Neil Gaiman’s Sandman, like Roland, to the Ivory Tower came
You know how, sometimes, you read something and you disagree with the writer utterly, without knowing exactly why it is that you do.
It’s almost like a phobia. Although ‘fear’ is not really the right word.
With me, for instance, it’s spiders. I’m not afraid of them, of course, because my conscious mind knows that they have much more reason to fear me than I have reasons to be afraid of them.
Still, when I see a spider, it’s not the conscious part of my brain that reacts: It’s that much older part, that never left those trees. So, my modern, suave, city dwelling, mirror-dressed soul gets clobbered by my inner monkey every damn Cobweb Orange day.
Anyway, so, sometimes, you read something (or hear some talking head pontificating about one thing or the other on your TV) and you almost have that same kind of revulsion, that same visceral loathing that people with arachnaphobia only know too well.
I had that again, some time ago, when I read the following article, in the OnlineTimes:
“Neuroscientists tell us that the visual part of our brain is millions of years older than the linguistic part, and this accounts for its superior power. Language, being a quite recent invention, is relatively undeveloped and inefficient. However hard you try to describe a face in words, for example, you will never do as well as a photograph. It follows that any work of literature will always be more indefinite than a picture, but its lack of definition stimulates our imaginations in a way that a picture cannot. When reading we have to create images in our minds as we go along, and this is one reason why we feel possessive about books we have read. We sense, rightly, that we have partly written them, and we feel something like an author’s indignation when we think that film or television adaptations have got them wrong. A book illustration interrupts this living engagement, replacing it with something inflexible and extraneous. Children need illustrations, of course, not having been alive long enough to build up the vast gallery of private images all adults have. But for readers beyond the Peter Rabbit stage they are a hindrance.”
Beyond Peter Rabbit though - and way beyond a lazy journalist’s scraping of throats and barrels…
… but enough.
“For readers beyond the Peter Rabbit stage illustrations are a hindrance…?“
God help us.
Neil Gaiman’s Sandman, anyone?
If you enjoyed this post, subscribe today to get free updates by email or RSS.
