Neil Gaiman’s collection of essays is broad, deep and entertaining, writes Andrew Salomon for the Sunday Times
The View from the Cheap Seats
Neil Gaiman (Headline)
****
This is the first-ever collection of Neil Gaiman nonfiction. At over 500 pages, The View from the Cheap Seats is a lot of anyone’s thoughts and opinions to read, but it is a testament to Gaiman’s writing skill and ability to harness enthusiasm that none of the more than 80 pieces feels laborious.
Gaiman’s take on The Bride of Frankenstein from 1935 describes the film as “oneiric, a beautiful, formless sequence of silver nitrate shadows, and when it ends I wondered what happened, and then I begin to rebuild it in my head”. This description typifies the clever, honest, almost-profound-but-without-being-pretentious essays.
Perhaps the strongest impression from reading this collection is how much Gaiman is himself a huge fan of creative endeavours; he can be just as devoted to the work of musicians, writers, filmmakers and comic artists as legions of fans are about his own. But above all, Gaiman is a fan who imposes no pecking order on genre or medium: he writes with uncomplicated joy and candid honesty about topics as diverse as what he thinks of Lou Reed and his music, how much Doctor Who has influenced his slant on the world, and how to make art that is worthwhile.
According to Gaiman, “Literature does not occur in a vacuum. It cannot be a monologue. It has to be a conversation.” This is evident through the thoughtful but easygoing style of his writing: you get the impression that if you were having a conversation with Gaiman, he would be saying the same thing in the same way.
The writing is insightful, funny, and sometimes angry (especially when he writes about the approaching loss of his friend and collaborator, Terry Pratchett).
Some of the most personal pieces are saved for the final chapter, “The View From the Cheap Seats: Real Things”. Gaiman takes us with him to the 2010 Academy Awards ceremony, when the film version of his novel Coraline was nominated for best animated feature, and you come away feeling that you have accompanied him through a somewhat surreal and ultimately empty experience.
He writes about the loss of Pratchett and Douglas Adams in a poignant manner that reveals how their loss is even greater due to the people they were, but without any efforts to portray them as saints.
This chapter also features his wife, Amanda Palmer, and contains a measured yet harrowing piece about a visit to a Syrian refugee camp in Jordan.
The View from the Cheap Seats is a worthwhile addition to the Gaiman canon: his writing on music, comics, films, television series and novels reveals his deep and abiding love of storytelling, but the collection does more than that: he engages you in a way that makes you want to go and experience them yourself.
Book details
- The View from the Cheap Seats by Neil Gaiman
EAN: 9781472208019
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