Platypus of Truth

We're already past July 4th, and I haven't addressed the critical issue of Summer Reading. In part, that's because I'm applying to grad schools and six to eight hours of each week day is devoted to language study and catch-up reading. So, right now, most of my Summer Reading is Wheelock's and Hanson and Quinn. Other things have managed to slip in, however. If you've been following this blog, you may have noticed the Neil Gaiman binge. It started with Troll Bridge , moved on to The Neverwhere , gained steam with The Sandman  vols 1-6, The Dream Hunters  and Overture , and finished up with Fragile Things  and The Ocean at the End of the Lane . That's a lot of Gaiman! To break up the flow of goth drama and tragic sexuality, we've also been listening to Stephen Fry read the Sherlock Holmes novels and doing our own read-through of Frank Herbert's Dune . We're looking forward to watching the Sci-Fi channels mini-series after we're done with tha...

Neil Gaiman's worlds are not nice worlds. That's not merely true of his dark epic,  Sandman , but also of his children's tales. The Graveyard Book  opens with the brutal murder of the protagonist's family, including his infant sibling. Troll Bridge  is a clear metaphor for sexual addiction with its origin in childhood trauma. The Ocean at the End of the Lane features a father attempting to drown his seven year old son and a nanny threatening to accuse the same boy of indecently exposing himself to her if he won't keep silent about her plot. I have to confess that it's shocking. Then I remember all the stories I've encountered as a teacher, and I of all the children I've encountered for whom these things are a part of their lives. Gaiman specializes in reaching out to those dark places. His fictional narratives create safe spaces for trauma to be processed and his narrators provide a reassuring "me too". I've found more than a few famili...

I'm almost done with volume 4 of The Sandman  and I think that's about as far as I got in grad school. Volume 5, however, will require more cash or a library hold. We'll see which comes first. In the meantime, here we have the siblings Dream and Death done in brush marker with a little Gustav Klimt intruding on the left a la Overture .

I had some time to kill yesterday and so I turned to doodling two of the lead characters of Niel Gaiman's Sandman . I'm always late to the party, but I finally figured out this year that Liz always dresses like Death. Sorry guys! All three drawings are freehand without references. I wish I had Dream's wardrobe. I don't think it would look as good on a short, stout, bald, Irish-Quebecois-Italian though. Ah well...

Sandman Overture  is quite possibly the perfect comic book. I read it  through twice over the course of the school year and I think I will only be more impressed by subsequent readings. Here, then is my poor study of one of Williams III's pen and ink drawings for a variant cover. Like Lizzie, I need more practice...

Doodling a little today thanks to Neil Gaiman's Neverwhere.

I grew up surrounded by graveyards.  They intrigued me by day and creeped me out by night.  Some of them had witches, some of them had apostates, not a few had a charnel house, and a few had ghost-stories. I've also liked Rudyard Kipling's "The Jungle Book" since seventh grade.  With that in my background, you'd figure I'd have picked up a copy of Neil Gaiman's "The Graveyard Book" sooner.  Fortunately, a friend gave me a copy for my birthday and I've just finished reading it.  I can see why Gaiman took away the Newbury medal for this piece of work.  It is a compact and delightful retelling of "The Jungle Book" that seamlessly blends its source material into the dark and weird world of Gaiman's fiction.  The characters are well-drawn and compelling and the story unfolds at just the right pace.  Though the main character is a child, there is nothing childish about the work.  Each sentence is the work of a mature author at the h...