Kurt Vonnegut Creates a Report Card for His Novels, Ranking Them From A+ to D

in Books, Literature, Television | September 4th, 2015

I love turn­ing teenagers on to the work of author Kurt Von­negut.

I want their minds to be blown the way mine was at 15, when I picked up Slap­stick, his 8th nov­el, for rea­sons I no longer remem­ber. It wasn’t on rec­om­men­da­tion of some beloved teacher, nor was there any Von­negut on our home shelves, despite the fact that he was a local author. What­ev­er drew me to that book, thank god it did. It was the begin­ning of a life­long romance.

What grabbed me so? His genius idea for bestow­ing an arti­fi­cial extend­ed fam­i­ly on every cit­i­zen, via the assign­ment of mid­dle names:

 I told him, ‘your new mid­dle name would con­sist of a noun, the name of a flower or fruit or nut or veg­etable or legume, or a bird or a rep­tile or a fish, or a mol­lusk, or a gem or a min­er­al or a chem­i­cal ele­ment — con­nect­ed by a hyphen to a num­ber between one and twen­ty.’ I asked him what his name was at the present time.

  ‘Elmer Glenville Gras­so,’ he said.

  ‘Well,’ I said, ‘you might become Elmer Uranium‑3 Gras­so, say. Every­body with Ura­ni­um as a part of their mid­dle name would be your cousin.’

This held enor­mous appeal for me as the only child of an only child. Lone­some No More!

It also con­tained the most won­der­ful pro­fan­i­ty I had ever heard:

You ask him his mid­dle name, and when he tells you “Oys­ter-19” or “Chickadee‑1” or “Hol­ly­hock-13” you say to him: Buster — I hap­pen to be a Uranium‑3. You have one hun­dred and nine­ty thou­sand cousins and ten thou­sand broth­ers and sis­ters. You’re not exact­ly alone in this world. I have rel­a­tives of my own to look after. So why don’t you take a fly­ing fuck at a rolling dough­nut? Why don’t you take a fly­ing fuck at the moooooooooooon?

Imag­ine my dis­may when just two books lat­er, Von­negut gave Slap­stick the low­est pos­si­ble mark in a lit­er­ary self eval­u­a­tion pub­lished in Palm Sun­day, below.

Vonnegut grades

He wasn’t describ­ing the dif­fer­ence between a B and a B+. In Vonnegut’s mind, Slap­stick was a D. In oth­er words, a min­i­mal­ly accept­able, deeply below aver­age per­for­mance.

(Slaugh­ter­house Five, which also con­tains the rolling dough­nut line, received an A+. Break­fast of Cham­pi­ons, my oth­er favorite, earned a C.)

He lat­er reflect­ed to jour­nal­ist Char­lie Rose that he’d been over­ly hard on the title. But the crit­ics had trashed it when it first appeared, and pre­sum­ably crit­ics knew best. So much for Von­negut the rebel and class clown. This was a clear case of give the teacher the answer you think she wants.

I give it an A+, and so would you, if you’d dis­cov­ered it when I did.

How about you? Any marks you’d change on Vonnegut’s report card?

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Kurt Vonnegut’s 8 Tips on How to Write a Good Short Sto­ry

Kurt Von­negut Maps Out the Uni­ver­sal Shapes of Our Favorite Sto­ries

Hear Kurt Von­negut Read Slaugh­ter­house-Five, Cat’s Cra­dle & Oth­er Nov­els

Ayun Rasp­ber­ry-19 Hal­l­i­day cel­e­brates the new edi­tion of her book, No Touch Mon­key and Oth­er Trav­el Lessons Learned Too Late. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday

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William Faulkner Rocked Fourth Grade (1907–1908)

in Life, Literature | September 4th, 2015

faulkner report card

William Faulkn­er attend­ed the Uni­ver­si­ty of Mis­sis­sip­pi and last­ed only three semes­ters. He skipped class­es, man­aged to pull a D in Eng­lish, and then dropped out in 1920.

A far cry from his aca­d­e­m­ic per­for­mance in 1907–1908 when, as a fourth grad­er, he got most­ly E’s (pre­sum­ably mean­ing “Excel­lent”), a year­ly aver­age of 96, and a high grade of 98 in Gram­mar.

