“Interesting places are rubbish!”

I’ve just got­ten back into town after a trip to Helena to see author Neil Gaiman in per­son at the Montana Library Association’s annual con­ven­tion. The English writer, who’s behind such graphic novel hits at the “Sandman” series and nov­els like Good Omens and American Gods, read an unpub­lished short story and answered audi­ence ques­tions before sign­ing books–and yes, I got my copy of Fragile Things autographed.

My impres­sions... Well, I’ve been a fan of Gaiman ever since pick­ing up an odd anthol­ogy of “Sandman” from comic fiend Colby Park, who used to work at the MSU Renne Library with me. From there, it was a short hop to Good Omens, which he coau­thored with Terry Pratchett. There was some­thing about their tone that gripped me from the first page. I don’t know what to call it except irrev­er­ence; the small­est details, the most mun­dane wan­der­ings, took on an impor­tance in the story that I’d only imag­ined. I sup­pose it had some­thing to do with some­thing Michael Sexson once said dur­ing an under­grad­u­ate class I took from him: “Digression is the art of sto­ry­telling.” When I read that book, I had phys­i­cal evi­dence that Sexson was right.

On top of that won­der­fully wan­der­ing style that incor­po­rates myth and fan­tasy and real­ity in a way that few oth­ers have done, decon­struct­ing the idea of genre as he goes, Gaiman has a won­der­ful pres­ence and voice. On a trip, we once lis­tened to an audio­book of him read­ing a few of his short sto­ries. His charm­ing accent is put to full use in a voice that was cre­ated to tell sto­ries. I’ve heard Stephen King’s voice. If King could speak as well as Gaiman, he would tran­scend fully into god­hood for me.

Nothing that Gaiman said was par­tic­u­larly sur­pris­ing. Many answers seemed canned, like sto­ries he’s told a thou­sand audi­ences before. But there’s still some­thing to be said for see­ing him in per­son, stand­ing two feet away from some­body with that sort of imag­i­na­tion, spend­ing $12 on his books. Plus, the guys got about a quar­ter bil­lion dol­lars’ worth of movies com­ing out this year, includ­ing Beowulf and Coraline. It’s hot year for him, and I’m glad I got to expe­ri­ence it in person.

Oh, the title of the post: it’s one of two things Gaiman said that I’ll type here. First of all, some­one asked him what helped inspire him. Gaiman said that bor­ing places inspire him, and that inter­est­ing places were com­pletely worth­less for mus­ing. I liked that thought, and I know I’ve expe­ri­enced some­thing sim­i­lar when sit­ting through a few bad plays or movies.

Second, Gaiman recited what he calls “Gaiman’s Law”: If you man­age to get a book pub­lished, the first thing that you will see when you open up that shiny advance copy is a typo­graphic error.

I hope I get to find out.

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