Shockingly Literate

I generally prefer novels to short story collections, but I would read a shopping list if Gaiman penned it.

I received Neil Gaiman’s collection of short stories Fragile Things for Christmas, and I’ve been devouring it rapidly. My favorite so far has been a gem called “Other People.”

The story details a man’s punishment in Hell, where he is physically tortured by a demon. He’s then forced to recount his life aloud again and again, admitting to every bad thing he’s ever done, and then he’s forced to learn the repercussions of his selfishness on other people.

In the end, the torture has left him looking like the demon, a soulless husk, and a new wayward human enters the chamber. The cycle begins anew.

In the forward, Gaiman recounts the doubt he felt upon completion of the story. It felt too circular, too neat to be original. It nagged at the back of his mind. He was sure it must have been a story he’d heard years before and then forgotten. After reading “Other People” to a number of friends, however, no one could name a derivative work.

I think this is a problem all writers face. Whenever I get an idea for a story, if I don’t get it written within a day or two, I usually talk myself out of it. I tell myself it’s too much like this other story or it’s taking too much from this movie.

Art doesn’t exist in a vacuum – everybody draws from their role models and inspirations. What separates us from them, though? How do we differentiate our work, and how do we mark that difference between being inspired by an artist and stealing from them?

The other day, Seth Godin posted this article on his blog (which is really a great site for when you’re looking for a little motivation, by the way).

In the post, Seth suggests that you shouldn’t look to the rats as warning of your boat sinking — you should look to the rich people. When all the major companies switched to faxes, letter delivery services had to go. It didn’t matter if Grandma would still use them to deliver a letter every six months — that’s not how the services made their money.

The Kindle is arguably the hottest gift this holiday season. It makes buying and owning books convenient for ravenous book buyers. It’s not a big deal for the average American though – all the reasons a Kindle is convenient don’t matter to someone who only buys one book a year. But, as with the fax machine example, these light readers aren’t how bookstores make their money. Seth predicts bookstores are the next to go, and it’s hard to disagree with him.

With the impending e-Book revolution, we’re one step closer to Star Trek technology, which I always assumed would excite me (first the Kindle, next the Holo-deck!). So why do I have a preemptive case of nostalgia instead?

An artist's representation of a Kindle actually incinerating a bookstore (image from telos.tv/blog).

Reading is already an isolating hobby. It’s comfy to curl up in bed with a good book, but sometimes I like to trick myself into thinking I’m social, and I’ll go into public to read at the Barnes and Noble up the street. It’s quiet, it has a nice atmosphere, and you may even look up from your book and actually meet another human being that reads (which is a trait that becomes rarer by the year). If I can buy and read all the books I could ever want right at home on my Kindle, my carefully constructed illusion of getting out of the house is shattered!

I wonder what place this leaves for libraries in our society. They’re already the victims of constant budget cuts. When reading words on paper becomes a laughable antiquity, how long will we set aside funds for libraries? And if libraries simply become a place to go to read digital files, why have a physical location at all? Just put it all online. I’ve never been one for the library — I generally like to keep books I’ve read. A full bookshelf is a comforting thing to me — evidence of my literary adventures. The Kindle, however, both defeats the purpose of the library and takes away the need for my shamefully large bookshelf. I hate the infernal device, but the technophile in me still wants one!

What do you guys think? Any of you get a Kindle this holiday season? Would you read more if you had the convenience of one? And do you think this e-Book thing is just a fad? Or is it the future?

Here is a movie poster of The Big Sleep, because movies are inherently more interesting than books.

For the Cyberpunk class I’m taking this semester (if you don’t know what Cyberpunk is, get educated) , the first book we checked out was Raymond Chandler’s The Big Sleep.  That probably rings a bell because of its film incarnation starring Humphrey Bogart as the protagonist, Philip Marlowe.

The story of The Big Sleep isn’t especially important for what I want to talk about today, and on top of that, it has one of the most convoluted plots I’ve ever had the displeasure of deciphering. While trying to adapt it for the screen, the team of writers simply could not tack down who murdered one of the characters.  They got Chandler on the phone, and his response was, “I haven’t a clue.”

That being said, it is still a great book, both as a detective story and as an exploration of 1930’s culture.  Since his appearance in The Big Sleep, Philip Marlowe has become an archetype in American storytelling.  He’s a hard-boiled detective in Los Angeles during the 1930’s mobster era.

A recurring symbol throughout the story is the white knight.  As the first image in the book, Marlowe stands in front of a tapestry hanging in his the front hall of his wealthy client.  Upon it, a knight tries frantically to free a naked maiden from the tree to which she is tied.  He is having trouble doing so, and Marlowe feels like he should give him a hand.  Later in the book, in Marlowe’s apartment, he examines his chess board.  He’s been belaboring his next move, fingering the white knight piece and then putting it down again over and over, unsure where to move it.  ”This isn’t a game for knights,” he comments.
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