6stronghands:

I went to a Neil Gaiman reading last night. It was really nice.

He said he hid from David Bowie when they were staying in the same little town (he was talking about meeting your heroes and how it’s a crapshoot, sometimes they’re even cooler irl, sometimes they’re lame, and he didn’t want to risk it with someone as formative to his life as Bowie). It was a clever misdirect from Gaiman regarding a question about how many of his friends and idols have died in the past few years. You could tell the audience really wanted him to talk about PTerry and he really didn’t want to, which is fine, my goodness. It really upset me when I heard about Pratchett’s death; I can’t imagine how a much more of a loss it is for his creative partner and lifelong friend.

Gaiman seemed burdened; he’s still working on the Good Omens show, even through this book tour. It didnt take away from the evening – if anything, his vulnerability brought an affirming immediacy, a rallying sense of “We’re all in this together, we’re all tired and sad, but here’s why books and stories are more important than ever.”

He’s always had great tenderness under all of his punk-rock pathos, something his introduction pointed out, and that sensitivity seemed a bit bruised and battered last night. It was interesting to watch him get sharper and funnier as the night wore on, to watch him tap into a lifetime of writing discipline and public speaking experience to connect to his audience in spite of obvious grief and fatigue. I’m interested to see how his emotional landscape affects future writing; I’d wager that it will make him better than ever, that his sorrow will carve out just as cool, just as weird, but even more humane art.

He talked about the importance of escapism, how those kinds of stories free us from the daily grind of life, how dreams become real, how imagination can and does shape reality.

He talked about how important it is to support kids by letting them read things they like, that there’s no such thing as a bad children’s book, that we need to avoid the Victorian mindset of “enriching literature.” He cautioned teachers and parents that reading is the thing, not the kind of reading.

(My daughter was raised in a very booky home: I took her to the library weekly, read to her every night, played audiobooks in the car, went as a family to storytelling festivals, etc. But all of that couldn’t compete with bad teachers who assigned bad books, or who assigned good books {but never sci-fi/fantasy books, ever} and then handed out 20 page homework packets so young students would deconstruct and analyze something like Winn-Dixie or Shiloh to the point of revulsion. {She had to read that Winn-Dixie book in 3rd, 4th AND 5th grade, damn that school to hell}. She refused any recreational reading by the age of 13. {Remember years ago when Meg Cabot worried about this very thing in the New York Times and people flipped out? Like, how dare anyone, let alone a ‘frivolous’ YA female author suggest that the American school system was failing its children by regurgitating racist, sexist, BORING AS HECK books in its curriculum? Cabot was right, then, and Gaiman is right, now: if you let kids read what they want, especially escapism, they’ll become readers, they’ll WANT to read}. Do you know what got my kid to read again?? THE TWILIGHT AND GOSSIP GIRL SERIES. I will forever love S. Meyer because she jumpstarted my child’s reading habit after her teachers killed it. Some of you YA tumblr cops need to calm down, let kids read what they want ffs).

Gaiman amended this advice with an anecdote about his daughter. When she was 11, she loved the R.L. Stein books, and he said, well, if you like those books you’ll LOVE this one, and gave her ‘Carrie’ to read. To this day, she glares at him if she hears the name Stephen King.

He read a funny Thor-being-very-Thor story from his Norse Mythology book, and a terrific ALA speech about the importance of modern libraries, then ended with a couple of pages from Good Omens where Aziraphale and Crowley get drunk and talk about divine interference.

He truly is one of the most gifted speakers I’ve ever heard. He used his gentle, medodious voice, his expert pacing, while describing the ancient, sensory pleasure of humans gathering around a fire at the end of a long day’s work to listen to a storyteller, transporting for an hour or two into better worlds, leaving the hearthside freer and lighter and more thoughtful. He said we find ourselves in books, find other people, our people, who reach across time and distance to tell us we’re not alone, that we’re not strange, we’re not defeated, that there’s always wonder and possibility… at least in the pages of a book.

I hope Neil Gaiman gets time by his fire to sit and read, after he’s completed Terry’s last wish. I hope he finds warmth there, finds some of the comfort and maybe some of magic that he shared with me, with my people, last night.