Don’t Panic: The Official Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy
Companion, and Don’t Panic: Douglas Adams and The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the
Galaxy, by Neil Gaiman.
The original version and the New and Updated Edition. The
first Neil Gaiman book I ever got before I knew who he was, bought for the info
on Adams and his work (I really enjoyed the first two books in the series; I
have since sold all my “Hitchhiker’ books but retained others of Adams’ work.
It was updated after Adams’ death. I keep them now mainly for Neil and as a
cautionary tale.
Ranking: Keepers.
File Code: Literary Biography. Softcover.
American Gods was the first fiction I ever read by Gaiman on
his own. I had read his collaboration with Pratchett, seen his adaptation of
dialog for “Princess Mononoke”, and had already started in on the Sandman, but
this was the first book of his own that I tried, and it was a homerun. Shadow
is a man caught in a war between the old gods of Mythology, both native and
immigrant, and the new gods of Technology. As his part in the war is slowly
revealed by his new boss Mr. Wednesday (a one-eyed wandering trickster) he
meets the old down-and-out gods who are trying to make a living in a world that
no longer believes in them. An engaging adventure, a journey through America’s
‘places of power’, and a secret behind-the-scenes history that seems more and
more plausible the deeper you go in. Has a sequel novel and several short
stories following Shadow through the aftermath, and now a TV adaptation I
haven’t seen yet. The Tenth Anniversary Edition has some edited material he put
back in and a special introduction.
Ranking: Essential.
File Code: Fantasy. Novel. Softcover and Hardback.
Anansi Boys, by Neil Gaiman.
Set in the same milieu as “American Gods”. When old Mr. Nancy
finally passes away, his son Fat Charlie returns home to a legacy he never
wanted, including a here-to-fore unknown brother who seems intent on
overturning his way of life. Another adventure among the old gods and the
children of the old gods, a peek at the mythic shadow-side of life, and a story
about reconciling yourself to who you are.
Ranking: Keeper.
File Code: Fantasy. Novel. Hardback.
Fragile Things: Short Fictions and Wonders, and Trigger
Warning: Short Fictions and Disturbances, by Neil Gaiman.
Two more of his anthologies of stories and poetry. Gaiman has
developed a strangely vatic voice that sort of sits you down and hypnotizes
you. You wake up from the story feeling as if you’ve been dreaming a dream you
can’t quite recall but which leaves definite emotions in its wake. For me part
of Gaiman’s charm is that he seems to know all the same lore that I know; that
we’re members of the same club and he’s discussing my favorite subjects in ways
I never thought of.
Ranking: Essential.
File Code: Anthology. Short Fictions. Hardbacks.
Beowulf: The Script Book, by Neil Gaiman and Roger Avary, and
Mirrormask, by Neil Gaiman and Dave McKean.
I don’t know if it’s the admixture of another artist, or the
difficulty of getting Gaiman’s poetic vision onto a screen, but these efforts,
as films, were mediocre at best. Reading the script of Beowulf you get a
glimpse of what he was trying for; seeing it dropped like an old horseshoe bare
on the screen leaves out the shadows and fog. The same goes for Mirrormask. On the
screen its whimsy is too heavy. As a book it just seems cluttered by McKean’s
illustration, a bundle of noise. How it would read simply as prose is hard to
say.
Ranking: Keepers. For now.
File Code: Film. Script/Adaptation.
Coraline (Softcover with Illustrations by Dave McKean), Odd
and the Frost Giants (Hardback with Illustrations by Brett Helquist), and
Fortunately, the Milk (Softcover with Illustrations by Skottie Young), by Neil
Gaiman.
Now these are all definitely “Children’s Books” in that they
seem mainly aimed at children and don’t simply have children as a protagonist.
I’ll talk more about that later. And that’s not just to say that only children
can enjoy them. “Coraline” has been made into the one good adaptation of
Gaiman’s work to the screen, in Henry Selick’s stop-motion film. “Odd” is
almost a dry run for a later work (which I’ll get to otherwhere), and “Milk”
reminds me of the grand old days of Doug Adams and his wackier adventures in
time and space, and I want Skottie Young to do a graphic novel of “A Grave on
Deacon’s Peak”.
