THE VIEW FROM THE CHEAP SEATS. SELECTED NON-FICTION. BY NEIL GAIMAN. Headline. $29.99.
Reviewer: COLIN STEELE
When Neil Gaiman came to Canberra nearly a decade ago for a Canberra Times /ANU Meet the Author event, he stayed long after the signing session talking to fans and did not get back to the Hyatt Hotel until after midnight. Now we would be unlikely to host him to Canberra, given his subsequent rise in global popularity.
Gaiman has a busy media time ahead for the rest of 2016. A TV series of American Gods will be released this year, while four of Gaiman's Likely Stories are being adapted as a Sky TV series in Britain.
Gaiman has, however, always had a sceptical view of media celebrity, a sentiment confirmed after attending the 2010 Academy Awards ceremony, when Coraline was nominated for best animated feature film. The non-fiction collection, The View from the Cheap Seats, takes its name from Gaiman's essay about those Academy Awards.
The collection comprises 550 pages, with 84 chapters arranged in 10 subject sections. Gaiman has stated: "It's not every speech, introduction or article I've written, but it's all the speeches that seemed important, all the articles I was still proud of, all the introductions that seemed to be about something bigger than just telling people about the book or author they were going to read."
Gaiman, who lives in America, begins with a personal credo, concluding that "in the battle between guns and ideas, ideas will eventually win". His 2013 lecture for the UK Reading Agency, champions the "Freedom to read, freedom of ideas and freedom of communication".
Quoting statistics that, "half of all the prisoners in the United Kingdom have a reading age of an 11-year-old", Gaiman argues strongly on behalf of education, libraries and reading, Gaiman's compassionate views on humanity are evidenced in the essay So Many Ways To Die, describing his visit to a Syrian refugee camp in 2014.
Gaiman recalls the books and comics he read, with the approval of parents, who "didn't have any kind of rules about what I couldn't read". He ranges over favourite authors such as Terry Pratchett, Stephen King, Edgar Allen Poe, Ray Bradbury and James Thurber.
The work of musicians Lou Reed and his wife Amanda Palmer are covered in chapters, especially Gaiman's attendance at Palmer's Dresden Dolls Halloween performance in 2010. His long section on comics reflects his deep personal involvement in the genre, arguing, through accounts of the various versions of the Sandman comic, that comic books should be taken seriously within literary circles.
The View from the Cheap Seats is a book to dip into, not only for the insights into Gaiman's life, especially his childhood and teenage years, but also for his accounts of books, films, art and music that have influenced him. It will have considerable appeal beyond Gaiman's many fans.
