China Miéville’s The City and the City, Neil Gaiman’s Neverwhere, Portal Fantasies, and Reading Books by Abusive Authors. (Now With Bonus Rowling included!!!)

(Approx 4000 words / 20 minute's reading time)

Introduction

Separate art from the artist, they say. It’s the intellectual thing to do – death of the author, even though in Death of the Author Barthes told us to feel free to ignore the author’s intention, not ignore the author's existence.

Many authors would love us to separate art from the artist. In some cases, it’s the only way their work is readable.

China Miéville’s Wikipedia page states: ‘In 2013, Miéville denied allegations of emotional abuse made by an ex-girlfriend. He acknowledged having had a brief affair with the woman, but stated that her account of it was untrue. According to Miéville, he was in a non-monogamous relationship at the time, about which she was aware.’

Neil Gaiman’s Wikipedia page contains the line: ‘In September 2024, Disney halted production on the film adaptation of The Graveyard Book due to a variety of factors, including the sexual assault allegations against Gaiman.’

J.K. Rowling uses Twitter, still, even though Twitter is gone. You can go and see her for yourself, if you like.

I have read books by each of these authors, in the aftermath of discovering that I don’t think I’d want to be friends with any of them.

Reviews

A murder mystery in a Beszel, a city sharing the same physical space as a second city, Ul Quoma, The City and the City follows an investigator trying to understand a murder that appears to have crossed the inviolable and intangible borders between the cities.

The City and the City is a book which constantly flirts with a sense of wonder, constantly seeks to convince us that something amazing is happening, but it never does. It can be a beautiful book, but only in pinprick openings that expose the illusion.

Beauty is subjective, but I will tell you that it is a moment that brings us to an emotional realm where we are fully aware of what we are experiencing. It is a sense of wholeness, and wonder. But that is not what China Miéville gives us in The City and the City, about a pair of co-located cities existing one atop the other, Beszel and Ul Quoma.

He gives us needle-thin moments, again and again, a tattooist’s hammering at our skin, begging us to believe that his blood is on the page, not ours.

He is well known for writing weird and wondrous fiction, but this paired city is split. That split is presented as something strange, metaphysical, operating by mysterious and magical rules, but in the end we discover that its strangeness is purely a mass hallucination by its citizens – a learned way to unsee the crosshatching, the ways in which a single street might exist and be shared between Beszel and Ul Quoma purely because each city’s inhabitants choose not to see the others as they go about their business.

Perhaps there is real artistry in encouraging a reader to develop beauty on their own, in the wide black gulfs of mediocrity between genuine stabs of greatness.

It would be easier to lend the artist my trust if he had been kinder.

An inhabitant of London, who stops to help what he thinks is one of the city’s homeless, and discovers that she is the scion to a powerful house with an indispensable magic vital to the future of London Below, a magical land beneath our feet.

Neverwhere is an adaptation of the 1996 BBC television series Neil Gaiman wrote, written while filming the series, rewritten for an American audience, and rewritten again in 2005.

No matter how many revisions are made, you can tell it’s a first book. The prose tells when it should show, going so far as to render its pivotal heel-turn, as a powerful angel’s fall is revealed, with: ... ‘in a time of scary things, it was the most frightening thing Richard had seen. The angel’s serene beauty cracked; its eyes flashed; and it screamed at them, crazy-scary and uncontrolled, utterly certain in its rightness, ‘They deserved it.’’

It isn’t terrible, but it feels like he is begging for an artist to take his work, tidy it, interpret it, and portray it for an audience. He knows how to describe what would be cool, but not, in this book, how to portray something cool. Is that why he is so well known in comics, where other artists bring their passion for him to stand astride?

London Below is a patchwork quilt of stories, myths, and dream-logic fantasy that would all charm me again, as the television series did so many years ago, if only I hadn’t seen Neil Gaiman in the way he described his protagonist, Richard Mayhew, as ‘a fresh-faced, boyish young man, with dark, slightly curly hair’ and ‘a rumpled, just-woken-up look to him, which made him more attractive to the opposite sex than he would ever understand or believe.’

Harry Potter exists brightly enough in the public consciousness that the only original thing I have to say about it, at this stage, is that I can see the exact moment Rowling was invited onto the film sets because her fiction devolves into fan-fiction of the work of those actors and set designers, and, in truth, this improves it. (Order of the Phoenix was, infamously, delayed until 2003. The first Harry Potter film was released in 2001.)

Psychoanalyzing authors

It is unwise to try and psychoanalyze authors through their work. I will be doing some of that, although it is important to remember that creating any work of art involves stepping outside of our heads. The authentic self is always very different to the self we present through our works, which is the beauty of creation of any kind. It involves performing one of the greatest miracles we can – making an expression of ourselves as we choose to create it.

