Hold my tea while I puke....

Each time I read an NG's novel the 1st time around, it is unexplicably lovely and incredibly insightful and full of lovely passages that I just want to gobble up and can't have enough of.

Whenever I do the 2nd read, his books turn out to be full of ultimate crap: incoherent, nasty to the brim and full of characters that need mushroom-induced piss to drink are seriously fucked up (not in a good way).

And it's giving me a whiplash.

What the crab is going on? Someone switching my books while I sleep or what?

I'll leave the 1st time around 5 star RV rating but what the hell, I want to give it right now a 1 star and be done with it! Better DNF it with this round and wait for, I dunno, until Loki gives me back my initial lovely volume?

Q:
I can believe things that are true and things that aren't true and I can believe things where nobody knows if they're true or not.

I can believe in Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny and the Beatles and Marilyn Monroe and Elvis and Mister Ed. Listen - I believe that people are perfectable, that knowledge is infinite, that the world is run by secret banking cartels and is visited by aliens on a regular basis, nice ones that look like wrinkled lemurs and bad ones who mutilate cattle and want our water and our women.

I believe that the future sucks and I believe that the future rocks and I believe that one day White Buffalo Woman is going to come back and kick everyone's ass. I believe that all men are just overgrown boys with deep problems communicating and that the decline in good sex in America is coincident with the decline in drive-in movie theaters from state to state.

I believe that all politicians are unprincipled crooks and I still believe that they are better than the alternative. I believe that California is going to sink into the sea when the big one comes, while Florida is going to dissolve into madness and alligators and toxic waste.

I believe that antibacterial soap is destroying our resistance to dirt and disease so that one day we'll all be wiped out by the common cold like martians in War of the Worlds.

I believe that the greatest poets of the last century were Edith Sitwell and Don Marquis, that jade is dried dragon sperm, and that thousands of years ago in a former life I was a one-armed Siberian shaman.

I believe that mankind's destiny lies in the stars. I believe that candy really did taste better when I was a kid, that it's aerodynamically impossible for a bumble bee to fly, that light is a wave and a particle, that there's a cat in a box somewhere who's alive and dead at the same time (although if they don't ever open the box to feed it it'll eventually just be two different kinds of dead), and that there are stars in the universe billions of years older than the universe itself.

I believe in a personal god who cares about me and worries and oversees everything I do. I believe in an impersonal god who set the universe in motion and went off to hang with her girlfriends and doesn't even know that I'm alive. I believe in an empty and godless universe of causal chaos, background noise, and sheer blind luck.

I believe that anyone who says sex is overrated just hasn't done it properly. I believe that anyone who claims to know what's going on will lie about the little things too.

I believe in absolute honesty and sensible social lies. I believe in a woman's right to choose, a baby's right to live, that while all human life is sacred there's nothing wrong with the death penalty if you can trust the legal system implicitly, and that no one but a moron would ever trust the legal system.

I believe that life is a game, that life is a cruel joke, and that life is what happens when you're alive and that you might as well lie back and enjoy it. (c)

i'm a graduate student in theology, so how can i not love this book?
this book is one of the most creative descriptions of my own understanding of theology. gods do not exist on some eternal plane, but they rise and fall with the cultures and peoples who support and worship them. these gods have avatars in many different places--they are not a single entity but many that are called by the same name. mythologies can be more true than reality. and it's a good warning about how careful we should be when we try to make our gods into simple human form. this is a theme that fascinates me (coming as i do from the Christian tradition). you'll see a number of books about Christian fascism on my bookshelf, and there's a theme. i just finished The Kite Runner, so i'm also thinking about the Taliban's attempts to bring their understanding of god into concrete human reality. it gets messy, and i'm not convinced it's a good thing. yet in this book, Gaiman also provides us with gods in human form who are good, fun, and mostly ambiguous.
i guess for me, American Gods is a good cautionary tale, for me, about how gods lurk in our subconscious, and about our need to dethrone divine violence in favor of other models of sacredness. we need to be careful what and how and who we worship in the ways we choose to live.