Faulkn­er’s 4th grade report comes to you cour­tesy of The Har­ry Ran­som Cen­ter’s Insta­gram account. Give it a fol­low.

via Bib­liok­lept

Relat­ed Con­tent: 

William Faulkn­er Resigns From His Post Office Job With a Spec­tac­u­lar Let­ter (1924)

William Faulkn­er Out­lines on His Office Wall the Plot of His Pulitzer Prize Win­ning Nov­el, A Fable (1954)

Guide­lines for Han­dling William Faulkner’s Drink­ing Dur­ing For­eign Trips From the US State Depart­ment (1955)

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Haruki Murakami Publishes His Answers to 3,700 Questions from Fans in a New Japanese eBook

in Life, Literature | September 1st, 2015

agony uncle

A quick fol­low up: Back in Jan­u­ary, Col­in Mar­shall took you inside Haru­ki Murakami’s unex­pect­ed stint as an agony uncle, writ­ing an online advice col­umn called Mr. Murakami’s Place. Accord­ing to his pub­lish­er, read­ers sent the Japan­ese nov­el­ist 37,465 ques­tions (see a few in trans­la­tion here), and he penned respons­es to 3,716 of them — answer­ing ques­tions like: “30 is right around the cor­ner for me, but there isn’t a sin­gle thing that I feel like I’ve accom­plished.… What should I do with myself?” Or, “My wife quite fre­quent­ly belch­es right near the back of my head when she pass­es behind me… Is there some­thing I can do to stop my wife’s belch­ing?”

Luck­i­ly, at least for Japan­ese read­ers, Muraka­mi has now pub­lished his respons­es (all of them) as an ebook in Japan. And it’s been climb­ing Japan’s Kin­dle best­seller list. Cur­rent­ly, there are no plans to release Mr. Murakami’s Place — The Com­plete Edi­tion – in Eng­lish. The task of trans­lat­ing what amounts to an 8‑volume set of books would be for­mi­da­ble. And yet some­how — like most things Muraka­mi has writ­ten — I sus­pect the col­lec­tion will even­tu­al­ly see the light of day in Eng­lish-speak­ing mar­kets.

Thanks to @justinmegahan and @hyloupa for help­ing us track down this book.

via The Guardian

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Haru­ki Murakami’s Advice Col­umn (“Mr. Murakami’s Place”) Is Now Online: Read Eng­lish Trans­la­tions

Haru­ki Muraka­mi Lists the Three Essen­tial Qual­i­ties For All Seri­ous Nov­el­ists (And Run­ners)

A Pho­to­graph­ic Tour of Haru­ki Murakami’s Tokyo, Where Dream, Mem­o­ry, and Real­i­ty Meet

Haru­ki Murakami’s Pas­sion for Jazz: Dis­cov­er the Novelist’s Jazz Playlist, Jazz Essay & Jazz Bar

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Oscar Wilde’s Play Salome Illustrated by Aubrey Beardsley in a Striking Modern Aesthetic (1894)

in Art, Literature | September 1st, 2015

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In William Faulkner’s 1936 Absa­lom, Absa­lom!, one of the novel’s most eru­dite char­ac­ters paints a pic­ture of a Goth­ic scene by com­par­ing it to an Aubrey Beard­s­ley draw­ing. Ref­er­ences to Beard­s­ley also appear in oth­er Faulkn­er nov­els, and the Eng­lish artist of the late nine­teenth cen­tu­ry also influ­enced the Amer­i­can nov­el­ist’s visu­al art. Like Faulkn­er, Beard­s­ley was irre­sistibly drawn to “the grotesque and the erot­ic,” as The Paris Review writes, and his work was high­ly favored among French and British poets of his day. The mod­ernist’s appre­ci­a­tion of Beard­s­ley was about more than Faulkner’s own youth­ful romance with French Sym­bol­ist art and mor­bid roman­tic verse, how­ev­er. Beard­s­ley cre­at­ed a mod­ern Goth­ic aes­thet­ic that came to rep­re­sent both Art Nou­veau and deca­dent, trans­gres­sive lit­er­a­ture for decades to come, pre­sent­ing a seduc­tive visu­al chal­lenge to the repres­sion of Vic­to­ri­an respectabil­i­ty.

beardsley-aubrey-aubrey-B20139-87

Beard­s­ley was a young aes­thete with a lit­er­ary imag­i­na­tion. In his short career—he died at the age of 25—he illus­trat­ed many of the works of Edgar Allan Poe, fore­fa­ther of the Amer­i­can Goth­ic.

