A blessay[*] by Grand Hotel Abyss places Neil Gaiman’s Sandman series of graphic novels into the context of the 1990s. It identifies tensions between postmodern and classical worldviews, as embodied by various Sandman characters, and explores how the stories and themes related to real-world events and political arguments. On the strength of this analysis I was tempted to buy a few Sandman volumes for holiday reading, but the cover price at Borders was something of a deterrent (around A$50 each). Shall try the second-hand bookshops first.
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[*] blessay = a portmanteau word coined by Stephen Fry in 2007, meaning a combination of blog post and essay. Fry[**] also experimented with blissertation but it didn’t seem to catch on.
[**] Mention of Stephen Fry reminds me of the deliciously witty linguistic games he and Hugh Laurie used to play in A Bit Of Fry And Laurie, their 1980s sketch comedy TV show. And that leads me to recommend a juicy bit of writing in the Uncyclopedia, a quoted passage that illustrates the concept of ‘romance novel’:
“Amélie tried to avert her eyes, as Martin shed all of his declensions. But she could not help it but to stare as this splendid vulgar Latin shed his cases. The nominative, accusative, and ablative cases were tossed upon the floor with an insouciance. With egality, fraternity, and liberty, Martin discarded the last of his genetive and dative cases…
- “Martin brought his arms together. Amélie nestled within his verb-frame… Martin’s dangling vowels dropped as Amélie pluralized…
- “Beneath the golden glow of sunlight streaming, the two formed a dialect continuum. The passion was mutually intelligible and full of euphony.”
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