Those who are most skilled in this can create something utterly detached from themselves, yet still capable of sharing something of the self with the reader.

Some say that all art makes a statement and asks a question: ‘This is a way I have felt – have you felt this way, too?’

I have felt conflicted, reading works by these authors. Have you felt conflicted, too?

I am a little bit afraid to write these words, because the threat of litigation is one of the tools these authors have used to silence people.

China Miéville mentions his law firm in a statement on his website, and with a considerable amount of digging, it is possible to make a broad assumption that the law firm has gone to considerable efforts to ensure the only allegation anyone knows of is the vague mention on wikipedia.

Neil Gaiman is reputed to have negotiated one of his accusers sign a Non-Disclosure Agreement for a sum in the hundreds of thousands of dollars.

There is a popular genre of tweet reading something like ‘I tweeted that J.K. Rowling is [something objectionable]. That allegation was false and offensive. I have deleted it and apologise to J.K. Rowling.’ These tweets often appear after J.K. Rowling threatens to sue someone.

These legal threats, from these authors of fantasy, are an invitation to enter a magical world where they have done no wrong.

Will you accept the invitation? Or would you rather go to court pursued by someone far wealthier than you are?

In The City and the City, Miéville presents a world where all transgressions of the status quo are dealt with by Breach. If one takes an illicit step between the city of Beszel and into Ul Quoma, Breach will make you disappear, forever. It is not always clear who, or what, Breach are. A shadowy organization with magical powers? A gestapo-like group with powers superlegal, if not supernatural?

In the end, we discover that Breach are a force of fear, who force the public to participate in a theatrical game to convince them that the world Breach claim exists, exists. A city park that exists in two cities at once, where it is impossible to see the citizens of the neighbouring city as you stroll by them? Of course that’s real – because if you see your neighbour-citizens, Breach will take you.

There is no threat in the secrets of The City and the City until they are made secret. A potential third city, Orciny, living beneath the other two, is a fairytale fable until the desperation of Breach to keep the truth – that these cities are one city divided only in the minds of their citizens – turns it into a poisonous threat.

Is there any threat in the allegations against China Miéville? Details are scarce. Reading between the lines, it could, simply, be a shitty breakup. A series of mistakes that hurt one or both parties. A shitty attitude to women. None of these things are really worth bringing into the public eye, but because whatever happened between China Miéville and his accuser has been silenced by his law firm, we cannot truly know. All we can do is live in an illusory world where Miéville did no wrong.

At the climax of the book, a bus full of refugees who do not share in the delusions of the citizenry is crashed, causing these strangers to begin wandering across the cities and letting the citizens see into a world where the strictures on what they can see around them are illusory. Breach gathers up those loose refugees, and silences them before they can speak of the illusions around them.

Can illusions stand, if people remain silent? Is that why the most powerful illusions are protected by fear of speaking about them?

In Neverwhere, there is a laundry-list of worrying things which are so very easy to dismiss when we know how cool Neil Gaiman is.

The most powerful woman in the book, Hunter, is introduced with the deliberately ambiguous phrase, ‘I rent my body’. We, and the characters in the book, assume she is prostituting herself.

While Richard is discovering that touching London Below has rendered him invisible to the mortal world we all know, he encounters a cheating couple on a park bench – and he watches on, for a moment, as they begin to grope each other.

A girl in her late teens, wearing a birthday party button declaring ‘I am 11’ and who giggles ‘like a Japanese girl’ eats a banana, which is specified as ‘the least erotic display of banana eating he had ever seen’.

The love interest who isn’t quite a love interest, who is named Door, is absolutely a love interest, based on a few moments of dancing, a few moments of errant touches, an intimate clasp of the hand, is introduced as looking like fifteen or sixteen years old.

Later in the book Richard passes the Ordeal of the Key, to become the key’s master... and we all know what keys and doors do, don’t we?

Throughout Neverwhere we are repeatedly treated to the thought that London’s homeless are not people we need to worry about. They are the mighty Hunter, they are near-literal vampires, they are immortals who have seen London rise from swamps beside the Thames.

We don’t have to worry about those less fortunate, about those we’ve hurt. They’re somewhere marvellous. Probably. If we ignore them, we can continue to believe that – in much the way Richard, the protagonist, fades from the memories of the everyday folk of London Above, most notably including his ex-fiancé, Jessica, who repeatedly inconvenienced Richard by being a bossy bitch of a woman, and who is perfectly unflustered when she no longer has to think of him – but when he makes a brief return, is clearly heartbroken to have lost him (after dumping his ass)... but don’t worry, Richard will once again dive into a magical world with all the magical people, and whatever hurt Jessica feels will fade.

