http://www.blogcritics.org/archives/2003/03/22/234355.php
Thousands have probably sent you this but if they didn't here it is.
Hmm... I suppose I should throw a question in to make it faqworthy...
so... how do other people's interpretations of your work hit you?
I know that when people interpret stuff I do it fascinates me to sense how other people perceive my creation... but then all that is still fairly novel to me... we'll see how I feel about that when I'm out of my first decade of proactive creativity.
-Kari
I suppose I tend to put things into two categories, reviews and critical works, and I'm interested in reviews when it comes to finding out how something is being generally received, but as soon as I have an idea of what they're saying, I lose interest. Good pieces of criticism, the kind that make you want to go back and read something you thought you knew again, I love, whether they're pro or con -- but they are far and few.
When I was a younger, and I was getting my first reviews, a good one would make my day, a bad one would blight it. And then I started to realise that reviewers said such different (and directly opposite) things, I could safely ignore them all. As I said in this journal when the first two American Gods reviews came in, one saying it was a wonderful road novel let down by the bits in the little Wisconsin town, and one saying that the bits in the Wisconsin town were perfect and the novel only lost its focus when it hit the road, if you listened to them, you'd go mad.
Hello Neil,
I've been trying to open the March archive of your blog, but haven't been having any luck. Would you be so kind as to repost the link to the "books for troops" site from several days ago? I'm going to propose that my writing group put together a care package of morsels from Dreamhaven and Uncle Hugo's. Thanks.
Paul of the Science Museum
The March Archives seem to have hit the Blogger Archive Bug, and aren't accessible by clicking from the archive page right now.
But they still exist -- you can get to them through:
http://www.neilgaiman.com/journal_archives/2003_03_01_archive.asp
which will have the link for books for soldiers...
A note for Shalene about meeting Harlan Ellison - I went to a signing many years ago in Virginia, and even though it was fairly early in the morining, and my friends were a bit nervous about the meeting, when we finally made it through the line he was quite charming, and signed several things for my friends. It says something that I remember, after all this time, how nice he was to us.
Oh good.
Four more universities since the last posting (though I think one or two are duplicates).
and finally,
Hi Neil
Just read 'Closing Time' in McSweeney's and whilst you may not consider it one of your best,I quite enjoyed (In fact I read it twice to make sure I understood it!)
One thing still confuses me though - when the writer first meets the three boys he goes on to say that the three of them fished out the pieces of the magazine from the ditch. Am I missing something or should that have been four - the writer plus the three boys?
If I've missed the point please tell me and I'll try again!
Best wishes
John Potten
Glad you liked it. And no, that wasn't a strange, deep, meaningful Wolfean clue, that was a typo that wasn't picked up, but which I hope will be corrected by the time the story is collected.