The View From the Cheap Seats: Selected Nonfiction by Neil Gaiman

4 Stars

An assortment of eulogies, book introductions, speeches, articles, interviews, and general ponderings on a great many things. Reading this is a way to understand Gaiman beyond his fiction. In the meager number of his works that I have explored, I've felt an underlying connection which I wasn't sure how precisely to interpret. My brain likes to file things in very specific ways, and it was as if it kept wandering from one aisle to the next trying to determine where to place Gaiman.

And then I read this book, and I knew.

Wandering through these thoughts, the long and short, I came to realize that we wonder about and appreciate very similar things. That's what was familiar and the thread being plucked as I tried to understand why I like Gaiman as much as I do with as little as I've read.

"Sometimes fiction is a way of coping with the poison of the world in way that lets us survive it." 

"Subject matter does not make genre." 

"The forms of tales that work survive: the others die and are forgotten." 

"Children are a relatively powerless minority, and, like all oppressed people, they know more about their oppressors than their oppressors know about them."

These all told me things that I aligned with, but perhaps since my grasp of fantasy literature is shallower I didn't understand until Gaiman spoke about music and film. Then, I knew. He wrote about his Sundance experience and his surprise and love for Kung Fu Hustle, a movie when I spotted it I made everyone important at the time watch because it was magical and unexpected, that we shared a connection. And the same when he mentioned Tori Amos.

Traveling still now: passing a sudden thunderstorm in the hills of New Mexico; then the stately California windmill fields and hills signal that the train is leaving real America and entering the world of imagination.

We do dream life into existence everyday between sundrops and landshakes. Surrealism is what makes California wonder-filled.

During his interview with Lou Reed there is the most perfect summation of being an artist.

Some people are forever in the Velvet Underground thing, or the Transformer thing, or the Rock N Roll Animal thing--someplace around there. They'd like it to still be that. But I was only passing through.

I think that if you love Gaiman, then you'll love the peeks inside. If you love art, you'll love how he talks about creation. Some of these are short and I skipped because I had no frame of reference for them, others I read anyway and enjoyed how Gaiman addressed the subject. Clearly, those that I knew, had an emotional investment, were the most satisfying to read.