The Muse of Exterminator Novels
From another interview with Gaiman, The Gods of the Funny Books
An Interview with Neil Gaiman and Rachel Pollack. I came across this:
POLLACK: An amazing thing about Blake is that while he’d tell people that his work was dictated to him by angels, he was a conscious artist working an reworking his material. People who don’t understand how that’s possible don’t understand what art is about. I was reading an interview once in one of those Soldier of Fortune magazines with one of these guys that writes those series books, like Exterminator 28. The guy was saying that he didn’t feel like it’s him writing, but that something writes thought him. And I thought, bloody hell, it’s a universal experience. Here’s this hack churning our incredibly trite work, who has that same experience of a spirit writing his story for him. It has nothing to do with it being high art or low art or popular art or esoteric art.
GAIMAN: People forget there are muses for the Exterminator novels. She’s working just as hard as the muses for poetry or comic books.
POLLACK: That’d be a great idea for a story.
My comment: I notice that it is Polloack who expresses surprise that the hacks and potboilersmiths among us are visited by the muses, and Gaiman, who is much more democratic in spirit, points out that the gods visit the meek and foolish and low as well as the high and great and wise. If the goddess of love afflicts men as wise as Merlin and Solomon as well as fools like me, or the terrible war god slays the humblest private as well as kings, which should the muses love only elites? Homer’s muse on silent wings visited some rustic fiddler composing a Clerihew after she saw Homer nodding, no doubt.
About John C Wright
John C. Wright is a practicing philosopher, a retired attorney, newspaperman, and newspaper editor, and a published author of science fiction. Once a Houyhnhnm, he was expelled from the august ranks of purely rational beings when he fell in love; but retains an honorary title.
