Culture

Neil Gaiman Responds to Explosive Report of Sexual Assault

Published

2 hours ago

January 16, 2025

Neil Gaiman Responds to Explosive Report of Sexual Assault

On Tuesday, the best-selling author Neil Gaiman denied allegations of sexual abuse and assault made against him by multiple women and reported in an explosive New York magazine article this week.

In a statement on his website, Gaiman emphatically denied engaging in “nonconsensual sexual activity with anyone.” He wrote that he has stayed quiet about the allegations to avoid drawing attention to “a lot of misinformation,” and characterized his relationships with the women who have alleged that he assaulted them and pressured them to engage in acts against their will as “entirely consensual.”

Accounts about Gaiman began to surface last summer, when multiple women came forward on a podcast produced by Tortoise Media and accused the author of sexually assaulting them. But a much more detailed and disturbing series of accounts by multiple women who allege that Gaiman raped, pressured, abused and assaulted them was published by New York magazine on Monday. The article describes alleged abusive behavior by Gaiman toward women who claim he forced them to perform degrading acts, including licking vomit off his lap, and in some cases pressured them into sexual situations while his young son was present in the room.

Some prominent writers — among them J.K. Rowling, Jeff VanderMeer, Maureen Johnson and Naomi Alderman — denounced Gaiman’s behavior and criticized the literary world’s tepid response to the allegations. Others suggested that prize committees should rescind some of Gaiman’s literary awards. Some booksellers wondered whether they should stop carrying his books, which have sold tens of millions of copies globally and include children’s books, comics and beloved fantasy novels like “American Gods” and “The Graveyard Book.” Appalled fans vowed they would no longer buy or read Gaiman’s work.

While some of Gaiman’s television and film projects were dropped following the initial allegations, the responses from his publishers, agents and professional collaborators have been far more subdued.

On Wednesday afternoon, however, Julia Reidhead, the chairman and president of Norton, which published Gaiman’s “Norse Mythology” in 2018, issued a memo to staff saying that the company “will not have projects with the author going forward.”

In the memo, which was viewed by the Times, Reidhead said she was “deeply disturbed” by the allegations, while noting that they did not involve the publisher’s employees. Norton released an illustrated edition of the mythology book in November.

HarperCollins, which has published many of Gaiman’s most notable works, and Marvel, the comic book publisher, have no new books forthcoming from him, according to representatives from the companies.

Gaiman’s lawyers did not respond to a request for further comment.

His literary agent at Writers House, which represents blockbuster authors like Dav Pilkey, Nora Roberts and Ally Condie, did not respond to requests for comment about whether the agency would continue to represent him. DC Comics, which published his blockbuster comic book “The Sandman,” along with other works, declined to comment when asked whether DC would continue to publish him.

For some of the women who have accused Gaiman of misconduct, the muted responses from some of his publishers and collaborators are a bitter disappointment.

Katherine Kendall, 35, was one of the women interviewed by Lila Shapiro for the New York magazine story. She met Gaiman when she was 22, while volunteering at one of his book events in Asheville, N.C. She described how, at another reading, 10 months later, Gaiman — whom she’d grown up reading and admiring — pulled her to the back of his tour bus and “lay on top of her.” According to Kendall, he said, “Kiss me like you mean it” and “I’m used to getting what I want.”

According to the article, Gaiman later gave Kendall $60,000 to pay for therapy in an attempt, as he put it in a recorded phone call, to “make up some of the damage.”

In the comment posted on Tuesday, Gaiman did not address specific allegations, but said that he reviewed the messages he exchanged with some of the women “following the occasions that have subsequently been reported as being abusive,” and that the messages reflect “entirely consensual sexual relationships” that “seemed positive and happy on both sides.”

In an interview with The Times, Kendall described the “culture of secrecy” around Gaiman. “Neil’s works were his bait, and promotional events were his hunting ground,” she said. “As long as his publishers and professional collaborators remain silent, Neil will continue to have unrestricted access to vulnerable women.”

Kendra Stout, another one of the women, told the magazine that in 2007, Gaiman forced her to have sex with him while she “had developed a UTI that had gotten so bad she couldn’t sit down.” The article states that, this past October, Stout filed a police report in which she accused Gaiman of raping her.

“The silence of the community around him — his fandom, his publishers — is loud and disturbing,” Stout said in an interview with The Times. “I’ve heard that it was an open secret that he was a predator, but that whisper network did not reach me.”

