The New Yorker on Neil Gaiman

For some reason I’m kind of fascinated by Neil Gaiman. I can’t really point to why — I was never a fan of Sandman and only relatively recently read Good Omens; I like the film adaptation of Coraline quite a bit, but I never read the book — other that to say that I find him really interesting as a personality type. One of the first famous bloggers, he’s always come across as someone who is genuinely pleasant to be around, kind to fans, etc., as well as an absolute idea factory, the sort of guy who has to walk around with a notebook to jot down everything that comes to mind, and is then able to turn those jots into full length stories without too much effort.

For example, he just tosses off this idea in the New Yorker like it’s nothing:

If he had not been a writer, he says, he would have wanted to design religions. “I’d have a little shop, and people would phone up or come into the shop and they’d say, ‘I’d like a religion,’ ” he said. “And I’d say, ‘Cool, O.K. Where do you stand on guilt, and how do you want to fund it? And would you like sort of a belief in the universe as a huge beneficent organ? Or would you like something more complex?’ And they’d say, ‘Oh, we’d like God to be really big on guilt.’ And I’d say, ‘O.K., how does Wednesday sound to you as a sacred day?’”

Now I’m sure this is something he’s thought of before, so it’s not quite tossed off or off the top of his head or anything like that, but it strikes me as a brilliant idea for a short story at least, if not a novel. The way that New Yorker piece reads, it sounds like he comes up with stuff like that all the time. I would kill for just a thimbleful of his talent. Well, okay, I probably wouldn’t kill. Just maim a little.

Anyway, you should read the whole thing. Bonus web content: A q and a with the author of the piece, Dana Goodyear and Gaiman.