Tales of Hoffmann - E T A Hoffmann

 

We've all heard of Tales of Hoffman, obviously.  But how many have read the tales?  Well I now have - and my breath has been taken away.  Unfortunately this Penguin Classics version isn't all the tales, so I'm guessing you have to hunt down other editions to complete the set.  Still, the eight tales here make for a marvellous read.

First off, these are not short stories, as the 'tales' element might have inferred.  Seven of these are novellas, the other - 'The Mines at Falun' - either a long short story or a short novella.  Hoffman (1776-1822) seems to have written his entire literary output in the last six or seven years of his short life.  Before that he tried painting and succeeded to an extent as a composer.  And all the time he was a middle-ranking local bureaucrat.

R J Hollingdale, in his introduction, makes much of Hoffman's 'double life'.  It is Hollingdale's thesis that many of his characters have double lives.  That's certainly true, but many of them are also mad, as are the worlds in which they find themselves.  A better argument - which Hollingdale also makes - is that Hoffmann is the direct precursor of Poe.  This is especially true of the first novella here Mademoiselle de Scudery, an aged aristocrat at the court of Louis XIV, turns amateur sleuth in order to unmask a serial killer.  But then we have the very creepy 'The Sandman', in which the story itself has two lives.  And my favourite, 'The Choosing of the Bride', in which a sad local bureaucrat in his forties gets embroiled with what may be a two hundred year old goldsmith and his associate, the Wandering Jew.  This, by the way, is a knockabout comedy.

The truth is, I can think of no one remotely similar to Hoffmann.  The closest I can think of is Neil Gaiman. (Is 'The Sandman' some sort of arcane clue?)  I am a Gaiman enthusiast and now I absolutely crave more Hoffmann.  Unique, brilliant - otherwise indescribable.

Norse Mythology - Neil Gaiman

Norse Mythology has been very successful and it's easy to see why. Everybody has a glimmering about Asgard, and Valkeries, most of us either from Marvel's Thor comics or the movies, and Gaiman admits he is no different. What he has done here is dig out the originals, make a personal selection, and retold them in his unique personal style. Because it is Gaiman, his choice is idiosyncratic. He has chosen to go down side-alleys not normally followed. I'm thinking particularly of 'The Apples of Immortality' and 'The Mead of the Poets,' and especially the amount of coverage given to supporting characters like Frey and his sister Freya.

Because it is through-written, the characters remain constant - the thick-headed Thor, Loki with his scarred lips, and Loki's daughter Hel, with half of her beautiful, the other half dead. And Gaiman tackles the whole Edda, from the dawn of creation to Ragnarok and rebirth. Personally, I loved it.

American Gods - Neil Gaiman

American Gods is Gaiman's big hit, the core of Amazon Prime's drama strand and the centrepiece of what is referred to in the end papers of this tie-in paperback as "The American Gods Quartet". Turns out I have now read three of the four, I have read the novella Black Dog, which is definitely part of the Gods sequence, and I have read Anansi Boys, which I suspect really isn't. Both are reviewed on this blog. In a nutshell, I loved Black Dog (and particularly relished the illustration by Daniel Egneus) and enjoyed Anansi Boys though I thought it was a bit superficial in places.

The good news is, I loved American Gods. The writing was never superficial and the core idea - immigrants bring their gods with them to America, then forget about them, so what happens to the gods - was brilliant enough and deep enough to sustain the narrative. That said, there seems to have been an earlier version - this, Gaiman tells us, is a manuscript put together with the aid of Pete Atkins. It includes cuts made in the original manuscript and some new bits. All I can say is that any mashing together is expertly done and doesn't show.


Our hero is Shadow, about whom we don't learn much save that he went to prison for his wife, who has now died but still feels obliged to repay the favour. Shadow falls in with Wednesday, who is a bit of a flimflam man, and comes up against a digital agency where agents have names like Town and World. Lots of modern writers who have been taught the Joseph Campbell hero theory make it a subtext. Gaiman, being a natural storyteller and inspiringly disinhibited, gives us the full hero ordeal of death and rebirth.


Yet through it all the characters remain real, rounded, and largely likeable, even the worst of them. I also enjoyed the immigrant stories, tales of 'coming to America' which show us how the gods and supernatural entities made it across the Atlantic. These really deepen the text and at the same time preview much of what is to come.


American Gods is, in a nutshell again, magnificent.



NOTE: This particular edition contains a lot of extra material, none of which held my attention. It also includes the full text of the other novella, The Monarch of the Glen. I already have it on my KIndle and am saving it as a treat for later.

Kraken - China Mieville

Mieville is probably the high priest of British New Weird. Kraken (2010) is not especially new but it is certainly weird. A preserved giant squid vanishes from the Natural History Museum. Its conservator, Billy Harrow, finds himself drawn into a web of cult police and kraken cults. Beneath this lies a secondary world of Londonmancers and occult gangs. On one, and one thing only, the feuding factions agree: the taking of the kraken betokens the Apocalypse.

I was instantly reminded of Neil Gaiman's Neverwhere, still my favourite of his. From Neverwhere springs a subset of alt-London Weird, that includes the likes of Ben Aaronovitch (Rivers of London). Mieville takes things much further but I feel he tries to cram too much into one novel. Kraken is far too long. The opening - the revelation of the mystery world - is extremely good; the apocalyptic battle at the end is masterly done; but there is a hell of a lot of middle, much of it stodge, much of it dispensable. That seems to the pitfall lurking for all such fictional constructs. Where do you draw the line? It's not for me to suggest plotlines to the likes of Mieville, however there is another spellbinding yarn waiting for the Tattoo and his unwilling host Paul.