Some booksellers were torn over whether they should continue to stock Gaiman’s books. Lauren Nopenz, the manager and buyer at Curious Iguana, a bookstore in Frederick, Md., said the store would no longer carry Gaiman’s books on its shelves, but would order copies for customers who request them. “We don’t want anyone to come into the store and see books that make them feel uncomfortable,” Nopenz said. Sarah Bagby, the owner of Watermark Books in Wichita, Kan., said her store would keep selling Gaiman’s work as long as there was customer demand, but might not promote his books heavily. “It’s a predicament, but we’ll carry him,” she said.

On social media, a number of authors expressed their shock and horror over the allegations. But some authors who were friends of Gaiman’s held back. The married writers Ayelet Waldman and Michael Chabon, who hosted Gaiman’s 2011 wedding to the musician and writer Amanda Palmer at their home, said they were still processing the reports.

“I’m just trying to absorb all this and don’t know what to say,” Waldman wrote in an email.

Chabon responded similarly: “I just don’t have it in me to talk about it.”

Palmer, who separated from Gaiman several years ago, declined to comment through a spokesperson, who said that “while Ms. Palmer is profoundly disturbed by the allegations that Mr. Gaiman has abused several women, at this time her primary concern is, and must remain, the well-being of her son and therefore, to guard his privacy, she has no comment on these allegations.”

After Gaiman published his statement, in which he noted that “I could have and should have done so much better” in his relationships with women, some of the women who have come forward said they were let down but not surprised.

Stout shared a statement from several of them — a few couldn’t be reached — responding to Gaiman’s post. It read, “We are disappointed to see the same non-apology that women in this situation have seen so many times before.”

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Culture

Will Ichiro Suzuki be the baseball Hall of Fame’s second unanimous selection?

Published

9 hours ago

January 15, 2025

Press Room

Will Ichiro Suzuki be the baseball Hall of Fame’s second unanimous selection?

Could Ichiro Suzuki become the second-ever player unanimously voted into the National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum? Will Billy Wagner pick up the five votes he missed last year to gain entry in his final year of eligibility? Will CC Sabathia make it to Cooperstown on his first try?

Heading into the Jan. 21 announcement of the Hall of Fame voting results, all three scenarios are on the table.

The voting is conducted by the nearly 400 eligible voting members of the Baseball Writers Association of America; all of the 151 ballots logged on Ryan Thibodaux’s Baseball Hall of Fame tracker as of Tuesday afternoon have the box next to Suzuki’s name checked.

To this point, only famed Yankee closer Mariano Rivera has been elected to the Hall of Fame unanimously — not Babe Ruth, not Hank Aaron, not Ken Griffey Jr. nor Derek Jeter, just Rivera. Could Suzuki be the second?

Thibodaux said he doesn’t expect an answer to that until after the results are official.

“We haven’t seen him left off of any ballots yet and my guess is we won’t see one up until the results are announced,” Thibodaux said in a direct message on Bluesky earlier this week. “If anyone left him off, we likely won’t find out until after, if at all.”

Jeter was left off one ballot in 2020 and Griffey three in 2016.

Voters are not required to make their ballots public, but the Hall of Fame does allow voters to check a box on the ballot to release their selections following the announcement of the voting. Last year, a total of 385 ballots were returned, with 306 voters choosing to make their ballot public. Neither the voter who passed over Jeter in 2020 nor the three who left Griffey off their ballots in 2016 have been revealed.

Suzuki is not the only candidate trending towards induction. Sabathia is on 140, or 92.7 percent, which bodes well for the first-year nominee.

“I’ll admit to being a bit surprised at the strength of CC’s support so far. I had him eyeballed as perhaps a 75 percent bubble candidate, but he’s breezed along so far and has comfortably been in the low 90s for most of ballot season,” Thibodaux wrote. “Unless the late public and private voters have a wildly different evaluation of Sabathia’s credentials, it looks like he’ll be a first-ballot Hall of Famer.”

FanGraphs’s Jay Jaffe, author of “The Cooperstown Casebook,” said he’s been surprised by Sabathia’s showing in his first year on the ballot.

“I thought he was going to be somebody who would squeak in like (Joe) Mauer did last year,” said Jaffe, who created the Jaffe War Score system (JAWS) that is commonly referenced by Hall of Fame voters to help put candidates into historical perspective. “I don’t expect him to stay at 92 percent or even 90 percent, but I think something upwards of 80 percent is very likely.”

