american gods

After reading Neverwhere, I wanted to read some more Neil Gaiman. I've had Stardust gathering dust on my bookshelf, and was about to pick it up when I saw a copy of American Gods at our local library. It was a great choice and a great book. Gaiman manages to successfully weave together a mixture of gods and mythic heroes from many different cultures and folk legends that would impress even Joseph Campbell—all into a fast-paced, intriguing, even comedic,  thriller.

His idea is that America is not a country conducive to gods and god-worship. All of the immigrants, voluntary and involuntary, who have come to these shores for centuries may have brought their home gods and goddesses with them, but these old gods never really took to the country. Or the country didn't take to them. Americans, by their very nature, are always on the lookout for the next best thing, so even the relatively recently created gods of the media and internet will soon be ignored by their successors. The physical landscape of America itself is phenomenal, with natural, holy places.  Modern day folks are still drawn to such "mythical" places as Mount Rushmore. How could an Odin or a Kali or an Anansi or Horus compete with a gigantic, magic, mountain?

 The two ravens Hugin and Munin on Odin's shoulders

The characters of the hero Shadow and his boss, Mr. Wednesday, are terrific, as are the others that  Shadow comes across on his travels—especially Mr. Nancy, Whiskey Jack, and Sam Black Crow. Mr. Nancy (Anansi) was a huge favorite of mine, so of course this means I have to read Anansi Boys next, right? Or should I check if the library has The Sandman, because Odin and some of the other peripheral characters are suppose to figure in that one as well ... Or The Graveyard Book? It looks like my Halloween reading this October and beyond will be Gaiman. The depiction of the down-and-out gods of the Old World trying to eke a meager existence in the U.S. is consistently good. And humorous. And apart from all of the deep mythical background, what really was the best part of the book for me were the supporting, peripheral stories that Gaiman wove to tell how a few of gods traveled to the New World, via slaves from Africa, a female prisoner from Cornwall, a salesman from Oman. These supporting mythlets were powerful and never detracted from the main narrative and fate of Shadow and Mr. Wednesday.

There are some wonderful passages. A little more than halfway through the book, Gaiman lets a character step momentarily out of a story within a story to talk of the role of myth and legend and fiction:

No man, proclaimed Donne, is an Island, and he was wrong. If we are not islands, we would be lost, drowned in each other's tragedies. We are insulated (a word that means, literally, remember, made into an island) from the tragedy of others, by our island nature, and by the repetitive shape and form of the stories. The shape does not change: there was a human being who was born, lived, and then, by some means or another, died. ... Fiction allows us to slide into these other heads, these other places, and look out through other eyes. And then in the tale we stop before we die, or we die vicariously and unharmed, and in the world beyond the tale we turn the page or close the book, and we resume our lives.

A life that is, like any other, unlike any other.

And also this wonderful speech:

Gaiman reading Sam's fabulous "I believe" speech

There were a few surprises, and a few plot points I was able to figure out ahead of time. Some of the characters' outcomes may have seemed left dangling or unresolved, but not in bad way. Just that their story might continue off-screen, if you will. Apparently Gaiman has written a novella with further adventures of Shadow. I'll have to check that out. The only very minor quibble I might have with American Gods is that the Götterdämmerung didn't end up being quite as dramatic as some of those other, stronger parts of the book. But the battle also didn't feature the hero front and center, and frankly that is where the book's and the reader's main interest lies—not in a long, drawn-out, detailed battle scene. Gaiman wasn't trying to rewrite The Two Towers or  The Return of the King and I'm grateful for that.

American Gods takes Shadow and the reader through some interesting places, both before and "behind the scenes," where anything might happen. I truly enjoyed accompanying Shadow and spending some time in a tiny nice town in frozen Wisconsin,  a funeral parlor in Cairo, Illinois, the mythical white ash Yggdrasil,  and the Underworld. As much as I enjoyed the narrative, I am left with the echoes of the forgotten gods and what it might mean to take your gods with you and then abandon them. All of our personal stories and histories, where do they go after we're gone? Who is that man driving the taxi cab, or that woman in the coffee shop with the too-bright hair and flower tattoo? Eccentric? Or maybe something else ...

Related:
Neil Gaiman's Journal

Related articles

• Neil Gaiman's 'Sandman' Moving to TV, Possibly With 'Supernatural' Creator Eric Kripke on Board (slashfilm.com)

underground

I just finished Neil Gaiman's Neverwhere. I enjoyed it. What really struck me, as I read it, were all the "links" I could make. Some placed within the novel by Gaiman, some brought to the experience of reading by the particular reader, me.

Neverwhere tells the story of an everyman, Richard Mayhew, who is swept into another world beneath the streets of London, called London Below. This other London is peopled by those who have fallen through the cracks of our world, as well as some fanciful and pretty horrible characters, and also ones with otherworldly powers. I enjoyed the character and in-joke of the Marquis of Carabas and was concerned about his fate, maybe more than any other character in the story. Not that I didn't like Richard, but the Marquis was more engaging. But that's true of the Wizard of Oz (film), too, which is numerously referenced in Neverwhere. Everyone has a favorite character from that classic film. Mine was and still is the Tin Man, although I think the most intrepid member of Dorothy's crew may well have been Toto. Richard, like Dorothy, spends much of his time wanting to go back home. In this upside-down fairy tale he gets his wish and then gets to change his mind. What I found most intriguing about Richard was that even though he has completely lost his identity in the London he knows and has become a walking metaphor of the homeless, faceless poor that try to live off the city streets with all-too-short a life, he never completely loses touch with who he is. No matter who he runs across in the strange societies of London Below, he never hesitates to introduce himself, with his full name, "I'm Richard Mayhew." Maybe he's just more polite than my fellow Americans, but I was impressed.

Another interesting aspect of Neverwhere is the idea of youth, and growing up. One could read the story of Richard's adventures in London Below as his maturation process. But I also saw it as a depiction of what it's like to be young in the city. City life and youth itself can be exciting, dirty, scary, sexy, even life-threatening. If Richard chose to return to his (our) normal world, he could always look back on his time with the Marquis and Door and the others as his wild youth, much like many of us have dim but pleasant memories of our own youthful escapades.

While reading Neverwhere I experienced echoes of other books I have recently read and enjoyed. As each step of Richard's journey took him closer to somewhere or someone even stranger or more dangerous than the last, reading can take you on a larger journey, from book to book, weaving a common thread through different stories. A few months back I read Rune by Christopher Fowler, whose Bryant and May mystery series I enjoy. Like Neverwhere, Rune is set in London with a male protagonist who doesn't yet realize he might like to break free from his relationship with a perfect woman who isn't perfect for him. An interesting yet offbeat young woman comes into his life and the story is off and running. More a horror story than fantasy, Rune still makes for a good read. In fact my only quibble with both books is that there is a lot, maybe too much, flowing blood. As good as both of these writers are, I was wondering how horrible Neverwhere's Mr. Croup and Mr. Vandemar could still have been without the need to be overly descriptive of half-eaten kittens and the like.

I also recently finished Philip Pullman's His Dark Materials series, with the wonderful female protagonist Lyra Silvertongue. These books start out in an alternate Oxford and then take off for worlds familiar and imaginary. I can't say enough about this great series of books, except that I look forward to my daughter being old enough to enjoy them. In the meantime I will most likely be reaching for Gaiman's latest and see where the book will take me and what other books and worlds I may discover on the way.