Ancient battles among gods will mingle with modern mortal realities when celebrated English storyteller Neil Gaiman returns to The Bushnell July 10.
Gaiman has written some of the finest fantasy fiction of the last quarter-century. His comic book dreamscape “Sandman” is considered a modern classic. (He recently returned to the character for the mini-series “Sandman: Overture.”) His novels include “Anansi Boys,” “Neverwhere,” “Stardust,” “Good Omens” and several popular works for children and young adults: “Coraline,” “The Graveyard Book” and “The Ocean at the End of the Lane.”
Many of his books have been adapted into movies, TV series or graphic novels. His 2001 novel “American Gods” — a contemporary supernatural crime drama inspired by folklore from many cultures, including African trickster tales — has been made into a TV series that debuted on the Starz network in April.
His latest book is the international best-seller “Norse Mythology,” a majestic retelling of ancient tales of warring gods and world-changing cataclysms.
Gaiman last appeared at the Connecticut Forum in 2012, alongside scientist Neil deGrasse Tyson and designer Neri Oxman. On July 10, it’s all about him. Gaiman will be interviewed onstage by New York Public Library’s Director of Public Programming Paul Holdengräber.
In a phone conversation earlier this month, Gaiman discussed Norse myths, his love of audiobooks, and what we can expect next month during his appearance.
Q: You’re coming back to Hartford for a live presentation. Do you do a lot of those?
A: No. I do a few a year. Last year I didn’t do any. The year before I did a handful. They’re enormously fun. It’s so wonderful, as an author, to actually feel like you’re meeting and connecting with the people who read what you write. It’s also lovely to get a live, living, breathing reaction from people. You can read a story. Sometimes I’ll write things in the morning and read them in the evening.
Q: I just heard the audiobook of “Norse Mythology,” and there’s your voice, thanking me for listening.
A: I love getting to read my own audiobooks. I consider it both an honor and a joy. You sit in a room for three days and just read a book. I can’t quite understand why all authors don’t do it.
I get to take 20 or 30 years of reading to children every night, and translate to reading my own books. That’s actually the same sort of engine that drives me to do readings in front of a live audience.
With the “Norse Mythology” book, it can seem a slightly scary or distancing book if you pick it up and it’s just words on a page. But if somebody is telling you these stories, then they come to life. You get to experience the stories in the same way that they were probably created.
Q: You have a great history of taking a sense of a book like “Great Expectations” [for “The Ocean at the End of the Lane”] or African mythology, and creating your own original works. Did you consciously choose not to do that with “Norse Mythology”?
A: Yeah, I loved the idea of playing with a net — the idea that I wasn’t going to make anything up. I wasn’t going to invent anything out of whole cloth. I could come up with dialogue. I could come up with motivations. I could link to things that you’re told happen. But basically, the stories are going to be the kind of stories that are told over the years. That, for me, was the joy. Then building them in a kind of beautiful rainbow pattern that actually takes you from the Creation through to Ragnarok.
Q: It certainly worked out. You say in the book’s preface that you sort of refreshed yourself on the stories, then put away the source material.
A: I was relatively studious, but the desire was that if you’ve bought my “Norse Mythology” book and read all the stories in it, you won’t have got a novel “inspired by…” You’ll have got stories. You’ll have a really good sense of Norse mythology. That was the deal I thought would be fun. That said, I had no idea that it was going to be this amazing mega-best-seller. Among things that have taken me by surprise, that’s high on the list.
There’s a lovely line that Jack Benny said many years ago when, as an old man, he got up to accept an award. He said “I don’t deserve this.” Then he said, “But I have arthritis, and I don’t deserve that either.” I sort of look at “Norse Mythology” going off and becoming the best-selling book of the year, and I go, “Well, I don’t deserve this,” but then I’ve done some fantastic books that sank without a trace, things that I was incredibly proud of that disappeared. So OK, if the universe is going to say “Here, take this book of Norse mythology,” it’s lovely.
Q: How does its popularity compare with “The Graveyard Book,” which won the Newbery Medal?
A: Astoundingly well. But it’s the kind of thing I don’t have any real explanation for, other than the strange times we live in, where people go “I am confused by the weirdness in the world. I wonder if Norse mythology explains it all.”
Q: Surely, this is what you’ve always done, though — take an alternative universe, or literary inspiration, and find the contemporary angle on it.
A: I guess, but the joy of “Norse Mythology” was not taking a contemporary angle on it, not using any analogies that could have existed later than when these stories were collected. The nearest to technology that I went was in describing a giant as being bigger than a cathedral.
Q: When you talk of gods and that massive scale of conflict and confrontation, it’s hard not to relate it to things going on in the world today.
A: I don’t think I have ever had a bigger laugh than the one I had in February in New York when I started reading the story about how the gods of Asgard decide they need a wall to keep to the Frost Giants out. It’s like, “OK, I guess this is obviously strangely relevant.”
“AN EVENING WITH NEIL GAIMAN” occurs 8 p.m. July 10 at The Bushnell, 166 Capitol Ave., Hartford. Tickets are $19.75 to $59.75; $175 “VIP tickets” include a preshow reception. 860-987-5900, bushnell.org.
