Reactions to story from Neil Gaiman - Neil Gaiman's Journal

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  Book Review Rule Number One

  http://crookedhouse.typepad.com/crookedhouse/2008/02/on-his-...
  205 days ago in Crooked House · Authority: 25

  On his blog, Neil Gaiman responds to a review in the Times, in which the reviewer David Itzkoff, who is reviewing two books for young adults (including one of Gaiman's), says: I sometimes wonder how any self-respecting author of speculative fiction can find fulfillment in writing novels for young readers. I suppose J. K. Rowling could give me 1.12 billion reasons in favor of it: get your formula just right and you can enjoy worldwide sales, film and television options, vibrating-toy-broom licensing fees, Chinese-language bootlegs of your work, a kind of limited immortality (L. Frank Baum who?) and — finally — genuine grown-up readers. But where’s the artistic satisfaction? Where’s the dignity? Gaiman says: I think that rule number one for book reviewers should probably be Don't Spend The First Paragraph Slagging Off The Genre. Just don't. Don't start a review of romance books by saying that all romance books are rubbish but these are good (or just as bad as the rest). Don't start a review of SF by saying that you hate all off-planet tales or things set in the future and you don't like way SF writers do characters. Don't start a review of a University Adultery novel by explaining that mostly books about English professors having panicky academic sex bore you to tears but. Just don't. Any more than a restaurant reviewer would spend a paragraph explaining that she didn't normally like or eat -- or understand why other people would like or eat -- Chinese food, or French, or barbeque. It just makes people think you're not a very good reviewer. I first saw Itzkoff's strangely unprofessional review quoted on Gwenda's blog last week. Gwenda, a writer of YA fiction, really let him have it and so did many of the commenters on her post. I'm so glad they did. Itzkoff's disrespect made me think sadly of Margaret Wise Brown, E. Nesbit, and Frances Hodgson Burnett. I recently read biographies of these three women, all of whom wrote amazing books for children that turned out to be classics. I was startled to learn that all of them went to their graves wishing they'd been as successful as writers of works for adults. And in every case it seemed that longing had mostly to do with other people's perceptions of writing for children as easy and unimportant work. Nothing I've read since has made as profound an impact on me as those books I read and enjoyed as a child and I'm sure I'm not the only reader who feels that way. What would be more satisfying to a writer than to know that? Come to think of it, Itzkoff's brand of disdain and dismissal is very familiar -- it's part of the unfortunate and prevailing attitude to anyone whose work has to do with children, actually, whether they're writers, teachers, daycare workers, or parents. It's not serious, it's not difficult, and it's not important. When in fact, nothing could be further from the truth.
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  Nice.

  http://bookshelvesofdoom.blogs.com/bookshelves_of_doom/2008/...
  205 days ago in Leila · Authority: 175

  Neil Gaiman on the recent NYTimes YA SF kerfuffle: It's an odd review -- I think that rule number one for book reviewers should probably be Don't Spend The First Paragraph Slagging Off The Genre. Just don't. Don't start a review of romance books by saying that all romance books are rubbish but these are good (or just as bad as the rest). Don't start a review of SF by saying that you hate all off-planet tales or things set in the future and you don't like way SF writers do characters. Don't start a review of a University Adultery novel by explaining that mostly books about English professors having panicky academic sex bore you to tears but. Just don't. Any more than a restaurant reviewer would spend a paragraph explaining that she didn't normally like or eat -- or understand why other people would like or eat -- Chinese food, or French, or barbeque. It just makes people think you're not a very good reviewer. If you missed it (how did that happen?), there's a round up of links here.
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  Gaiman Writes The Graveyard Book

  http://medinger.wordpress.com/2008/02/06/gaiman-writes-the-g...
  205 days ago in educating alice · Authority: 57

