the dream king: neil gaiman

neil gaiman dusts off old stories and makes them new. he takes new stories and makes them appear antique. he shapes seemingly discordant mythologies and morphs them into a comprehensive whole. he sees the threads that connect us as a people, as a race--and he sees what divides us. many of his characters have near limitless powers but show a graceful restraint.

my favorite of his works is the sandman series, a comic book series that takes up 10 volumes and follows the story of Morpheus, the Dream King and one of the Endless. the Endless are seven entities that are constant throughout existence. the Endless are Destiny, Death, Dream, Destruction, Despair, Desire, and Delirium. they are siblings, but have no parents. they are more than mere gods and each have their own roles and agendas in the lives of men. in this mythology gods are actually born in the Dreaming, Morpheus' realm, and walk out into the world to gain power. as their influence wanes and their worshipers desert them, gods take different roles and eventually die.

the sandman series is too complex to enter a cogent and satisfactory synopsis here. this is instead meant to be my tribute to neil gaiman the author. but when i think of gaiman, i am always compelled to think of the sandman as well. i first read the entire series the summer after junior year of college. i had somehow gotten wind of them and picked up the first book. by serendipity i found almost all the rest at a used bookstore and bought them all up ravenously. i tore threw them all.

that summer, i worked alone. i worked summer maintenance for a storage company. i would go around to all the different storage facility locations in the north/southwest chicago suburbs and paint bollards fresh coats of yellow, clean empty storage units and use a floor cleaner to clean up the hallways of a dozen or so of these places. all i had for company was my ipod and my thoughts. what i thought most about was the sandman, the different storylines and characters, the implications and presuppositions of the mythology, the allusions made throughout the work. i thought about the small things--the names of the books in the dreaming's library which were only dreamt and never written, for instance--and i relished in them. they were an occupation for a lonely mind. i thought so much about the sandman that i think i experienced at least somewhat lucid dreaming.

i have read other books by him since, and they have shown the same sort of ability to play upon the dreams and nightmares of the reader. he has the keen and unique gift of being able to write both description and dialogue exceedingly well (something very envious to me, as in my few feeble attempts to write fiction, i have never been happy with a single line of dialogue).

from an nationality perspective, he is the opposite of what i would like to be: he is an englishman living in america, and i am an american who wants to live in england. to me this is just another of the many things that appeals to me about mr. gaiman.

i could go on incessantly. i will end with three suggestions for reading material:

1. the sandman series.

2. american gods.

3. murder mysteries.

start there, and keep reading.