Monday November 16, 2009

Journey to the East

By MICHAEL CHEANG

The irrepressible Neil Gaiman just can’t help spinning story after story, even as he looks for new pastures to conquer.

ONCE upon a time, there was a very famous storyteller. His wonderful stories were read and loved by millions, and everywhere he went, he was greeted like a rock star by screaming fans. The Storyteller’s name was Neil Gaiman.

Captivated: ‘It’s those amazing characters, those wonderful stories, the intricate plot, this glorious plot that jerks from mysticism to Chinese culture, and the journey with this wonderful magical group. And I love the fact that there is a Monkey God!,’ says Neil Gaiman of his fascination with Journey To The West.

Gaiman’s wildly imaginative stories have been told in every medium imaginable – from graphic tales about a maker of Dreams and his sister Death; novels about American gods and fairy stardust; short stories about smoke, mirrors and fragile things; children’s books about girls who defeat button-eyed demons and boys who live in graveyards; and even films about mirrormasks and human statues.

One day, on Oct 30, to be exact, The Storyteller arrived at a little island nation a bridge away from the Malaysian city of Johor Baru, where he told his stories at an event that celebrated master storytellers and writers like him – the Singapore Writer’s Festival.

Tickets to his talks were snapped up within minutes, and over 900 people (some dressed up as his characters Destiny, Death, Dream, Desire, Despair and Delirium) crowded into the Art House’s Victoria Hall just to hear him speak. And for five long hours after that, The Storyteller gamely sat down and signed copies of everything his fans thrust in front of him – from old and new copies of his Sandman comics, novels, and even movie posters, whilst cheered on by his girlfriend and own personal Dresden Doll, Amanda Palmer.

Seemingly dressed always in black, Gaiman could not help but tell stories everywhere he went.

It didn’t matter whether it was at an intimate press conference with less than 10 journalists, or a festival panel filled with over 900 fanatic fans – ask him the simplest of questions, and he will spin you tales of big hairy authors, eccentric directors and amazing experiences that are so intriguing and fascinating that they could only be true (see accompanying story on Page 3 for some of these not-so-tall tales).

Monkey story

Not content with making up stories through his fiction and comics, Gaiman, 49, is currently taking on a genre that he has yet to master – non-fiction. He will be writing what seems like a sprawling take on the classic Chinese literature Journey To The West (better known by the title Monkey in Western countries, ironically enough).

It is a project that has seen him undertaking his very own journey to the West through China. “I set off last year to do my own journey to the West. I followed both the routes of Monkey and the real-life Xuanzang, who in the seventh century defied the imperial rulers and went off on a thousand-mile journey to the West to retrieve the Buddhist scrolls,” he recalled.

A touch of fantasy: A cosplay enthusiast (left) dressed as Dream from Neil Gaiman’s graphic novel Sandman posing with his friends.

As such, the book will be about three different things – the real-life Xuanzang’s journey, the fictitious Journey To The West, and Gaiman’s own journey.

Why is Gaiman so fascinated with the Journey To The West?

“There is a reason why Journey To The West is one of the classics of literature and have worked as well as they have,” he explained. “It’s those amazing characters, those wonderful stories, the intricate plot, this glorious plot that jerks from mysticism to Chinese culture, and the journey with this wonderful magical group. And I love the fact that there is a Monkey God!

He also attributed it to the fact that every other conversation he had with people about Chinese literature would always come to Journey To The West and the Monkey God; and his own peculiar personal relationship with Monkey.

“The only book in my life that I have really missed was a gift from my father which he bought before I was born. It was this incredibly beautiful hardback illustrated version of Monkey that he bought for me, his child-to-be,” said Gaiman, who himself has three children – Michael, Holly, and Madeline – with his ex-wife;

“Unfortunately, he was never able to find it seven or eight years later when he wanted to give it to me. So since then, I imagined Monkey to be a glorious, magical book, and have been fascinated by the story ever since,” said the Portchester, England-born writer, who currently resides in Minneapolis, in Minnesota, US.

Writing, then and now

The writing of the Monkey book (as he refers to it) will probably take up most of 2010; and though it will be essentially a non-fiction book, he is expecting to include some elements of fiction into it somewhere.

“I don’t know how to write without some fiction elements creeping in around the edges. There was also a moment where I was tempted to make it a completely fictional reinterpretation of the story. But then I might have wound up producing something that was less than the original,” he said, adding that writing a non-fiction book was also something he had to do.

A scene from Coraline, the stopmotion animation movie directed by Henry Selick and based on Neil Gaiman’s book of the same name for young readers.

“I think it’s really good for writers to do stuff they are not very good at or don’t know how to do. I haven’t written a non-fiction book since Don’t Panic in 1997, and it’s time for me to do something fundamentally non-fiction,” he said.

The way he writes these days has also changed a lot in the years he’s been writing, because everything he did when he started out was new and fresh and had never been written before.

“I think I used to love writing more. I used to love the process more, partly because anything I was writing then was being written for the first time, and any idea I had, I was having for the first time,” he mused. “Now, it’s harder for me to do something I’ve never done before, and even when I start something I think I’ve never done before, I can perceive echoes of previous ways that I’ve done things.”

Directing Death

Having already conquered writing, Gaiman has been searching out new pastures – most notably in the world of film. He recently directed an eight-and-a-half-minute short film called Statuesque for British-based Sky TV, starring Bill Nighy and Amanda Palmer.

“The film is about a man who falls in love with a human statue while another human statue falls in love with him,” he explained.

“The idea came from the fact that before Amanda was a rock star, she used to be a human statue. I realised it was a great idea for a silent movie.”

It was the first time Gaiman had complete control of an entire film, and he found it a glorious and wonderful experience.

“In some ways it spoiled me, but also confirmed to me that I had two choices when it comes to making movies. I could either hire someone I trust completely and sell the rights to him, like I did with Coraline and Stardust, or I could do it myself,” he said.

One movie he was supposed to direct but will not be doing so in the near future is the adaptation of Death: High Cost Of Living. According to him, the movie was on the verge of being green-lit in 2007, when trouble started brewing at New Line Pictures, where the movie was supposed to be made.

“Everything was looking great. Pretty much immediately after that, New Line and Warner Bros got into an internal power struggle. After that New Line Pictures vanished and became a filing cabinet somewhere in the Warner Bros building, and so they no longer had any power to go ahead with this film,” said Gaiman, who said things were also made harder by the fact that the character of Death is owned by DC Comics, which in turn is owned by Warner Brothers, who according to him, do not do “cute little films like Death: The High Cost Of Living.”

“What I’m afraid of now is by the time they do decide to make it, the script would be 15 years old and I wouldn’t want to do it anymore, or won’t have the time to do it. That would be really sad,” he said.

Still, with all the stories Neil the Storyteller has left to tell, retelling an old story would probably be the least of his concerns. He also has a musical stage version of Coraline in the pipeline (which he is hoping to collaborate on with Stephin Merritt of the band Magnetic Fields), as well as a movie based on The Graveyard Book (to be directed by Neil Jordan, Oscar-winning director of The Crying Game).

And that is on top of writing the Monkey book, and countless other novels, short stories and comic books in the future. Still, whatever he chooses to do, you can always be sure of one thing – he will never stop telling those wonderful stories.

Related Story:
Stranger than fiction