Review by Matthew Scott Winslow
Reading the short stories of Neil Gaiman always reminds me of a quote by W.H. Auden: "Some writers confuse authenticity, which they ought always to aim at, with originality, which they should never bother about." One of Gaiman's hallmarks is that he does not attempt at originality every time he sits down to write. But, strangely enough, he achieves that, simply because he aims more at what Auden calls "authenticity."
Smoke and Mirrors collects 30 short stories and poems that span a goodly part of Gaiman's career. As might be expected from such an anthology, the quality of the stories varies. But when all is said and done, the stories and poems are enjoyable and fulfilling.
If one had to find a recurring theme through all these stories and poems, it would probably be the idea of story. As Gaiman says in the introduction, "The mechanics of writing fascinate me" (19), and throughout the collection, we sees stories as much about stories and writing as about anything else. Whether he is writing a cross between Baywatch and Beowulf ("Bay Wolf"), playing with Lovecraft's world ("Shoggoth's Old Peculiar" and "Only the End of the World Again"), or retelling familiar fairy tales ("Glass and Apples"), Gaiman is as much discussing the stories these are based on as he is creating something new.
This is, indeed, the authenticity of Auden. Originality be damned: we live in a culture and Gaiman plumbs the depths of that culture for his sources. Reading Gaiman can be surprisingly disturbing as one realizes that these familiar stories -- at the hands of someone like Gaiman -- can still move us in new and different ways.
In spite of all that praise, though, there are still some trite and cliched stories in the collection. No matter how hard you try to redeem it, "Mouse" is still just another story on life as a mousetrap and man as the mouse; no matter how much we may like what he has to say, "Looking for the Girl" still can't rise above it's incredibly obvious and didactic conceit. But we know that even a talented author writes a bad story. I just wish they hadn't been included here.
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