The
Audience and the Story
Neil
Gaiman's book Angels and Visitations: A Miscellany
starts with a poem called “The Song of the Audience.” The poem
begins with “Let us call now for the makers of strong images,/Let
them come to us now carrying their quills and sharp razors/Let them
gash their arms for ink and let them limn” (lines 1-3) and ends
with “Let them entertain us, the makers of strong images./Let us
toss them copper pennies. But let us not forget./They make the
images. We give them flesh”(10-12). The poem shows a relationship
between the author and the audience as two parts of a creative whole.
This relationship is explored through a reader-response
analysis of the last story in the book, Gaiman's “Murder
Mysteries.” The use of a story within a story in “Murder
Mysteries” blurs the line between fantasy and reality within the
narrative, leaving the reader with a new perspective on stories and
their ability to change the audience.
As a literary
theory, reader-response criticism takes the responsibility of
creating meaning within a text away from the author alone and puts it
in the hands of the audience, making the creative process a
relationship between the two.
As stated in “Writing about Literature” about this relationship,
“Reading is not a passive attempt to understand what lies within a
text but an act of creation, no less so than the writing
itself”(1293). Understanding this process is a part of
understanding the text. As objective as a critic tries to be, such
as in formalism, the critic can not separate their own experiences
and thought processes from the message of the text. In her work
“Interpretive Strategies/Strategic Interpretations: On
Anglo-American Reader Response Criticism,”
Mary
Louise Pratt states that “interest
in reader response was sparked by a problem in formalist theory,
namely the fact that readers commonly disagree as to the aesthetic
structures and properties of texts”(201). If meaning was solely in
the hands of the author and strictly tied to the text formalist
critics would find the same meanings and themes in a work or there
would be more consensus on what is the correct interpretation.
Reader-response criticism suggests that the various interpretations
made by the reader can all be correct and are influenced by the
reader's experiences, beliefs, and the amount of reading he or she
has done. Without an audience to supply these influences a text has
no impact.
In
his essay “An
Autopsy of Storytelling: Metafiction and Neil Gaiman,”
Chris Dowd describes Gaiman's stories as metafiction which he defines
as “self-aware fiction.” He continues by saying “Metafictional
stories purposely draw attention to the artifice of storytelling
itself”(104). To do this in “Murder Mysteries” Gaiman uses a
story within a story. The central narrative is only revealed to the
reader through the narrator of the framing story relating a tale he
was told to the audience. The framing story only makes sense in
light of the central narrative. Dowd notes that many of the
characters in Gaiman's stories who play the part of the audience
later become the storytellers (112). This is true of “Murder
Mysteries.” The unnamed narrator of the framing story acts as both
audience to Raguel, the storyteller of the central narrative, and
becomes the storyteller to the reader, telling both his own story and
Raguel's story in flashback. This emphasizes the importance of the
audience to the story.
“Murder
Mysteries” starts with the narrator saying “This is true”
(139). The narrator then goes on to tell a story of a week spent in
Los Angeles ten years ago in December. The narrator was young then
and was in LA waiting for the weather in London to clear up enough
for him to catch a plane home. He receives a call from an one time
lover who had heard that he was in town. He has an awkward and
unsatisfying visit to her home before she gives him a ride to the
place he is staying. This part of the story could easily be true.
Where it gets strange is when the narrator is sitting on a park bench
having a smoke and is approached by a man asking to buy a cigarette.
The narrator gives the man a cigarette for free but the man feels he
owes some payment for it and offers a story. “Mm. You want to hear
a story? True story?” the man starts (144). The narrator agrees
to the deal and the central story begins. Both stories are prefaced
with the respective storytellers insisting on their truth but where
the framing story is set in a world recognizable as real the central
story is set in the Silver City, a place populated by angels before
the creation of the universe. The reader could pass the central
story off as the delusions of a homeless man and the unnamed narrator
of the framing story almost does. As the storyteller, named Raguel,
continues his tale the narrator and the audience is drawn in and
whether the story is true or not, it becomes something that needs to
be heard. Eventually this allows the reader to feel that this
fantastic story is just as true as the framing story, at least within
the confines of the universe “Murder Mysteries” takes place in.
Raguel's
story begins “First thing I remember was the Word. And the Word
was God . . . I remember the sound of the Word in my head, shaping
me, forming me, giving me life . . . The Word gave me a body, gave me
eyes” (144) In these lines Raguel is relating his own beginnings
as the audience, echoing the premise of the framing story. As an
audience, Raguel is literally created by the story or “Word.” He
came into being in a silver room, with no one else in it. He tells
the narrator that he does not know how long he waited in that room
before Lucifer came to give him his name and function (144-145).
Raguel is told that he is “The Vengeance of the Lord” and that he
must find out who has murdered the angel Carasel and take vengeance
on him (145-146). Raguel is both audience and storyteller in this
task and his part in it changes him from a beautiful angel to a man
asking strangers for cigarettes. These stories within stories within
stories, all connected and all changing the characters making up the
audience, begin to show the reader the power a narrative has.
Raguel's story takes place during the designing of the universe,
before the Word creates it (148). This is another instance
displaying the power of a story, furthering the theme of “Murder
Mysteries” and its resonance with the reader.
As
Raguel investigates the murder pieces of another story fall into
place. The intended audience of this story is Lucifer and it will
forever change him. Raguel finds that Lucifer has been going into
the dark outside of the Silver City, a place full of voices telling
stories about God. Lucifer goes into the dark to test himself and
his strength. He knows that the voices are lying when they tell him
that God is not just. Raguel also finds that Phanuel has taken
credit for the development of Love, a project that Carasel and his
partner Saraquael worked on before they began to work on Death.
