Bernard Shaw

Should someone who’s life work is helping people recover from alcohol addiction and violence accept money from alcohol and weapons manufacturers? Should society mandate education and curtail freedom of expression in the hope of increasing social equality? Should love of an individual have priority over love of a country?

They’re tough questions. Good questions.

So here’s an idea: rather than look for an answer, let’s just make fun of everyone involved with the questions. Salvation Army workers? Mock them. Alcoholics? Mock. Weapons manufacturers? Mock. Anyone who tries to do something worthwhile and doesn’t make the world perfect? Mock. Mock. Mock.

Bernard Shaw mocks well. He has the cleverness of Oscar Wilde with a lot more bitter attitude, and a worldview that makes every hero fairly despicable and every villain a clown.

When I read Major Barbara (the Salvation Army vs. Big Booze play), I was amazed by the wordplay and timing. Sure, it left me depressed, but the language was amazing.

Moved to Pygmallion next, and my amazement at his language and discouragement at its use both increased.

And then Arms and The Man, throwing in the same types of characters but with comic subjects like romance and heroism.

And I took a break.

I thought it would only last a few months. After all, I had enjoyed each book while reading it, and he had a lot of others, and I was getting into plays.

But I found other authors, including Shaw’s nemesis, Chesterton, and the break has now lasted a happy few decades.

Barbara O’Dair, ed.

What’s the word, like Afrocentric, or Eurocentric, that refers to a worldview centered on lesbians? Lesbocentric? Lesbiancentric?

If I knew that word, I would say that The Rolling Stone Women of Rock, edited by Barbara O’Dair, is the first book of that type that I read. 40 years of essays and interviews with women rockers could have been great, but why is it only the ones that hated men got ample space? You don’t have to like singers who are pretty and popular, but ignoring them in a history of 20^th-century women singers is like ignoring Lee Iacocca in a history of cars just because you value fuel-efficient transportation.

Cretien de Troyes

            I tried with Yvain. I really did. I picked it up at a used bookstore that specialized in foreign language books. I failed to get it. I joined a French language book club. Still nothing. Then I chose a college course just because I heard the professor always taught Yvain.

            I learned a lot from that professor, but not how to appreciate that book.

John Milton

I’ve read more mythology than most people I know, but not enough to understand John Milton.

Paradise Lost, the epic retelling of Genesis 1-3, is hard reading, but worth the work. The dozens of lines comparing angelic actions to mythic figures can cure insomnia, but other insights, particularly the demons’ debate and Adam and Eve’s relationship drip with insight and love. I doubt few poems have influenced pop culture more than his depiction of Satan and the demons bickering and strutting over control of the anarchy of hell. Deep down though, I think Dante was more on track depicting Satan as a worthless tool frozen in ice.

I picked up Milton’s Shorter Poems at a garage sale. It was in a box marked, “Please Take.” I agree with the garage-saler: many of the poems were nearly incomprehensible to me due to their references to classical mythology. But I would have paid for “Upon the Circumcision”, and “On Time.”

Madeleine L’Engle

Madeleine L’Engle is one of the many authors whom I greatly respect while not quite believing.

A Wrinkle in Time is presented as a children’s books, in that it involves children traveling through space and time to battle evil, but it’s really a treatise. As is its sequel, A Wind in the Door, and its sequel, The Swiftly Tilting Planet. The third of the series is by far the most intriguing on a plot level, but the basic universalist tilt comes through the entire series.

Love Letters, a stream-of-consciousness weaving together of three stories centered around the meaning of romantic and divine love, starts slowly, very slowly, but picks up toward the end.

Walking on Water is a tone-based argument on the need and method of Christian art. It’s not always inspiring, but it includes some great quotes.

