(no subject)

[nny]

Belated December post the second: GOOD OMENS for sholio

What's weird is that I remember very vividly reading Neverwhere for the first time; I was on a train home from Cardiff, and I remember accidentally latching onto Bath as the visual representation of the book even though I knew it was supposed to be London. It's probably why I moved there eventually, even though that didn't last.

I have absolutely no idea how I first came across Good Omens. I wish that I did, I wish I had a meaningful story about my first encounter with it, but it's genuinely been part of my life for so long that I have absolutely no clue.

I came to it through Terry Pratchett, and came to Neil Gaiman through it, I know that much. I have a kindle copy, a signed copy and a first edition (that I found for a fiver in a charity shop - it's worth nowt but it's worth SO MUCH to me :D). I have bought and given away at least five copies because I love it so much, and I have used it as an identifier several times when meeting people from the internet. It has always been my favourite thing to write for, although I haven't been a very active part of fandom because I'm not very good at it on the whole (and I wish I was better - anyone know if there's an active place to be Good Omeny at the moment?) One time I used it (along with Milliways) to impress a girl. It worked, too, and no matter that that wasn't the best decision ever made.

Why does it speak to me so strongly? I have no idea. There are so many things I could list off as being things I love about it, but that's not a why. Part of it is why I love Neil Gaiman and Pterry's books in general - atmospheric creepiness and endless worlds of potential backstory from Gneil, and sly jokes that take me years to get from Pterry (...MISSALS! HOLY SHIT! You know when I got that? John Sheppard. I don't think I'd ever heard anyone say it in the right accent before him). Pratchett also writes children really well, and if anyone hasn't read them I really recommend the Johnny Maxwell books. (One time I wrote a crossover).

Then there's the style; the cast list is iconic (sauntered!), and the footnotes are absolutely delightful and add tiny clues to backstory that needs to be writ. If you tried hard you could probably tease apart the bits that Neil and Terry wrote, but I love the way it swings back and forth between creepy and surreal and funny and matter of fact. The book sounds like what the inside of my head sounds like, and I guess that's why I've generally been pretty proud of my attempts to recreate it.

I also love the characters and the pairings, obviously. Aziraphale is basically who I'd like to be when I grow up, but at the same time I'm far more mature and sensible than he could ever be; the moment when he realises, properly, that Adam's just a child is a wonderful moment of character development. I always used to mentally cast him as Adrian Rawlins (James Potter) because of this cover, but more recently I picture him as Richard Ayoade. He's the only character I've really mentally cast, because he's my favourite absolutely, and I love Aziraphale/Crowley as a pairing because there's this weight of history and expectation and opposition between them that somehow manifests as domesticity and drunkenness and bickering. This is the story I'm proudest of about them; I also love the story I wrote this year but I can't tell you which it is yet. (Totally check out the exchange though! That's basically what I intend to do this afternoon :D (Edit: REC.)).

My absolute favourite number one pairing in Good Omens, though, is Brian/Wensleydale. It makes me unaccountably happy, and there is absolutely scads of backstory in my head that I haven't ever actually got down on paper. Someday I will dammit.

I think one of the best things about Good Omens, though, is that everything is suitably huge and epic and worldwide, as all good Armageddons should be, and yet everything comes down to this little town full of little people (waking up to say... TODAY WE ARE CANCELLING THE APOCALYPSE!). And everyone arrives for the appointed end of the world and... they're all rather useless. No one's really a hero, or rather, everyone is. Whether it's because they took initiative (where they'd been brought up never to), or because they gave up on impressing people and told the truth, or because they threw aside ancient grudges, or because they spoke up and pointed out fundamental errors in logic, or because they decided that friends were the most important, actually.

It's a huge story told on a very small and personal scale, and it's flawed and there are gaps where a hundred stories can take root.

I like it.

(Again - please comment! Ask questions, tell me about what you like, whatever!)