American Gods, a meandering tale of a book, took me at least two tries to get through, despite my gravitation towards urban fantasy.. The concept of "old versus modern" gods is an intriguing one, and I can always get involved in themes of belief, stories and myth. It didn't always work, however, and was completed at stuttering pace. Transitions can be rough, and it's not always clear where a particular chunk of narrative is heading. I feel like part of it is that we have indeed lost the old gods, and many people need a little background on Gaiman's creatures in order to appreciate the tale he's telling. Often it's well done, but at times it interrupts the flow of the narrative.

I often enjoy Gaiman's imagery, although occasionally it's self indulgent, seemingly for the sake of being shocking, like the woman that swallows a man through her vagina during sex, and a dead person vomiting maggots.

A few loose ends don't particularly seem pertinent,  such as the leprechaun that gives Shadow a gold piece, which Shadow then is moved to throw it into Laura's grave. I'm not sure of the point of that subplot either--the power of belief?

I'm never particularly moved by Gaiman's use of language, but he has a deft hand at characterization. Characters and ideas are clearly his strengths. I loved some of the old gods, and thought Mr. Nancy and the Chicago family particularly well done. The new gods were less well done, though the concept is a fascinating one. Most of the time is spent on the internet/tech and media gods, and they are done well enough to be immediately annoying. However, the pantheon gets a little fuzzy at this point, particularly in Gaiman's decision to largely leave out "modern" organized religion--as Anubis and Bast and such were worshipped by Egyptians, it seems fair to acknowledge Jesus as more than a hitchhiker in Afganistan. I wonder if he avoided it for complexity? Controversy?

The voice and tone is narrator is emotionally removed from the story, but I felt it suited the tone and scope of the novel well. I liked Shadow and felt he was a very believable character for a while. Emphasizing his numbness and distance helped explained how he could be so blase about the return of his dead wife and Mr. Wednesday's abilities. It's interesting that after his initial questioning and challenging of Mr. Wednesday and the leprechaun, he accepts the rest of the magic at face value.

I have mixed feelings about the ending.  I'm a little disappointed that Shadow chose to "rest," and wonder if it's inconsistent, as all along he's been Wednesday's man, paid to work and protect him. And the fact that the plot of the novel is a double con--well, I too feel more than a little betrayed. It seemed weak that both old and new gods took Shadow's announcement and popped back to reality, ready to abandon the fight then and there. Certainly their animosity had to be based on something, and removal of primary motivation doesn't remove built up antagonism.

Worth noting that I sold my copy to Half Price Books, because it's space on the shelf was worth more than the slim chance of re-read. Two-and-a-half stars, rounding down because my memory assures me I don't want to touch it again.

I first read American Gods in the early aughts. While I did like it, I was disappointed and underwhelmed. Considering the subject matter, I was looking for something loud and epic. Instead, I found an understated protagonist in a story that, for all its inventiveness, was slow, meandering, and digressive. I gave it a three star review that noted my disappointment.

Nearly twenty years later, I’ve now experienced the story in multiple formats, and reevaluate my original take. Upon hearing that it was to be turned into a television series, I reread the story as an audiobook. I watched the series. I read the graphic novel adaptation. I’ve come to understand that my original disappointment was based in a fundamental misunderstanding of what the book was.

Despite its setup, American Gods is not about an epic confrontation between Old Gods and New. Rather, it is a mythic road trip across America, On The Road with the Old Gods. It’s in the tradition of Huck Finn traveling with the Duke and Dauphin, not Frodo’s journey to Mordor. What I missed that first time around was that it was the journey, not the destination, that was the point.


The following is my original review:

My three star rating of American Gods is reflective of the ambivalence I feel toward it. I enjoyed reading it, and found it a real page-turner. The concept was fascinating and the mythological elements were interesting and clever in their American guises. So what's the problem? It is akin to the old chestnut about eating Chinese food - after devouring 600 plus pages of Mr. Gaiman's novel I found that I was still hungry, still unsatisfied despite the tastiness of Gaiman's talent.

