Reality Check: The Night and Neil Gaiman
In the past month, I’ve been on a Neil Gaiman kick. And quite the kick it has been. Neil Gaiman is not everyone’s cup of tea, but if you are interested in visits to and from the graveyard or simply to and from your everyday alternate reality, then Gaiman’s intoxicating brews may well be for you.
My trip to the other worldly began with Anansi Boys. This is the best audio book I’ve listened to yet…and yet includes 22 novels and 5 memoirs in audio format since 2006.
Anansi Boys, brilliantly narrated by Lenny Henry, tells the story of Fat Charlie Nancy, the timid and unambitious son of Anansi the Spider.
I admit to having been intrigued from the get-go because I can remember reading Anansi stories to my children. I shared their fascination with this troublesome trickster, the spider god who could cheat both death and the devil on a good day. He remains one of the most important and intriguing characters in West African and Caribbean folklore. Gaiman has no problem dragging literary, mythical and comic book characters into his stories and he does it masterfully here.
Fat Charlie rues his upbringing, denies his inheritance, and avoids involvement. As a result, it becomes near impossible to extricate himself from the evil clutches of Grahame Coats, the acid tongue of his fiancé’s mother, the bloodlust of a vengeful Tiger, and the shenanigans of his brother, Spider, who unfailingly manages to put him in harm’s way and who he ultimately must save. To do so, he has to embrace his past and discover an astonishing power that, unbeknownst to him, he possessed all along: the ability to alter reality by singing.
This is a wonderful book…though, as I said, one best listened to.
Things That Go Bump in the Night
I then changed directions and took on Gaiman’s epic graphic novel, The Sandman (published by the DC imprint Vertigo). This 10-book set is a compilation of the 75 installments published by DC Comics between 1989 and 1996. It was and remains a classic of the genre.
Morpheus, the Lord of Dreams, is one of the Endless, his brothers and sisters including Destiny, Death, Destruction, Desire, Despair and Delirium. Beneath the “blanketing mist of sleep”, Morpheus prods, protects and, on numerous occasions, punishes those who enter his realm, that of the unconscious. He is somewhat the tragic hero, a reluctant participant in the waking world and a virtuous though flawed taskmaster in the nocturnal one.
For The Sandman, Gaiman constructs a universe as vast and complex as his boundless imagination can conceive. Stories wind and weave their way through ethereal planes and mythic realms which Gaiman has no trouble invoking for his purposes; indeed, Morpheus makes his way to Hell and back on more than one occasion. But there is an underlying logic to it all, as well as a consistent if peculiar morality. Nightmares seem to have their own excuse for being.
Gaiman’s writing talent is as broad as it’s deep, covering everything from comics to poetry to prose, with film and song lyrics in between. My travels through Gaiman’s constructs took me to Fragile Things, a collection of delightful if disturbing stories that, in short order, show off his genius for the gothic tale. There is even a story that brings Sherlock Holmes back for an encore performance. Interspersed are poems that add an oddly discomforting texture.
Whistling Past the Graveyard
Finally, I listened to Gaiman himself read The Graveyard Book, a novel for young readers of all ages. This is the enchanting tale of a boy named Bod (short for Nobody) who has narrowly escaped death and, in the process, finds himself being raised by the ghosts and ghouls inhabiting a small town cemetery. The Man Jack continues to hunt him down, however. It takes some wily thinking and the help of werewolves and other denizens of the dark to see him through. A wonderful touch – even if you don’t know the allusion – is the chapter on the danse macabre.
The Graveyard Book is typical Gaiman. He gives reality a shake and imbues the macabre with a wry sense of humour. He is the literary counterpart to Tim Burton and Edward Gorey (see cartoon at right). These are masters of the macabre, with a titch of mayhem and mystery thrown in just to make it interesting.
It is exciting to think Tim Burton (Edward Scissorhands, Sweeney Todd) will be producing the movie version of Gaiman’s very creepy Coraline and that he has enlisted as director stop-motion animation wunderkind Henry Selick, who performed the same duties in Burton’s The Nightmare Before Christmas. (All we’re missing now is Johnny Depp.) Coraline, published in 2002, is the story of a young girl who walks through a secret door in her new home and discovers a chilling alternate version of her life. An update on Alice in Wonderland, it makes a fine lead-in (or follow-up) to The Graveyard Book.
Coraline’s tagline is, “Be careful what you wish for”. Perfect. Because if you are planning a trip through Gaiman’s surreal universe, your wish may just come true.
I have to admit to being on a bit of a Gaiman kick, too. I really enjoyed The Graveyard Book. Gaiman reads his own work aloud wonderfully well. I just finished Stardust, too. Do you read his blog?
I do indeed read Gaiman’s Journal. It is personable and interesting. Considering that he has become an industry and virtually inaccessible one-on-one, it is one of the ways he is able to communicate with his legion of fans. He does it well.