All the hurt will fade, if we don’t speak about it. If we ignore it.

Can you ignore it?

In Harry Potter a little boy who has nothing and who everyone hates discovers that, actually, everyone loves him, and he has all the wealth in the world, and everything is wonderful. And anyone who hates him is obviously an evil creature, but don’t worry, those can be banished with a casual flick of the wand.

Do you really think a billionaire cares if they spend ten thousand pounds sending a solicitor after someone on Twitter? It’s just a flick of the wrist.

Abuse

What all of this amounts to is a desire to live in a certain kind of world, magical, where we have done no wrong.

What’s wrong with that? It’s a common escapist fantasy.

And yet, in order to enter such a world, one requires power. And in this case, if someone feels wronged by these authors, there is a way for the authors to ensure they cannot speak.

A magic spell to say, ‘shut up, shut up, shut up, never speak again, I silence you forever’, and once the nasty letter from a solicitor arrives, suddenly the victim is sent to a parallel world where the author is wrong, and vanishes from our world, where the author is a perfectly respectable person who has wronged no one.

What an ugly thing to do to other people. What a selfish thing to do in response to someone telling you that you have caused them pain.

It is difficult to live in a split world like that. Where a street may seem, to anyone else, to be one place – but you know that you can never step on the street’s far side, because that is a place where you have never been harmed. And there is no way to exist in a world where you have not been harmed, because the hurt is something you are now forced to bear in silence, forever.

I have streets like that. The abuses I have suffered were, perhaps, quite small compared to the suffering of others. But, I have suffered, in many phases of my life and in many contexts, and I know what it’s like to stand in public, knowing that I am alone in a world none of them can see, because everyone else believes they live in a world where I am unhurt and whole, but I live in a world where I am bitterly hurt.

There is a temptation to view these authors as completed works, as perfect and polished as their books. Abusers who are so single-minded in their pursuit of that abuse that their entire lives must focus on it – that the rest of their hearts, if they ever had one, must have withered away into nothing. A temptation to see fairytale monsters.

The sad truth is that most abusers, and these authors, are, in fact, not very skilled at abuse. Nor do they pursue it with the energy we assume they must to achieve so much hurt.

More usually, abuse is a sinister hobby. An unthinking reflex. Something done without much thought, sometimes regretted, sometimes set simply aside.

It is easier, perhaps, to believe in the myth of the perfect narcissist – a monstrous creature that only creates hurt, that cannot love, that cannot be anything but harm. Yet, such creatures, if they really existed, would be much safer to be around.

It is much harder to believe in the truth – these people are, simply, people. Some people are kind to us, some are unkind. It should be that uncomplicated. It is not.

The most dangerous among us are those who give genuine good to us, but in a moment of anger or pain or by mistake or through greed or in reaction to the abuses they suffered and now carry forward, they use that good to twist our arm and march us into further hurt.

The most dangerous ones are the ones we continue to love, a love we keep in a secret place, because we cannot armour ourselves against those we love.

I have, sometimes despite my better instincts, loved these authors.

I always felt strange about Miéville, though. He has one foot in politics, one foot in academia. I found him threatening, at the start – he was too perfect, too erudite, too beloved by the intelligentsia. When, in a private conversation, someone slagged him off? I rejoiced.

But so many people loved him – people I respected. His works... they had a beauty? I could see it? I just had to ignore my feelings, ignore the gaps between the parts I could love. Ignore the strange uglinesses... and ignoring those things was easy.

I think China Miéville wants to be loved. I think he wants to be seen as someone on a level above the rest of us. Maybe not a thought leader, but definitely someone we all wish we could be. Someone who not merely is on the shoulders of giants, but could be the giant for future generations. Someone we happily know is just a little bit smarter and wiser than us.

Someone entitled to our love.

That, I think, is what made me feel strange about him – it felt like he was, in some way, entitled to my love and admiration. And while I could never wholeheartedly throw myself into his books... I could find parts to love, parts that were beautiful.

Did he feel entitled to be loved? Is that why the possibility people wouldn’t love him, if they knew all his secrets, made him so desperate to live in the fantasy world where he could never do wrong?

We’re all entitled to love. Not all of the love, not love from every person, but at the minimum, we are entitled to love ourselves. I'm not sure he does.

I don’t know what Miéville did or didn’t do. It seems that he’s made sure no one will ever find out, not for sure.

I don’t love him. He’s a decent author, in places, but I don’t love him.

I always thought Neil Gaiman was cool. I had some trouble getting into his stuff – the comics were a little too expensive, I bounced off his books a little... but I always, always knew that Neil was cool. And Neil knew what was cool, too.

