ITT: literary shit you never understood

ITT: literary shit you never understood

2009:
My friend got drunk and started telling me that American Gods was the best book he had ever read. Tried reading it. It fucking sucked.

2016: still don't understand the appeal of Gaiman, it bothers me. Even most shit YA fiction I can understand. American Gods had a good premise but the delivery felt flat and cold.

The only thing I don't get about him is how many people believe he's literary to a certain degree. He really fucking isn't, and to me it seems like it should be something that's painfully obvious. His writing seems to be YA for the "goth" kids in high school who are too good for regular YA for various shit reasons.

Really? I thought it was just a slightly nerdier strain of airport fiction. Not that that's really any less vapid than YA.

>tfw Gaiman will probably write 'A Dream of Spring'

more like gayman

>the delivery felt flat and cold.
same, I really have no idea how he stopped making comic books. The only thing I read by him I liked was good omens, and even then he wasn't the only writer.

It's been a long time since I read anything of his, and the people who pushed it on me were my Tripp pants wearing high school friends so it kind of colored my perception. I admit all I've read is Neverwhere though.

Not just that he wasn't the only writer, but Pratchett did most of the actual writing himself. Gaiman primarily collaborated on the ideas only because he was busy with Sandman.

When my friend told me the synopsis back then (keep in mind we were both young), I thought it sounded amazing because >muh myths >muh modernity, at least from a YA perspective, but it was a dull piece of shit and 450~ pages long as well. At least with John Green there's this sort of irritating, quirky rhythm that I can actually imagine teenagers liking.

I actually kind of like Gaiman and I feel the same way about American Gods as you do, user.

I have no idea why the fuck it's praised as much as it is.

ha ha

I've got the complete boxset of The Sandman that I haven't started yet. The only thing I know from Gaiman is that he's a Gene Wolfe fanboy

Nah, he likes mythology and magic and "deep" themes too much to write philosophically nihilistic realism (here I'm talking about ASOIAF only in the context of fantasy, of course).

I hope you haven't read Moore's comics or Sandman will look painfully derivative.

Hemingway. I was raised on old British books and generally hardly ever read anything written after 1920, he's too direct and simple for my taste.

He writes plebby literature. But it IS literature. This means that when plebs read it, and only otherwise read genre fiction, they think it is fucking God-tier GOAT omgsodeep.

The same applies to Pratchett and Martin; Tolkien and Herbert are among the few to appeal to plebs but be better than plebs.
You do not understand the differences between genre fiction and literature, as I do. Coraline and the Morpheus-thing are obviously not hollow, cargo-cultlike reproductions of better works with all their tropes and cliché.
That's among the least of his problems.

This. His best work is in the trippy little short stories, even Anansi Boys is better than AG

Neil Gaiman is, and I'm not memeing here, legitimately just an ideas guy. His writing isn't amazing, he just has a lot of good premises and visuals.

It's why he works best in comics where 90% of the storytelling is done through the artist, because his writing doesn't take center stage and he can have someone else (literally) illustrate his good ideas.
Sandman is great because it's a premise that lets him do anything he wants with visuals and ideas.

I like American Gods but even I'll admit the main character is worthless and boring and half the book probably shouldn't have taken place in Wisconsin.

It's a good book, haven't found anything better from the genre.

Is AG really that bad or are you exaggerating? Anansi Boys is pretty shit to begin with

Yeah, don't feel bad for that. Hemingway is shit. Muricans had nothing comparable to Joyce and Proust, so they forced themselves on him.

It's kind of like Anansi, but taking itself seriously as Big Weighty Myth, where AB has a more mischievous folktale thing going on. Might just be my tone preference.

Would've enjoyed a good Anansi though. I wish he'd done it in a comic

He probably will do eventually; there's graphic novel versions of Graveyard Book and Stardust

Yup, and American Gods is a complete rip-off of Soldier of the Mist - except Soldier of the Mist is good. Whereas Wolfe explores themes of identity, memory, religiosity and sanity, Gaiman takes the more or less same basic premise and makes a super-hero movie out of it.

They had Fitzgerald.

And no doubt explores themes nonetheless. I've never read it though.

i grew up with his comic books and adored them as a kid. when i graduated to his novels, ouch. my first was Neverwhere and it blatantly sucked. i put off reading American Gods and Anansi Boys and when i finally did my opinion of his prose didn't change. i've read some of his short stories and rather liked them but he's no great talent. i think, like Alan Moore, it's people who are more familiar with comic books than literature who find their prose work to have literary value. haven't read Jerusalem, though. doubt i will anytime soon.

I've read both and

>> 8507490

is dead on the money. I'd never thought about it before because I read the two so far apart, but Gaiman even mentions Wolfe in the intro to my edition of American Gods, so it's definitely at least inspired by Soldier of the Mist.

I meant that Gaiman pretty much certainly uses his novel to explore themes, even if it is a bad piece of capeshit literature.

>who is Gertrude Stein

RELEASE THE END OF THE SILVER AGE ARC REEEEED

I NEED TO KNOW IF MIRACLEMAN WILL PLOW YOUNG MIRACLEMAN'S BOIPUCCI

Yeah, like said Gaiman is basically a poor man's Moore anyway.

jeez, brits realy are rather silly, aren't they? one dresses all in black, the other like an Elizabethan nancy boy.

Anyone notice how shitty his books became after Amanda Palmer came into his life? That woman killed any further potential he might have had.

I still ship Neil and Tori Amos
Amanda is a succubus who stole him away with ludicrous amounts of sex

I really liked most of the book, the ending however felt a little flat for me

i could not bring myself to continue reading The Ocean at the End of the Lane after the first couple of chapters. it is abysmal. real pedestrian YA shit.

I love The Sandman, but his prose work is abysmal shit.

It was Moore's wedding iirc, he usually looks scruffier.

Gaimans great but American Gods is okay at best. Give Neverwhere a shot, it's fucking solid. Sandman is his best work though.

lovecraft

Is there some way for Gaiman and John Green to collaborate on a book
and for that book to then eat the two of them

Can't believe this thread has gotten this far without him being called a cuck.

Isn't Faulkner often compared to Joyce, though ?

Pound was better than both

>Neil Gaiman is, and I'm not memeing here, legitimately just an ideas guy
I feel the same way about Dostoyevsky

I don't understand why people think Pale Fire is worth reading, let alone their favorite book.

He's the Tim Burton of novelists.

Faulkner was a nonentity in 'murrica for a lot of his career. He even commented on how he was far more respected in Europe than his own country at one point.

So I succeeded in refuting that user's point.

>the ending however felt a little flat for me
To this day whenever I remember the ending and that coin trick I can't help but picture the ending of Thriller but with Shadow's face

>Amanda is a succubus who stole him away with ludicrous amounts of sex
I wouldn't mind that, he's probably even richer now.
She's oddly hot and vulgar but kind of qt at the same time

Underrated post. Gaiman is, like King and Moorcock, an ideas man but not a great writer. He has a good imagination, and shorter stories where you don't have time to feel let down by the delivery and prose quality usually work best (or comics).