10 Questions with Neil Gaiman

Neil Gaiman: I think that one of the biggest problems that faces us is that people don't understand each other's belief systems -- political, religious, or even recreational. The extreme end of that is war, of course. And it's a lot harder to demonise people if you know what they think or believe or dream.

HD: What mythology would you like to explore more fully?

NG: I loved learning about Slavic myths while I was researching American Gods, and was frustrated that there wasn't more information around. (Most of it was burned, or the people who believed in it were.) We're lucky how much of the Norse myths have survived -- I miss the ones that weren't so lucky.

Michael Link: Do you ever concern yourself with the critical or popular biases associated with science fiction, fantasy, or graphic novels?

NG: What would be the point? I started writing comics because I thought it was an art form I could do things in that hadn't been done before. If I'd believed the people who had told me that comics were, by their nature, incapable of being art, or even good, I would never have made all those stories.

And the other fields I've worked in -- Fantasy, or Children's Fiction, or Horror -- tend to be critically looked down on as gutter literature by a certain sort of reader (comics weren't even in the gutter when I started writing them. We were some kind of sub-drain. You looked up to the gutter). Personally, I think the imagination is the most important thing we have, and despising it seems a very foolish thing to do. But there must be people who are happier without it.

HD: Aside from the people with whom you have worked, who inspires you?

NG: Musicians -- Thea Gilmore, Stephin Merritt, Tori Amos, Lou Reed. Sondheim. Artists -- Dave McKean, Charles Vess, Kelli Bickman, Frank Pape, Harry Clarke. And all manner of poets and writers... too many to list here, truly.

ML: As the architect of the story, you collaborate with illustrators, directors, editors, and others who interpret your ideas. How do you find this experience?

NG: I love collaborating. And I love being in control too. As long as I get both I'm fine.

HD: You have created a pantheon of characters throughout your career. Who are some of your favorite but overlooked creations?

NG: It's hard to tell who's overlooked but -- Merv Pumpkinhead and Wilkinson the Rat from Sandman; Miss Spink and Miss Forcible in Coraline; Czernobog in American Gods.

ML: When your characters are illustrated they become, to a certain extent, visually defined in a reader’s mind. How do you feel about this as a writer?

NG: Fine. When talking about comics, anyway. With something like American Gods I'd rather that the reader gets the Shadow in his head. But then, that's why I wrote it as prose.

ML: You seem to enjoy writing children’s literature that has a slightly menacing edge to it. As a parent, do you find a preponderance of literature for children to be saccharine or simplistic?

NG: I don't know about a preponderance, but there's a lot of bad children's books out there (as Theodore Sturgeon pointed out, 90% of everything is crap). There's certainly a lot more edgy fiction for kids around now than there was when I began Coraline.

When I was a boy I used to like reading ghost stories and scary stuff. As an adult, writing for kids, I like adding something scary around the edges, something I would have I hope enjoyed when I was a boy.

ML: What is on your desk?

NG: A computer. Several CDs. A dead beetle. (This is the desk in the gazebo in the woods I retreat to sometimes. The beetle came under his own steam.)

HD: As a writer and as a reader, what most excites you about your new work, Fragile Things?

NG: As a writer, it's fun to assemble eight years of short fictions and to see what they look like when you put them all in the same book. I didn't realise there were so many repeating themes (and even a few repeating phrases) until I read all the stories for the audio book. Still, they're different enough that, like a box of chocolates, if there's one you don't like you can abandon it behind a potted plant and probably the next will be more to your taste.