Neil Bloody Gaiman
The Gaiman scandal is bad enough and Bluesky is bad enough. Because of faulty brain wiring, I spent the past few nights combining the two. The anti-woke may think that Neil Gaiman’s getting a pass from his old buddies, the self-styled enlightened left. But slog through half a thousand Bluesky posts and you’ll find out otherwise. Users snap and snarl at the man who used to be their favorite author, the nonpareil male feminist and trans ally now known to be a coozehound and possibly a rapist, a child abuser, and the inflictor of horrendous sexual degradation. Their feelings don’t end there. Many are peeved at people who fret about the Good Omens TV show and what will happen to it, at people who dwell on the harm done to their memories of reading Sandman or Coraline, and especially at people who say they always knew something was wrong with that guy. This last category concerns me. Because of it I must step carefully.
I didn’t know Gaiman was chasing tail, let alone any of the specifics that have been alleged. But for the past 16 years I’ve considered him a pious bullshit artist who’s a bit too crafty about getting his way. I had a big reason for this and a minnow school of smaller reasons. The big reason was that Mr. Feminist divorced his first wife and took up with someone about 20 years younger. The smaller reasons were kicked off by a personal experience of mine. Not a big deal, a mere offhand remark he delivered to the crowd at a science fiction convention. But I was there, so it made an impression, and the impression matched various interviews he gave and pronouncements he posted. That impression didn’t forecast today’s horror show, but it goes with it well enough.
As far as I can tell, to the best of my recollection, what happened was this: he lied. I’d say he had no big reason for doing it, that all he wanted was to tickle the audience and give his reputation a minor bit of gloss. As I recall, he walked on stage and told us about the hour he’d just spent at the convention’s daycare center. There, I remember him saying, he and the kids had erected “something mysterious and teetery known as a Turkey Tower.” Bear with those quote marks. I recorded nothing and it may be that Gaiman said “wobbly and mysterious” or some other variation. The word “structure” might have been in there. But I remember him saying that he and the kids had built a Turkey Tower.
The convention came to an end. Gaiman had done a fine job, especially when reading his stories to us. I’d seen my—well, not my hero (too many of his works are boring, and his fey smugness weighs on me), but somebody who managed to lead the life I always wanted. Except the part about ditching his wife, of course. This unhappy bit of marital news was eventually followed by a second revelation. Five months after the convention, The New Yorker ran a profile of Gaiman. Its writer had been there with him, including in the daycare center. She mentioned no teetering and mysterious structure, or any structure at all. We were told that Gaiman had encountered a group of children and “a long crafts table covered with bins of pompoms, googly eyes, and crayons.” The point of the get-together: “to create something inspired by Gaiman’s picture book ‘Crazy Hair.’” But the session didn’t take fire. The kids scribbled with their cartoons, Gaiman read them Crazy Hair, and then he said, “I’m Neil Gaiman. I’m the author.” The children went back to their crayons.
“Gaiman left, to participate in a panel on his own roots as a fan,” said The New Yorker, using one of its special commas. I definitely remember that panel, since the moderator told us how the barely post-teen Gaiman had attended his first convention with a paid assignment to report on it for an s.f. publication. Even when he was a fan, Gaiman was already functioning as a pro, which is still something I admire. The main point, though, is that the facts line up. Daycare visit, then the fandom panel and his remarks on the daycare visit.
The New Yorker didn’t mention those remarks, leaving me to reveal l’affaire Turkey Tower all these years later. As bombshells go, this one doesn’t pack much blast. But it does bring out something important. Gaiman’s a celebrity and he’s gifted at it. Celebrities, by the nature of their calling, must devote considerable energy to managing public perceptions of them. Gaiman addresses this task with devotion and skill, by which I mean he’s full of shit. More people might have noticed, but it was the sort of shit they liked (winsome, floppy-haired, redolent of favored opinions). But I noticed. Just don’t tell Bluesky I said so.