(no subject)

[felis_ultharus]

So I just read American Gods, being the last geek in the world not to have read it.

At first I was disappointed with it. The plot seemed unfocused and rambling. About halfway through, it turns out that a lot of the aimlessness was misdirection, and he brings it to a brilliant reveal-type conclusion -- very Rowling-like, when Rowling is at her best.

So it was a brilliant plot. And a fun read. Most of the characters were interesting and fun. Too bad that in order to make his thematic arguments, he pretty much has to build a whole universe out of straw.

I'm pretty bad about only focusing on the negative in my reviews, even for books I really liked. So to start with, I'll say I'm glad I read the book. Some of its best points:

• When it comes to plot, he really worked that same magic he did in The Sandman. At first it seems like only a set of vaguely related episodes, but eventually -- with the series of big reveals at the end -- you realize how important every little thing was. It rewards anyone paying close attention.
  
  
• I like vision quests and initiation scenes. Shadow's visions on the tree is gorgeous. That's Gaiman at his best.
  
  
• The one thing I really hated about The Sandman was the homophobia. It was pretty blatant, but strangely nobody ever seemed to notice it until I pointed it out. The Sandman's homosexual characters all range from the shallow and empty to the monstrous, they don't develop as characters, and they tend to have bad ends. Someone must have given him a stern talking-to, because he's really cleaned it up. All his queer characters are sympathetic now, and less likely to wind up dead.

The thing that really annoyed me about this novel was that it's set in a straw universe -- that is, an entire universe set up on a strawman principle so that the author can polemicize. The problem is, soapboxes made of straw just don't hold up very well. Among some of the themes that only hold up so long as you don't know anything about the subject:

• America is allergic to religion: THE major theme is that the US just isn't fertile grounds for belief -- that belief just doesn't take naturally to American soil. He wrote this when Bush was in the White House. Seriously. Who does he think put him in? Who formed the core support for McCain and Palin in the last election? I mean, McCain/Palin supporters voted against Barack Obama. That's like voting against kittens, backrubs, and breathing. It was all a few nasty, hate-your-neighbours strains of Christianity that did that, and it garnered a dizzying 47% for the McCain/Palin! No wonder Jesus scarcely merits a mention in the novel. It'd open a real can of worms to have Christianity here.
  
  
• The ancient gods are dying because no one remembers them, much less worships them: Er, really? According to ReligiousTolerance.org, the number of Neo-Pagans in the US doubles every 30 months, making it the US's fastest-growing religious group by percentage. When American Gods was written, there were about 200,000 Neo-Pagans in the US. At last survey last year, there were 700,000. Many of those are Norse reconstructionists, and thus Odin worshippers, while others pay reverence to Odin as a facet of a god. And why is Kali here? There were a million Hindus in the US at the time, and that number is also rising. Honestly, British writers are obsessed with this theme sometimes, from Gods Behaving Badly to the Dirk Gently to loads of other sci-fi and fantasy. I don't know if I want to read a writer who can't even Google their premise.
  
  
• Pay no attention to the Neo-Pagans behind the curtain: But you don't have to pay attention to any of that, because the one Neo-Pagan in the novel is a goofy barrista just worships the female principle, doesn't believe in gods, and is too much of a ditz to even now the most basic material included in even the worst Pagan 101 books. I have never met a Pagan who didn't know who Eostre/Easter/Ostara was, not even the ones who talk about witches "burning" at Salem. The female principle never shows up, of course, unlike everything else anyone believes in, however abstract.
  
  
• But it's okay that the gods are dying because they don't do anything useful: They just demand sacrifices, con you out of your money, and occasionally sleep with you. All the other positive benefits of religion to the lives of individuals are absent -- the sense of wholeness, a return of meaning and the sacred, a sense of perspective and humility, the strength in hard times.
  
  
• The First Nations have no gods: Just cultural heroes, apparently, and they don't want worship. Europeans, though, apparently only have gods, and all those gods were depicted as perfect in every single legend. Even rusalki, giants, dwarves, and Medusa are gods, apparently.

There were other things that irritated me about the novel as well. For starters, I found myself disagreeing with what was presented as "a happy ending" -- the new gods and the old gods go their separate ways, and don't fight.

Excuse me? The new gods are Television, Corporate Media, Drug Addiction, Cancer, Technology (at its worst), Market Forces, Evil Secret Agents, and Hollywood. If the old gods win, these things cease to be important for Americans. This is a bad thing? I wanted the old gods to beat the stuffing out of the new.

Other than that? There were bits and pieces of annoyance. I don't think Gaiman is as good at writing comedy as he thinks he is. The best scenes here are tragic or beautiful or mystic, like in The Sandman. When Gaiman tries to be funny, it's usually just a bag of clichés.

Also, he seems to have caught the bug from American writers of trying to use explicit sex that's in no way part of the plot to try and keep the reader's interest - a tactic that doesn't really work since readers' interests in that kind of thing tend to be quite specific. There's a reason all porn in any format is categorized so many different ways (sex/age/body type/etc) and you will inevitably bore or disgust nine-tenths of the audience for every one you excite.

Of course, I doubt many are going to be enticed by the Queen of Sheba's sex scene. I mean, somewhere she got a weapons upgrade from vagina dentata to the Sarlacc Pit from Return of the Jedi. Ugh.

Wow. My reviews are getting longer and longer. Could it be I actually miss English lit? These things are turning into term papers. Of course, I couldn't say most of that stuff in a term paper.

I still recommend the book. It's entertaining. It just gets messier and messier the more you think about what it's trying to say. Another bad habit I carry over from English lit, although maybe a good one for my own writing.

Comments

[pixel39.livejournal.com]

FWIW, I have some of the same quibbles. OTOH, he did nail rural WI and The House On The Rock pretty solid.

[felis-ultharus.livejournal.com]

I thought he'd made it up until I checked Wikipedia. The House on the Rock, that is. Not rural Wisconsin.

Can I guess you mean he got rural Wisconsin exactly, except for the child-murdering kobolds...?

[pixel39.livejournal.com]

I'm guessing a lot of people thought he made it up. I, however, have spent a *lot* of time in Wisconsin, both rural and not, and knew better. :-)

It wouldn't surprise me if there *were* child-murdering kobolds in rural Wisconsin, though. Nothing surprises me about rural Wisconsin, really.