The problem is that I was expecting an epic. The book's subject matter, length, awards, and reviews all scream epic. I was expecting something deep, meaningful, and memorable. Gaiman's writing talent teased me nearly all the way through that this was indeed what I was reading, yet it never quite delivered. Instead of a memorable epic, what I finally discovered in American Gods was a well-written and enjoyable pulp novel that felt much closer to a particularly well done Stephen King story than it did to an important mythological epic.

I did enjoy reading American Gods. Neil Gaiman is a talented writer, and if you are a fan, you will probably want to read it as well. But be warned to limit your expectations. Despite its length and hype, this book is not an epic, mythic or otherwise. File this one on your bookshelf beside King's The Stand rather than putting it beside Tolkien, Joseph Campbell, or Jung.

In 2003, I walked away from my childhood religion – a high control (some would say abusive) group with a tiny little worldview and a severe superiority complex.

This was my reality:











I believed with all my being that the things depicted above were real, and were just over the event horizon.

Leaving meant losing almost every friend I had ever made since childhood, it created a rift with my still devout family, and quite possibly saved my life.

Is it any wonder that fiction – alternate realities, fantasy, and mental escape – helped me make that decision, helped me move on, and helped deprogram my cult-think? One fiction supplanted the other, only this time I already knew I was working with stories.

Some of this fiction I had read many times, not understanding why the stories resonated so strongly within me, just knowing that I was compelled to return to those worlds, over and over. Others were stories I read during the time surrounding my breakaway, and shortly thereafter.*

American Gods made me observe and think differently. It gave me a new context for the mythologies I had accepted for most of my life. It was bigger than the story of Shadow, or the girl Sam, or Czernabog. For me, it was about how we allow our Old Gods to define our present worldview, and how we allow our New Gods to steal our awareness. Our mythologies set the boundaries of our culture, and paradoxically, as our culture changes, our gods sacrifice their immortality.

n  "Religions are, by definition, metaphors, after all: God is a dream, a hope, a woman, an ironist, a father, a city, a house of many rooms, a watchmaker who left his prize chronometer in the desert, someone who loves you--even, perhaps, against all evidence, a celestial being whose only interest is to make sure your football team, army, business, or marriage thrives, prospers, and triumphs over all opposition."n

The part of the story that affected me the most profoundly was the story of Hinzelmann and Lakeside. The mixing of good and evil, the blurring of lines, townspeople looking the other way – to such a degree that it never occurs to them to see what is happening right under their noses. Dead men's bones. Deaths of legends. It affected me to my core. During the time I was reading American Gods, it was this which rocked me – I was doing the same thing – choosing and keeping and killing my own Gods, my own mythologies.

It was tremendously painful, made a little easier by having the opportunity to process it within the bounds of somebody else's story.


*The rest of the list:

Dune
Chapterhouse Dune
Fahrenheit 451
Animal Farm
1984
Sandman
Crisis of Conscience
Under the Banner of Heaven
Seductive Poison

This was the first book by Gaiman I read, and I instantly became a fan.

Gaiman is a "love-him-or-hate-him" author: either you will die for his prose, or you will be prepared to engage commandos to kill him. I think the reason for this extreme reaction is the way he writes his stories. It can be called fantasy, but actually it's closer to myth with its rambling style and narrative inconsistencies.

"American Gods" is the tale of Shadow and his part in the struggle between the traditional Gods from all over the world who have immigrated to the New World, and the Gods of America (those of media, celebrity, technology, and drugs). These Gods exist because people believe in them: and the new ones are engaged in an epic battle with the old ones for the mastery of the American mind.

The tale is very broad in its sweep and contains many subplots and side alleys, typical of any old-world mythical saga. I devoured the book ravenously, and was instantly hungry for more.

(Boo! My original review, which was longer and better, was destroyed, erased by the Internet gods.)

Gaiman's gift to us is his character, Shadow, who is so lackadaisical that everything he thinks, says, or anything he is prone to, reacts against, is absolutely unpredictable. Love the whimsy, do NOT particularly like the way Aztecs or Mayas were nonexistent in Gaiman's America; go and behold! Norse ones are definitely included!

