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I found an opinion piece on Caitlin Kiernan's treatment of The Sandman Series in DC Vertigo's The Dreaming that was far less than stellar. The reviewer, Roxane Grant, seemed to have taken affront a Kiernan's writing style and preferred genre, insisting that Kiernan was a completely inappropriate choice for the type of derivative endeavor that The Dreaming was purported to be. Having only read the first three issues of Neil Gaiman's The Sandman, and having never read The Dreaming, I can't comment on whether or not that statement is true. My affection for Kiernan's writing immediately rears it's head and scoffs at the possibility of such, but that's a personal bias and really has nothing to do with anything.
This is not a slam on the piece. There were flaws in the non-argument, but it's an opinion piece and not a critical review, so, again, that's irrelevant here. I did take issue with a few things as a Kiernan fan, but that's also really neither here nor there. What I do want to focus on are the reasons that Grant lists for how Kiernan "killed" The Dreaming and extrapolate that into a question that I have for all you writers on my FL.
Grant writes that "Vertigo made two fatal mistakes," the second of which concerns this post.
"The second mistake was in giving Kiernan such a massive responsibility, when she was obviously not as talented a storyteller as Gaiman. Caitlin R. Kiernan is a novelist with a limited scope, best known for imitating the dark fantasy writing styles of Poppy Z. Brite and Anne Rice. I say she is a restricted writer because she seems to have a goth fetish and seems incapable of writing in any other genre. This handicap is also reflected in her comics, and eventually came to dominate THE DREAMING. Prior to permanently taking over the book, Kiernan had written a short story the prose anthology of SANDMAN, and issues 17-19 of THE DREAMING."
The highlighted text is my where my interest lies. My initial response was that writers typically write in some sort of genre (and I mean genre in the most traditional sense of the word) and they usually stick to that genre, sometimes because of personal preference and sometimes because of audience resistance to change. When authors stray into other terrain we often see pen names employed to differentiate the new type of novel from the author's previous works (possibly to prevent alienating the original fan base more than anything else -- I'm only speculating, so I'd love to hear from those of you in the publishing industry). When we as readers reach for an author, I think, that we are reaching for a particular type of read. With Kiernan we're expecting dark, lush, nightmarish dreamscapes and hardscapes. We're expecting that gothic, punk rock type of aesthetic.
So as far as writing another genre goes, I'm wondering, how many writers,under one pen name, really do write across genres? Do YOU write in one genre or in many? Do you think that's a fair assessment of someone's writing to take issue with the genre that they write in? And I'm asking you guys this, dear FL, because I know that quite a few of you are wildly more well-read than I am.
My other issue with Grant's statement is that crack about the "goth fetish." Granted that this is an opinion piece and maybe Kiernan just really isn't her cup of tea, after all the leap from Gaiman to Kiernan is not a small one, but I find that you can usually recognize the "fetish" within a writer's body of work. And when I say fetish, I mean the theme or idea that permeates an author's canon, whatever they're obssessed with at the time. We all have demons or questions that we explore in our writing and I don't think that it's too far fetched to say that we explore those themes across our personal canon and not just within the confines of a single creative endeavor. That's not to say that the themes don't change over time. Ultimately, we may answer the question, resolve the puzzle, lay our demons to rest or just become interested in something completely different. Or maybe not.
My second question to you, then, is this: Is it fair to say that Kiernan has a goth fetish? Is it fair to say that all authors have a fetish of some sort? Do you? If yes, what is your fetish?
Okay, so I lied, that's a series of questions. But let me add a couple more; Do you think that you write in one genre and only one genre? Are you interested in writing other "types" or styles of things? Why? Why not?
Tell me something. Tell me anything.
This is not a slam on the piece. There were flaws in the non-argument, but it's an opinion piece and not a critical review, so, again, that's irrelevant here. I did take issue with a few things as a Kiernan fan, but that's also really neither here nor there. What I do want to focus on are the reasons that Grant lists for how Kiernan "killed" The Dreaming and extrapolate that into a question that I have for all you writers on my FL.
Grant writes that "Vertigo made two fatal mistakes," the second of which concerns this post.
"The second mistake was in giving Kiernan such a massive responsibility, when she was obviously not as talented a storyteller as Gaiman. Caitlin R. Kiernan is a novelist with a limited scope, best known for imitating the dark fantasy writing styles of Poppy Z. Brite and Anne Rice. I say she is a restricted writer because she seems to have a goth fetish and seems incapable of writing in any other genre. This handicap is also reflected in her comics, and eventually came to dominate THE DREAMING. Prior to permanently taking over the book, Kiernan had written a short story the prose anthology of SANDMAN, and issues 17-19 of THE DREAMING."
The highlighted text is my where my interest lies. My initial response was that writers typically write in some sort of genre (and I mean genre in the most traditional sense of the word) and they usually stick to that genre, sometimes because of personal preference and sometimes because of audience resistance to change. When authors stray into other terrain we often see pen names employed to differentiate the new type of novel from the author's previous works (possibly to prevent alienating the original fan base more than anything else -- I'm only speculating, so I'd love to hear from those of you in the publishing industry). When we as readers reach for an author, I think, that we are reaching for a particular type of read. With Kiernan we're expecting dark, lush, nightmarish dreamscapes and hardscapes. We're expecting that gothic, punk rock type of aesthetic.
So as far as writing another genre goes, I'm wondering, how many writers,under one pen name, really do write across genres? Do YOU write in one genre or in many? Do you think that's a fair assessment of someone's writing to take issue with the genre that they write in? And I'm asking you guys this, dear FL, because I know that quite a few of you are wildly more well-read than I am.
My other issue with Grant's statement is that crack about the "goth fetish." Granted that this is an opinion piece and maybe Kiernan just really isn't her cup of tea, after all the leap from Gaiman to Kiernan is not a small one, but I find that you can usually recognize the "fetish" within a writer's body of work. And when I say fetish, I mean the theme or idea that permeates an author's canon, whatever they're obssessed with at the time. We all have demons or questions that we explore in our writing and I don't think that it's too far fetched to say that we explore those themes across our personal canon and not just within the confines of a single creative endeavor. That's not to say that the themes don't change over time. Ultimately, we may answer the question, resolve the puzzle, lay our demons to rest or just become interested in something completely different. Or maybe not.
My second question to you, then, is this: Is it fair to say that Kiernan has a goth fetish? Is it fair to say that all authors have a fetish of some sort? Do you? If yes, what is your fetish?
Okay, so I lied, that's a series of questions. But let me add a couple more; Do you think that you write in one genre and only one genre? Are you interested in writing other "types" or styles of things? Why? Why not?
Tell me something. Tell me anything.