Beard­s­ley also famous­ly illus­trat­ed Oscar Wilde’s scan­dalous dra­ma, Salome in 1893, to the sur­prise of its author, who lat­er inscribed an illus­trat­ed copy with the words, “For the only artist who, besides myself, knows what the Dance of the Sev­en Veils is, and can see that invis­i­ble dance.” Beard­s­ley’s draw­ings first appeared in an art mag­a­zine called The Stu­dio, then the fol­low­ing year in an Eng­lish pub­li­ca­tion of the text.

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Beard­s­ley and Wilde’s joint cre­ation embraced the macabre and flaunt­ed Vic­to­ri­an sex­u­al norms. After an abrupt can­cel­la­tion of Salome’s planned open­ing in Eng­land, the illus­trat­ed edi­tion intro­duced British read­ers to the play’s unset­tling themes. The British Library quotes crit­ic Peter Raby, who argues, “Beard­s­ley gave the text its first true pub­lic and mod­ern per­for­mance, plac­ing it firm­ly with­in the 1890s – a dis­turb­ing frame­work for the dark ele­ments of cru­el­ty and eroti­cism, and of the delib­er­ate ambi­gu­i­ty and blur­ring of gen­der, which he released from Wilde’s play as though he were open­ing Pandora’s box.”

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Wilde’s play was osten­si­bly banned for its por­tray­al of Bib­li­cal char­ac­ters, pro­hib­it­ed on stage at the time. Fur­ther­more, it “struck a nerve,” writes Yele­na Pri­morac at Vic­to­ri­an Web, with its “por­tray­al of woman in extreme oppo­si­tion to the tra­di­tion­al notion of vir­tu­ous, pure, clean and asex­u­al wom­an­hood the Vic­to­ri­ans felt com­fort­able liv­ing with.” Wilde was at first con­cerned that the illus­tra­tions, with their sug­ges­tive­ly posed fig­ures and frankly sex­u­al and vio­lent images, would “reduce the text to the role of ‘illus­trat­ing Aubrey’s illus­tra­tions.’” (You can see some of the more sug­ges­tive images here.)

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Indeed, it is hard to think of Wilde’s text and Beardsley’s images as exist­ing inde­pen­dent­ly of each oth­er, so close­ly have they been iden­ti­fied for over a hun­dred years. And yet the draw­ings don’t always cor­re­spond to the nar­ra­tive. Instead they present a kind of par­al­lel text, itself dense­ly woven with visu­al and lit­er­ary allu­sions, many of them drawn from Sym­bol­ist preoccupations—with women’s hair, for exam­ple, as an allur­ing and threat­en­ing emblem of unre­strained female sex­u­al­i­ty. Pub­lished in full in 1894, in an Eng­lish trans­la­tion of Wilde’s orig­i­nal French text, the Beard­s­ley-illus­trat­ed Salome con­tained 16 plates, some of them tamed or cen­sored by the pub­lish­ers. Read the full text, with draw­ings, here, and see a gallery of Beardsley’s orig­i­nal uncen­sored illus­tra­tions at the British Library.

beardsley-aubrey-aubrey-B20139-97

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Art of William Faulkn­er: Draw­ings from 1916–1925

Stephen Fry Reads Oscar Wilde’s Children’s Sto­ry “The Hap­py Prince”

Gus­tave Doré’s Splen­did Illus­tra­tions of Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Raven” (1884)

Alber­to Martini’s Haunt­ing Illus­tra­tions of Dante’s Divine Com­e­dy (1901–1944)

Pablo Picasso’s Ten­der Illus­tra­tions For Aristo­phanes’ Lysis­tra­ta (1934)

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

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Tom Sawyer, Huck Finn & Twain Himself Meet Satan in the Zany 1985 Claymation The Adventures of Mark Twain

in Animation, K-12, Literature | August 31st, 2015

“But who prays for Satan?” Mark Twain asked in the auto­bi­og­ra­phy left behind as he exit­ed this mor­tal coil on the tail of Halley’s comet, whose 1835 appear­ance coin­cid­ed with his birth.

It’s a good ques­tion.

Had he instead asked who clay­mates Satan, the answer would have been clearcut.

1985 saw the release of The Adven­tures of Mark Twain, the world’s first all clay­ma­tion fea­ture film, in which Satan starred along­side Tom Sawyer, Huck­le­ber­ry Finn, Becky Thatch­er, and Twain him­self.

Direc­tor Will Vin­ton, father of the Cal­i­for­nia Raisins and Domi­no Pizza’s ill-fat­ed mas­cot, The Noid, drew on some of Twain’s best known work, cob­bling togeth­er a sto­ry in which the fic­tion­al kids stow­away aboard an air­ship Twain plans to pilot into the comet.

