I always thought the fact that Death is less "scary" than Dream doesn't make her less actually scary.

I always thought the fact that Death is less "scary" than Dream doesn't make her less actually scary.

I think Gaiman is much better at having respect for the authors he's cribbing from and making a concerted effort to really inhabit their voices than Moore is, even if Moore's knowledge of literature-to-take-ideas from is more encyclopedic and his ability to weave huge numbers of insane narrative threads together more…

I think Gaiman is much better at having respect for the authors he's cribbing from and making a concerted effort to really inhabit their voices than Moore is, even if Moore's knowledge of literature-to-take-ideas from is more encyclopedic and his ability to weave huge numbers of insane narrative threads together more…

Here's the essay cut-and-pasted for those who don't want to click:

Here's the essay cut-and-pasted for those who don't want to click:

I see this almost as a litmus test — if you think the book would've been creepier had it been a straight "horror novel" with evocative descriptions of some dude poking around in a strange dark labyrinth and all the metatextual stuff was boring by contrast, then we probably shouldn't hang out.

I see this almost as a litmus test — if you think the book would've been creepier had it been a straight "horror novel" with evocative descriptions of some dude poking around in a strange dark labyrinth and all the metatextual stuff was boring by contrast, then we probably shouldn't hang out.

Well, okay, here it is. It's kind of tl;dr-y, so don't say I didn't warn you. I also wrote it several years ago and I'm a little embarrassed about its pretentiousness now, but whatev's.

Well, okay, here it is. It's kind of tl;dr-y, so don't say I didn't warn you. I also wrote it several years ago and I'm a little embarrassed about its pretentiousness now, but whatev's.

This all may be my fault for having read the Ficciones piecemeal over the course of a long period of time rather than sitting down and reading a lot of Borges at once, but I'll make a note to reread them at some point with this in mind.

This all may be my fault for having read the Ficciones piecemeal over the course of a long period of time rather than sitting down and reading a lot of Borges at once, but I'll make a note to reread them at some point with this in mind.

SPOILER ALERT:

SPOILER ALERT:

I'd like to think I'm a pretty big fan of Borges and I acknowledge a lot of what you say — I think the way Pierre Menard, Author of the Quixote is written in a way that never even once acknowledges the weirdness of its central conceit is wall-to-wall brilliant and something I've never seen anyone else do as…

I'd like to think I'm a pretty big fan of Borges and I acknowledge a lot of what you say — I think the way Pierre Menard, Author of the Quixote is written in a way that never even once acknowledges the weirdness of its central conceit is wall-to-wall brilliant and something I've never seen anyone else do as…

The Minotaur is scary precisely because the Minotaur isn't there.

The Minotaur is scary precisely because the Minotaur isn't there.

I could talk your damn ear off about what the Minotaur symbolizes as a Jungian archetype, with reference to a whole passel of random sources (starting with Borges' The House of Asterion).

I could talk your damn ear off about what the Minotaur symbolizes as a Jungian archetype, with reference to a whole passel of random sources (starting with Borges' The House of Asterion).