerly mind and just let go.
He does it here in _Stardust_. I have nothing to add in terms of the conflict or the characters because I lived and interacted with them. Books like this remind me why I loved reading so much when I was younger, before I sucked all the fun out by going to graduate school. Perhaps the resolution was telepgraphed to the reader, but that only comes out on reflection. Go get everything he's ever written, and remind yourself why you liked reading too.
We deserve good fairy tales, and we get them from Neil Gaiman. Thank you Neil.
July 15, 2010
Fizzy Lifting Drink?: On Charlie and the Chocolate Factory
My memories of Charlie are from the movies. I never read the book, but the movies do add things as movies will do and now I understand the differences arising between the two Chocolate Factory movies. The directors had to add some sort of conflict. Dahl's story is like this: Charlie is poor; Charlie gets golden ticket; Charlie is virtuous where the other children are bad; Charlie is awarded factory by Wonka.
In this, the original story, everything plays out nicely and everything is too simple. Charlie is poor but his family is entirely good. All the others we see are horrible and one-dimensional and their defining traits become the mode for their downfall. But if you're poor you can be good just by keeping your head down and good things will happen to you. I was dismayed to learn that Charlie and his grandpa avoided the Fizzy Lifting Drink and avoided any complexity to their characters as is in the version I cherished.
Wonka is an entirely wonderful and novel creation, and I understand why such talented actors wanted to fill his shoes. However, he is not a hero of the working class. Expelling all your workers as a way to avoid corporate espionage is bad enough, but enslaving a whole race of people as your personal worker-army is a little much. I would hope that the Salts or the Gloops or one of the other families enlighten the government as to the conditions at the factory. Also: Wonka has a beard.
In the end, reading the book for beloved stories like this always create more perspective. Dahl is a talented writer but this creation is written for a different audience than me. In that respects, I feel it is an effective text. For me however, it works in concert with the creative efforts spawned by it to forge a synthetic idea of just Who Willy Wonka and Charlie Bucket really are. I am glad I read it.
In this, the original story, everything plays out nicely and everything is too simple. Charlie is poor but his family is entirely good. All the others we see are horrible and one-dimensional and their defining traits become the mode for their downfall. But if you're poor you can be good just by keeping your head down and good things will happen to you. I was dismayed to learn that Charlie and his grandpa avoided the Fizzy Lifting Drink and avoided any complexity to their characters as is in the version I cherished.
Wonka is an entirely wonderful and novel creation, and I understand why such talented actors wanted to fill his shoes. However, he is not a hero of the working class. Expelling all your workers as a way to avoid corporate espionage is bad enough, but enslaving a whole race of people as your personal worker-army is a little much. I would hope that the Salts or the Gloops or one of the other families enlighten the government as to the conditions at the factory. Also: Wonka has a beard.
In the end, reading the book for beloved stories like this always create more perspective. Dahl is a talented writer but this creation is written for a different audience than me. In that respects, I feel it is an effective text. For me however, it works in concert with the creative efforts spawned by it to forge a synthetic idea of just Who Willy Wonka and Charlie Bucket really are. I am glad I read it.
On Blankets
I continue to feel that I read graphic novels, or whatever you want to call them, way too fast. A good part of this is that there are far fewer words per page in a graphic novel than in a more traditional novel. Description is laid out in pictures instead of words, saving the reader much time. I think that having pictures creates a stickiness for the reader. The force of the speed pulls you through and makes you want to continue until the end. I'm a fairly quick reader of text, but there's no sense of momentum built up in reading even quick reads as there is in graphic novels. The pile in your left hand grows at the expense of the pile in the right.
One caveat is that this process happens best when the art is there to serve and enhance the story, instead of moving into the foreground and becoming the story itself. Craig Thompson's _Blankets_ uses such transparent art. He uses the genre to pull the reader into the world he created (and recreated from memory), immersing you into his own sort of memories. The novel is a brilliant evocation of the late teenage years. It is a story about love and finding yourself and coming to terms with who you are and brotherhood. It is life, split and worked into a nice and believable narrative arc. The story is alternately heartwarming and heartbreaking and entirely worth your time.
One caveat is that this process happens best when the art is there to serve and enhance the story, instead of moving into the foreground and becoming the story itself. Craig Thompson's _Blankets_ uses such transparent art. He uses the genre to pull the reader into the world he created (and recreated from memory), immersing you into his own sort of memories. The novel is a brilliant evocation of the late teenage years. It is a story about love and finding yourself and coming to terms with who you are and brotherhood. It is life, split and worked into a nice and believable narrative arc. The story is alternately heartwarming and heartbreaking and entirely worth your time.
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