American Gods, by Neil Gaiman

[Leto]

As per request of Circus Cranium, in the horror forum, here is it :

American Gods
by Neil Gaiman

What if people weren't the only migrants to cross the ocean to USA ? What if their old beliefs, fairy tales and legends lead their gods to migrate with their followers ? Are they able to survive uprooted, now that the people who brought them here start to forget them. And turn to new gods, as Wealth, Infonet, and Technology. From this basis, Neil Gaiman write a brilliant road story following Shadow, a man who's just out of jail and who would do anything not to go back in. Unfortunatly for him, Mr Wednesday will make him an offer he can't refuse. Forced to do some illegal jobs, Shadow will soon cross the veil between men and gods. And join the battle between Old World and New One.
Is this book an fable regarding Neil Gaiman's situation, an Englishman established in USA ? Certainly, but, even if the book lies heavily on Norse legends, the strength of this novel is not to stop between a simple confrontation between Europe and Americas. Some of the characters are far older than the first Neanderthalian tribes walking on European plains. Some, as old, are native to USA. The battle front is more between Ancients and Moderns, and the winners are... none of them. You can't live in the past, but without past you have no future.

So after reading all this psycho-rambling, you're still wondering if this book worth the read ? If you like road stories, coming of age stories, redemption stories, good and clear writing style, tongue in cheek humor, go for it.
If you prefer black and white story and don't want your opinions to be shattered, go back to your Da Vinci code and Anne Rice books, you won't like this.

 

[Tsujigiri]

I enjoy Gaimans work, both in his novels and his comics so I think I'll look for this one at the bookshop.
Thanks for the review

 

[Circus Cranium]

Thanks Leto. That sounds really interesting. Gonna have to make room for it on my list.

 

[Brian G Turner]

Thanks for the review, Leto - I'll put this up once I'm done with adding the new books review section to the site.

 

[Leto]

Feel free to edit it. I'm not sure my english syntax is at its best here.

 

[stellarexplorer]

Let me start by saying I liked the book. It is a very good book. I appreciate the opportunity to try to articulate why I liked it but wouldn't rave about it and tell everyone that they absolutely had to read it. But I don't think I'll attempt that at the moment.

Fine writing; vivid images and metaphors; complex and layered plot handled masterfully; characters well-drawn and believable -- many of them quite easy to dislike. I think I'm starting to approach the area of reservation.

And then there is Shadow. He is something of a cipher. A shadow. 465 pages (or 14 tapes) and what do we understand about him? Some strong character traits. A certain nobility. A sense of honor. A taciturnity that makes him spare, austere, and hard to penetrate. His mind is a mystery. His life is a mystery. How did he get this way? What was his family life like, his boyhood? What can we know about these details to make sense of someone who we can't readily have access to? I think part of the answer to this is that Shadow does not himself know who he is, and Gaiman wants us to share in a piece of that not-knowing.

Fine. That's Shadow as a real character in a book. Apparently, Gaiman is also suggesting that Shadow is not just the man Shadow, but either in name or in actuality is the Norse god Baldur, son of Odin, killed by Loki with a sprig of mistletoe through the eye, resurrected only at the time of Ragnarok -- the ultimate and final battle of the gods against their adversaries that destroys most of the universe.

Is Shadow really Baldur? Is he a new version of Baldur -- an American God Baldur?

So from that point of view the story is metaphor. It is a kind of retelling of myth in a contemporary setting, with some new elements.

No doubt it is a hell of a book. I respect the considerable effort that went into this, and its execution. So why am I left feeling let down? Is there some gimmickry in all this? Is it all a little facile? Or maybe I just don't like most of these people.

 

[stellarexplorer]

Second post

On the influences to this book:

I had my own thoughts about this as I was reading. Then in the acknowledgements Gaiman says, "Once I'd written the first draft I realized that a number of other people had tackled these themes before I ever got to them..." and he cites James Branch Cabell, with whose work, sadly, I am unfamiliar; Zelazny; and Harlan Ellison, "whose collection Deathbird Stories burned itself onto the back of my head when I was still of an age where a book could change me forever."


For me, the Ellison influence stuck out strongly. (As an aside, I think it worth mentioning that the idea that God is dead, and dead due to the failure of belief by his erstwhile adherents goes back at least to Nietzsche. And the marginalization of God, gods, and belief seems to go back to the Enlightenment, God as the Watchmaker who wound up the clock of the world and disappeared, no longer needed; man increasingly pushed away from the center along with his gods, as our unremarkable place in the universe supplanted Man as the Measure of All Things. But that's a whole other discussion, as interesting as I find it.)

I went back and reread Deathbird Stories. The stories speak for themselves as dark, gritty offerings to the new objects of worship. I think it is worth quoting from the Introduction, because I found it remarkable as one of the principal sources for the ideas in AG:

"...gods...are made viable and substantial only through the massed beliefs of masses of men and women. And when puny mortals no longer worship at their altars, the gods die.
To be replaced by newer, more relevant gods.
...Already we begin to worship these other, newer gods.
This group of stories deals with the new gods, with the new devils, with the modern incarnations of the little people and the wood sprites and the demons. The grimoires and Necronomicons of the gods of the freeway, of the ghetto blacks, of the coaxial cable; the paingod and the rock god and the god of neon; the god of legal tender, the god of business-as-usual and the gods that live in city streets and slot machines. The God of Smog and the God of Freudian Guilt. The Machine God.
They are a strange, unpredictable lot, these new, vital, muscular gods..."

 

[Greg Austin]

I agree, American Gods is a very good read. It's my favourite, along with Jasper Fforde's The Eyre Affair. Cheers