Wagner is on the ballot for the 10th and final time. After just missing the 75 percent mark a year ago, he’s trending steadily toward induction. As of Tuesday afternoon, he was at 84.1 percent on the public ballots.

It’s not just the raw numbers that are in Wagner’s favor; the trends are behind him, as well. After just missing out, he’s been added to eight ballots that didn’t include him last year and of the 141 public votes submitted, none who checked his name last year haven’t selected him this year. Another eight first-time voters have voted for Wagner, as well.

“There are still more first-time voters out there and he’ll need to maintain solid support from that group,” Thibodaux wrote. “There are also likely several dozen voters who aged out of the electorate this year. If he happened to have extremely strong support among them, then there still may be work to do to get him over the finish line.”

Carlos Beltrán was at 79.5 percent of the vote as of Tuesday afternoon and Andruw Jones was just below the threshold at 74.2 percent. According to Thibodaux, last year those who made their ballots public before the announcement averaged 7.55 votes per ballot. Voters who waited until after the announcement averaged 6.77 votes per ballot and private ballots averaged 5.8 names. Thibodaux, who began tracking balloting in 2012, said those trends have been steady through the years.

The current voting totals are not encouraging for Beltrán or Jones in relation to their 2025 hopes, but it is a positive for eventual induction. Next year’s first-year eligible class doesn’t have any players who have a career bWAR of 60 or more, such as Suzuki (60) and Sabathia (62.3). The top first-year players on next year’s ballot are Cole Hamels (59 bWAR) and Ryan Braun (47.1 bWAR).

Jaffe said the strength of Sabathia’s support bodes well for the future of not just Sabathia, but also Andy Pettitte, Félix Hernández, Mark Buehrle and Hamels.

“Andy Pettitte and Félix Hernández are almost diametrically opposed in terms of how they’ve gotten to this point, Pettitte with a very workmanlike career and a huge volume of postseason work that was very important in helping teams get to and win the World Series,” Jaffe said. “Félix had a very high peak and a lack of longevity, early burnout and no postseason experience.”

Pettitte, on the ballot for the seventh time, was at 31.8 percent as of Tuesday afternoon. Last year, Pettitte received 52 (13.5 percent) votes and this year he is already marked on 48 ballots, indicating a significant jump. Hernández, in his first year on the ballot, was on 25.2 percent of the votes revealed by Tuesday afternoon.

While the focus on voting is always on the 75 percent line needed for induction, the other marker to watch is the 5 percent needed to stay on the ballot.

Of the 14 names on the ballot for the first time, seven had not received a public vote as of Tuesday morning. Of the remaining seven first-year eligible players, only Suzuki, Sabathia, Hernández and Dustin Pedroia (12.6 percent) have received the necessary five percent to stay on the ballot.

That means 10 players are in danger of falling off the ballot, including a pair of catchers in Russell Martin (4.6 percent) and Brian McCann (4 percent) who would fall off the ballot after just their first year. Also facing the possibility of not receiving 5 percent are Torii Hunter (1.3 percent), who is on the ballot for the fifth time, and Francisco Rodríguez (7.9 percent), who is on the ballot for the third year. Mark Buehrle, on his fifth ballot, has 19 votes as of Tuesday morning, which will be enough to keep him on the ballot another year as long as no more than 380 ballots are returned. One more vote for Buehrle between Tuesday afternoon and next week’s announcement would guarantee the longtime Chicago White Sox starter a spot on next year’s ballot.

(Photo: Steph Chambers / Getty Images)

Culture

Book Review: ‘Going Home,’ by Tom Lamont

Published

17 hours ago

January 15, 2025

Press Room

GOING HOME, by Tom Lamont

Tom Lamont’s “Going Home” is an exceptionally touching novel in multiple ways. It’s a story of fathers and sons. Male friendship and all its many — and not often discussed — complications. Jewish community, culture and faith. What goes into raising a young boy, and tending to loved ones who are at the end of their days. The cruel trick the universe plays that brings us from child to adult to child again over the course of our lives.

At the core of this novel is the question “What does it mean to care?,” and it considers both senses of the word: to care for, and to care about, someone.

Lamont’s literary debut is set in the London suburb of Enfield, and is told largely from the alternating perspectives of four impeccably drawn characters. Téo Erskine, 30, has left Enfield for life in the big city, but dutifully returns once a month to visit his elderly father. His close childhood friend is Ben Mossam, whose parents moved abroad when he finished school, leaving him with a house and money but not many reasons to grow up. Téo’s well-enough-meaning father, Vic, does his best to hide his ailing health and wonders why providing for his family — despite being distant at times — isn’t sufficient to rate him as a good father. And the new progressive rabbi in town, Sibyl, is doing her best to win over a board of more traditional congregants while grappling with her own growing questions around faith.