The male characters are better drawn than the female. Mieville clearly has high hopes for his wisecracking witch-cop Collingwood. The best I can say is that she is amusing in small doses.

I seem to be listing a lot of negatives. That's not the intention. I really enjoyed Kraken and only criticise because I care. There's a lot more Mieville and New Weird waiting for me. I'll keep you posted.

Anansi Boys - Neil Gaiman

It has been almost a fortnight since my last post. The delay is not because I'm reading some colossus of a book (though I now am) or that I've been wasting eyesight on a book I cast aside before finishing. It's because I did finish Anansi Boys, perhaps against my inclination,
Now, to be clear, I am a huge fan of Neil Gaiman. I adored Neverwhere and Black Orchid frazzled my brain. Anansi Boys, though...

Essentially it is a mechanistic farce - a limited number of characters forever popping up in one another's lives. Improbability is the whole point of farce, which is one reason it doesn't greatly appeal to me. And, to be absolutely fair, Gaiman does offer some justification through the context of Caribbean mythology. After all, if events didn't come across as wildly improbable, how would we know the gods are involved?

The book has its funny moments, lots of them, some of which made me laugh out loud, which I rarely do. The problem was I couldn't really care about these people. And that is, I suspect, because Gaiman has erred in choosing an almost entirely Caribbean cast of characters. Gaiman is not of Afro-Caribbean ethnicity and neither am I. How can we possibly understand the particular complexities of the lives of Afro-Caribbeans and their communities? Sure, we can research their mythology - and Gaiman handles this aspect with aplomb - but Fat Charlie and his circle live in contemporary Florida, London and on a fictional island. In the first two locales they definitely face challenges which Gaiman and I don't.

Again, let me be clear, there is no hint of racism here. Gaiman clearly likes all his characters. But for me that's not quite enough. The characters are lacking a context. That leads inescapably to a lack of three-dimensionality and character progression.

The other problem is the lack of jeopardy. In a farce, the jeopardy is usually the potential loss of the true love. Charlie's girlfriend Rosie is not the one he should be with, so losing her is the right thing, whereas the true love, Daisy, is right alongside from Charlie from early on. In fact, he can't lose her even when he wants to.

So there it is, the reason for my reluctance to blog about Anansi Boys. It won't stop me reading more Gaiman, not by a long chalk. It is not a bad book: it is expertly written, bowls along, with jokes. It just lacks that element of fantasy which for me is essential - believability.

Neverwhere - Neil Gaiman

I remember Neverwhere the original TV series back in 1996.  I remember quite liking it, but those were busy times for me, long before any sort of recording equipment in my house, and I don't think I watched everything.  Recently, Neil Gaiman has been cropping up a lot in my reading.  When I saw this in Hunt's bookshop in Rugby I thought, why not?

There are two versions of the Neverwhere novel, the TV tie-in from 1997 and this, the author's preferred text, from 2000.  What the differences are, I don't know.  Anyway, just be to clear, I am reviewing the 2000 version, which we must take as the definitive one.

I keep saying I'm not a big fan of sci-fi or fantasy, and I keep reviewing them.  Obviously, these days, I must state I am quite a fan of witty fantasy and reasonably down-to-earth sci-fi (i.e. not cowboys in space).  What I really like are fantasies set in the dark underbelly of London, the London nobody knows.  Thus William Gibson's Zero History, Kim Newman's Anno Dracula (of which I have just a acquired the second volume), the Felix Castor series by Neil Carey (like Gaiman, a renowned British practitioner of US cult comics), and - probably my favourite - Rivers of London by Ben Aaronovitch.  Neverwhere keeps good company.  The TV origins are evident but I don't find that a problem in any way.  I wonder, though, how well Nineties Visual Effects coped with the grand set pieces like the Floating Market in Harrod's basement.  As to how I will soon find out, see below.

The characters are likeable and well-drawn.  Poor old Richard, who finds himself marooned in London below simply by being a good samaritan.  Door, the recipient of his generosity and the girl with a mission.  The flamboyant Marquis de Carabas, the Morecambe and Wise of hired killers Croup and Vandemar, various rats and, of course, the Angel Islington.  The invention is unceasing, the wit flows flee and I really enjoyed it.  Indeed, I enjoyed it so much that I immediately laid hands on a DVD of the BBC series, which I will ultimately be reviewing and comparing on my Media & Culture blog.

Black Orchid - Neil Gaiman and Dave McKean

The cover of this 1991 edition gives no clue, but Black Orchid is the graphic novel as high art.  Gaiman, of course, is a legendary writer of such things, now also a major novelist - The Ocean at the End of the Lane is published this week.  Dave McKean, also an Englishman, is Gaiman's friend and early collaborator.  This work began as a short-run special edition DC comic, using one of their dud back characters, and became a cult.

The influence of the mighty Alan Moore, another Gaiman friend, is apparent in the deep philosophical back story.  Gaiman's appeal to comic book fans is evident in the way he anchors this very un-DC narrative in the familiar DC universe: the US cities are Metropolis and Gotham, the super-villain (but not the lead antagonist) is Lex Luthor, and Batman puts in a shadowy cameo.

But the best parts are when Black Orchid, a humanoid plant, retreats from civilization to the rain forest of the Amazon Basin.  Here, McKean's radical rethink of the way graphic art can lay out a narrative really come to the fore.  About 20% of the imagery is so evocative that the creators decided no words were necessary.

I was a major fan of superhero comics when I was a boy and again as a young man.  I tried one a few years back and had really lost the taste.  This is the way forward for me.  I want more.

[There is a brilliant essay on Black Orchid here, which also includes images of some of the sumptuous artwork.]