[ SECRET POST #2146 ]

[case]

⌈ Secret Post #2146 ⌋

Warning: Some secrets are NOT worksafe and may contain SPOILERS.

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Notes:

Secrets Left to Post: 05 pages, 120 secrets from Secret Submission Post #307.
Secrets Not Posted: [ 0 - broken links ], [ 0 - not!secrets ], [ 0 - not!fandom ], [ 0 - too big ], [ 0 - repeat ].
Current Secret Submissions Post: here.
Suggestions, comments, and concerns should go here.

Comments

[pts]

Somehow I knew somebody was going to call me out on this icon here.

I'll be completely honest -- a lot of what irritates me about Gaiman is external to him; I find the ceaseless fan and industry worship of the guy to be really very tiresome. And that's not his fault. But it still bugs me that, for example, there's a book about him and his writing called "Prince of Stories." I mean, jesus, really? He's not even dead yet and we're hailing him as the Prince of Stories? Ugh.

That said, Mieville has enjoyed nigh-universal acclaim ever since Perdido Street Station, and I could see why somebody could find that just as tiresome. And you're not the only person I've encountered who finds his writing self-congratulatory. The weird thing is I can both kind of see why you would perceive it that way, and yet find myself unclear on exactly what it is about a book that makes one feel like the author is impressed with their own cleverness. Is it stuff like word choice and vocabulary? Maybe. That doesn't seem quite fair. I don't know. And yet as you say, Gaiman often seems ineffably smug in just that same way.

Anyway, Mieville is certainly not for everybody and for my part I recommend his work only sparingly, so you won't find me screaming at you about HOW DARE YOU NOT APPRECIATE HIS GENIUS etc.

[(Anonymous)]

sa

For me, it's the fact that I feel viscerally when he thinks he's come up with the most unique and groundbreaking idea to ever be committed to the page and it's incredibly distracting.

One instance that sticks out is in Perdido when the insect character is painting with her spit. While it's an interesting idea, instead of actually exploring it in any meaningful way, he just goes on and on finding as many possible ways as he can to say "AND SHE'S PAINTING WITH HER SPIT, ISN'T THAT COOL?" instead of advancing the story or unearthing any actual implications behind the concept. I eventually had to put that book down out of exhaustion because he was too busy patting himself on the back about world-building for me to care about the characters or what happened to them.

I've read that he's a big fan of Mervyn Peake and I can definitely see the attempts to emulate him. The problem is that he doesn't seem to get that what makes Peake so amazing is the intense, sad, sadly hilarious humanity of the characters and the location, not all the ~cool weird stuff~ in the setting.

/sorry if your question was rhetorical, haha