The Neil Gaiman Reader: Critical Essays

The meaning of a writer's work is often amorphous, confusing, or conflicting - even to the writer themselves. Good works leave us wondering, discussing, and dissecting; great works leave questions to answer long after the story is published.
The questions are as often about the writer, or about ourselves, as they are about the story itself. In The Neil Gaiman Reader, writers explore the questions, the writer himself, and, ultimately, themselves.

"...I recently spent an interested couple of hours browsing through my complementary copy of The Neil Gaiman Reader, edited by Darrell Schweitzer. Essays on things I've written, by a dozen different very smart people. I think it's probably a very good book of essays, but I am undoubtedly the last person on earth who can usefully comment on it, being, as I am, the least competent critic alive of the author in question. There were a few moments when I felt like the author being described had done something monstrously clever , but they always immediately balanced by moments where I sighed and thought "You may think I'm being very clever there, but I only wrote it like that because that was how it happened, and I wasn't being clever at all..."
Neil Gaiman, Neil Gaiman Journal, Monday, February 05, 2007

Introduction by Darrell Schweitzer

Weird Tales Talks with Neil Gaiman by Darrell Schweitzer

~ Sandman Studies ~

Campbell and The Sandman: Reminding Us of the Sacred by Stephen
Rauch

Dreams and Fairy Tales: The Theme of Rationality in A Midsummer
Night's Dream and The Sandman by Julie Myers Saxton

The King Forsakes His Throne: Campbellian Hero Icons in Neil
Gaiman's Sandman by Peter S. Rawlik, Jr.

Blue and Pink: Gender in Neil Gaiman's Work by Mary Borsellino

An Interview with Neil Gaiman by Rob Elder

~ The Rest of Gaiman (A Very Large Subject Indeed) ~

Neil Gaiman in Words and Pictures by Ben P. Indick

Pay Attention: There May or May Not Be a Man Behind the Curtain,
An Analysis of Neil Gaiman and Dave McKean's Violent Cases by
JaNell Golden

An Autopsy of Storytelling: Metafiction and Neil Gaiman by Chris
Dowd

Tapdancing on the Shoulders of Giants: Neil Gaiman's Stardust and
Its Antecedents by Darrell Schweitzer

"The Old Switcheroo: A Study in Role Reversal" by Jason Erik
Lundberg

Backstage by William Alexander

No Need to Choose: A Magnificent Anarchy of Belief by Bethany
Alexander

The Thin Line Between by Marilyn Mattie Brahen

On the Death of King Sweeny: Irish Lore and Literature in
American Gods by William Alexander

Catharsis and the American God by Baba Singh

The Frame and the Flashback: Analyzing Neil
Gaiman's Story "Murder Mysteries" by Marilyn Mattie Brahen

Coraline: A Quest for Identity by Mike Ashley

Bibliography by Deborah Snyder

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The Neil Gaiman Reader

Darrell Schweitzer is an editor at Weird Tales magazine. His intimidatingly long bibliography of books & magazines he's either edited, written, or written for includes several books I read as a child, never knowing or even dreaming that I'd work with the writer someday.

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