Comments

[quarter_to_five]

I can't remember where/when I read it either. As far back as I go, i'm always in a state of having read Good Omens. I'm a little bit wary of revisiting it these days, because my recollections of it have grown just a tiny, tiny tad moralistic, but I still love the weirdness and the surrealism and the poignancy. The tape in the car that is always Queen, the horsemen of the apocalypse hanging out in a bar, Newt and Anathema...

[nny]

What do you mean moralistic? I'm curious. :)

I didn't re-read for a good long while when I was RPing Aziraphale because I was thoroughly concerned that my playing was deeply flawed, an impression that wasn't helped by my RP partner (but also had some basis in reality). It was bloody delightful coming back to it, though; it's been a while again, maybe I should schedule in another re-read.

[quarter_to_five]

What do you mean moralistic? I'm curious. :)

Well, it's been a while since I read it, so this might just be my recollections making a tiny mountain out of a non-existent molehill, but there's something a little...didactic, and very neat, very...nice, about the way it sets up humans as being all about free will and being anything they want to be and so on. I'm not against any of that*, but the way it winds through the story feels simplistic and a touch unnecessary. It would be brilliant if the story invited us to figure it out ourselves. Just telling it to us - however elegantly and wittily - undercuts that.

But that's me - i'm kind of a grinch about these things. :-)

*...well, there's a lot of commie in my background, so maybe I am, a little.

[nny]

Oh it really is such a simplistic story, I agree; this reads a little more like a kids' book than most of the authors' other works, I think, and in that faintly patronising way that Diana Wynne Jones is very dismissive of. That's one of the things I like so about Frances Hardinge's writing, actually, that for a YA author her books are incredibly morally complex.

I'm not, though. So I guess GO suits me. :D

[quarter_to_five]

Lol, but, yeah, that simplicity keeps it from quite being the perfect book for me. Especially since, as you say, there is writing aimed at the same age group that can be much less patronizing. It's like they were trying very, very hard to get across a perfectly humanist message, and it falls a little flat.

[petra]

Books I will always purchase if I find them used so I can hand them off to someone who hasn't read them, Exhibit A.

[nny]

Hee, me too. This, anything by Frances Hardinge (although finding them is the trick) and Archer's Goon, mostly. If I ever find Rivers of London that, too. :D

[skygiants]

Ha, I love your Richard Ayaode Aziraphale fancast, and that's where I got his face in my head from to begin with, but then he became Peter from Rivers of London in my head and now it's a very strange juxtaposition.

[nny]

I haven't yet satisfyingly cast Peter in my head, which is probably down to a huge lack of English telly in my life. I don't think Richard Ayoade is physical enough to play him? Although that said mostly I know him from panel shows and the IT Crowd and Garth Merenghi's Dark Place and The Mighty Boosh, none of which hold exactly normal characters. I have so much respect for him as a person, though. XD

[skygiants]

I've never actually seen Richard Ayoade being physical in anything, is the thing, I only know his face. I VERY MUCH LIKE HIS FACE, THOUGH.

[sholio]

Now I want to reread this book again. :) It's an odd example of a collaboration that probably should not work, but does; Pratchett's sense of humor lightens up Gaiman's darkness, but you also get the lovely sense of fairy-tale wonder that Gaiman does so well. I was always sad that they never produced a sequel, but at the same time, the book stands so well on its own that it's hard to imagine a sequel being anything other than disappointing.

Definitely one of my favorite books of all time. :)

(Though I can't remember my first encounter with it, either ...)

[nny]

I'm not sure I'd want a sequel in the same way I'm always really on the fence about whether a TV series would be a good thing. I never watched the Dirk Gently miniseries because there are things I'd rather have in my head; also I read the screenplay that Gaiman wrote for GO and it was... bizarre. Not really true to the book very much at all, although very Gaimany, and I would worry that the sequel wouldn't get the balance right in that way.

I'd rather have the sequel to Neverwhere that Gneil's always been promising, I think. :D

[forthwritten]

I really like how you've captured some of my favourite bits about this book - about how it's huge and epic but told through little human lives and experiences.