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Gaiman defenders, show yourself I had a this book of mythology as a kid and it was real good https://www.amazon.com/Usborne-Book-Greek-Norse-Legends/dp/0746002408
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Feb 11, 2019 20:26
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Feb 11, 2019 20:31
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Missed a ton of stuff in this thread again. That Hideous Strength is an enjoyable read: quote:Mark is once again out of favour in the N.I.C.E., but after a conversation with an Italian scientist named Filostrato he is introduced to the Head of the Institute. This turns out to be a literal head – that of a recently guillotined French scientist (as Jane dreamed) which Filostrato erroneously believes he has restored to life by his own efforts. The head of John the Baptist masquerading as a zombie to fool a bunch of evil materialists.
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Feb 11, 2019 20:36
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Karia posted:Which is really interesting, because (at least my understaffing is that) a lot of mythology is trying to explain stuff in it real world that they don't understand. Sun rises and sets? Yeah, there's a dude who drives it across the sky in a chariot every day. Spiders make sense? Uh, there was this really good weaver but she got cursed to become a spider 'cause she was so arrogant. It's interseting that in trying to explain the real world they created a more magical story than modern authors trying to create one. The assumption that all myths are based on something "real" is kiiiinda problematic in that it basically opens up a wide open interpretative field for something that we don't really have evidence of. Like, this is sort of the question on which all study of mythology is based on, and the study of mythology goes back to Plato and before, and it's eminently clear that Plato doesn't "believe" in the myths, yet he's also creating ones of his own
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Feb 11, 2019 21:04
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Feb 11, 2019 21:06
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Mel Mudkiper posted:what I love is that the most clear situation of cause and effect in the greek myths was when the wife of King Minos had Daedalus build her a giant cow costume so she could gently caress a bull and out came the minotaur 
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Feb 11, 2019 21:13
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til Minos was a US president
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Feb 11, 2019 21:20
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my bony fealty posted:Gaiman defenders, show yourself I used to like Neil Gaiman a lot when I was a teenager, but then I realized almost everything he did that I liked was done way better by other writers. Concept-heavy short stories? Borges is better. Fairy tale send-ups? Angela Carter. And so on. I still enjoy some of his stuff, much in the same way that occasionally I enjoy ordering a pizza when I’m feeling too lazy to cook.
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Feb 11, 2019 21:25
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my bony fealty posted:Gaiman defenders, show yourself He did his own reading of the audiobook for Norse Myths, and I quite enjoyed that. I've only seen the TV show of Neverwhere, but that was kinda fun. #faintpraise e: Doctor Faustine posted:I still enjoy some of his stuff, much in the same way that occasionally I enjoy ordering a pizza when I’m feeling too lazy to cook. Yeah, this is a really good way of putting it.
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Feb 11, 2019 21:27
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I liked his essay for Sim City 2000
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Feb 11, 2019 21:58
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Doctor Faustine posted:I used to like Neil Gaiman a lot when I was a teenager, but then I realized almost everything he did that I liked was done way better by other writers.
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Feb 11, 2019 22:04
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I was given a book of Greek myths retold by Nathaniel Hawthorne as a child and I used to love it. I must’ve read it at least a dozen times. Wonder how it would hold up today
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Feb 11, 2019 22:06
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my bony fealty posted:His "Norse Mythology" is a good example of how I feel about Gaiman: take stories that are wonderful and weird and distill them down to easy, non-threatening bites for a mass consumer audience. Let me guess: he makes Norse mythology sexless? "Weirdly prudish" is part of the stereotype I have for modern reinterpretations of mythology Sham bam bamina! posted:One of my professors described him as a "destructive influence" on the public perception of folklore. That sounds like a good topic for an effortpost *hint* *hint* *nudge* *nudge*
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Feb 12, 2019 00:00
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chernobyl kinsman posted:neil gaiman's norse mythology makes me really irrationally angry because it doesn't need to exist. the prose edda is about 70 pages long and is available in a number of very good translations; just read that! why on earth would you want neil gaiman's take on snorri sturluson's take on the norse myths unless you are a literal child? i discovered yesterday that stephen fry has written a similar book about greek myth and guess what, it's also bad(big surprise there!)
