In His Latest Book, Neil Gaiman Offers Readers A 'Trigger Warning'
Trigger Warning is a term used to warn someone about potentially harmful reading material. It's also the title of Neil Gaiman's newest collection of short-fiction.
As Gaiman writes in his introduction to the book, "We each have our little triggers ... things that wait for us in the dark corridors of our lives." The book includes a story about a man who made up an imaginary girlfriend in high school only to have her actually show up years later; the story of a man who is slowly forgetting things that were important to him; and dark take on the fairy-tales of Snow White and Sleeping Beauty.
Gaiman calls the stories a "hodgepodge," with no real interweaving theme throughout. But each of the stories and poems all celebrate a different aspect of storytelling that has informed the author's life.
Interview Highlights
On potentially harmful stories he's read
I was the kind of kid who read everything. And, you know, when you read everything, you wind up reading short stories or stories that just, you shouldn't probably have read yet and the kinds of things that gave me nightmares. I remember a short story by a man called Charles Berkin about a parent, father who realizes that his missing daughter was turned into a circus freak by a mad professor who kidnapped children and turned them into horrible freaks using surgical means. And it just rocked my world! At 9 I thought the world was safe and the idea that people could come in and take you away from circuses and turn you into speechless golden eyed creatures that would gaze imploringly at your parents if they ever came passed and there was no hope. That was one that absolutely shook me, it gave me nightmares, it disturbed me. But I look back now and I go, "Well, I'm the person I am because I read that. Would I change it? I don't think I would."
On the story 'The Man Who Forgot Ray Bradbury'
I wanted to write a story for Ray Bradbury for his 90th birthday. And I started just thinking, what if I had forgotten Ray? What if I could sort of remember his stories but I couldn't remember his name? What if forgetting his name meant more of that? The act of forgetting him perhaps meant that he was perhaps becoming forgotten by the world. That all led me into to the idea of writing a monologue about a man who had forgotten Ray Bradbury and who was desperately trying to remember him.
On the unifying themes found throughout stories in 'Trigger Warning'
It's very much in some ways, it's me tipping my hat both to the human imaginative facility, the fact that we can imagine, and it's also a way to celebrate aspects of and creatures of and people of the imagination that I've loved. Which is why it contains a Sherlock Holmes short-story, which is why it has a tribute to Bradbury, which is why it has a Jack Vance story. there are things in there that are just ways of tipping my hat to things and fictions and acts of imaging that I have loved.
On fans wanting a sequel to 2001 best-selling novel, 'American Gods'
I sympathize with them. I empathize with them. And um ... I'm a terrible writer. I'm terrible, like a bad writer because I get distracted. I go and do things that seem like they're going to be fun and very often they are. Then I look around and see people going, "This thing you liked! Why aren't you doing a sequel to it?" Because I had other stuff I wanted to do.
I wanted to write The Graveyard Book and I wanted to write Coraline and I wanted to go and write a short story and perform it around the world with a string quartet starting at the Sydney Opera House and doing Carnegie Hall. It seemed like a great idea and I loved doing it.
But you're right, I haven't actually written that novel yet. I will! I really will!
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