About the Author Summer brief- par t 3
Choosing from the list I found it easiest to start off by crossing off the list authors I knew I didn’t want to do a follow up project upon, such as Shakespeare, Lewis Carrol and George Orwell. I’d either done work previously on these figures or felt there was nothing new I could say that hadn’t been said about there work before. For some of the other authors I just didn’t feel qualified to tackle the subjects they covered.
AUTHOR 1- Edgar Allan poe One of the three main authors from the list that stood out for me was Edgar Allan Poe I chose him as I had already briefly started exploring his work in our final project from last year, so this gave me the best opportunity to find out some more about this American gothic writer.
The life of EDGAR AllaN POE Lost his mother, adopted mother and wife all to Typhoid whilst being abandoned by his two fathers Was a superb artist as well as writer, was an editor also helping to publish other people’s work as well as his own Poe was also the first writer of the detective story Had a very self destructive nature, a prime example was when he had an audience with the president While known for being a rather dark figure, he also had a rather happy and gentle nature often out on picnics with his wife and pets Final days were bizarre, he disappeared for a couple of days and was found in the streets in someone else’s clothes
HIS WORK As for Poe’s work, I’ve looked at three main examples for possible inspiration The Raven This being his most famous horror story, even giving him the nickname of the Raven. It tells the tale of grieving man who is haunted by the memory of his late wife Lenore. A raven flies into his room and creepily calls out the word ‘nevermore’ over and over. This story grew to have even greater weight for me when I found out he was writing the story at the same time his own wife dying, he was writing about the same loss he had and soon would experience again.
work I then looked at the short stories The Black Cat and The TellTale Heart They both follow a very similar story structure. Having a main protagonist going mad out of either fear or hatred, then killing a loved one before hiding their body, and then finally almost close to getting away with the crime their overconfidence leads to their own downfall. Whilst searching the internet I found a lot of entertaining fanmade animations of his work, I also realised funnily enough how I had been first introduced to Poe from an early age by two episodes of the Simpsons.
Author 2- Neil gaiman My second choice was British born writer Neil Gaiman. Having heard his name a lot in connection to comics I thought this would be a good opportunity to learn more about the man
Life of neil Spent a lot of his life trying to show how comics can be equally as important as any other medium Started his own zine at 16 called the Metro Was a journalist in the 80’s writing reviews and conducting interviews Author of many short fiction books, novels, comic books as well as films Believes that book themselves have a gender
His work Sand man comicsA main line of comics for DC, following stories involving such entities as Death, God and the Sand man himself. He only expected at the time to write twelve issues of the story arc but managed to carry it on for seventy five issue. And unlike most mainstream comics no other writer carried on with the stories when he’d finished working on them, he got to keep the characters completely as his own. Neil also wrote kids favourites Coraline and The Graveyard Book.
work 1602 The one book that introduced me to his work was the marvel graphic novel ‘1602’ I’ve blogged about it before, it has to be one of my favourite comics ever written. The mixture of historical context and superhero lore is brilliantly done and it’s won numerous awards over the years. The artwork is also superb with it’s traditional aesthetic.
Author 3 Italo Calvino My third and final choice was Italo Calvino, an Italian writer.
Life of Calvino During world war two he refused to sign up for service and had go into hiding, his mother later encouraged him to join the Italian resistance. His work remains the most-translated contemporary Italian writing so far
work At twenty-two Italo began his writing career as a realist, however when he wrote about his war time experiences in ‘A path to a nest of spiders’ he felt guilty about using his friends as characters, he felt indebted to fact and so he began to write complete works of fantasy. Since then he became highly experimental with his work no piece was to be written in a similar style Italo did a series of book retelling old Italian folklore as well as creating his own fairy tales in the trilogy ‘Our Ancestors’ Cosmic comics – These set of fantasy stories each revolved around a scientific principle
Work Invisible cities This book involves a conversation between an old emperor and one of his young explorers, Marco Polo The explorer speaks of the different cities of the empire , describing parts of fifty-five cities in total, creating a large collective picture in the readers mind. This book alone is full of possibilities to develop further, with so many contrasting places described. From the floating lands to the cities of the dead.
Taking the next step What I plan to do: • Further my research during this week to see if there’s any valuable research I’m missing • Blog my progress and outcomes • Decide finally on which author I should go with I’m currently considering Italo Calvino as my final choice, whilst I do find the life of Poe to be the most interesting it’s also rather grim and I’m trying to involve lighter subjects in my work this year. I also feel I don’t know enough about Neil Gaiman to create something substantial based upon him and his work yet. Italo Calvino’s varied work creates a lot of source material and gives me many directions to possibly go down Any Questions?