The dream of the new year

[kaberett]

May your coming year be filled with magic and dreams and good madness. I hope you read some fine books and kiss someone who thinks you're wonderful, and don't forget to make some art -- write or draw or build or sing or live as only you can. And I hope, somewhere in the next year, you surprise yourself.

... says Neil Gaiman, at intervals, and I know that he is dreadful, and I take issue with the idea of good madness (at least for myself); and yet - and yet, this.

Because: the days are getting longer, and light is seeping back into the world. Because I've made it halfway through winter. Because it reminds me to find other people wonderful, and to trust that others might feel similarly about me; because it reminds me to dare to make art.

And: yes, I don't think a changing number in the Gregorian calendar makes a huge difference to What Things Will Be Like, but - it's a useful milestone; a useful waymarker at which to lay down one's load and consider the path ahead. So that's the dream, maybe, but I don't think it's an unrealistic one: that I might have choice, and the space to choose wisely.

Comments

[kaberett]

Absolutely, but I still don't want to give uncritical praise, being as:

- he fucked up big-time wrt saying that The Graveyard Book couldn't possibly have been set in the USA rather than in England, because there isn't the history, which is just... gross
- I actually massively dislike the way he handled Wanda's arc in The Sandman
- also he was kinda racist in Sandman IIRC
- also I haven't reread American Gods since getting a better understanding of racism but suspect he's fucked up there too
- Anansi Boys, while it made me more aware of my own racism, is also kind of really appropriative?

... so er yes most of my issues with him boil down to "wow that thing you just did with other people's gods/culture was not okay". And -- yeah, I think acknowledging that when sharing stuff he has written with an audience containing people he has harmed is important.

[elialshadowpine]

Oh, not to disagree about letting people know! I wasn't aware of most of these (I think the only thing I have read from him is part of Sandman, and yeah, I really disliked Wanda's arc too), but I have a few too many friends who feel massively awful for liking something that somebody who has done problematic things has said, so that's where I was coming from with my comment. :)

[swaldman]

Hmm, interesting. Never thought of those things in those ways before. I just had to look up the bits of Sandman with Wanda to remind myself... Yeah, she's a caricature... But then again, perhaps a fairly progressive one for when that was written (eighties?). I'm not meaning to be fan-boy-defending-the-author, but I am curious as to how he would have written her today...

[kaberett]

It doesn't help that I know the person Wanda is based on, & she is delighted by the story arc, and she is someone who I've taken an intense dislike to for other reasons!

Don't get me wrong, I adore Sandman (and all his other work, to first approximation) -- in that reading my way through the entirety of Sandman is one of the things that got me through my first term at university -- but. But. And so on.