Carasel was compelled to experience everything he worked on in order
to perfect the design for approval by Zaphkiel, the senior partner in
the creation of the universe. With these pieces Raguel believes he
knows who killed Carasel and so he brings everyone to Zaphkiel's room
to make the reveal (153-158). The story Raguel tells of the murder
of Carasel and the ending that Raguel acts out serves as a warning to
Phanuel to avoid doing anything that could cause Raguel to take the
Lord's vengeance on him, such as taking credit for other angel's
work. But the true audience is Lucifer. Saraquel killed Carasel
because of the love they shared. Saraquel would have done anything
for Carasel and professed to love him more than himself. When
Carasel abandoned that love in order to throw himself into his work
on Death, Saraquel became angry and killed him. For this Raguel
killed him, driving Lucifer to cry “That was not right . . . he
loved. He should have been forgiven. He should have been helped”
(162) The reader feels Lucifer's pain as the story he just witnessed
changes everything he believes. Lucifer no longer believes that God
is just and some readers may agree. As Lucifer leaves the room more
pieces of the story fall into place for Raguel. He realizes that God
was the one that set all of the events in motion and Raguel confronts
him (163-164). God admits his guilt and his purpose, “Yes. I did.
Lucifer must brood on the unfairness of Saraquael's destruction.
And that . . . will precipitate him into certain actions . . . for
there is a part he must play in the drama that is to come” (164).
God has written a story and set his angels to act it out. They are
at once the characters and the audience and are forever changed by
the tale. When Raguel has his idea of how the story was created
confirmed he is forever changed. He tells God, “I feel dirty . . .
sometimes You leave blood on Your instruments” (164). God offers
to erase Raguel's memory of the event but he refuses the offer. God
goes back to work and Raguel leaves, ending the story being told to
the unnamed narrator (164). Raguel is not the only one changed by
this story. The reader has more insight into how stories can effect
change and may be experiencing some of that themselves. The narrator
certainly is. As Raguel leaves the narrator says, “I felt like he
had taken something from me, although I could no longer remember
what. And I felt like something had been left in its place ---
absolution, perhaps, or innocence (165). The story effected the
narrator deeply and changed him, just as all of the stories within it
changed the angels.
Within
the framing story told by the narrator there are several gaps left to
be filled in by the reader using clues within the text. These gaps
take the form of blank spaces in the narrators memory. The first of
these gaps occurs when he is driven to his friend Tink's house by her
flatmate. He can't remember arriving at the house or where Tink's
flatmate went. He remembers kissing Tink and receiving a blow job
from her quite well though, including his thoughts as she ran to the
sink to rinse out her mouth (141). It is interesting that as he
tells the story he remembers many small details, yet remembers
nothing in those gaps. Tink shows the narrator her daughter, asleep
in a room decorated with drawings of winged fairies over palaces.
Tink tells the narrator that her daughter is everything to her, then
she tells the narrator that she loves him and offers him a ride to
the place he is staying, leading to another gap in his memory. The
narrator remembers nothing between embracing Tink after she offered
him a ride and being on the sidewalk in front of the house he was
staying at (142). Clues to what occurred in those gaps are offered
near the end of the story and the audience draws the meaning of them
from the story told by Raguel. The gaps and the clues mean nothing
without the reader to put them into place. Flashes of memory, one
involving a drawing from the room of Tink's daughter with a blood red
hand print and the other of the narrator having sex with a bleeding
Tink, suggest that the narrator has done something terribly wrong.
This suspicion is supported by the narrator seeing a newspaper report
of a triple homicide, two women and a child (165-166).
In
the end of the story the narrator has finally made it back to London
only to be trapped alone in an elevator. The elevator is described
as a “little silver room” (166) echoing the earlier description
of Raguel's room. This shows the reader that the narrator has become
a new man through Raguel's story. A man of Raguel's creation. This
is supported by the narrator's assessment of his life in the
beginning of the story. “Looking around today at the parts of my
life left over from those days, I feel uncomfortable, as if I've
received a gift . . . I have truly inherited my life from a dead man;
and the misdeeds of those times have been forgiven, and are buried
with his bones” (139-140). It is Raguel who has given the narrator
that gift through his story, and given the reader a gift as well,
though not so grand. In a small way the reader has been given an
insight into his or herself and the power of stories to shape his or
her life.
The
transformative power of stories is shown throughout “Murder
Mysteries.” It is also apparent that in order to be changed by a
story the audience must participate in it. They must use their own
experiences and thoughts to fill in the missing information of the
story, then watch how the story and their thoughts change as the
storyteller provides more information. This collaboration has a
profound effect on the reader and turns a story from pure
entertainment to something that offers insight into the reader's
life. The response of the reader creates a story that will stick
with him or her and become a part of his or her personal mythology.
Works
Cited
Dowd,
Chris. “An Autopsy of Storytelling: Metafiction and Neil Gaiman.”
The Neil Gaiman Reader.
Ed. Darrell Schweitzer. Wildside Press LLC, 2007. 103-114. Print.
Gaiman,
Neil. Angels and Visitations: A Miscellany. Minneapolis:
Dreamhaven Books, 1993. Print.
---.
“Murder Mysteries.” Dreamhaven Books. 139-166.
---.
“The Song of the Audience.” Dreamhaven Books. 1.
Pratt,
Mary Louise. “Interpretive
Strategies/Strategic Interpretations: On Anglo-American Reader
Response Criticism.”
Boundary
2,
11.1/2, (1982-83): 201-231. EBSCOhost.
Web.
10 Dec. 2012
“Writing
about Literature.” Literature: A Portable Anthology.
Ed. Janet E. Gardner, et al. Boston: Bedford/St. Martin's, 2009.
1177-1296. Print.
