Neverwhere

For thems that don’t know, Neil Gaiman is an author and screenwriter who first came to greater public attention writing the DC graphic novel Sandman, the single most literate, creative and thought provoking comic book ever. He left the comic in 1996 and DC/Vertigo wrapped the series up because there was simply no one else who could have written it. I encountered the series when I was 18, beginning to get bored with the melodramatic soap s that the guy in tights super hero comics had become. A friend showed me the issue "August", which tells the story of Emperor Caesar Augustus, the man who laid the foundation and certainly a story or two of the Roman Empire, but in a very different way from anything you’ll find in the brightly colored pages of comic books even today. Most of the book he is just telling the story of his life, and you only encounter the principal protagonist of the series, Dream of the Endless, in a couple pages where he delivers advice to the emperor of refuge from his own Uncle, the then deified Julius Caesar. Quietly told but dramatically powerful, I was utterly hooked.

There are very, very few people in the world I am in awe of. I am in awe at the sheer scope of Gaiman’s creativity. His creative ability…to truly honor it would be to say it defies description, but that doesn’t help you all, so understand what I am saying is a poor description of what he does. Gaiman can blend the mythic and the modern into a world that is disgusting, glorious, gory and breathtakingly beautiful. He deals in old gods as dangerous and magnificent as the forces of nature in a new world of plastic, neon and reality TV. Most authors I can see the mental process that went into what they create, but Gainman completely flummoxes me. I have no idea how he came up with this stuff. And yet while how it is created it utterly foreign and it’s outward shell appears that way, it still speaks to me. It’s still rings very true, true enough to make me think. That's what Art is supposed to do. I would love to just sit inside the man’s skull and watch the creative process that blends these incongruous elements together into mythic tales worthy of Homer.

"Also nice to learn that I'm a neo-goth-pulp-noir author. Next time anyone asks me what kind of an author I am, I can finally tell them. I wonder if there are any other neo-goth-pulp-noir authors out there. We could form a society or something." ~ Neil Gaiman

What is so engaging is unlike most dystopian writing, Gaiman seems guided by an eternal faith in beauty of the human heart. His characters are hardly knights-on-white horses, but they aren't anti-hero's either. As terrible as the worlds they may inhabit are and as overwhelming and strange as the forces of violence may seem, his characters triumph not in succumbing to the violence the universe presents them with, but by understanding. They are human (though technically some of them are not) and frail and flawed, but essentially good people you not only can relate to, but that you grow to love.

I also have to say that Gaiman also knows when to stop with the details. You are just given what the character experiences, not a detailed layout and explanation of the world that is obviously completely thought out by the details you are presented with, yet you remain mostly uninformed of. That really gets the engines of imagination revving.

Such is the case with Neverwhere, the novelization of the BBC TV series of the same name that Gaiman wrote. On the surface, it seems to be a modern retelling of Alice in Wonderland with the utterly normal Richard becoming entangled in the dirty and magical world of “London Below” through a random act of kindness. But Richard's struggles to return to his life put him on a Hero quest worthy of any ancient storyteller in which Richard not only learns to accept what life brings and be proactive rather than reactive, but accepts himself as well. The quest also leaves us wondering. Do we chose to be everything we have the possibility of being or do we settle comfortably in our ruts? Do we want to rise to the challenge of being everything we can be, or do we want a settled predictable life?

Neverwhere is not as philosophically complex as his later works, such as American Gods, and is a quick and enjoyable read. But for all that, I think it’s almost a necessary read for modern adults who have yet to sit around the fire listening to the ancient bards weave tales of magick and man.

Joseph Cambell would be delighted.

On a fun note: I found this while researching the link for this article. It seems
So....Which Member of the Endless Are You?

Actually I got the same result with this Quilliza version too.

Cool!