The Satan sec­tion above comes cour­tesy of the author’s final, unfin­ished nov­el, The Mys­te­ri­ous Stranger. The ani­ma­tion is top notch, but hoo boy, it’s hard to imag­ine a vision this apoc­a­lyp­tic get­ting a G‑rating today.

Vin­ton him­self resist­ed the rat­ing, not want­i­ng to be lumped in with more reg­u­lar kid­die fare. It per­formed dis­ap­point­ing­ly at the box office despite great crit­i­cal response from such lofty realms as The New Repub­lic.

Is it real­ly so sur­pris­ing that fam­i­lies flock­ing to the Care Bears Movie steered clear of one fea­tur­ing a shape-shift­ing, free-float­ing mask, who ter­ror­izes the chil­dren in the film (and pre­sum­ably, the audi­ence) by con­jur­ing an enchant­i­ng lit­tle clay king­dom only to rain mis­for­tune upon it. We’re talk­ing smashed coffins, grief-strick­en clay moth­ers wail­ing over the bod­ies of their young, help­less vic­tims being swal­lowed up by cracks that appear in the earth.

Where’s the Hap­py Meal tie-in there!?

It’s reas­sur­ing to know that the exis­ten­tial hor­ror was indeed delib­er­ate. As Vin­ton told James Gartler in an inter­view with Ani­ma­tion World Net­work:

“… it was just such a bizarre char­ac­ter, to start with.  In fact, I haven’t seen a char­ac­ter quite like that in almost any­thing else – some­one who has this pow­er but no feel­ing one way or anoth­er and just sort-of tells it like it is regard­ing the future of human­i­ty.  We want­ed it to be about meta­mor­pho­sis, visu­al­ly, and make that a big part of sequence.  He trans­forms and grows up and down from the earth and appears out of noth­ing­ness. The design of the char­ac­ter came from an ear­ly draw­ing that Bar­ry Bruce did, where a jester was hold­ing his face on a stick.  I thought it was a real­ly inter­est­ing way to play it.  I end­ed up doing the voice of the Stranger with a female per­former.  We want­ed it to be almost androg­y­nous, so she and I did it togeth­er and made a point of not try­ing to hide it, even.”

I’m not sure the per­son or per­sons respon­si­ble for the the­atri­cal trail­er, below, got the memo…

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Nor­man Rock­well Illus­trates Mark Twain’s Tom Sawyer & Huck­le­ber­ry Finn (1936–1940)

Mark Twain Pre­dicts the Inter­net in 1898: Read His Sci-Fi Crime Sto­ry, “From The ‘Lon­don Times’ in 1904”

Play Mark Twain’s “Mem­o­ry-Builder,” His Game for Remem­ber­ing His­tor­i­cal Facts & Dates

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday

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Hear Kurt Vonnegut Read Slaughterhouse-Five, Cat’s Cradle & Other Novels

in Audio Books, Literature | August 26th, 2015

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Many of us grade the books we read, but Kurt Von­negut grad­ed the books he wrote. Let­ters of Note once tweet­ed out a list of the thir­teen grades he applied to thir­teen of his nov­els, pref­aced with his dis­claimer that “the grades I hand out to myself do not place me in lit­er­ary his­to­ry. I am com­par­ing myself with myself.” With that out of the way, he gives 1969’s Slaugh­ter­house-Five, his sixth nov­el and best-known work, an A‑plus, and puts his fourth nov­el, Cat’s Cra­dle from 1963, in the very same league.

But you don’t have to take Vonnegut’s word for it. You can, of course, read these books your­self — or you can hear them read aloud, at least in abridged ver­sions, for free on Spo­ti­fy. What’s more, you can hear Von­negut, clear­ly not a man to dis­tance him­self from his fin­ished work, read them aloud in his own voice. The record­ings come from the label Caed­mon, pio­neers of the vinyl-album pro­to-audio­book begin­ning in the 1950s with a record of Dylan Thomas read­ing his poet­ry. Their Von­negut-read­ing-Von­negut releas­es came out through the 1970s.

You might as well begin by lis­ten­ing to the read­ings of Cat’s Cra­dle and Slaugh­ter­house-Five, Vonnegut’s “A‑plus” books. They also put out audio ver­sions of Wel­come to the Mon­key House, which the author grad­ed a bit more harsh­ly with a B‑minus, and Break­fast of Cham­pi­ons, which, with a C, he ranked down among what he con­sid­ered his less­er works. But that dis­dain doesn’t affect his char­ac­ter­is­tic rich­ly weary deliv­ery of the text, and besides, some of his fans love Break­fast of Cham­pi­ons best of all. Bonus: Sto­ries from Wel­come to the Mon­key House is also an option.