  Neil Gaiman has been posting remarkably honest updates on his blog as he writes this book. Since these are often buried in posts covering all sorts of other interesting things I’ve put some of them here to entice you to read his blog regularly if you are not already doing so. January 8th: I’m more or less happily writing Chapter Six of The Graveyard Book. I say more or less as I’m at that place where I hope that the book knows what it’s doing because right now I don’t have a clue — I’m writing one scene after another like a man walking through a valley in thick fog, just able to see the path a little way ahead, but with no idea where it’s actually going to lead him. January 21st: The Graveyard Book is back on track, I think, and the thorny and evil thicket that was Chapter Six has been traversed and, I am told, does not sound like I was making it up as I went along, but sounds as if I knew what it was about the whole time. This makes me happy, because it was miserable writing it. January 28th: I’m still in Chapter Seven. Yesterday was very talky. Today stuff may happen. January 31st: There’s an odd point in writing, when you reach a bit that you’ve known was going to happen for years. Years and years. And then it doesn’t happen like you thought it would… It’s as if there’s a ghost-story behind the text and nobody knows it’s there but me. February 3rd: Yesterday I reached the moment I’d been dreading for years, where you learn why the things that happened in the first chapter happened (which I hadn’t known when I wrote them. I knew that they had happened, but not why) and as I started to write it, I realised that it was pretty obvious, so I wrote it, and learned a lot. February 5th: … But I know that it’s [Chapter Seven] almost done since I’ve started worrying about the eighth and final chapter, and you don’t do that until the one you’re on is nearly done.
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  The Art of Reviewing #5

  http://www.middlemiss.org/weblog/archives/matilda/2008/02/th...
  206 days ago in Matilda · Authority: 33

  Neil Gaiman starts off talking about the upcoming Audie awards, and then makes some telling points as he discusses his "...collaboration with Michael Reaves, Interworld, which was reviewed, along with China's Un Lun Dun in the New York Times this week. It's an odd review -- I think that rule number one for book reviewers should probably be Don't Spend The First Paragraph Slagging Off The Genre. Just don't. Don't start a review of romance books by saying that all romance books are rubbish but these are good (or just as bad as the rest). Don't start a review of SF by saying that you hate all off-planet tales or things set in the future and you don't like way SF writers do characters. Don't start a review of a University Adultery novel by explaining that mostly books about English professors having panicky academic sex bore you to tears but. Just don't. Any more than a restaurant reviewer would spend a paragraph explaining that she didn't normally like or eat -- or understand why other people would like or eat -- Chinese food, or French, or barbeque. It just makes people think you're not a very good reviewer."
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  Itzkoff Doomed?

  http://www.cheryl-morgan.com/?p=576
  206 days ago in Cheryl’s Mewsings · Authority: 84

  Itzkoff Doomed? February 5th, 2008 by Cheryl Andrew Wheeler has been waging a long and lonely campaign against David Itzkoff for many months now. Whether this is the reason that Itzkoff’s column has become so infrequent or not is unclear. However, when Neil Gaiman weighs in I think we can safely say that Mr. Itzkoff’s days are numbered. The offices of the NYT will presumably now be besieged by teenage goth girls demanding Itzkoff’s head. Or at least to be allowed to give him a make-over. I would, however, like to focus on the last paragraph of that post. Neil is quite right to say that it is stupid of a reviewer to begin a piece by saying that all books of the type he’s reviewing are rubbish except the work in question. However, I think it is perfectly OK to say that you, personally, don’t normally like works of a particular type, but this one was different. No reviewer can be expected to like every type of book, and you don’t always get to review books you like. Besides, if you suddenly find what appears to you to be a real treasure in a genre that doesn’t work for you, you may want to enthuse about it. More to the point, other people who have similar tastes to you may find they like that book too, and they won’t know to try it unless you tell them. And if you review regularly your readers will know your tastes, so they’ll expect an explanation for why you are suddenly enthusiastic about something they expected you to hate. Neil knows this - that’s why he put in that caveat - but it is a fine distinction and one likely to be lost on people who don’t know much about writing reviews (a group which appears to include Mr. Itzkoff). I’d hate to see reviewers become reluctant to encourage readers to try something new because the great blog-reading public thinks Neil said that you must never admit that certain types of book don’t appeal to you. Listening to: Morph the Cat - Donald Fagen Posted in Reviewing

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