The Magic of writing

I find myself longing to escape from my ossified self and then I came across this quote by Neil Gaiman as I refreshed my Instagram and this feed popped up.

‘Make new mistakes. Make glorious, amazing mistakes. Make mistakes nobody’s ever made before. Don’t freeze, don’t stop, don’t worry that it isn’t good enough, or it isn’t perfect, whatever it is : art, or love, or work or family or life.

Whatever it is you’re scared of doing, do it.‘

–Neil Gaiman

I searched for the full quote.

The above quote starts with ‘So that’s my wish for you, and all of us, and my wish for myself.’

Here is another quote by Neil Gaiman :

‘I lived in books more than I lived anywhere else.’

Fantasy novels are not my usual kind of reads. Nonetheless I do want to expand the genres that I read and I’ve been wanting to read novels by Neil Gaiman. Now I have finally read one.

Anansi Boys by Neil Gaiman is a fantasy novel about Charlie Nancy aka Fat Charlie who is estranged from his father. He lives in South London. He moved to England at the age of ten. One day he is about to get married. Rosie, his bride-to-be is very keen on meeting his dad.At her insistence and with great reluctance, he calls their neighbour , Mrs Higgler who has been wanting to contact him. This is how he finds out that Mr. Nancy has recently dropped dead on a karaoke stage. Mrs Higgler informs him about his father’s funeral. So he tells Rosie,

‘ Dad won’t be coming to the wedding.’ He has to go to Florida. When she asks how his dad died, he does not want to talk about it. To him, his dad is an embarrassment. This is how Fat Charlie’s dad died. Mrs Higgins tells Charlie,

‘He had arrived in the bar early, and had launched the karaoke evening by singing ‘What’s New Pussycat?’,which song he had belted out,according to Mrs Higgler, who had not been there,ina manner that would have caused Tom Jones to be festooned in flung feminine undergarments, and which brought Fat Charlie’s father a complimentary beer, courtesy of the several blonde tourists from Michigan who thought he was just the cutest thing they’d ever seen.‘

There were all these female tourists who were young enough to be his daughters and as he was being his charming self, he got up to sing and dance. He took the bustiest and blondest of the tourists on a quick spin around the dance floor and then when he was done with one dance, he announced it was his turn again. He appeared to be having a fine time and he sang ‘I Am What I Am’ to the room, particularly to the blondest tourist on the table just below him. And then ‘he made an odd face, pressed one hand to his chest, stretched the other hand out, and toppled….’. The music kept playing, only now without anyone singing

Mrs Higgler says it was these women’s fault as they were women who had squeezed into tube tops and they were encouraging him.

‘ “It was how he always would have wanted to go,”sighed Mrs Higgler.‘

Charlie is embarrassed by his father’s behaviour and how he died. At the funeral, Charlie meets Mrs Higgler, Mrs Dunwiddy , Mrs Bustamonte and Miss Noles. Mrs Higgler tells him that his father was a god. To Charlie, he was a rotten husband and a rotten father. He is then told that his father was an incarnation of the West African trickster spider-god Anansi. ‘Anansi is the spirit of rebellion, able to overturn the social order, create wealth out of thin air, and even baffle the devil.‘

He is told that he has a twin brother and if he needs to find this mythical brother, he just has to tell a spider and his brother will come running.

As the story progresses the two brothers in turn discover one another’s existence after being separated as young children. The novel follows their adventures and kaleidoscopic journey as they explore their common heritage. Charlie’s life is about to be turned upside down as he discovers his heritage and bloodline. Anansi Boys is a comic novel. It is an entertaining read.

There is an interview with Neil Gaiman at the end of the book.

Question : Spiders – down the plug hole or let them be?

Here is the first part of his answer.

‘ I am a let-them-be person, on the whole , I will move spiders that are in the wrong place because If you’re a father, having to be the default person who moves spiders that are in the wrong place. This is one of those strange parental duties that they don’t tell you about when you get married and have kids, but turns up almost immediately‘,

By the same token, if I may add, ‘ If you’re a mother, you will find yourself having to be the default person who removes or kills roaches that are in the wrong place, even though you are feeling rather squeamish about them.’

Gaiman loves Anansi,a little trickster god. ‘Anansi is all about the revenge of the weak‘.

In the same interview, Gaiman also gave his top tips for surviving family get-together. His was always bring a book. That is what I did during our weekly visits to my in-laws.

Here is another fun fact about Anansi Boys. Neil Gaiman wrote the novel with a Waterman Ideal fountain pen. In Neil Gaiman’s interview with Tim Ferris, he talked about his writing process. Most of the time he will write his first draft using a fountain pen. Here is what he told the interviewer: ‘I like the feeling of fountain pen. I like uncapping it. I like the weight of it in my hand. I like that thing, so I’ll have a notebook, I’ll have a fountain pen, and I’ll write. If I’m doing anything long, if I’m working on a novel, for example, I will always have two fountain pens on the go, at least, with two different colored inks, at least, because that way I can see at a glance, how much work I did that day.‘ click