That’s why there’s always so much cool stuff in everything he does – he has a great eye for things that are beautiful. He appreciates things with a clarity that makes me think he sees beauty in an earth-shaking way almost every single day of his life.

I wonder if the women who say Gaiman mistreated them are women he finds beautiful. I wonder if Gaiman’s hunger for what is beautiful means that he will take from other people as easily as he takes from myth and legend.

The Sandman isn’t his character – it’s a pastiche of things he’s heard about. A folkloric character, who Gaiman decided was siblings with Death and other personifications... Neverwhere isn’t much his, either. He stripped London’s tube map and mixed in mismatched elements until it looked new, until it looked like his... until it looked cool.

How much of other people does he take? I don’t know, but I know what it is to be so hungry to be part of something beautiful. I know what it’s like to be so envious of something amazing I’ve experienced that I become desperate to take it for my own.

Is that what Neil Gaiman did? To people? To people? I don’t know. It sounds like it.

I don’t think Neil Gaiman’s work is cool, these days. I wonder if he’s unhappy, knowing that all the beautiful things he showed us are a little uglier now, because of him.

J. K. Rowling has always, always, been pathologically addicted to pleasing us. More, more, more, give them more, because the more she gives us, the more we’ll love her.

Dumbledore? Gay. Every ethnicity who asks on Twitter? A student at Hogwarts with a mildly inappropriate name. Wizards? Used magic, not privies. Whatever will please you? It’s there!

And it is all. So. Wonderful.

Being everyone’s friend, so eager to please, must be exhausting. It must have overstretched her at some point – and then, when she overstretches herself and shits on the floor, she'll get a lawyer to magic it away.

I wonder where Rowling got so addicted to pleasing other people. I’ve heard she suffered domestic abuse. I’ve lashed out, unthinkingly, towards people who acted a little bit like people who hurt me. And I’ve always known that pleasing the people who hurt me would stop the pain. I’ve been so very desperate to please other people, before they could hurt me. Is that why she wants to please us?

J.K. Rowling was, I think, very lucky to be able to make so much money, and to build such high walls around herself that she doesn’t even need us to be silent. She can continue to live in her escapist fantasy, where she is always correct, where she is always pleasing, and perhaps she always will be.

I wonder if she’s lonely.

I don’t think she lets herself wonder that.

Summing up

Can someone unbeautiful make something beautiful and worthy? Of course they can. That is what making beautiful things is all about.

We are all of us unbeautiful. No book survives a hate reading, so they say. In an extreme enough purity culture, no one is pure. None of us are perfect, nor can we be, nor should we be.

I have been hurt, and I have hurt others. I tell myself that when I have hurt others it’s been by mistake, not maliciousness, but I know that mistakes hurt just as much as malevolence does. People make mistakes. People hurt each other. That’s okay, it’s part of being a person.

(Have I hurt you? I’m sorry. I have never hurt anyone without feeling sorrow, but once or twice I have been so ashamed I couldn’t bear to speak the apology.)

There is a very potent reason to believe in the perfect narcissist – fabulous monsters of hate – because it absolves us of responsibility. We did nothing wrong, the people who hurt us were monsters, don’t you understand? And because they are monsters, we are permitted to do whatever we want to hurt and wound them however we can.

Did I do anything wrong, to invite the hurts I received? Did the people accusing these authors of mistreatment do something to deserve it? It doesn’t matter if we did wrong, or didn’t. A mistake hurts as badly as maliciousness, and the deserving feel pain as sharply as the undeserving do.

But when someone decides to hurt someone else, and does so, whether it is in the bedroom or in denying them their humanity or in forcing them to recant their claims, that matters. It matters a lot.

These authors could have decided to apologize. They could have decided to make amends, even if imperfectly. They could have decided to make peace with living in a world where they did something wrong.

Instead, they made the choice to try and force those they hurt away into the shadows, so they could live in a world that believes they have always been right.

Can we consume the art of monsters, if they truly existed? Can we enjoy it?

Of course we can.

But no matter how perfect and beautiful the art they make is, creators will always retain the power to do something astonishing.

They can sour what was once sweet.

These authors, all of them, have made their books bitter to me. And it is no one’s fault but their own.

I wonder if they regret that.

(China, Neil, Joanne, I am sorry if this has hurt you. I invite you to make peace with the reality we all live in - one in which we hurt each other - and to recognize that everyone in this world should have the opportunity to carry their hurt with as much dignity as they can. Finding that dignity is, often, the first step towards healing. I hope you learn to understand my thought that it is wrong - undignified - to strip the dignity from others, by forcing them to carry their pain secretly and in fear. I hope you all find a way to carry your hurts with dignity. I hope you heal. And I hope you all, even if imperfectly, do what you can to apologize.)