Tying these characters together is 2-year-old Joel, one of the most charming children put to the page in recent memory. The novel carefully shows the way the child’s very existence changes each of the other characters’ lives, all while perfectly encapsulating the frustration, boredom, anxiety and tremendous bursts of tenderness that come from raising a young one, even when that young one is not your own.

After Joel’s mother, Lia — Téo’s unrequited love — dies by suicide, this all-ages group of lads, plus Sibyl the rabbi, earnestly try to watch over Joel in the wake of baffling tragedy. Can they make room in their lives for a toddler until social services can find Joel’s biological father or caring foster parents? Or will one of them end up caring for him permanently in Lia’s absence?

I’ll take a moment here to applaud Lamont’s human, heartfelt and nonjudgmental portrait of depression and suicide. Rabbi Sibyl doesn’t shy from addressing the manner of Lia’s death in her eulogy, saying that Lia had been failed in life by those who were slow to help. “She would be failed as much in death,” Sibyl adds, “were anybody to criticize her or blame her — ask, how could she? — without trying to understand that for Lia the question might have been, how could she not?”

With nights out, a football match, a trip to Scotland, poker games, pints and even a bit of pill-popping and subsequent street-puking, Lamont shows his talent for revealing the depth of the characters’ feelings through their small, quotidian joys and tragedies. It is here where Lamont’s years as a journalist (for The Guardian and GQ) clearly translate into a canny understanding of surface-level wants alongside deeper, subconscious motivations.

Though at times the plot can feel a tad tidy, the sight of a few seams doesn’t take away from this funny and poignant, bittersweet and moving — yet never maudlin — debut. “Going Home” made me cry on more than one occasion, and laugh out loud many more times. It’s a terrific reminder that what binds us to our loved ones isn’t blood but the care we take to keep them close, and our ability to show up for them when we screw it up on the first go-round.

GOING HOME | By Tom Lamont | Knopf | 287 pp. | $28

Culture

Why deep runs are “probably the most important thing in football”

Published

1 day ago

January 14, 2025

Press Room

Why deep runs are “probably the most important thing in football”

When watching a game of football, we only truly consume a snippet of the action.

We are naturally drawn to the fun stuff occurring on the ball, but zoom out a little and there is beauty laid out in the carefully choreographed off-ball movements across the pitch.

You might not notice a lot of runs. Some of them will not even get picked up by the television coverage, but when a player receives the ball in space, you can be confident that it was their team-mates’ movements elsewhere that dragged the opposition out of shape.

Runs beyond the defensive line are crucial to a team’s attacking potency, particularly in a Premier League that is increasingly physically demanding.

“Deep runs are probably the most important thing in football,” said Liverpool manager Arne Slot on Amazon Prime after their 3-1 victory over Leicester City.

“You don’t even always have to play to a player who makes the deep run — but then you can maybe create a bigger one-v-one situation for your winger, so the more deep runs you make, the more chance you have of winning a game.”

The Athletic identified a similar trend in Slot’s side earlier this season, with the underlapping runs made beyond the opposition defensive line allowing Liverpool’s wingers to come inside to cross — as shown by Mohamed Salah’s assist for Curtis Jones against Chelsea.

Runs beyond the ball remain a key theme of Liverpool’s campaign under Slot.

As well as the obvious candidates of forwards Salah, Cody Gakpo and Luis Diaz, Slot’s midfielders have shown a notable propensity to break beyond the opposition last line with those runs from deep.

For example, in their recent Premier League game against Manchester United, Jones is desperately trying to catch the attention of Ibrahima Konate as he identifies a gap in the defensive line.

While the ball does not reach Jones, Harry Maguire’s attention is drawn to the 23-year-old as the ball continues to be circulated.

Five seconds later, that space is exploited with another deep run from fellow midfielder Alexis Mac Allister, with Salah’s clipped ball struck first time by the Argentina international.

Using SkillCorner’s Game Intelligence model — which extracts contextual metrics from broadcast tracking data — we can measure the number of off-ball runs made by each team when they are in possession, focusing on runs made in behind.

For those unsure, this type of run simply logs when a player is attacking space behind the last defensive line — like the example below. Crucially, the player does not have to receive the ball for the run to be logged.

