The View from the Cheap Seats

The View from the Cheap Seats: Selected Nonfiction by Neil Gaiman  522 pp.

This is a collection of articles, essays, reviews, book introductions, and columns compiled into one volume. While there is a bit of repetition, it is another look at the work of the prolific novelist whose work crosses genres. (There is an article about genre in the collection.) While most of it is concerned with literature, films, or music, there is some biographical material, and small bits of his personal life, as well as a first hand account of a visit to a Syrian refugee camp. I am surprised at how much I enjoyed this collection. After listening to the audiobook read by Gaiman, I came away thinking that this is a man with whom I could be friends. I'm also going to find some of the books he refers to and read them, beginning with Thurber's The Thirteen Clocks.

A View from the Cheap Seats: Selected Nonfictions

A View from the Cheap Seats: Selected Nonfictions by Neil Gaiman, 522 pages.

I read this collection of essays, book review, movie reviews, and biographical bits early this year and I know that it has stuck with me since I have listened to music he talked about, including Amanda Palmer's band The Dresden Dolls, and I have read 4 or 5 of the books he talked about. Neil Gaiman has a lot of interests and he can make anything interesting.

Farther Away / Jonathan Franzen 321 pp.

A collection of essays and long book reviews from 2005-ish until publication in 2012. Most notably there are Franzen's eulogy for David Foster Wallace and a long essay he wrote about grieving his friend which involved a trip to a remote Chilean island. I gather that some thought Franzen may have been too honest in his assessment of his friend, or insufficiently hagiographic. Not knowing a great deal about DFW but being well-acquainted with loving a sick and self-destructive human being, I would say that Franzen was extremely generous. And in general I noticed in this collection how frequently he writes about love: of parents, siblings, and friends, in addition to the kind between partners. Given that the long novel Freedom was, to my view, an examination of how human beings can do the work of loving one another, I find this focus beautifully old-fashioned in a way that compensates for some of the grumpier pieces, on technology, for example. The book reviews have expanded my to-read list: Christina Stead's The Man Who Loved Children, Paula Fox's Desperate Characters, and The Hundred Brothers by Donald Antrim.