Though this reviewer counts himself as one of the
uninitiated, Neil Gaiman is said to possess a large, devoted fan base. Cursory
investigation on the internet reveals that this base is, in large part,
composed of black-clad teenage girls enamored with his dark, rumpled appearance
and wily British ways. That’s all well and good, but the question remains: can
the man write? Many sources reply with an emphatic yes, valuing his work as
fantasy without the puerile trappings to which that genre often falls victim. Fragile Things, Gaiman’s new collection
of “short stories and wonders”, provides a glimpse of the writer’s appeal, but
unfortunately, the scraps that have found their way into the book never cohere
into anything substantial.
Then again, perhaps that was his
intention. In the compilation’s lengthy introduction, Gaiman expounds upon the
origins of the project – originally intended, for example, to contain only
prose; a handful of poems were added because “the book would cost you the same
with or without them” – and of each story and/or wonder in particular. While
sometimes useful as context, all this explication primarily communicates the
following the common reader: There are hundreds, perhaps thousands of fans out
there more intimately familiar with the oeuvre
of Neil Gaiman than you will ever be, people who salivate over each and
every one of his words. While you may be left cold by a lot of this stuff,
others are already on their third read through.
That isn’t to say that Fragile Things comprises mediocre fluff
palatable solely to diehards. Several of the stories included are prestigious
award-winners; the best of the bunch, a collision of the worlds of Sir Arthur
Conan Doyle and H.P. Lovecraft, received a Hugo. However, just like the images
on its oddly designed cover, the pieces seem to have been inserted without
rhyme or reason. Their original venues of publication range from McSweeney’s Mammoth Treasury of Thrilling
Tales to The Matrix’s official
website. A real-life ghost story here, a poem about returning to nature there,
a short bit of fiction that loops infinitely in on itself after that; the
unpredictability is fun at times, but it couldn’t be called an easy ride by any
stretch of the imagination.
As such, the book showcases
Gaiman’s skills unevenly. At his best, he breathes life into the sorts of
scenarios one might idly wonder about but not carry to their logical
conclusions. What if, for example, a harlequin decamped from the world of the commedia dell’arte to our modern one?
What if things could go on living, despite being eaten? What if the Bible had
one last, very brief, book? These and other questions are, after a fashion,
answered, and cleverly so. At his worst, Gaiman’s affectations enslave his
writing. (Notably, this is an impression one gets from his more devoted
followers as well.) Some pieces are spun too far from conceits too thin, as
when the months of the year are personified as storytellers around a campfire
or a group of gourmands tiresomely seeks an apocryphal bird.
When myth meets reality, Gaiman’s
work resonates both the most and the least. If this compilation is any indicator, what happens at the
intersection of the two constitutes his staked-out territory, and the results
are alternately brilliantly amusing and somewhat flat. It’s distinctly possible
that this release isn’t intended for the casual Gaiman reader; that the final
54 pages constitutes a novella revisiting American
Gods, an earlier novel, suggests as much. While more often entertaining
than not, Fragile Things may be best
left to the girls in black.
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