If you don’t yet have the free soft­ware need­ed to play these or oth­er record­ings on Spo­ti­fy, down­load it here, start lis­ten­ing to these clas­si­cal­ly satir­i­cal, inven­tive, and cyn­i­cal mid­cen­tu­ry Amer­i­can nov­els, and pre­pare to hand out some grades of your own.

Look­ing for free, pro­fes­sion­al­ly-read audio books from Audible.com? For exam­ple, John Malkovich read­ing Break­fast of Cham­pi­ons? Or James Fran­co read­ing Slaugh­ter­house-Five? Here’s a great, no-strings-attached deal. If you start a 30 day free tri­al with Audible.com, you can down­load two free audio books of your choice. Get more details on the offer here.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Kurt Von­negut Maps Out the Uni­ver­sal Shapes of Our Favorite Sto­ries

Kurt Vonnegut’s 8 Tips on How to Write a Good Short Sto­ry

Kurt Von­negut Explains “How to Write With Style”

Kurt Von­negut Urges Young Peo­ple to Make Art and “Make Your Soul Grow”

Hear Hem­ing­way Read Hem­ing­way, and Faulkn­er Read Faulkn­er (90 Min­utes of Clas­sic Audio)

Lis­ten to 60+ Free, High-Qual­i­ty Audio­Books of Clas­sic Lit­er­a­ture on Spo­ti­fy: Austen, Dick­ens, Tol­stoy & More

Col­in Mar­shall writes on cities, lan­guage, Asia, and men’s style. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer, and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

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Hear Dramatizations of H.P. Lovecraft’s Stories On His Birthday: “The Call of Cthulhu,” “The Dunwich Horror,” & More

in Audio Books, Literature | August 20th, 2015

Hor­ror writer Howard Phillips Love­craft was a man who lived his life in fear—of peo­ple of oth­er races and nation­al­i­ties, of women, of real­i­ty itself. In a recent New York Review of Books write-up, Charles Bax­ter some­what deri­sive­ly char­ac­ter­izes Love­craft as a dis­en­chant­ed ado­les­cent (and favorite of dis­en­chant­ed ado­les­cents), who “nev­er real­ly grew up. ‘Adult­hood is hell,’ he once wrote in a let­ter.” Yet his fic­tion depicts more than a tor­ment­ed adult world, but an entire uni­verse brim­ming with name­less ancient horrors—and occa­sion­al­ly named ones like the crea­ture Cthul­hu, whose like­ness he once sketched out in a let­ter to a friend.

The cephalo­pod-faced mon­ster crys­tal­izes Lovecraft’s dis­gust with real­i­ty in all its strange­ness and, for him, all its vari­ety. It’s a per­fect image of alien­ation (just this past week we saw tongue-in-cheek spec­u­la­tion over whether octo­pus­es are aliens; a plau­si­ble con­ceit) and presents us with an ele­men­tal uncan­ni­ness that char­ac­ter­izes his entire body of work. “Fic­tion like Lovecraft’s can be bru­tal­ly hyp­not­ic,” writes Bax­ter, “the young read­er, intel­lec­tu­al­ly unde­fend­ed and eas­i­ly shak­en enters the writer’s fear-drenched uni­verse and can’t eas­i­ly get out of it.”

The Call of Cthul­hu — Part 1

Whether you dis­cov­ered Love­craft as a young read­er or an old­er one, you may have found your­self sim­i­lar­ly entrapped by the hor­rors of his imag­i­na­tion. And you could count your­self in the com­pa­ny of not only her­met­ic, mis­an­throp­ic, death-obsessed young men in punk bands but also of media friend­ly, death-obsessed writ­ers like Stephen King and Joyce Car­ol Oates. And, of course, thou­sands upon thou­sands of hor­ror fans across the world, includ­ing a great many actors, writ­ers, and direc­tors who over the years have adapt­ed Lovecraft’s fic­tion as old-fash­ioned radio dra­ma of the kind the author him­self might have con­sumed while iso­lat­ed from the wicked world in his New Eng­land home.

