Neil Gaiman, Telling Tales

It's time for Seattlest to ask a couple of absurd questions about Neil Gaiman. For instance, if Mr. Gaiman were to swoop from the sky and attack you- like a bird of prey- what sort of predatory bird would he be?

The answer: A very polite one. At least that's how we remember him- as polite, not as a bird of prey. He was extraordinarily kind the last time we saw him, which was in New York and not Seattle. P.S. 2 had hastily arranged a signing for comics pros as a fundraiser. Attendance was poor, due to a lack of publicity, but Chris Claremont was there, and so was Kyle Baker. But we went to meet Gaiman, who had just finished his run on Sandman and was kind of the main draw. As homemade brownies were being hawked in the corner, we sat down across the table from him and talked. For about twenty minutes. And before we would say a thing about his writing, we would have to stress that he is an incredibly nice man. Which must please his mother immensely.

His writing we now find to be a bit self-satisfied and cloying- but we did wait until we had praised him, please note.

Second absurd question: What are the chances of you getting 20 minutes to chat with Neil Gaiman these days? Hah! Did you really just ask that? No, we did. We're being absurd. These days Gaiman is fed through an intravenous drip, sheltered from direct sunlight, and whisked from one side of the planet to the other by private jet, communicating with fans from behind a curtain through his personal assistant, while men in black coats keep his cigars lit- Cubans, hand-wrapped in billion dollar notes. Ok, so we're exaggerating a little. The point is, he's no longer a puny comics scribe. He's got a movie, has written another for Robert Zemeckis, he's a New York Times bestselling author, a cottage industry, and has just started his own country.

On the occasion of the publication of his new novel, Anansi Boys, he comes to Seattle (and a few other, unimportant, places). On tour promoting a book heavily involving pagan gods, several readings will be held at churches- an irony which should please schoolboys everywhere.

As a Brit living in America, Gaiman has a rare vantage from which to view us. This has apparently provoked one of the themes of the new novel:

The English have no trouble with the concept of oddness. I mean Americans don’t have trouble with the concept of oddness, though I have met more odd Americans than I have ever met odd English. The Americans tend to be embarrassed about them in much the same way one would be embarrassed about a mad aunt: You don't talk about her. You know she keeps cakes in the wardrobe, has a room full of cats, and tends to walk around town in the middle of the night wearing absolutely nothing at all. You just don't talk about her. It's embarrassing. Whereas the English don't mind, “Oh that's just dear old Dorothy.” There's definitely a different ideal but it just goes down to that strange American sets of ideals about what things are normal. The idea of normality involves having a family that looks like a 1950s sitcom. And then nobody does and everyone's faintly embarrassed in America and how their family is nothing like The Donna Reed Show because they're sure that everyone else's is. That's the kind of thing I was getting at in Anansi Boys. I like writing a book about how everyone's family is embarrassing in different ways.

Don't let your mother hear you say that Neil! He'll be at University Temple Methodist Church, Tuesday, Oct. 4th at 7pm. Tickets available from the U Bookstore. Mirrormask, written by Gaiman and directed by longtime collaborator, Dave McKean, opens at the Varsity on October 7th.