If you liked Watchmedance, you’ll urinate for Prangstgrüp.
Day: October 29, 2004
The inspiration was pretzel nuggets
I just had a great idea: if I ever direct a play again, which I won’t, because I’m a bad director, I wouldn’t have my actors warm up by doing exaggerated facial stretches and silly consonant sequences. (If you have a theatrical background you know what I’m talking about; if you don’t, rest assured that this is typically the case.) Instead, I would have them run through lines they hadn’t quite memorized anyway with grapes in their mouths. Or marshmallows, but grapes would be better for their vocal cords. See, it would force them to do all that stretching anyway to get around the grapes, and they’d be working on lines, and it’d be delicious! All at the same time!
Maybe this is one of those ideas that turn out not to be so great later.
Things Neils and Neals Say
Neil Gaiman: “And I’ll write another Neverwhere novel in two or three books’ time, I expect.”
Well, !
I was… can I say not impressed? I’m not trying to bash anything here. I’ll say that when I read it, I didn’t find the prose and plot of Neverwhere to be extraordinary. It was a good novel, but it was a first novel.
That said, the imagery of the book had an enormous impact on me–I am still in the process of writing that out of my system. I think Gaiman’s prose improved immensely in American Gods, and I’m eager to see its application to the Neverwhere universe again.
Neal Stephenson: “Accountability in the writing profession has been bifurcated for many centuries. I already mentioned that Dante and other writers were supported by patrons at least as far back as the Renaissance. But I doubt that Beowulf was written on commission.”
Stephenson’s answer to the second question in that series is the only clear and reasonable delineation I’ve read of why lit fiction and genre fiction are so distinct, and why they tend to sneer at each other. Even more to his credit, he never uses the word “jealousy” with regard to either side.
Plus, in the third one, he and William Gibson totally fight.
P. S. I just want to point out that this is the first time I’ve ever linked something on Slashdot, because I don’t read Slashdot. It could well be the only time I ever link Slashdot.
I have this vision of what I want to do with my life, but it’s still pretty blurry. So even though I’m impressed and fascinated, I’m also jealous that Brian Provinciano has something like the same vision, just much, much clearer.