The best interpretation of what ancient gods could look like in modern society

Usurpers of the throne
A company goes bankrupt, a human dies, and a god without any believers… rebrands her/himself, vanishes, goes back to heaven, hell, behind the big bang, crunch, rip, multiverse? But seriously, of course not, as long as nobody has interviewed a literal goddess/god, this remains an open question. Maybe they don´t even know it themselves and fear the day of the last dead idolator. But at least they are human in the one regard that there is always

A new business idea based on technological and cultural evolution
This is the totally mindblowing, forever continuable concept of creating new gods out of technological and social progress and manifested in it. Internet, biotech, social media, mind uploading, nanotech, war machinery, new ideologies, all fantasy, and sci fi concepts that are standalone enough to be an equivalent, or new interpretation, of the old gods for human stuff like love, death, birth, war, and the big ones like weather, earth, etc. The funny thing is, the more

Humans are losing the connection to their origins, nature, and the biosphere
the more destructive a bad god could be. Let´s say a god of war or mammon is the whole army or government of a superpower or all its conglomerates and megacorporations. A god of lust is the owner of anything pornographic in a time VR and AR are pimping and spicing already incredible 4K and 8K pornography. What I´ve heard so far. And depending on how good or bad Aphrodites and Eros's kinky fetish tendency is, One man's meat is another man's suffering style, the impact on a society, in this case even a mixture of hard tech and soft, sometimes slack, horny ape needs, is pleasure or pain. Play with the idea yourself, you´ll find incredible insights. Both fantasy and sci fi

Expand this concept in extreme detail
Imagine an incredible mighty evil or good magician or a Clarketech civilization and this game could be played until the end of time. And thereby also creating a picture of the human values left in these fantastic settings. That´s what makes, back to the topic, Gaimans´work not better, but more unique than his other also incredible pieces. They are a kind of gold standard for fantasy, but they don´t have this

Mixture with our current time
This is what makes both the book and the TV series something unusual for the genre, tinkering with the idea of fusing fantasy genres with a commentary on modern society that isn´t moralizing or proselytizing for an ideology. But instead letting gods do that work.

Tropes show how literature is conceptualized and created and which mixture of elements makes works and genres unique:
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.ph...

"Američki bogovi" je moja prva Gejmenova knjiga za, uslovno rečeno, stariju publiku. Kako sam na samom početku čitanja njegovog opusa (znam, sram me bilo), nisam znala šta da očekujem od ove knjige. Takođe sam izbegla bilo kakav vid istraživanja kako bi utisak bio što autentičniji.

Bez obzira na to što su od početka bili prikazani paralelni događaji koji su nagoveštavali način na koji će se radnja dalje razvijati, sam početak knjige mi nije previše obećavao. Sa druge strane, preplitanje tih tokova sa osvrtom na događaje iz prošlosti u okviru priče mi je držalo pažnju dovoljno da želim da nastavim dalje. Pre svega su mi bili zanimljivi bogovi i njihova manifestacija na zemlji, kao i to da su njihove priče i svedočenja protkana kroz celu knjigu putem segmenata. Samim tim, u drugi plan mi je pao ceo segment o ratu između starih i novih bogova do trenutka kada Senka zapravo pristaje da bdi za Sredom. Ovde bi valjalo da stanem jer ću u suprotnom celu recenziju morati da sakrijem kao spojler.

Takođe bih izdvojila delove koji nam govore o Senkinom boravku u malom mestu Lejksajd. Ta priča je toliko dobra da bi mogla da se nađe kao posebna publikacija. Zaista me zanima kako će sve ovo biti predstavljeno u seriji koja se trenutno emituje, a za koju kažu da je bolja od knjige :)

***Now a celebrated TV series on Starz.***

“‘I read some book about brains,’ she said. ‘My roommate had it and she kept waving it around. It was like, how five thousand years ago the lobes of the brain fused and before that people thought when the right lobe of the brain said anything it was the voice of some god telling them what to do. It’s just brains.’

‘I like my theory better,’ said Shadow.

‘What’s your theory?’

‘That back then people used to run into the gods from time to time.’”

n  n
Shadow Moon is played by Ricky Whittle. Excellent casting.

