So a bunch of ILLs that I had given up on all came in at once and it’s like a Denis Johnson buffet: The Veil, Seek, Resuscitation of a Hanged Man, The Throne of the Third Heaven of the Nations Millennium General Assembly. And I’m so overwhelmed, because I’ve just finished Don’t Panic (Neil Gaiman’s book on Douglas Adams) and I’m just about to start on Volume 9 of The Sandman, and there’s no way I can stop until it’s done.
And I don’t. The thing about Neil Gaiman is that he’s constantly making all these literary/mythological/philosophical allusions, like, “Look chap, this isn’t just another silly comic book — I’ve read Marlowe, and I’m bloody serious here.” But the thing about me is that I don’t care because he’s not just shit-talking. Yeah I love the baby gargoyle and the image of Delirium walking a goldfish that acts more like a balloon. I love Lucien and his library of books that never were. But mostly I love that Gaiman somehow created a world where Cain and Loki and Morpheus coexist, that his world is big enough and complex enough for it all to make perfect sense.
And Don’t Panic? Well it’s mostly about HHGTG, secondarily about Adams himself, and calling it by its stuffy-sounding technical name (“literary biography”) doesn’t quite do it justice. Gaiman doesn’t try to imitate Adams’ humor, but he kind of overlaps in places. The weirdness is in the perspective, I think — the first edition was finished before Adams’ death, but it’s been updated since then. It’s not a standout work of literary genius or anything, but it entertained me and satisfied my curiosity, especially about Hitchhiker’s early years. There’s plenty of trivia, and little bits of scripts that never made it and so forth to geek out over.
And I step outside at the exact wrong moment, it’s not just rain now it’s fucking hailing too, it’s about 100 feet from my backdoor to Bender’s and I still get soaked, it’s a Friday night but the place is dead and by the time George and Phil come get me I’m almost completely drunk.
Between storms is blazing sunlight, at least on one side of the street, and she’s talking about Before This Happened and I come so close. I can’t tell if it’s me from the inside, or the sunlight, that burning feeling and I say no, it’s always been like this, the difference is that we hadn’t known it. He is two people, maybe. It’s all I say, this little bit of honesty and I think maybe Sandman is doing other things, too.
And I buy a round-trip ticket and a gold dress. August can’t be far enough away and I make it to the cafe just in time before it starts again, the rain and the hail that are washing summer down the sewer before I’ve even looked up long enough to recognize it.
