the pencil reads

I love the weekend. Today we celebrated a friend's birthday with chilli crab, awfully chocolate cake, ice cream, and wine. I got to hang out with old friends and talk with my sis on Skype. And I had enough time last night and this morning to finish reading this comic by Neil Gaiman.

At this point, I can truthfully say that I am happy.

Volume three explores where great writers get their inspiration from. The Sandman, being the source of dreams, is the source of inspiration for all the great works created by men as well. It is kinda mind-boggling 'cos if the Sandman inspired Shakespeare, did he inspire Gaiman to write the story you hold in your hand as well? It is a little like looking into a pair of parallel mirrors with images retreating into infinity.

This volume includes the original script for "Calliope" and it is interesting to see how a comic gets written. It is rather detailed work and requires a lot of cooperation between the writer and the artist. It is also congruent to include the script in this particular volume since the theme of this volume is the process of writing stories, and the script gives a backstage look at this process.

Art is the translation of memoirs, history, and human experience into stories that never die because their truth echoes through time. And The Sandman series is art.

This is the fourth comic this week. Possibly too much, considering that the first one I've read in my life was on Wednesday.

Storybook love is volume three is the series Fables. I am not used to how quickly and easily characters are done away with in this series. I'm used to story lines that take a long time to ripen, where protagonists hang around till at least the end of the novel. But graphic novels excel in the absurd. Who knows if they won't return in the next volume?

What if my dreams came true?

It is a scary thought. I don't think I would survive it. My dreams have a pattern running through them, recurring themes that I can't shake off: love, guilt, fear... and if what I dreamed were real, I would go mad.

For that reason, Preludes and Nocturnes is a scary book. In his afterward, Gaiman describes the stories in this series:

"The Sleep of the Just" was intended to be a classical English horror story; "Imperfect Hosts" plays with some of the conventions of the old DC and EC horror comics (and the hosts thereof); "Dream a Little Dream of Me" is a slightly more contemporary British horror story; "A Hope in Hell" harks back to the kind of dark fantasy found in Unknown in the 1940s; "Passengers" was my (perhaps misguided) attempt to try to mix super-heroes into the SANDMAN world; "24 hours" is an essay on stories and authors, and also one of the very few genuinely horrific tales I've written; "Sound and Fury" wrapped up the storyline; and "The Sound of Her Wings" was the epilogue and the first story in the sequence I felt was truly mine, and in which I knew I was beginning to find my own voice.

Did you notice how many times the word "horror"appears?

I had a weird thought. There is a very thin line separating fantasy from theology. The characters of fantasy are heaven and hell, demons and angels, death and salvation, mortals and gods—well, it is the same with theology. (Theology would quibble about the plural used in "gods" but it does have father, son and holy spirit after all.)

I think I'm out of my depth here, so forget about that last paragraph.

I wonder what I'll dream about tonight.
Read more

I bought my first graphic novel: Fables Vol 1, Legends in Exile.

It's so fun to own a comic book. It is like owning a piece of art. I hope I don't get hooked to this feeling 'cos it will prove an expensive hobby.

Fables is about a bunch of fairy tale characters who are in exile in our world, specifically New York. We have the big bad wolf, little red riding hood, the witch in the forest, bluebeard, the three little pigs, Pinocchio, Snow White, etc. going incognito among the Mundanes, i.e. the regular human folk. Volume 1 is about a crime committed in the fable community.

It is available in the library as well, if you would like to thumb through it without having to put up good money, but I'll appreciate it if my hordes of readers (*cough*) will leave me at least one copy. I don't like leaving the library empty-handed. ;) And I really need save myself from the addiction of buying comic books.

(Fables is written by Bill Willingham, Penciled by Lan Medina, Inked by Steve Leialoha and Criag Hamilton, colored by Sherilyn van Valkenburgh, Lettered by Todd Klein, and given covers by James Jean and Alex Maleev. Phew. What a lot of folks it takes to make a comic.)
Who wrote Fables?

I now know why books in this genre are known as "graphic novels".

But I think I am finally getting Neil Gaiman in his element. He is imaginative, sensual and his work is driven by plot. I love the brooding Morpheus and the Lady Delirium who makes little coloured mushrooms and frogs sprout wherever she sits. It is amazing what a picture can do. For example, Delirium is always drawn in a whimsical pose: she is sprawled on the floor, or her arm is over her head, or she is surrounded in a multi-coloured realm with frivolous and fantastic bits and pieces. Even her eyes are different coloured!

I like Barnabas too, the sarcastic talking dog. He's cool. Isn't it interesting that Barnabas means "son of encouragement"?

It is so much faster to go through a comic than a novel.

It is a curious thing that both fictional stories I've read on Christian persecution are so unconventional. My perception of Christian persecution was first shaped by the Bible narratives -- Paul and Silas singing in the prison and the chains falling off -- and then by the historical narratives. In college, I was mesmerized by Tertullian's quote: "The blood of the martyrs is the seed of the church." I was in awe of the unshakable faith and joy of the early martyrs.

And then I read Silence by Shusuku Endo, and then Philip Yancey's article, and now The Power and the Glory by Graham Greene. What is up with Endo and Graham? They are turning my world upside down.

In defense, Graham does not go as far as Endo in his scathing bitterness at the silence of God. The martyrdoms in Silence are very sad and haunting -- it makes a person tear -- but the persecution in The Power and the Glory tends towards the comic and matter-of-fact. The only scandal of the novel, really, is the portrayal of the priesthood. The church protested against the novel's portrayal of the priesthood in 1954, 14 years after the novel's publication, and rightly so, for the main character of the novel is a priest addicted to whisky, power, and various other vices.

But that is the beauty of this novel... That God does triumph despite our doubt, sin and human wretchedness; that he can make the ugly beautiful. If God saved us while we were still sinful, how much more is he still saving us now? (Rom 5:10) Surely he can save a drunken priest. Of course, this is the antithesis of what John Wesley preached. A distinctive of Methodism is the doctrine of sanctification -- that the journey after justification is one towards holiness and perfection -- towards Christ-likeness so to speak. In fact, John Wesley believed that because of the grace of God, it is possible to be perfect in this life. Christians are holy just as fig trees produce figs.

But not Greene's whiskey priest.

Silence and The Power and the Glory are rather alike in most areas. Both novels feature a Judas; both novels' main character is a flawed Christian; both novels don't attempt to second-guess God's role. Both are based on a Christian framework: while The Power and the Glory has a stronger sense of Christian duty, Silence is more sentimental and existentialist.

But there is one primary difference between the two novels: how they end. It is because of their different endings that we get their diverging titles. One title is despairing, the other, triumphant. In spite of all the foibles of the priest and the blatant sin of the virtuous Christians in The Power and the Glory, there are still many, many little graces that redeem the characters. As Greene puts it in this novel, "when you visualize a man or woman carefully, you can always begin to feel pity -- that is a quality God's image carries with it." The redemption was in the little things.

The prose in The Power and the Glory is compelling and some say that this is Graham Greene's magnum opus. It is a good book. Go read it if you have the time.
Read more!