Week 8: American Gods

American Gods is a hard novel to discern. It feels like a relatively long journey that’s been stretched even longer by the author for reasons I’m not sure I agree with. Between every chunk of main story with Shadow, we’re given a side story of another piece of American mythology. At first I endured these by carefully reading them and remembering the content, expecting them to intersect with Shadow’s story later. After a few, I realized they wouldn’t ever meet up with Shadow’s story, and my interest waned. I still enjoyed some of those stories a lot, like the one with the taxi driver and the djinn. Others, I read while only looking forward to being one with. I have a hard time connecting to these short stories, and part of the reason is that when I read them, I really just want to know more about Shadow. His journey is already wandering enough without interruptions, however well-written they may be. At about the ¾ point of the novel, I haven’t really changed my mind about the format style Gaiman chose for of American Gods – the truth is, I’m not patient enough for it. I wish I liked it. I’ve heard a lot of good things about Gaiman, and I loved Good Omens. I think Gaiman errs too closely to the conventions of horror for me to really love him. His prose is long and well-considered. But I want to be very close to Shadow’s thoughts. Gaiman has a tendency to draw away when the tension ramps up, as most horror novels do, and all I want is to be closer. It’s just a matter of personal preference, and otherwise I enjoyed the twists and turns of the novel very much. I’m not sure why the style matters so much to me, and I feel a little guilty for not liking authors like Stephen King or other horror big names. Objectively, American Gods is a wonderful book with top notch characters, writing, and original concepts. However, it’s going to take me a while to read the last ¼ of the book. That being said, I connect deeply with a lot of the experiences Gaiman writes about. I was born in Shakopee, Minnesota and lived in Stillwater until I was 12, with the loud, exciting presence of Minneapolis and St. Paul both close at hand and still clearly foreign. We lived in a piecemeal Victorian house perpetually caught between the rural and the urban, somehow skipping the suburbs entirely. Across the street was a home filled with antique dolls on display in their various seasonal attire. A trio of nuns walked past on Sundays, regardless of below-zero weather. Sometimes we’d drive downtown and eat rock candy, climbing or stumbling down the steep hills where rows of ancient shops perched, touting “Olde-Fashioned” this or that. Or we’d go all the way to the Mississippi and hike the trails looking for dead fish bones and interesting rocks. On holidays, we’d drive out to my grandparents’, where I would spend my days socializing the local colony of feral barn cats, learning to fish from the neighbor’s boy (who hooked himself in the cheek once and had to go to the hospital,) or testing the lake waters to see if the algae had receded enough to go canoeing. I had Irish dance classes once a week in the Twin Cities, where I’d be tugged along, wide-eyed, sneezing at the cigarette smoke and smiling at cheerful drunks stumbling out of their pubs. And then I moved to Los Angeles, and I grew up. Gaiman sees Minnesota and Wisconsin as an outsider. All the same, he has a lot of insight into the culture and explains some things that I could’ve never managed to do, even being from there. I love when he hits one of those Midwestern quirks dead on, like the car lottery, the late-night diners trapped in another decade, or the careful, polite people who are quick to be acquaintances and slow to be friends. Tremendous kudos to him for portraying a rural Minnesota/Wisconsin town so well, since it’s a piece of America that you almost never see on-screen or in books.