One Question For Neil Gaiman

Master of Dreams

If you could ask Neil Gaiman one question, what would it be?

I was faced with this particular challenge last month when I joined a gaggle of other over-eager fans (er, journalists) at the National Book Festival in Washington DC. As we waited on the muddied grass of the National Mall, it became increasingly clear that we would not each get to have a one-on-one interview with Gaiman, that we would not each be able to impress him with our wit and casual intellectualism thereby earning his favor and eternal friendship. No, that pipe-dream was as distant as a movie adaptation of Sandman. Instead we were each allowed to ask him one question, the results of which appear below…

Chelsea Bauch, Dorkscape:
Trickster figures frequently appear in your work—from Low Key (ie. Loki) in American Gods to Lucifer in Sandman. What is it that you find so interesting about the archetype?

Neil Gaiman: Part of the joy of tricksters as characters is their utter randomness. They obviously belong very, very deep in the human psyche. All of the stories that we have, going all the way back, have trickster characters in them. And they’re not heroes. And they’re not gods. And they’re not villains. Although sometimes they wear all of these roles. The Native American trickster figures are wonderful because they’re as likely to create the world as they are to have their penises cut off while trying to make love to somebody else’s wife. It’s all part of the same thing. I think that, as a storyteller, it’s that wonderful random element. You can be fairly sure when entering the story of what your hero is and what your villain is, but if you have a trickster on the scene then anything can happen.

Nancy O. Greene, Pen in Hand:
There tends to be a gap between what’s considered literary and what’s not. Since you won the World Fantasy Award for Sandman how do you think the gap is narrowing between those two schools of thought on what’s literary and what’s not?

NG: I got lucky because Norman Mailer read Sandman and said something like “Sandman is a comic book for intellectuals and I think it’s about time.” That kind of changed all the rules for me. It changed all the rules in that people started thinking that if Norman Mailer said it’s ok, then maybe it’s not trash literature. The truth is it’s not something I ever give any thought to. I figure that I get to have the best of all possible worlds in that I write what I want, it all gets published, and afterwards people can argue about whether it’s high culture or low culture or pop culture, people can argue about whether or not I get taken seriously or whether I should be taken seriously. But none of that has anything to do with what I do. I sit down and I make stuff up, write it to the best of my ability then put it out into the world. It only ever dawns on me that I’m technically high culture too when I learn that I’m being taught in colleges and universities. But that’s not on my agenda. My agenda is to tell stories.

Ben Walker, Orphanim Media:
Have there been any times that you’ve had a fanboy brain melt?

NG: Yes, it’s happened many, many times. The only one that somehow leaps out of my consciousness was the first time I was introduced to Samuel R. Delany. It was one of those moments where my friend Steven Bruce said “Neil I want you to meet Samuel R. Delany.” I just started doing that thing where you look down at your shoes and you shuffle a bit and I’m going “Oh my God, Mr. Delany this is just such an honor and I’ve been a fan of yours since I could read.” Then I look over and I realize he’s saying, “Oh Mr. Gaiman, this is absolutely an honor.” I’m thinking: You can’t do that! You are not allowed to look at your shoes and shuffle. You’re Samuel R. f*cking Delany and I demand the right to be the one who’s standing here being the fan. It was sort of a mutual fanboy meltdown.

This morning I went to the White House breakfast because if it wasn’t for Laura Bush this thing would not exist. There is no guarantee we’re going to have one next year. I hope we will, but this was actually founded by Laura Bush. She is a librarian and whatever I think politically of things, I’m going to the White House breakfast. And I vaguely assume that being a White House breakfast it will be like any other time I set my foot on federal property, where you’re not allowed to have any kind of instrument. But of course I could have brought and the cameras I wanted. As I’m standing there grumbling to Salman Rushdie that I had no picture taking equipment, he says “Oh, I’ll take a photo of you on my phone.” So Salman takes a photo of me and my daughter standing in front of a Lincoln painting with John Scieszka in the background showing off his medal. Then I was posting it on my blog this morning because I’d got back to the hotel and there’s the email form Salman and I realized that I live in a really strange world. The main reason that I don’t get the celebrity meltdown is I started life as a journalist and I started life doing celebrity interviews. Twenty-five years ago that’s what I was doing and it sort of inoculated me. And, looking back at it, and those are my heroes who I met have remained my heroes. People like Alan Moore and Terry Gilliam who I thought were cool before I met them, were even cooler once I met them and got to know them as friends.

Bill Thompson, Eye on Books:
What do you take away from the Vulcan mindmeld of your fellow wizards at a place like this?

NG: Except for geeking out about Batman with Brad Meltzer this morning, you normally don’t get to talk to your fellow wizards. When you do, you’re saying things like “Is there any more coffee?” or “Do you mind if I sit over there?” and “My microphone works fine.” You’re not sitting there back in the VIP tent saying: “Let’s talk about adjectives and the nature of fiction.” Instead you’re talking about the coffee. But I think these things are really for authors and readers to interact. The joy for me is looking at them all and you’ve got 120,000 people and they all care about books, they all care about reading. And they are all ages and sizes and some of them are here because they’re librarians and teachers, but most of them are here because they’re human beings and they think that words on paper are important. That meeting between authors and artists and readers is the real meeting of the wizards.