Ragnarok and Chikhai

There are a couple authors I will follow anywhere: Neil Gaiman is one of them. I've followed him to graveyards, to a mysterious pond at the end of dusty farmland roads, to a ghost town in Illinois where children disappear, and now I'm following him to Asgard.

Norse Mythology is not a Neil Gaiman novel: it's, at least so far, a textbook with élan, which is to say it's something of a new highway in an old car. It is like visiting a friend in another city: I am not quite sure where we are headed, the street signs are unfamiliar, but I trust they know the best pizza place in town.

I'm listening to the audiobook: it's narrated by Gaiman himself, and he reads his material like a bedroom story, slowly and warmly. It is delightful to learn how things were made, and how (apparently) they will end.

Two days ago, I finished up Lincoln in the Bardo.

If Norse Mythology is driving around a new city with an old friend, Lincoln in the Bardo was being parachuted into 23rd century Saigon with a screwdriver and a bunch of seashells: I had no idea what I was getting into and spent the first couple hours feeling as though I was about to drown from lack of context. (To explain why it is so confusing would be robbing you of some of the fun, as being brought into the light from the dark is very much the point of the book.)

It is the most interesting book I have read in a very long time. Or, rather, heard -- I listened to the audiobook, which I highly recommend (Nick Offerman! Carrie Brownstein! David Sedaris! Keegan Michael Key!).

I have spent the past week or so trying to shoehorn Lincoln in the Bardo into every single conversation I've had, because it is that good, and now I am shoehorning it into this email, because it is that good.

Listening to this book -- this maelstrom of characters and historical documents and soliloquies on the nature of living -- was like nothing I've ever experienced in any art form.

Here is my favorite passage:

Please do not misunderstand. We had been mothers, fathers. Had been husbands of many years, men of import, who had come here, that first day, accompanied by crowds so vast and sorrowful that, surging forward to hear the oration, they had damaged fences beyond repair. Had been young wives, diverted here during childbirth, our gentle qualities stripped from us by the naked pain of that circumstance, who left behind husbands so enamored of us, so tormented by the horror of those last moments (the notion that we had gone down that awful black hole pain-sundered from ourselves) that they had never loved again. Had been bulky men, quietly content, who, in our first youth, had come to grasp our own unremarkableness and had, cheerfully (as if bemusedly accepting a heavy burden), shifted our life’s focus; if we would not be great, we would be useful; would be rich, and kind, and thereby able to effect good: smiling, hands in pockets, watching the world we had subtly improved walking past (this empty dowry filled; that education secretly funded). Had been affable, joking servants, of whom our masters had grown fond for the cheering words we managed as they launched forth on days full of import. Had been grandmothers, tolerant and frank, recipients of certain dark secrets,who, by the quality of their unjudging listening, granted tacit forgiveness, and thus let in the sun. What I mean to say is, we had been considerable. Had been loved. Not lonely, not lost, not freakish, but wise, each in his or her own way. Our departures caused pain. Those who had loved us sat upon their beds, heads in hand; lowered their faces to tabletops, making animal noises. We had been loved, I say, and remembering us, even many years later, people would smile, briefly gladdened at the memory.

Anyway, I guess I'm an audiobook person now, after scoffing at the medium for so long.

Happy Sunday. I hope you find something new and exciting.