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Feb 12, 2019 00:21
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My big issue with Neil Gaiman is that he is not nearly as clever as he thinks he is. American Gods was tedious because he kept acting like obvious things were big twists Like, he wanted you to be surprised Mr Wednesday was Odin when his name is loving Mr Wednesday
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Feb 12, 2019 00:24
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It’s probably good if you’re like fourteen and not well read Actually just apply that to the whole thread
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Feb 12, 2019 00:25
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Mel Mudkiper posted:Like, he wanted you to be surprised Mr Wednesday was Odin when his name is loving Mr Wednesday To be fair most people probably don't know the etymology of Wednesday.
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Feb 12, 2019 01:05
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I'm writing a fictionalized "what if Rome but today" story, gonna refer to Octavian as "Mr August"
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Feb 12, 2019 01:06
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pseudanonymous posted:To be fair most people probably don't know the etymology of Wednesday. He literally says "Since today is my day call me Mr Wednesday"
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Feb 12, 2019 01:09
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Mel Mudkiper posted:My big issue with Neil Gaiman is that he is not nearly as clever as he thinks he is. Low-key Locksmith or whatever, UGGGHHHH.
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Feb 12, 2019 01:15
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Milkfred E. Moore posted:Low-key Locksmith or whatever, UGGGHHHH. Lyesmith iirc which is even more obnoxiously on the nose.
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Feb 12, 2019 01:16
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Mel Mudkiper posted:He literally says "Since today is my day call me Mr Wednesday" Oh well if he says that and you have no idea the derivation, then obviously the knowledge will spontaneously pop into your head.
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Feb 12, 2019 01:19
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hackbunny posted:That sounds like a good topic for an effortpost *hint* *hint* *nudge* *nudge* Going by what I've picked up through osmosis/Wikipedia and what's been mentioned in this thread, though, Gaiman seems to treat the pantheon of mythology and folklore as a roster of characters for his epic crossover fic. American Gods is – from what I know; please correct me if I'm wrong – about mythical badasses like Loki and Anubis and, uh, Czernobog (almost certainly not an authentic pre-Christian deity) striking back at a modern world that no longer believes in them. But this completely misses the point of folklore in the first place. It isn't about believing in gods and spirits and beasts that don't exist, and it isn't even about the stories that they take part in; these things all proceed from a deeper worldview that's completely alien to modern thought. "Magical thinking" is a phrase that people use like it refers to a simple logical fallacy, but it's actually part of a mentality that one of my course readings had to spend multiple pages merely summarizing. The world of ancient folklore is a world of unseen forces for good and ill, of patterns and correspondences that might influence them in their hidden world if you just try hard enough in the visible one, ideally at the permeable border areas of space and time. Getting into just the concepts I've studied in Slavic folklore, you also see influences like the interactions of cyclical ("sacred") and linear ("profane") time, the idea of lineage and kinship as a metaphysical entity (called rod) that must be protected above all else and ideally should grow and flourish, the hearth as the center of both physical and spiritual security with spaces ringed hierarchically around it. I'm sure that some of these ideas are common to other folk traditions; I'm just as sure that some would be as alien to other peoples as theirs would be to the Slavs. In any case, it's a totally foreign world, with Baba Yaga and Koshchey the Deathless and all those names being more or less beside the point. And I'm pretty skeptical that Gaiman scratches the surface of it, let alone even attempts to do it justice, after reading posts like these: Foul Fowl posted:the only thing interesting about it [American Gods] was how clearly gaiman was writing out comic book scenes in prose. Eugene V. Dubstep posted:My chief beef with American Gods (among many) is that it casually trashes deep mythologies by turning their characters into lazy national stereotypes. My blood boils when I think of how much potential was wasted by, e.g., writing Mad Sweeny as a generic Irish soccer hooligan. After having read and kinda liked Anansi Boys, it made me realize that Gaiman probably did the same thing to Afro-Caribbean myths and I just missed it because I didn't know anything about them. Amethyst posted:American gods is too boring to read. I don't understand how people endured pages and pages of shadow wandering around observing things like cold weather. Sham bam bamina! fucked around with this message at 03:55 on Feb 12, 2019 |
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Feb 12, 2019 01:20
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Doctor Faustine posted:I used to like Neil Gaiman a lot when I was a teenager, but then I realized almost everything he did that I liked was done way better by other writers. Concept-heavy short stories? Borges is better. Fairy tale send-ups? Angela Carter. And so on. I still like The Sandman series, but that is helped by some very enlivening art. Also there are parts of it that get to be a chore, especially near the end of the series.
