lorjulius' article
lucy...@geocities.com
Thank you, Mr. Bolhafner, whereever you are!
-lucy anne
lucy...@geocities.com
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OTHERWORLDLY FAIRY TALE IS GAIMAN'S BEST
( St. Louis Post-Dispatch )
J. Stephen Bolhafner; Of The Post-Dispatch;
01-10-1999
'Stardust'
A novel by Neil Gaiman
Published by Spike/Avon, 256 pages, $22
Neil Gaiman is considered one of the "Top Ten Post-Modern Writers in America"
by the compilers of the "Dictionary of Literary Biography, " a baffling honor
indeed. It's difficult to see, really, what Gaiman is supposed to have in
common with such writers as Thomas Pynchon or William Burroughs. The hallmark
of post-modernism, it seems to me, is that the reader must struggle like a
canoeist paddling against the current just to find a meaning in the stream of
words flowing by.
Gaiman, by contrast, is always easy to read. Sometimes sparse, sometimes
witty, often lyrical, his prose is as smooth as 12-year- old Scotch. Like
writer Ray Bradbury, most of Gaiman's stories deal, in one way or another,
with the fantastic, the unbelievable. Again like Bradbury, the sheer poetry
of his writing is a big part of how he makes us believe it.
"Stardust" is a traditional fairy tale - sort of. The brief sex scene early
in the book is a nod to modernism, but on the whole it follows a path that
manages to be expected and surprising all at once. We know when Tristran
Thorn promises Victoria Forester to find a fallen star and bring it back to
her that things are not going to turn out the way he thinks they will. But we
may be surprised, nonetheless, at the details of Tristran's adventures, which
begin and end in Victorian England but mostly take place in another world.
Gaiman has done more serious work, such as the "Sandman" comics series that
Norman Mailer called "a comic strip for intellectuals." But for the sheer
poetry and music of the language, this is his finest work yet.
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