You can hear some choice exam­ples here: at the top of the post we have Richard Coyle’s read­ing of the novel­la At the Moun­tains of Mad­ness. (You can also hear his read­ing of “The Shad­ow Over Inns­mouth” here.)  Next, we have a 1945 drama­ti­za­tion of “The Dun­wich Hor­ror,” per­formed by Acad­e­my Award-win­ning actor Ronald Col­man. And then hear the infa­mous “Call of Cthul­hu,” parts one and two, pro­duced by the Atlanta Radio The­atre Com­pa­ny, who have record­ed no small num­ber of Love­craft radio plays. Just above, lis­ten to a read­ing of “Behind the Wall of Sleep” from old-time radio sci-fi read­ings archive Mind Webs (which we’ve cov­ered in a pre­vi­ous post). Final­ly, below, lis­ten on Spo­ti­fy to the HP Love­craft Radio Hour Vol 1, a col­lec­tion of dra­ma­tized Love­craft sto­ries. 

Should you hap­pen to tear through these record­ings and find your­self in des­per­ate need of more to feed your Love­craft obses­sion, fear not; you would have a very hard time exhaust­ing all the options. The World’s Largest H.P. Love­craft Audio Links Gate­way, for exam­ple, deliv­ers exact­ly what it promis­es. Should that expan­sive data­base some­how leave out a read­ing or drama­ti­za­tion, you’ll per­haps find it over at the H.P. Love­craft Archive’s size­able col­lec­tion. And you must, if you’re a Love­craft fan, vis­it the H.P. Love­craft His­tor­i­cal Soci­ety, who host plen­ty of Love­craft merch, and links to much more Love­craft audio, includ­ing albums inspired by his work and a pod­cast.

And on the off chance you knew lit­tle or not at all of Love­craft before read­ing this post, beware. You may, after lis­ten­ing to some of his weird tales of hor­ror, come away a devot­ed Love­craft cultist.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

H.P. Lovecraft’s Clas­sic Hor­ror Sto­ries Free Online: Down­load Audio Books, eBooks & More

H.P. Lovecraft’s Mon­ster Draw­ings: Cthul­hu & Oth­er Crea­tures from the “Bound­less and Hideous Unknown”

Love­craft: Fear of the Unknown (Free Doc­u­men­tary)

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

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18 Stories & Novels by Neil Gaiman Online: Free Texts & Readings by Neil Himself

in Audio Books, e-books, Literature | August 19th, 2015

Neil Gaiman might just be the most beloved fan­ta­sy author out there. He writes weird, twist­ed, exhil­a­rat­ing tales about hid­den real­i­ties and the bizarre, fan­ci­ful crea­tures that live in them. His works, like Sand­man, Frag­ile Things and Amer­i­can Gods, are pure escapism and a blast to read. No doubt, that’s the major rea­son why the author has devel­oped such a rabid fan base.

But per­haps anoth­er rea­son is that he is sim­ply more avail­able than most writ­ers. Sure, oth­er authors, like J. K. Rowl­ing for instance, might have inspired an entire gen­er­a­tion with her Har­ry Pot­ter series but she prefers to keep a cer­tain remove from her read­er­ship. Though she has a Twit­ter account, she uses it spar­ing­ly.

Gaiman, on the oth­er hand, is seem­ing­ly always on Twit­ter — he has, as of this writ­ing, tweet­ed at least nine times in the past 24 hours, inter­act­ing with fans, pub­lish­ers and the press. This is the guy who once report­ed­ly signed 75,000 copies of his book The Ocean at the End of the Lane, after all.

He has also post­ed a lot of his work for free up on the inter­net. Below is a list of Gaiman’s work that you can read, see or hear online. Many are read by Neil him­self. If you know of any miss­ing texts, please let us know and we’ll get them added to our list ASAP.

Above you can find videos of Gaiman read­ing the first chap­ter of his book Cora­line, and also the sto­ry “The Man Who For­got Ray Brad­bury.”

Audio & Video
Text

Relat­ed Con­tent:

1,000 Free Audio Books: Down­load Great Books for Free

Neil Gaiman Reads “The Man Who For­got Ray Brad­bury”

Where Do Great Ideas Come From? Neil Gaiman Explains

Aman­da Palmer Ani­mates & Nar­rates Hus­band Neil Gaiman’s Uncon­scious Mus­ings

Jonathan Crow is a Los Ange­les-based writer and film­mak­er whose work has appeared in Yahoo!, The Hol­ly­wood Reporter, and oth­er pub­li­ca­tions. You can fol­low him at @jonccrow. And check out his blog Veep­to­pus, fea­tur­ing lots of pic­tures of vice pres­i­dents with octo­pus­es on their heads.  The Veep­to­pus store is here.

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