The
View from the Cheap Seats: Selected Nonfiction – Neil Gaiman (2016)
I love this type of book. Any volume that collects together the
non-fiction writing of an author whose fiction work I love is mandatory reading
for me. It allows me to learn about the
person behind the stories. Neil Gaiman
is a master of stories, mainly the type that people categorize as
fantasy/horror. However, those
categories do not do his work justice as he is always looking for truth,
something that many readers quickly dismiss as unavailable in genre
fiction. (I hate when people say
this. There is truth to be found in all
things, even outright lies.) This book
is an excellent resource for anyone who has wished to hold a long conversation
with Neil Gaiman, but never had the opportunity, for you will hear his thoughts
coming to you from his true voice, not a character or a narrator. Books such as this one are like finally
meeting a person you have admired and appreciated for years and years, and then
finding out that the person is even more interesting than you could ever have
imagined.
Neil Gaiman started out as a
journalist. He then branched out into
comic book writing and fiction writing. I
say “branched out” as if he just began to work in a new field, but what Neil
Gaiman actually did was to change the face of comic books in our world, to
reinvigorate the fictional exploration of myth and legend, to craft a cohesive
world the likes of which Lovecraft, Poe, or Douglas Adams would be proud to
have created. His Sandman comic book
series may be the best fictional exploration of humanity’s legends ever, and
serves up as much truth and insight as any of Joseph Campbell’s scholastic
works, all the while delivering deeply engrossing stories. His novels continued in this vein and are
just as amazingly thrilling and evocative.
His writing was never intended to be esoteric, although his topics
always seem to be. He writes with an
ease of communication that makes the reader forget that she is experiencing
something of great magnitude and deep wisdom.
This book is divided up into
separate parts. Some collect the various
speeches and introductions that Neil Gaiman has given at conventions, seminars,
or workshops. Other sections deal solely
with the many intros he has written for books he loves or books of friend’s he
admires. One part compiles writings that
deal only with music and musicians. Another deals with individual books or
authors he has interviewed or worked with.
It is a grab-bag, but the best kind of grab-bag, especially for someone
like me who loves information for information’s sake. I was familiar with many of the works and
authors he discusses, but I have found several that I was unaware of, either
because they were not popular in America, or because they have been forgotten
in time.
I love seeing what is important to
my favorite authors. One of my greatest
reading joys as a young teenager was reading Danse Macabre, Stephen King’s
non-fiction collection of essays about horror, horror literature and film, and
the art of writing such horror. This was
also a seminal book for Neil Gaiman himself! I read and re-read it, always finding new
insight and ideas. Some of my favorite
books by Kurt Vonnegut are also collections of non-fiction writing. It is more direct. The idea is expounded upon without the need
for the framework of story. I love story,
but I love ideas more.
It is a very rare thing to get to
meet your idols or your heroes. Some
people advise against it, for you will most certainly be disappointed in what
you find. Books like this one make it a
pleasure to meet one’s idol! It fills in
details that normal writer’s bio pages do not cover. This book helped me understand Neil Gaiman’s
childhood, his obsession with reading and libraries (something else we share in
common), and his endless intellectual curiosity, even if that curiosity took
him to places his mind was not yet prepared for as a child. The same thing
happened to me. We are all much more
alike than we are different. This is
something that is implicit in much of Neil Gaiman’s work. It is another of the many truths that a lie
like “fiction” can convey. I am so glad
someone gathered up these ephemeral bits.
Thanks for all the stories Neil.
(This book can be purchased here: AMAZON )
(This book can be purchased here: AMAZON )
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