When looking across all Premier League teams, Liverpool’s 4.1 runs in behind per 30 minutes in possession — adjusted to control for each side’s share of the ball — is the third-most this season, with Crystal Palace topping the charts, edging ahead of Aston Villa.

There is no right or wrong method here, but the graphic above highlights the stylistic approach taken by each team in attack.

For example, Arsenal and Manchester City are comparably low by this measure, which reflects their desire for a more patient, possession-based build-up that looks to squeeze the opposition back — gaining territorial dominance, which often leaves less space behind the opposition defensive line.

As for Southampton, well, let’s not compound their misery.

GO DEEPER

Measuring off-ball runs by Premier League wingers

For league-leading Palace, the runs of Jean-Philippe Mateta are crucial to Oliver Glasner’s attacking approach and they can have a dual benefit for the team.

The first is the typical threat of a striker receiving the ball beyond the opposition last line, but the second is the space that such a run can provide for others to exploit between the lines — namely Eberechi Eze.

For example, in their most recent Premier League game against Chelsea, Ismaila Sarr finds right wing-back Daniel Munoz in space on the right flank, with Mateta occupying Chelsea’s centre-backs with a run in behind, towards the front post (see frame 2).

That run makes space for Eze to drift into, with Munoz’s cutback allowing Eze to shoot first time — albeit missing the target.

There was a near-identical pattern 20 minutes later. Sarr’s ball finds an onrushing Munoz, with Mateta’s run in behind to the near post allowing Eze to hold back and receive the cutback — which is blocked on this occasion.

Conversely, Mateta’s improved link-up play has allowed Sarr to thrive as a No 10 by making runs from deeper.

This is shown in his Premier League goal against Aston Villa in November, with Mateta dropping to receive the ball in his own half before releasing Sarr, who has made the run in behind.

It is a part of his game that Sarr has been actively working on in training since his summer arrival.

“We showed him the space where he can show his strength,” Glasner said in his press conference last month.

“We wanted to have pace, a player who can make runs in behind. (To find) the perfect profile we are looking for, we can’t spend (a lot of) money, so we have to find players with most of the profile, then it’s our job to teach them where they can show their skills and talent.”

GO DEEPER

If Eze has his confidence back, Palace have a true triple threat up front

At Aston Villa, the midfield runs of John McGinn and Morgan Rogers — alongside the wide runs from left full-back Lucas Digne — are key to Unai Emery’s system. However, Ollie Watkins is one of the leading candidates across the Premier League for runs made in behind.

While he is capable of dropping deep to receive, Watkins has developed his game in recent seasons, staying on the last line between the width of the six-yard box and conserving his energy — having pulled into wider areas in seasons gone by.

He picks his moments carefully, but the muscle memory of his channel runs in behind when Tyrone Mings has the ball continues to be effective — as it was against Leicester last weekend.

It was a similar run made for his Premier League goal against Crystal Palace in the aforementioned fixture in November. Before McGinn received the ball between the lines, Watkins was already looking for the space he could exploit in behind (see frame 1).

A perfectly weighted pass and a calm finish duly followed.

When breaking down Watkins’ run types by category, more than two-thirds of his total tally are runs in behind or ahead of the ball — with a notably small share coming short or pulling into the half-space to receive.

When a team-mate gets the ball in space, you can be sure Watkins will be on his bike heading towards goal.

Crucially, this aligns with Emery’s method of attack to pierce through the opposition’s back line when they can. No Premier League team has logged more than Villa’s 53 through balls this season, which shows that they often take the opportunity to play the pass when those runs are made.

Breaking down our SkillCorner dataset by player, Watkins is out in front alongside Leicester’s Jamie Vardy in the highest volume of runs in behind as a share of their total tally, in a list made up largely of No 9s who spearhead their team’s respective attack.

Below Watkins on the list? The previously discussed Mateta, of course.

Like Mateta, the runs made by Watkins and Jhon Duran don’t always need to be met with a pass from a team-mate. However, these movements are still vital for pushing the defence back and creating space for Villa’s No 10s to exploit.

This was particularly notable in Villa’s recent victory over Manchester City — as The Athletic has previously analysed — with Rogers and Youri Tielemans benefiting from Duran’s relentless forward running.

GO DEEPER

How Tielemans and Rogers’ ability between the lines helped Villa beat City

While our post-match debrief will largely focus on the events that occurred on the ball, the key to unlocking a defence might often occur elsewhere on the pitch.

Whether you’re Nottingham Forest or Forrest Gump, running matters — and now we can measure its impact in context.