Looking over these brief memories, it would seem that I don’t care much for Ms. L’Engle. That’s far from true. I’ve enjoyed every book of hers I’ve read. Yet, at the same time, every one has left me a little disappointed. Maybe it’s that thy carry hints of the great, “sweep you away” feeling of the Lewis and Tolkien myths, while mired in the realism of white suburban women. Maybe it’s that they bring a whiff of divinie mercy, without any room for justice. But whatever the case, I’ve left every book thankful I’ve read it, yet wanting something more.

Neil Gaiman

With Neil Gaiman, I’ve been procrastinating; partly because I don’t want it to be a year since I’ve read him, and partly because he’s just too big to review.

The novels aren’t as good, so I’ll start there.

American Gods is an epic in length, and could be in scope if it had epic-quality characters. The characters are straight-from-stock, though, down to the sexy free-spirit wise-beyond-years thinks-she’s-lesbian. I’ve been to the “House on the Rock”, though. And Wisconsin. And the set works: the Midwest could very well be the place where old gods go to die.

Stardust was of even lower caliber. It’s just a fairy tale, like you’d find in the 19^th-century genre, but with just enough extra sexuality to justify a post-modernist author.

Caroline and Wolves at the Door are brilliant! Caroline is still too scary for my six-year-old, but I think she’ll read it soon. She loved Wolves and explained it carefully to her four-year-old brother.

And with those two as examples, you’ll get a hint of Gaiman’s genius: image, symbol, concept, and as few words as possible.

And that description transitions us nicely to The Sandman. The Sandman is an epic of huge impact. The fact that nearly every line is illustrated and it looks like a comic book will turn off a lot of readers, but it shouldn’t. Alan Moore convinced me that comics, as a genre, were worth another look. The Sandman was the prize for taking that second look.

If you buy or borrow any of the bound sets, you’ll find introductions far better than this. I’ll skip the general stuff, except to say The Sandman is a post-modernist epic on the nature of story as art and truth, with the protagonist as one of the unchanging anthropomorphic gods.

It would be easy to pick The Sandman apart from a Christian worldview. After all, it depicts, and almost seems to advocate many types of witchcraft. But the point is that it’s not about people and magic; it’s about creativity.

Preludes and Noctures, vol. 1 of the series starts slowly, and several of the episodes, especially the ones incorporating other DC Comics, are painfully shallow. The last few, though, including the gruesome “24 hours” are near brilliant. I can’t say strongly enough that “24 hours” is brutal, and horrible. But it’s how it is sometimes.

The Doll’s House, vol. 2, was the first that I read, and it hooked me. The dark comedy (a mass-murderer convention with intervention by G.K. Chesterton) almost turned me off, but I kept reading and was glad I did.

Dream Country, vol. 3, containts tales of the cats, a near-immortal seeking death, the kidnapped muse, and Midsummer Night’s Dream are the best stand-alone stories in the series. This volume contributes little to the overall mythology, but is one of the best to read and ponder.

Seasons of Mists, vol. 4, begins the mid-series slump. So, who’s stronger: Dream or Hell? This is one of the few volumes that follows a linear storyline start to finish, with a collection of minor characters instead of a truly ensemble cast of equals. It’s occasionally gruesome, but amusing. The attempt to fit the Endless into a Judeo-Christian ontology is necessary for the series (given Dream’s repeated claims to be part of all religions and beliefs, and Gaiman’s well-founded choice to avoid trying to incorporate Jesus) sort of succeeds, but it’s probably not worth the time spent on it. I’d recommend skimming this one, and jumping to Fables and Reflections.

A Season of You, vol. 5, is extremely gruesome, and easily the most twisted of the Sandman series. I don’t recommend it. The story is essential for understanding the mythology of the series, but isn’t in itself compelling, and it pushes the boundaries both in theme (gender identity) characters (lesbians, witches, transsexuals, and sluts), and visuals (zombie baby cannibals and degloved faces that talk). I tried reading it a second time for insights in the female or better, non-male psyche, but the insights weren’t worth the experience.