There are few experiences that will teach someone more about himself better than going to prison. It is a microcosm. It is like shoving the world into a shoebox. There are rules, not prison rules, but prisoner rules, and you better get them figured out in a hurry. It is one of the few places remaining where people really have to interact and deal with other people. Inmates learn how to cooperate, or really bad things happen.

Plenty of bad things happen anyway.

Time keeps traveling at a normal rate outside, but inside the box, this minute is the same as the last minute, and when a person emerges from prison, it is like being dropped into a different world because his brain is still shackled in place, in whatever decade he first went into prison. A person spends a lot of time with himself in lockup. They become either a better version of themselves or a horrible twisted version of who they were supposed to be.

Shadow lost his temper and lost three years. He came out of prison probably a better person than who he was going to be. He learned to ignore the bullshit and focus on what was most important...living.

The universe is not done fucking with Shadow, not by a long shot. Prison is just the beginning, the burnishing of his character. He barely has made footprints in the dusty highway of his new life when he meets a god. Like it would with any of us, it takes a while for him to really believe he has met a god. This supposed god doesn’t glow or have a thunderous voice. He is abnormal, but in a kooky uncle sort of way, who besides being weird also happens to be a con man. He is frankly...kind...of...annoying.

Gods have fallen on hard times in America.

This god needs Shadow to work for him.

n  “The land is vast. Soon enough, our people abandoned us, remembered us only as creatures of the old land, as things that had not come with them to the new. Our true believers passed on, or stopped believing, and we were left, lost and scared and dispossessed, to get by on what little smidgens of worship or belief we could find. And to get by as best we could.”n

Christianity commits deicide. The whole convert or die thing sort of makes pagans and what would be considered alternative religion types to quickly reevaluate their level of faith in the old gods. It is easier, after all, to focus on one god than figuring out the pantheon of gods they were trying to please before the first bedraggled priest washed up on the shores of their community. Christianity simplified faith. This left all the old gods, used to receiving tasty animal sacrifices, fresh fruits, virgins, bereft of not only sustenance but also...love.

We brought these gods to America with us and then abandoned them.

The new gods who are putting the final nail in their celestial coffins are the new deities, such as internet, media, and cell phones. They hurl insults like these: n  “You-you’re a fucking illuminated gothic black-letter manuscript. You couldn’t be hypertext if you tried. I’m…I’m synaptic, while, while you’re synoptic…”n It is hard to be insulted by a compliment, isn’t it? These new gods are even starting to chip away at the strong foothold that Christianity has on the minds of the American people. If he doesn’t watch out, JC is going to be bumming rides from truckers on the interstate and hoping for the kindness of his former people, eyes focused like zombies on the screens before them, for a handout.

Not to mention the fact that Shadow has televisions asking him, n  ”Do you want to see Lucy’s tits?”n

I’d explain that, but it is more fun for you to find out for yourself.

Needless to say, things are dire.

n  n
Ian McShane plays Mr. Wednesday, brilliantly of course.

Shadow’s boss, Mr. Wednesday, you can probably figure out who he is, decides it is time to wipe the new kids off the block (a version of Titan vs Olympian) and seize the power the old gods so passively let slide through their fingers. Shadow is caught right in the damn middle of it. He is Odysseus in the midst of the Trojan War.

Shadow naturally asks himself, why me?

When Neil Gaiman first submitted this book for publication, his editor/publisher suggested that he cut 12,000 words out of the manuscript. If you are having deja vu feelings of The Stand by Stephen King, you are on the right fright frequency. Gaiman won a plethora of awards for American Gods, so how can you argue that the cuts weren’t a good idea? The thing is, those orphaned 12,000 words were still whispering to Gaiman, and when the decision was made to put out a tenth anniversary edition, he decided it was time to put the kids back with their parents. I would highly suggest reading the 10th anniversary edition. I do not feel the book is bloated. All the scenes are relevant to the larger arc of the plot. I would be nervous to lose the experience of reading any part of this book.

