The View from the Cheap Seats: Selected Nonfiction

I read this book 5 or 6 years ago when it was first published and felt the need to read it again a couple of weeks ago.

If you're a good friend of mine then you know that I love ANYTHING written by Neil Gaiman and have ever since I first discovered his writing when someone recommended I read “Neverwhere” about 25 years ago.

The View From the Cheap Seats is a collection of forewords, prefaces, or introductions to books he has written; a compendium of introductions of other famous people he has written and verbally presented at Science Fiction, Fantasy, and Comic Book conventions; articles he has written about people, books, music, and even the Syrian refugee crisis; as well as a smattering of work he did early on as a journalist before becoming a writer of fiction. (His Lou Reed interview was astonishing in the depth of his knowledge of Reed's music, and the fact that he asked questions in such a way that Reed did not hang up on him, as he had done with so many journalists, but rather stayed on right up until he HAD to go be on stage for a concert he was giving.)

And as much as I have loved his novels, short stories, and other works of fiction (even his “children's” books), The View From the Cheap Seats holds an entirely different level of love from me for his writing for a couple of reasons.

First and foremost; when I read his works of fiction I ‘hear” his characters' voices, inflections, tones, etc. based on either what he has written about them and how they speak or, if I have to imagine the characters voices, it is because he has described the character in ways that I assign a certain voice to them. I think we all do that in our heads, whether we actively think about it or not.

When I read this collection, every little bit is in Neil Gaiman's voice which I love to listen to for some reason. It may be the accent, but I think it is probably more because he is as careful and yet delightfully free with his spoken words as he is with his written ones. Some people can speak so eloquently and yet that eloquence never makes it into their written words, others have the exact opposite problem. Neil Gaiman has mastered both.

Secondly, we learn so much about his personal life; his youth, his likes and dislikes, people he has known, why he likes some things and doesn't like others, how he views people and the world and more importantly, himself. When he writes a movie review, an author dedication or a preface to another writer's book I find myself either comparing my takeaway or making notes of the title or author or writer so I can remember to look into each of those myself to see what I can come away from them feeling after I'm done. Will I feel the same? Or will I have a different view? Will I find what he found, or will I miss it altogether?

If you have not yet read The View From the Cheap Seats, I wholeheartedly recommend you do so, especially if you're a Neil Gaiman fan. And if you've already read it, do what I did and re-read it again. Like the majority of Neil Gaiman's work, it is as good as or better the second time around.