The View From The Cheap Seats

The Amazing Mr Gaiman

If there’s any reader out there who has not read Neil Gaiman’s wonderful fantasy stories, graphic novels and children’s fiction, they have missed something!

Gaiman started his writing career as a journalist (“backed awkwardly away from journalism because I wanted the freedom to make things up” as he so eloquently puts it), then moved to fiction, but this collection of his non-fiction, intriguingly titled The View From The Cheap Seats, is not just a great read, but like an introduction to the world of sci-fi and fantasy writing, because a lot of the pieces here are warm and humorous tributes to the masters of the genre—like HP Lovecraft, Stephen King, Terry Pratchett, Douglas Adams, Ray Bradbury, Samuel R Delany—writers who have inspired him and some who went on to become his friends.

There is of course, a lot more in this splendid collection; every bookworm will relate to his memories of libraries, and every nerd will hang on to his impressions of comics, graphic novels, the world of film and TV, and music—nuggets from his amazing and prolific career.

The book is wise, funny, amazingly gracious (writers seldom pay such tributes to other writers). A lot of pieces in this collection are forewords to books, keynote addresses at events, or homages to writers who passed away.

Besides being a very readable and inspiring book, The View from The Cheap Seats, but an invaluable cultural history of sorts. The fact that his journalistic writing can be as powerful as his fiction is proved by the piece he wrote about a refugee camp in Jordan. If such a variety of fine writing, does not induce writer’s envy, what will?  Read, keep, dip into the book from time to time and refuse to lend it.

The View from The Cheap Seats

By Neil Gaiman

Publisher: HarperCollins

Pages: 544