I was skeptical when I began reading this book. Gaiman introduces these gods from different cultures and does not exactly explain who any of them are, or at times he is even being cagey with their names. He is expecting a certain sophistication from his readers that is not only refreshing, but startlingly bold. I thought, in the beginning, that he has the Stephen King magic figured out with the easy accessibility of the writing and enough interesting factoids to make people feel like they are learning something as they work their way through the plot. He has those things, but he doesn’t just let us dog paddle on the surface of the water. He snags our ankles and thrusts us deeper beneath the waves to where things get dark, and we have no choice but to examine ourselves in the context of this story.

And what a pleasant surprise it has been.

n  ”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.”n

With books like this, we resume a richer life.

If you wish to see more of my most recent book and movie reviews, visit http://www.jeffreykeeten.com
I also have a Facebook blogger page at:https://www.facebook.com/JeffreyKeeten

Update: Re-read for the first time in years to prep for reviewing the tv show. So excited!!! I'm recapping for B&N, I'll be putting links up on my profile periodically to the recaps.

Overall, this is a harder book than I remembered. So much harder (as in, harder-edged) and more thoughtful than I remember, both. It's not as twisty/turny surprise-y as it was when I read it last time, but it more than makes up for it with the new thematic things I have the headspace to think about. There's so much here to play with and I'm hoping they use as much of it as possible.
***
Original: Here's my new review of this, up on the B&N fantasy blog: http://www.barnesandnoble.com/blog/sc...

Yay!!

This book (in a very round about way) taught me what good literature is. My mother was telling me about this book, and commented that it is good literature. Now, I was surprised to hear this because Neil Gaiman is usually a nonstop sex and violence party of disaffected goth teenager fantasy. Furthermore, I didn't really believe in good literature. I had had so much obvious bull-plop literary analysis crammed down my throat in high school (A high school teacher once said to our class "In the Great Gatsby, green means go, FOR SEX!") I'm a logical type of dude, and such literary analysis seemed like wildly speculative and unfounded pondering. So I asked my mom, what makes good literature and she said two things make good literature:

(1) Language must be used in an artistic way.
(2) There must be serious themes or metaphors in the work.

And this, for the first time ever, made literature make sense to me.

By this metric, American Gods is good literature. This book is very well written. The language is complex but it flows well and reads easily. The description is deep and enveloping, but does not make the reading labored.

This book is about how the old gods, brought to America in the myth and beliefs of immigrants for thousands of years, are alive on the fringes of our society. Our culture has no time for them, and they wither and grow old in the lack of worship. These gods, such as Anansi, Easter, and The Queen of Sheba, can practice magic; but they are relegated to the position of grifters, criminals, con men, and prostitutes. Meanwhile, the new gods, gods of technology, internet, wall street, and media are becoming strong and want to kill off the old gods. This book is the story of their war.

Of course, the book is rife with themes and metaphors about religion and America in general. And everyone has a take on what it all means. You can read many people here on Good Reads' take on it. You can read mine below, I don't want to affect your opinion about the book if you don't want me to.

I read this book because my mom recommended it, because I like Neil Gaiman, and because I wanted to see what it was all about.

WARNING THEMATIC DISCOVERY SPOILER (could ruin the fun, as unwrapping the metaphor of this book is as fun if not more so than discovering the plot.)

I think that this book is about the cultural shift in America that has been occurring over the last quarter century. The specific cultural shift of which I speak is the shift to a country wide homogeneous culture. Mom and Pop stores have been giving way to Walmart. Local restaurants give way to McDonald's, Subway, Olive Garden, or the Cheese Cake Factory. Local television stations are no longer watched in favor of Digital Cable or Satellite Television. Local Radio stations are bought up by clear channel and local or idiosyncratic programming is scrubbed in favor of nation wide play lists. Ethnic or local cultures are assimilated into the new American culture.

The old gods are metaphors of the ethnic immigrant and local cultures in America. The stories about how each god came to America are not about the gods themselves, they are about the immigrants who believe in them, and how they came to the new world.

The new gods represent the culturally homogenizing forces in America. They are the internet, the media, credit, and technology.

Repeatedly Gaiman refers to "the battle for the soul of America" between the new and old gods. This battle represents the assimilation of the American people into the new homogeneous culture and how this causes us to for go our ethnic backgrounds.