It has come to my attention that I failed to mention it here when I posted my most recent recommendation to the website. I’m still behind, I’m afraid, but at least March’s is up now: Stardust, by Neil Gaiman. And I should be able to get back on track fairly soon.
Nifty review, and when you write the paper, I’d love to read it – _Stardust_ is near and dear to my heart, and should I ever actually spawn, it’s the very first thing that I plan to read to the resulting offspring.
One thing, though … do you really see it as a solo work? For me, Vess’s illustrations play *such* a key role in the transmission of the tale that I find it impossible to consider it purely as text (something which I see as contributing in an interesting way to its status as “fairy tale plus”).
I think that depends on how you encounter the text. I know it best as the hardcover, which isn’t illustrated; it just has abstract curlicue splash pages for the chapters. I’m not going to consider Vess’ art in my paper, since my paper is a cousin of my ICFA one (that time I threw Pierce and Luthi at each other to see what came out; this time, it’s Gaiman and Propp), but I should go put a note about it into my recommendation.
Ah, okay! I first stumbled across _Stardust_ in its original incarnation as a set of 4 sort-of-kind-of comic books, so that’s how I tend to think of it: in the longer version of my own ICFA paper, it was one of the texts that I used to argue that the fairy tale and the comic book expanded one another as mediums. Dunno if you saw it, but Stefan Eckman had a *great* paper on a related topic at ICFA this year, looking *just* at how the art enhanced the story (something which made me feel obscurely better about the fact that I’d had to cut all of the examples out of mine, because, well, the issue *was* being addressed, and a sight more neatly than I’d managed). And, hmm, Gaiman and Propp? Oh, yeah. *Totally* looking forward to hearing/reading this one ….
I didn’t see Stefan’s paper, no. I’ve got no critical vocabulary for addressing the visual, I’m afraid — a lack I’d like to fix one of these days, but there’s about twelve other things in line ahead of it.
And it’s sort of Propp/Dundes/the other dude whose name I’ve forgotten — a generalized morphological look at Stardust, since Propp himself is pretty culturally specific.
Hm… I may have to email Stefan on that. I’m sorry I missed it.
For the record, and I do have the graphic novel; I just purchased the text-only version first.
Also, while we don’t own a physical copy of Anansi Boys, I am half-considering purchasing a hard copy of it. I have an Audible download of the audiobook, and it really did gain a great deal from Lenny Henry’s reading, which was absolutely phenomenal.
My love for the imagery knows no bounds – it’s one of the few texts that I’ve not only purchased multiple editions of (more or less accidentally – I went from owning the four-part series to buying the fancy-schmancy bound version for the sake of convenience to picking up the TPB just so I could get one of them autographed, as, obviously, the first two were never leaving my clutches) but also *decorated with*, as posters and prints of the interior abound in my apartment. I’m still puzzled as to why on earth the publisher decided to produce an image-free version of it ….
And, well, on the second count, I have to admit my geek-fu fails, as I’m waiting for the paperback of AB to come out before I buy, partially because I’m broke, and partially because AB was, oddly enough, my least favorite of his works. Maybe *I* should pick up the audio version …. Interesting to see just how many mediums these works are available in; I wonder if anyone’s ever done anything on how the medium affects the reader-response. Hm ….
That’d be an interesting thing to consider. As to the audiobook, it was exceedingly engaging, and Henry has some amazing accents. All three characters are identifyable just by how he speaks, and they sound like completely different people. It really is very well done, and I think Gaiman made mention of how pleased he was on his journal at some point.
As for me, my least favorite of his works was Neverwhere. It just didn’t grab me the way his other stuff has.
Neverwhere has gone through an astonishing number of formats — TV miniseries, novel, there’s probably an audio version, now there’s a graphic novel, and I want to say somebody was producing a stage version or some such.
I can point to my ‘I’m a geek for oral narrative’ inclinations for my love of Anansi Boys, even when reading the hardcover. It was like Neil Gaiman had come into my house for tea and told me a story.
That said, I’m definitely going to have to listen to the audio-book version, given the oral tone.
Also, I believe that Anansi Boys of all Gaiman’s stuff I’ve read–might make the best movie.
