It’s easy enough when it’s a dead author to distance yourself from them whilst still enjoying their works. But what do you do when they’re still alive and creating?
In J K Rowling’s case it’s been pretty easy not to engage with her continuing content, the Robert Galbraith stuff is just crap and the whole premise of the game (siding with the Empire? Really?) leaves me cold. Also – my girlfriend’s a trans woman I just don’t want to have her stuff around me, though I was never big into hogwarts merchandise really. What I did have I covered with stickers until it became something else, not because I’m trying to stick it to Rowling but because it felt repulsive to have.
I don’t want to buy more Gaiman books. I viscerally do not want. I was intending on engaging with Good Omens Season Two as essentially indulgent fanfic because I knew it was going to lack the grounding that I enjoyed from Good Omens (Terry Pratchett’s influence) but now I think I’d rather give it a miss. However I don’t feel the need to get rid of what I’ve already got, there’s no money to be made by Gaiman from books already in our house and I already explained I don’t feel like my favourites are really his…
Oh. My. Gods.
I just went on Facebook part way through writing this.
Matthew Boroson (I don’t know him or follow him) has been copied by a number of friends. This is verbatim his post;
“This is about Neil Gaiman.
Ta-Nehisi Coates’ BETWEEN THE WORLD AND ME is a great book. Insightful, beautifully written, profound.
Coates modeled his book on James Baldwin’s THE FIRE NEXT TIME.
We know this because Coates was open and up-front about this fact.
George R.R. Martin’s GAME OF THRONES/A Song of Ice and Fire is a great series.
Martin modeled his books on a series by a French author named Maurice Druon.
We know this because Martin was open and up-front about this fact.
Viet Thanh Nguyen’s THE SYMPATHIZER is a great book.
He modeled it on a book written in Vietnamese, whose title escapes me.
We know this because Nguyen was open and up-front about this fact.
Neil Gaiman’s THE SANDMAN is a great comic book series.
Gaiman modeled his series on Tanith Lee’s TALES FROM THE FLAT EARTH.
But you wouldn’t know this, because Gaiman has never given her any credit.
Despite the fact that the main character — a byronic, pale, otherworldly, deity-like character — is the prince of night and dreams.
Despite the fact that every time people see art depicting Tanith Lee’s main character Azhrarn, they think it’s Morpheus from the Sandman. (How bad is this? When people see depictions of her character, they say SHE must have ripped HIM off.)
Despite the fact that the dream lord’s younger sibling is Death.
Despite the fact that other members of his family include Delusion, Delirium…. They are not gods but beings older than gods, and when the gods die, Dream, Death, Delusion, and Delirium will remain. This family of immortal, eternal, unchanging beings, who each embody an eternal abstraction starting with the letter D.
Someone else on the internet, noticing the similarities, flipped open the third book in Tanith Lee’s series to a random page, and lo and behold, there’s a description of a character who was clearly the inspiration for Gaiman’s Mazikeen.
The prose, the characters, the narrative strategies, the mythology, the story structure, all of it: Gaiman found it all in Tanith Lee‘s writing and never gave her any credit.
He became rich and famous profiting from her ideas. People effused over his amazing imagination, when the ideas they praised him for were actually created by Tanith Lee. And, while he was building his name and fame, she was struggling. In the 1990s, toward the end of her life, she complained in an interview that magazines weren’t buying her stories anymore.
A simple “If you like The Sandman, you should really read Tanith Lee’s books!” from Neil Gaiman would have meant so much to her career. To the livelihood of a struggling, less-privileged writer, whose amazing imagination Gaiman was actively ripping off.
People praised The Sandman comics for their depiction of gay and trans identities. But in the original material, Tanith Lee was far more progressive about lgbtq+ identities, and that was twenty years earlier.
I first read Tanith Lee’s book NIGHT’S MASTER (the first in the FLAT EARTH series) in maybe 2005, about 10 years after first reading The Sandman. I looked to see if Gaiman had credited her for “his” ideas; as far as I could tell, he never had.
And for the subsequent 19 years, whenever I see a new Neil Gaiman interview, the first thing I do is ctrl-F to search to see if he mentioned Tanith Lee. And he never has, that I’ve seen.
I have no difficulty believing the accusations against him.
Because I know — KNOW — that he has felt entitled to take what he wants from a woman, without her permission, and without any acknowledgement of her contributions.
And, finally:
If you loved Neil Gaiman’s stories, if you are heartbroken to learn the storyteller you loved is apparently an abuser, here is my suggestion:
track down Tanith Lee’s TALES FROM THE FLAT EARTH books. Her prose is more exquisite and imaginative, her ideas more original, her empathy real.
…
Edited again: A lot of people are buying Lee’s book THE EARTH IS FLAT. This is the wrong place to begin; it’s a collection of posthumously published stories set in the same world as the series. The place to begin would either be NIGHT’S MASTER or the omnibus edition of the first three books, LORDS OF DARKNESS.”
… I said the other day that I didn’t feel like The Endless were his, I thought that was because he’d created them as a team with artists as comic book writers do, not because he’d fucking straight up stolen them. Jesus fucking Christ.
I mean he told us he was raping his muses didn’t he? He did tell us. Christ.
What do you do to really Kill an Author? Cause fuck it; let’s get into this conceptual Death. Find a new author, find an old author, find a better author and buy their stuff. So I’ll be buying Tanith Lee’s work then.
Fucking hell.