Neil Gaiman Has a Blog Like This One

It just so happens that Neil Gaiman has his own Blogspot! It is the second tab opened on my computer, right next to this one, and it makes me feel special that the same logo that his tab bears is the same logo under which we have been posting all this semester.

That being said, I think there is something different about reading Stardust than any of the other texts we've enjoyed thus far in the class. And that is due to the fact that the author lives and writes as we live and write. He blogs on the same Internet, and records similar thoughts about his relationship with Lewis and Tolkien over the years, as we have done here.

There are a great many things that connect us to Gaiman; much more than any other author we've studied. One of these ways is that we can follow his thought-processes through his work - most predominantly pertaining to what/who inspired him. It is known that Gaiman purposely tried to resist the form of fantasy writing that Lewis and Tolkien embraced, yet his own words on his journal read:

"C.S. Lewis was the first person to make me want to be a writer."

and

"I came to the conclusion that Lord of the Rings was, most probably, the best book that ever could be written, which put me in something of a quandary. I wanted to be a writer when I grew up. (That’s not true: I wanted to be a writer then.) And I wanted to write The Lord of the Rings. The problem was that it had already been written."

(http://journal.neilgaiman.com/2012/01/speech-i-once-gave-on-lewis-tolkien-and.html) 

Reading through the thoughts recorded on his blog, it's easy to make a connection between his journey through fantasy lit growing up, and our own. The act of being introduced to these great texts, the voracity with which one reads them for the first time, and the acquisition of every volume until the set is complete are all relatable circumstances for this group.

When it came time for him to start writing, Gaiman had to confront his love for these authors. He had to decide what it looked like to still love these classic texts that had changed his life while forging his own path and voice at the same time. 

Also, he had to deal with re-reading them again at different intervals in life, what he realized about them as he got older, and how that effected his view on these stories and their authors.

These are the same struggle we go through as well. How do we develop our own characters and distinctive voice among the forest of great fantasy writers from whom we learned it all? How do we deal with the ideas and ideals that can be found in the texts we did not read into as children?

That is something this generation does very well: explore and cultivate curiosity. It reminds me of Tristan in Stardust. We come from a literary pedigree that seems, to much of society, like it comes from the other side of The Wall. One day, we will be able to satisfy our longing and curiosity to step over the boundary to fully explore our potential in the new land, and see what adventures we find there.