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Feb 12, 2019 01:40
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pseudanonymous posted:Oh well if he says that and you have no idea the derivation, then obviously the knowledge will spontaneously pop into your head. Nah, I bet he's also, like, blind from one eye, or followed everywhere by two crows, or performs runic magic or some super obvious poo poo like that Sham bam bamina! posted:the point of folklore Is there a good primer on this? It's extremely my poo poo. I was tempted to read The Golden Bough (mostly from how scary Lovecraft made it sound. Now that I'm no longer 15, I bet it was only scary in bizarrely racist ways) but it seems completely discredited, so
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Feb 12, 2019 02:01
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A goon once described Neil Gaiman as a fantasy author so talented he ascended to the level of dogshit regular author.
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Feb 12, 2019 02:02
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Sham bam bamina! posted:Going by what I've picked up through osmosis/Wikipedia and what's been mentioned in this thread, though, Gaiman seems to treat the pantheon of mythology and folklore as a roster of characters for his epic crossover fic. This is basically true. It's essentially a less interesting less clever Long Dark Tea-Time of the Soul. That being said it may introduce people to interesting mythological figures and cause them to do their own research. I like American Gods and Sandman, but I don't think they're amazing or anything. Shadow is kind of just an empty vessel through which to view the story, which seems kind of lazy.
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Feb 12, 2019 02:07
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hackbunny posted:I liked his essay for Sim City 2000 You read Marvel 1602 and liked it, you lying bitch
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Feb 12, 2019 02:08
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hackbunny posted:Nah, I bet he's also, like, blind from one eye, or followed everywhere by two crows, or performs runic magic or some super obvious poo poo like that I don't remember him being one-eyed, or having crows, or a six-legged horse, he does know some "charms". It seems like the real criticism of American Gods is that people are ignorant enough that it is a somewhat clever reveal, which is more about the reading public than the book itself.
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Feb 12, 2019 02:10
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Mel Mudkiper posted:Mount Olympus is essentially a divine trailer park What would that make Asgard?
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Feb 12, 2019 02:53
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chernobyl kinsman posted:neil gaiman's norse mythology makes me really irrationally angry because it doesn't need to exist. the prose edda is about 70 pages long and is available in a number of very good translations; just read that! why on earth would you want neil gaiman's take on snorri sturluson's take on the norse myths unless you are a literal child? when you get back from your 24 hour time out (lol), which translation would you recommend? Same, or even more so for the Poetic Edda I recall reading it in Penguin Classics or whatever as a child forever ago I did like how Gaiman made Thor look like a complete furious dumbass and want to read the source material again because I don't recall him being that much of a meathead
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Feb 12, 2019 02:58
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The problem I have with Gaiman is how internally self-serving everything he creates is. He creates a world that only exists to justify his creation of the world. There's no relevance other than a hint of commentary to anything greater than what he's imagined, and even then he hasn't imagined anything much at all. His worlds are taken from things that have meaning as myths, and he creates facile plots around them. At least Pratchett, who he worked with, used his fantasy as a commentary on real things. Pratchett might spend an entire book on a single idea, and with pop-philosophical moments of "straight-thinking" throughout, but he was using it for as a mirror. The only bigger meaning in Gaiman's books is a bigger meaning within itself. It doesn't speak to anything other than itself, it's own plot, it's own characters, it's lazy. It's a man playing around in a language of his own creation but with no insight on language, rather the language is a series of grunts and groans.
