That was who I was … that was what I did. I was the kid with the book. Sitting in a white-walled restaurant overlooking the beach at Bondi, it seems entirely likely that Gaiman still has a book secreted somewhere about his person, in his black jacket or jeans or shirt pocket. But his greatest love was for Lord of the Rings. Aged 12, J.
Tolkien's classic became his model for supreme creative achievement. So I built this elaborate fantasy in which I would always need to travel with a copy of Lord of the Rings, just in case I slipped into an alternate universe which was exactly the same as ours, except there was no Lord of the Rings.
Then — voila! He smiles, sipping his drink. I realised that just sending my copy of the book to the publisher wouldn't work; but I also knew I couldn't type. So my plan was to persuade an adult to type the whole manuscript, which I would then send off to the publisher. Gaiman is 57 this year, but his childhood in the south of England still seems extremely, almost supernaturally, close.
Indeed, it's one of the defining characteristics of his writing. Chesterton again: "Children feel the whiteness of the lily with a graphic and passionate clearness which we cannot give them at all. He remembers having his arm accidentally dislocated by his father when he was three; the moment became the inciting incident in his most significant early graphic novel, Violent Cases. He remembers his family's white Mini suddenly disappearing from the garage when he was seven.
A family lodger used it to gas himself one night after a disastrous gambling loss; Gaiman's father sold it the next day. This event became the basis of the novel The Ocean at the End of the Lane. His pharmacist mother, Sheila, and businessman father, David, were simultaneously English, Jewish and passionate Scientologists David was the church's chief UK media spokesperson for many years, and a member of its highest international management arm, the Watchdog Committee.
His younger sister, Claire Edwards, is a prominent Scientologist, and his mother, elder sister Lizzy and ex-wife Mary McGrath have all been reported as current church members. Though he's distanced himself from the sect over the past 20 years, Gaiman was raised a Scientologist. But he is also Jewish, and he attended Anglican schools. I realised that on the one hand not everyone can be right, but on the other hand you can all be as right as you want, because you are arguing about things that, mostly, are imaginary.
This is true, but disingenuous, since for Gaiman the imaginary is the most powerful force of all. How is that working? This real-world underpinning of his fantastic tales may be the ultimate key to Gaiman's success. Not for him the straightforward escape of Middle Earth or Westeros: he weaves his hammer-wielding gods and teenage witches into the fabric of everyday life so that they catch at the edges of his readers' vision.
And in this, he appeals to something profound in the human psyche — something buried, perhaps, after we lose the immanence of childhood. He makes us believe in magic, even as we know we don't. For the past several years, Neil Gaiman has been spending significant amounts of time in Australia. He and Palmer — lead singer of the Dresden Dolls, controversial crowd-sourcing musical activist and feminist provocateur — met in in a New York green room, when, as Palmer has written, "Neil looked like hell and had a black eye his dog gave it to him and I looked according to Neil pudgy and mannish and absolutely 'not his type'.
Famously, they have an open relationship, about which Gaiman has said, "It works okay currently because we have people we can kiss all over the world. If we both lived in a small town and never left, we might decide it was easier to have a closed relationship. Or we might not. So far, it's really good. We're very aware of each other, and we would not allow another relationship to imperil what we have.
Sunday Times No. I think of…. By the Author. Chivalry From the award-winning creators Neil Gaiman and Colleen Doran comes a stunning new graphic novel. The Neil Gaiman Reader 'This collection is [like] the Beatles' "White Album": massive in size and scope, with individually brilliant pieces presented together because the only context they need….
The American Gods Quartet Collected together for the first time, the extraordinary American Gods quartet from bestselling author and master storyteller Neil Gaiman. Good Omens The internationally beloved novel by dream literary collaborators and internationally bestselling writers, Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman. Art Matters Seize the day in the name of art. Troll Bridge Troll Bridge, a tale from the mind of Sunday Times bestselling writer Neil Gaiman, has been beautifully adapted for the first time by Eisner Award-winning….
Trigger Warning: Short Fictions and Disturbances In Trigger Warning, global phenomenon and Sunday Times bestselling author Neil Gaiman returns to dazzle, captivate, haunt, and entertain with this third collection of short….
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