That's something down
Jul. 17th, 2004 11:04 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
calimacMy long talk with ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
liveavatar about procrastination on Friday seems to have had its effect, for I have just now finally finished a draft of my paper on Neil Gaiman's Sandman. After putting it off for weeks, I wrote the last 80% of it in a buzz over the last two days. And about time, too, because I'll be reading it at Mythcon in two weeks from yesterday afternoon. It's 5,000 words long, which is really pushing it for a half-hour time slot, but that's typical of me. I'll figure out something. I'd rather edit than write, anyway.
I decided to write this paper when I came across the deep and profound misunderstanding and criticism of Sandman by Rachel Pollack in a quote I found here. I write so many critical remarks about fiction myself that I thought it'd be fun to defend something from its critics for a change. Chip Delany's introduction to the Sandman volume A Game of You, raising similar issues to Pollack's, is even goofier, and I'm trying to take it on too, especially as I consider A Game of You to be just about the best thing Gaiman's written yet.
Now, to finishing up my other paper, a survey of music inspired by Tolkien. I drafted this one over a year ago, cut it off from another paper on music that inspired Tolkien himself, which I gave at last year's Mythcon, and left it to marinate for a while. But I can't cover everything - there's hundreds of albums out there - so selectivity will be critical. I'm going to focus on classical music and folk settings, as that's what I know and like best. Right now I'm listening to a couple of semi-classical albums by a Russian group called Caprice (which I bought here), and trying to decide what I think of them. One reviewer said they blow The Tolkien Ensemble out of the water, but I don't think so. Too much of the same harp arpeggios, the same too closely-miked oboe, and the same Russian female voice singing in deeply-accented English. You don't beat The Tolkien Ensemble that easily. Some of it's interesting, though, especially on the second album.
liveavatar about procrastination on Friday seems to have had its effect, for I have just now finally finished a draft of my paper on Neil Gaiman's Sandman. After putting it off for weeks, I wrote the last 80% of it in a buzz over the last two days. And about time, too, because I'll be reading it at Mythcon in two weeks from yesterday afternoon. It's 5,000 words long, which is really pushing it for a half-hour time slot, but that's typical of me. I'll figure out something. I'd rather edit than write, anyway.I decided to write this paper when I came across the deep and profound misunderstanding and criticism of Sandman by Rachel Pollack in a quote I found here. I write so many critical remarks about fiction myself that I thought it'd be fun to defend something from its critics for a change. Chip Delany's introduction to the Sandman volume A Game of You, raising similar issues to Pollack's, is even goofier, and I'm trying to take it on too, especially as I consider A Game of You to be just about the best thing Gaiman's written yet.
Now, to finishing up my other paper, a survey of music inspired by Tolkien. I drafted this one over a year ago, cut it off from another paper on music that inspired Tolkien himself, which I gave at last year's Mythcon, and left it to marinate for a while. But I can't cover everything - there's hundreds of albums out there - so selectivity will be critical. I'm going to focus on classical music and folk settings, as that's what I know and like best. Right now I'm listening to a couple of semi-classical albums by a Russian group called Caprice (which I bought here), and trying to decide what I think of them. One reviewer said they blow The Tolkien Ensemble out of the water, but I don't think so. Too much of the same harp arpeggios, the same too closely-miked oboe, and the same Russian female voice singing in deeply-accented English. You don't beat The Tolkien Ensemble that easily. Some of it's interesting, though, especially on the second album.
