Neverwhere by Neil Gaiman | a tribute

Yes, weird things are happening on this blog [look, we're all mad here. get with it or get out . . . while you still can]. Since I don't see a need to review a book that's been published for some time and written by a well-known author, I thought I'd give you a sort of aesthetic/tribute.

Whatever this is, it's something you make up as you go along because that's what I'm doing.

[all quotes are from the book, obviously]

Neverwhere by Neil Gaiman

rushing about for ordinary things | in ordinary ways | shoved along the fast crowd | fast as the London tube | ordinary mistakes | London keeps moving | until a door tumbles open 

"It was a city in which the very old and the awkwardly new jostled each other, not uncomfortably, but without respect."

"London grew into something huge and contradictory. It was a good place, and a fine city, but there is a price to be paid for all good places, and a price that all good places have to pay."

"but no one lived in the City now. It was a cold and cheerless place of offices, of people who worked in the day and went home to somewhere else at night."

ordinary life's overwhelming | if London Above's too much | try London Below | it's a scream
and always eat your breakfast | it makes impossible things more digestible

"As a child, Richard had had nightmares in which he simply wasn't there, in which, no matter how much noise he made, no matter what he did, nobody ever noticed him at all. He began to feel like that now, as people pushed in front of him."

"His feet hurt, and his eyes stung, and he knew that soon enough he would wake up from today and a proper Monday, a sensible Monday, a decent, honest Monday would begin."

"His life so far, he decided, had prepared him perfectly for a job in Securities, for shopping at the supermarket, for watching football on the telly at the weekends, for turning on a heater if he got cold. It had magnificently failed to prepare him for a life as an un-person on the roofs and in the sewers of London, for a life in the cold and the wet and the dark."

"It was then that Richard began to laugh; he couldn't help himself. There was hysteria in there, certainly, but there was also the exhaustion of someone who had managed, somehow, to believe several dozen impossible things in the last twenty-four hours, without ever getting a proper breakfast. His laughter echoed down the tunnels."

times and spaces in mixed places | mind the rats of the underworld | the forgotten and lost | collected together | Welcome to the Floating Market

"'Lovely fresh dreams. First-class nightmares. We got 'em. Get yer lovely nightmares here.'"

"A man in armour beat a small drum, and chanted as he did so, 'Lost Property. Roll up, roll up, and see for yourself. Lost property. None of your found muck here. Everything guaranteed properly lost.'"

"Richard began to understand darkness: darkness as something solid and real, so much more than a simple absence of light. He felt it touch his skin, questing, moving, exploring: gilding through his mind. It slipped into his lungs, behind his eyes, into his mouth . . ."

"It felt not so much as if the lights were being turned down, but as if the darkness were being turned up. Richard blinked, and opened his eyes on nothing -- nothing but darkness, complete and utter."

"'What's happening?' whispered Richard.

"'Darkness is happening.'"

each tube station a world to itself | where are you going | don't get lost | Croup and Vandemar on your heels | prowling close | what's this about angels? | find the key | death too close | don't get lost 

They wore black suits, which were slightly greasy, slightly frayed, and even Richard, who counted himself among the sartorially dyslexic, felt there was something odd about the cut of the coats."

"It was too consistent, too steady and inexorable a walk to be considered as a stroll: Death walks like Mr Vandemar."

"'Crows. Family corvidae. Collective noun,' intoned Mr Croup, relishing the sounds of the word: 'a murder.'"

"'What,' asked Mr Croup, 'do you want?'

"'What, asked the Marquis de Carabas, a little more rhetorically, 'does anyone want?'

"'Dead things,' suggested Mr Vandemar, 'Extra teeth.'"

"Richard did not believe in angels. He never had believed in angels. He was damned if he was going to start now. Still, it was much easier not to believe in something when it was not actually looking directly at you, and saying your name."

"Door folded her arms, and stood taller, putting her head back raising her pointed chin. She looked less like a ragged street-pixie; more like someone used to getting her own way."

"Door paused on the stage, wondering how to make the guards let Richard go. She went over to the microphone, went up on tiptoes, and she screamed, as loud as she possibly could, into the public-address system. She had a remarkable scream: it could, with no artificial assistance, go through your head like a new power drill with a bone-saw attachment. And amplified . . . It was simply unearthly."

you want to go home | do you know where home is | above or below 

"'I'm fine,' lied Richard bravely, to no one in particular."

"But the most important thing for you to understand is this: all things want to open. You must feel that need, and use it."

"and, somewhere in her heart, she lets it be what it wants to be. There is a loud click, and the padlock opens."

"'Sorry . . . . Wrong London.'"

hold on