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Feb 12, 2019 03:00
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hackbunny posted:Is there a good primer on this? It's extremely my poo poo. I was tempted to read The Golden Bough (mostly from how scary Lovecraft made it sound. Now that I'm no longer 15, I bet it was only scary in bizarrely racist ways) but it seems completely discredited, so Even discredited as it may be folkloric anthropology from that period is really interesting and worth reading, to get a sense of what people did take as fact and what came of it. I'm slowly reading through Margaret Murray's The Witch-Cult in Western Europe and despite being mostly-to-totally nonsense it had a pretty big impact on Western culture; it of course wouldn't exist without TGB. Worth noting that Frazier himself acknowledged much of TGB was speculative and would likely be superseded or discredited later. Graves's The White Goddess is the next in this vein I plan to tackle. Joseph Campbell's The Masks of God series might be what you're looking for, though I'm not sure how academic anthropologists view it. e: if there's enough interest a comparative mythology thread could be neat my bony fealty fucked around with this message at 03:04 on Feb 12, 2019 |
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Feb 12, 2019 03:00
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my bony fealty posted:Gaiman defenders, show yourself I really liked his one off story "Hold Me" in Hellblazer. I also bought Sandman but lost interest somewhere into the second year. I then sold them to some dude in India for a ton of cash, so thanks Neil!
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Feb 12, 2019 03:04
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Bilirubin posted:What would that make Asgard? A divine frat house, but the one that’s always doing community service and the bros and sorority sisters are just all around wholesome, athletic kids who on the weekend throw insane parties. There’s also a weird frat across the street that they’re always arguing with. And a dude who’s been in college for like seven years with one eye and a huge bong shaped like a tree
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Feb 12, 2019 03:05
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poisonpill posted:A divine frat house, but the one that’s always doing community service and the bros and sorority sisters are just all around wholesome, athletic kids who on the weekend throw insane parties. There’s also a weird frat across the street that they’re always arguing with. And a dude who’s been in college for like seven years with one eye and a huge bong shaped like a tree Stoner Odin sounds way more entertaining than anything Neil Gaiman came up with in American Gods.
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Feb 12, 2019 03:16
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I liked the “Road trip across America and stumble upon weird stuff in the forgotten corners of the country” parts of American Gods, and would appreciate recommendations for books that have a similar vibe.
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Feb 12, 2019 04:51
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Travels with Charlie
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Feb 12, 2019 05:24
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poisonpill posted:Travels with Charlie I just understood a joke/reference in Stephen King's Desperation 
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Feb 12, 2019 08:51
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hackbunny posted:Is there a good primer on this? It's extremely my poo poo. I was tempted to read The Golden Bough (mostly from how scary Lovecraft made it sound. Now that I'm no longer 15, I bet it was only scary in bizarrely racist ways) but it seems completely discredited, so A lot of what I referenced in my post is from a draft of a textbook that (to my knowledge) still has not yet gone to print, but a good widely available resource on folklore in general is the scholarship anthology International Folkloristics, edited by the extremely influential Alan Dundes. For Russian magic in particular, you have the sensibly but unfortunately titled The Bathhouse at Midnight (to explain, both of these are liminal or transitional spaces; the bathhouse is where you enter soiled and leave clean, a place where impurity becomes purified, and folk tradition in Russia holds that midnight and noon are not merely points marking time but actual breaks in its flow between the approach and departure of extremes), which might be a bit more specific than what you're looking for but is nonetheless very good. I also feel obligated to point out that, even though I ended up being somewhat dismissive toward folk tales in emphasizing their context, Aleksander Afanasyev's classic Russian Fairy Tales is an absolutely indispensible anthology. Sham bam bamina! fucked around with this message at 12:03 on Feb 12, 2019 |
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Feb 12, 2019 12:00
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