Neil Gaiman – Page 5 – { feuilleton }

New things for July

The Flapper by Frank X Leyendecker, Life magazine (1922).

• 2008 is turning out to be a great year for Lovecraft aficionados. As well as the stupendous Lovecraft Retrospective: Artists Inspired by HP Lovecraft, we’re also awaiting Frank Woodford’s feature length documentary, Lovecraft: Fear of the Unknown. I’m lucky to have my work included in Frank’s film which is easily the best documentary to date concerning the life and work of HPL. Among the interviewees are Neil Gaiman, John Carpenter, Guillermo Del Toro, Caitlin R Kiernan, Peter Straub, Ramsey Campbell and Lovecraft scholar ST Joshi. The film will receive its first (?) public screening later this month at the San Diego Comic Con:

Thursday, July 24
8:00–9:45pm
Room 26AB

• Over the weekend Arthur Magazine cleared the $20,000 it needed to keep running before the three-day deadline elapsed. A stunning piece of fund-raising which shows how much people value Jay and company’s efforts.

• The gorgeous cover above is the work of Frank X Leyendecker (1876–1924), brother of the more well-known (and gay) Joseph C Leyendecker. Makes me think I should make a post of Butterfly Women if only as an excuse to track down more pictures of Loie Fuller.

• Last but not least: happy birthday Lorraine!

Harlan Ellison: Dreams with Sharp Teeth

Harlan Ellison.

“You have somebody who is one of the greatest writers of the twentieth century.”

Neil Gaiman on Harlan Ellison, and so say all of us. The quote comes from a trailer for Dreams with Sharp Teeth, a new documentary about Ellison’s life and work which, as far as I can tell, has yet to acquire any distribution. Given Ellison’s reputation you have to wonder why it’s taken this long for someone to make a substantial film about such a great artist and natural performer.

“Repent, Harlequin!” Said the Ticktockman, from a 1978 portfolio by Jim Steranko.

But it doesn’t arrive a moment too soon given the quantity of recent web discussion which seems to have forgotten his huge body of work and sees him solely as a person who gets into arguments all the time. He’s always been argumentative, of course, splendidly so, and his take-no-prisoners attitude did much to shake up the conservative world of American science fiction in the late Sixties and early Seventies. As a political commentator he’s always been at the Hunter S Thompson level with a great line in witty vituperation. The filmmakers seem to have caught both sides of Ellison, the writer who doesn’t so much read as perform his texts from memory, and the tightly-wound ball of fury who won’t take shit from anyone. The film site has nearly an hour of clips to watch, including a tremendous speed-reading of Prince Myshkin, and Hold the Relish.

And while we’re on the subject, I’ll give another plug to the landmark collection of HP Lovecraft-derived art due to appear soon from Centipede Press. This features a number of my Lovecraftian works and an introduction from Mr Ellison himself.

Previously on { feuilleton }
• The Bradbury Building: Looking Backward from the Future
• Revenant volumes: Bob Haberfield, New Worlds and others

Cain’s son: the incarnations of Grendel

Beowulf wrestles with Grendel, Lynd Ward (1939).

There’s nothing new in pointing out Hollywood’s crimes against literature, the film business has been screwing up book adaptation since the earliest days of silent cinema. But sometimes the wound is so grievous you can’t help but speak out, in this case against Roger Avary’s Beowulf which is released next month. This is another CGI-heavy confection along the lines Polar Express, with the actors being given digital bodies via motion-capture, and it’s something I’d probably have ignored until I saw this picture of Grendel, the story’s principal monster. Beowulf is one of the earliest surviving Anglo-Saxon poems and Grendel, the bloodthirsty creature which Beowulf battles, is one of the ur-fiends of English literature, along with his equally monstrous, lake-dwelling mother and the dragon which fatally wounds the hero. The trio give us a peek back into the dark imagination from a time before recorded history and Grendel especially has always had something raw and primal about its character. So when you see a beast with such a history portrayed as little more than a diseased muppet you wonder what’s going on. Are the creators inept? Ignorant? Were studio restrictions at work? How does an industry with the talent to give splendid life to the trolls and Balrog of Lord of the Rings, or Davy Jones and crew in Pirates of the Caribbean, screw up so badly?

Continue reading “Cain’s son: the incarnations of Grendel”

New things for October

“Mirage in time—image of long-vanish’d pre-human city.”

A couple pieces of news to catch up with here, both Lovecraft-related which is very apt for the month of Halloween. The first is the work I gave a teaser view of in August, a commission for Maison d’Ailleurs, the Museum of Science Fiction, Utopia and Extraordinary Journeys in Yverdon-Les-Bains, Switzerland. The brief for An Exhibition of Unspeakable Things: Lovecraft’s Commonplace Book was to choose an entry from HP Lovecraft’s Commonplace Book, his source of story ideas. The entry I chose implies some of the alien architecture which is a feature of At the Mountains of Madness although I’ll admit that the final result is debatable as architecture.

Continue reading “New things for October”

Congratulations are in order…

…for Miss Melinda Gebbie and Mr Alan Moore on the day of their wedding. I can’t make it to Northampton today but here’s the delightful invitation that Melinda created which features a Fabergé egg adorned with views of San Francisco and the happy couple dancing inside. I hope the weather’s good for them.

Update: Neil Gaiman posted photos.

Previously on { feuilleton }
• Alan Moore in Arthur magazine