Fables and Reflections, vol. 6. Page for page, this is the most enjoyable volume of the series because in it, Gaiman seems to simply let himself excel at what he’s best at: amazing stories in new mythology, as opposed to a cohesive mythology without a plot. Many of the stories (the prologue of the aspiring actor, the Emperor of America, Robespierre, The Family, Caesar Augustus, and Ramadan) are among the most optimistic of the epic. The introduction of Orpheus isn’t especially intriguing, but it’s necessary to understand the rest of the series.

Brief Lives, vol. 7: As part of the overall myth, this volume is essential, and more accessible than The Kindly Ones or A Game of You. The horror still rises at points, but doesnt’ get out of hand, as it did in Game. The basic story–Dream and Delirium look for Destruction, and can only find him through a death pact Dream makes with his son, Orpheus–isn’t as intriguing as the short stories in the series, but there’s more intentional humor and development of the Endless as characters than available in the other volumes. In fact, this is one of the few volumes which overtly treats The Sandman as a protagonist.

World’s End, vol. 8, is where Gaiman finally reaches his stride in a delightful Chaucerian collection of stories told by characters at an inn where worlds meet and end. Each story stands well by itself, and they’re woven smoothly into the larger Sandman mythology.

The Kindly Ones, vol. 9: Like some of the other Sandman volumes that tell a single story instead of intertwined short stories, this one falls short of the every-page dazzle I’d come to expect. The mythology angle comes on strong, but it gets to be such a self-referential mess that I started to wonder if it was worth it.

The Wake, vol. 10: The Sandman’s clearly not the same once he’s dead, but this one picks up well, revivifying some of the most ingenuous minor characters and bringing back Shakespeare himself for some of the best analyses of writing and art in the series. The first few chapters don’t stand alone well, as they simply wrap up the myth. The return of Hobs, the never-dying man, on a visit to a Renaissance Festival, though, is one of the most optimistic of the stories in the series, and the reworking of The Tempest is self-referential symbology at its finest.

Endless Nights, vol. 11, probably would have scored two numbers higher if it had been my first Sandman book. As a sequel, though, this collection of stories (one per “endless” character) lacks the depth and general motivation of the original series.

So I guess the summary is that’s it’s usually bizarre, often confusing, and frequently grotesque, but somehow I think he’s worth it.

Lewis Carroll

I gave him my best shot. Really. Everyone loves him. People quote him all the time. They use the word “genius” in sentences about him. So, Alice in Wonderland, Through the Looking Glass, Phatasmagoria, and The Hunting of the Snark. I went through all of them.

They’re not bad, really. The titles of the last two books in that list are worth a couple stars on their own.

But genius?

Reading them was like listening to an intelligent fanatic rave about a cause you don’t care about. I couldn’t feel a soul.

I trust the others who cite him enough to doubt my own judgment. Maybe his books should have a sign saying, “You must be this smart to read this book.”

For what it’s worth, I’ve talked to a lot of children, and none of them list Alice (book or movie) as a favorite.

Jonathan Eisen

The Age of Rock, 2, edited by Jonathan Eisen, is a collection of interviews and essays about music and musicians that should probably be compared to meat and potatoes of music literacy, as opposed to the chocolate sundae with a cherry on top that would be, say, Nick Hornby’s 31 Songs.

I’m glad it read it because it helped me appreciate Credence Clearwater Revival a little bit more. But only a little.

I also appreciate the (unintentional?) humor of waxing nostalgic about what used to be called rebel music.

Rolling Stone Interviews

The Rolling Stone Interviews, 1967-1980 gives you exactly what you think it’ll give you: random insights, bizarre personas, and a lot of trivia about Rock musicians. I like getting what I think I’m getting.

There was a bonus surprise, though: pages and pages of confirmation for my long-held suspicion that John Lennon was an egotistical boor.

Max Allen Collins

The Road to Perdition didn’t re-invent literature for me in the way The Watchmen did, but it’s fast-paced, fun but grim introduction to graphic novels. The film version is slower and darker, but they’re close enough to the same thing that if you didn’t like one, you won’t like the other either.