Ranking: Essential.
File Code: Fantasy. Children’s. Novel.
The Graveyard Book, by Neil Gaiman. With illustrations by
Dave McKean.
If you are raised in the jungle, like Mowgli, you are in The
Jungle Book. If you are raised in a graveyard, like Bod, you are in The Graveyard
Book. After Bod’s family is killed by a man named Jack, he is adopted by ghosts
and protected by a vampire and taught by a werewolf. He is safe from Jack as
long as he remains in the graveyard, but it has its own strange perils and
haunting ways. And Jack is not giving up until Bod is dead. There is a gaggle
of Lovecraftian ghouls, and the general situation reminds me a little of “A
Fine and Private Place”.
Ranking: Essential.
File Code: Fantasy. Novel. Hardback.
The Ocean at the End of the Lane, by Neil Gaiman.
Now, I wouldn’t necessarily call this a book for kids, even
though its narrator is a little boy. I wouldn’t say it wasn’t for kids, either,
though some of the things in it are pretty grim. It’s a story about a boy
encountering dark forces and the strange allies he finds in the little girl and
the two old ladies who live at the end of the lane. If I had to compare it to
some other work, I’d say it’s kind of like Bradbury in “Something Wicked This
Way Comes”.
Ranking: Essential.
File Code: Fantasy. Novel. Hardback.
Norse Mythology, by Neil Gaiman.
After referencing it for years in Sandman and American Gods
and Odd and the Frost Giants, Gaiman sits down for a complete novelistic
retelling of the cycle of Norse myths, from the fire and ice of the creation to
the aftermath of Ragnarok. Along the way he puts his own spin of interpretation
here and there (Fenris was a good doggie, really), but other than parts like
that he hews pretty closely to the tales, and treats the gods and giants as
real characters.
Ranking: Essential.
File Code: Mythology.
Novel. Hardback.
The View from the Cheap Seats: Selected Nonfiction, by Neil
Gaiman.
Essays, reviews, prefaces, and articles, Gaiman is almost
better as a chatty super-fan than he is as an author. Gaiman is a friendly man,
and he seems to want everyone to be his friend. He seldom says anything
definitely bad about something, always preferring to say something positive, or
at least ambiguous, and his best evasion is always words to the effect of “It’s
not for me to judge. What do you think?” It’s a maddening slippery habit that I
see all too often on his blog, and whether he does it to avoid offending
someone’s opinion or simply evade trouble for himself is a vexing question. But
for the most part this book is full of informative, enthusiastic talk, and
insight into his own work and voyage through imaginative fiction. The last book
I ever bought at Hastings, before they closed down.
Ranking: Essential.
File Code: Nonfiction. Anthology. Hardback.
The Neil Gaiman Reader, Edited by Darrell Schweitzer
(Softcover); The Sandman Companion: A Dreamer’s Guide to the Award-Winning
Comics Series, by Hy Bender (Illustrations; Hardback); Prince of Stories: The
Many Worlds of Neil Gaiman, by Hank Wagner, Christopher Golden, and Stephen R.
Bissette (with a Forward by Terry Patchett; Hardback); The Sandman: Book of
Dreams, edited by Neil Gaiman and Ed Kramer (Hardback); The Art of Neil Gaiman,
Written and Edited by Hayley Campbell (Illustrated; Hardback); The Sandman:
King of Dreams, by Alisa Kwitney (Introduction by Neil Gaiman; Illustrations, Hardback.)
C. S. Lewis says somewhere that you have literature, and then
you have the literature about the literature, or books about books. And here
they are, tie-ins with Gaiman, mostly about the monumental Sandman graphic
novels. “Book of Dreams” is short stories by others in the Dream universe. “Art
of” and “King of Dreams” are very heavy on the graphics. Perhaps the best is
“Prince of Stories”, which examines all his output in order with a short
synopsis and pertinent points about each work.
Ranking: Keepers.
File Code: Read their descriptions above.
No comments:
Post a Comment