Colette Qualtieri 

10/25/20

REL 101/People In the Public Eye

Biography:  Neil Gaiman

I first discovered Neil Gaiman through his book American Gods.  The story provides a humorous fiction behind the question, “Where have all the gods gone?”  The characters consist of gods of the past that are quickly losing their worshippers to the gods of technology in modern America.  Gaiman typically adapts his characters from the tales of ancient Greek mythology, Jewish mysticism, Norse paganism and Christian angels and demons.  

Neil Gaiman was born in Portchester England in 1960.  His parents moved to East Grinsted, West Sussex when he was still a young boy.  He descended from an Eastern European Jewish family.  His parents were practicing Jews until he was four years old when they were attracted to the practice of Scientology.  He hungrily consumed books in his childhood and loved the works of Tolkein, C.S. Lewis, and Lewis Carroll.  From the stories of his childhood, it seems he was raised by librarians and cut his teeth on books.  He began writing as a journalist and after becoming disenchanted with mainstream media, moved on to help create an up and coming genre, adult comic books.  He worked with DC comics to resurrect an old character named the Sandman which depicts Morpheus, the Lord of Dreams.  It was wildly successful from 1989 to 1996.  His body of work (Wright) is vast and crosses many genres.  He is the first author to win two prestigious awards with one book.  The Graveyard Book was awarded the Newbery Medal in 2009 (Rich)and the Carnegie Medal in 2010 (Flood).  

Neil Gaiman’s work connects us to myth while we exist in an increasingly scientific and rational world.  The impressions his stories make enhance the good and the bad of our human condition.  His cast of characters are both horrifying and humorous.  His tales reach deeply into the human psyche using the chariots of the gods to transport us to the ‘world beyond the veil’.  

The Graveyard Book (Gaiman) is a story about a boy named Bod, short for Nobody, who lost his parents as an infant and is lovingly raised by ghosts in a graveyard.  One of his guardians is Silas, who guides Bod through his ‘coming of age’ period.   At one point, Silas tells Bod that “People want to forget the impossible things because it makes their world safer.”  This statement is exemplary of an ideology found throughout his work.

Although Gaiman doesn’t like to speak of his beliefs, he has been quoted to say “I think we can say that God exists in the DC Universe.  I would not stand up and beat the drum for the existence of God in this universe.  I don’t know, I think there’s probably a 50/50 chance.  It doesn’t really matter to me.”  (Stocka)

Mr. Gaiman was compelled to write a personal piece of work a few weeks after the Charlie Hebdo massacre (News) occurred in Paris on January 7th, 2015.  The massacre was in retaliation against the weekly Charlie Hebdo magazine which had published satirical cartoons about Muslim beliefs.  

Credo

I believe that it is difficult to kill an idea. Ideas are invisible and contagious, and they move fast. 

I believe that you can set your own ideas against ideas you dislike. That you should be free to argue, explain, clarify, debate, offend, insult, rage, sing, exaggerate, and deny. 

I do not believe that burning, murdering, exploding people, smashing their heads with rocks (to let the bad ideas out), drowning them, or even defeating them will work to contain ideas you do not like. Ideas spring up where you do not expect them, like weeds. And they are as difficult to control. 

I believe that trying to stop ideas spreads ideas. 

I believe that people and books and newspapers are containers for ideas. But burning the people will be as unsuccessful as firebombing the newspaper files. It is already too late. It is always too late. The ideas are out. They are hiding behind people’s eyes, waiting in their thoughts. They can be whispered. They can be written on walls in the dead of night. They can be drawn. 

I believe that ideas do not have to be right to exist. 

I believe you have every right to be perfectly certain that images of god or prophet or man are holy and should be kept unspoiled. And I have the right to be certain of the holiness of speech, of the holiness of the right to make fun of, to comment, to argue and to speak. 

I believe I have the right to think and say the wrong things. I believe your solution for that should be to argue with me or to ignore me. And I should have the same solution for the wrong things that you think. 

I believe that you have the absolute right to think things that I find insulting, stupid, ridiculous, or dangerous. You have the right to speak, write, or distribute these things. I do not have the right to kill you, injure you, hurt you, or take away your liberty or property because I find your ideas threatening or insulting or downright disgusting. You probably think my ideas are pretty awful, too. 

I believe that in the battle between guns and ideas, ideas will, eventually, win.

Because the ideas are invisible, and they linger, and, sometimes, they are even true. 

Eppur si muove:1 and yet it moves.

1 Eppur si muove (ehp puhr see MWOH vay) Italian phrase meaning “and yet it moves,” attributed to the Italian mathematician, physicist, and philosopher Galileo Galilei (1564–1642) in 1633, after he was forced to take back his claim that the Earth moves around the sun.

His Credo is now published in his book, Art Matters. (Gaiman, Art Matters)  His words remind me of the readings in our coursework regarding colonialism and the desecration of indigenous peoples’ beliefs and traditions through violence.

In conclusion, it is the influence of other writers both ancient and modern in the fields of fantasy and myth that are reflected in his body of work.   His claims of belief are largely agnostic, however, his characters are religious and mythical figures.  His Jewish and Scientology upbringing may have exposed him to concepts that he uses in his work today, but he claims neither faith.  His humanitarianism comes through in his characters, his stories and in real life.  In an interview by Jennifer Brown (Brown), his editor asked the question, “What cause is dear to your heart?”  He answered, “Literacy. Libraries are incredibly important to me.  I look back and I think without libraries I would not be the person I am…and refugees.  I just figure that huge global events happen, and they affect people. Suddenly you have no hope.  Suddenly you’re on the run…suddenly you’re escaping, and we need to be able to look after those people.  We’re a big human family and you look after your own.”