Here There and Everywhere

Neil Gaiman’s Smoke and Mirrors

Smoke and Mirrors is a collection of – as the author puts it – short fiction and illusions.

My son got me started with Neil Gaiman when he gave me a book called Good Omens. He is probably not an author everyone would like – he can be cynical, but my experience with cynics is that their cynicism is an attempt to disguise a deeply idealistic nature, so his cynicism doesn’t bother me. I love his attention to world mythologies, those beliefs deep down that are passed from parent to child, beliefs so deep we don’t even know they are there.

Smoke and MIrrors was an easy, if uneven, read. I get the impression Gaiman gathered up a bunch of short writings he had done – like sometimes you jot down an idea for something and keep it to be developed later, into a book, a sub-plot, etc. and that these ones never quite graduated.

There are two stories I will never forget. The last story, Snow, Glass, Apples, is a re-telling of the Snow White legend, told from the point of view of the wicked step-mother, set far back in dark times. I will never see Snow White in the same light again. I love the flicker of perception that changes everything. Snow White as a vampiric, wild, uncontrolled child? When Gaiman writes, all the pieces fit together.

The other story hits me on a deeper level. In a house where stray cats come and are cared for, a cat arrives, scarred and damaged, seeking only love. Every night he goes out onto the porch, and late late on some nights, sounds of wild and horrendous battles are heard, from which the cat emerges more damaged, battered and scarred than before. Horrified, the people try to keep the cat inside, but after he has healed enough, he insists on going out again to do battle. One night, the man watches as an apparition appears; on a deep instinctive level, he knows it is a demon / devil. The cat protects the house and its occupants. The story is called The Price, and after I read it, I couldn’t read the book again for a couple days.

When I read Neil Gaiman, it frees me up to think outside the lines, outside the normal boundaries of what we consider normal. This man was gifted with an amazing imagination.

I think of Jesus, and his disciples, the 12 he gathered to help him in his earthly ministry. I think of how often they listened to Jesus – and got it wrong. He would be explaining something, and they just didn’t get it. I wonder how often it still happens, that we think we understand what he is telling us, but our minds are small and fuzzy, and we can’t begin to comprehend the magnitude of what he is telling us.

So I think about angels, and how they are all around us. . . and what if all these little cats and dogs are part of the angels God has sent to protect us? I think how they love us unconditionally, simply, and how good they are for our health (having a pet can lower blood-pressure, for example) and how truly truly AWFUL it is that we might be abusing, starving, neglecting the very angels God has sent to ease our lives and protect us? It fills me with horror!

Neil Gaiman sets me free to think such thoughts. You can read his stories as just stories, but if you have an ounce of depth, you will find your mind wandering to strange places after reading Gaiman. You can find Smoke and Mirrors on Amazon.com for around $10 in paperback, less if you buy it used.

Again, thank you, son, for introducing me to such a mind-stretching author.

April 20, 2009 Posted by intlxpatr | Books, Character, Entertainment, Fiction, Interconnected, Poetry/Literature | mythology, myths | 4 Comments