Review: American Gods

Book Review: American Gods, by Neil Gaiman
Elizabeth Stahl
 
“The important thing to understand about American history is that it is fictional, a charcoal-sketched simplicity for the children, or the easily bored. For the most part its is uninspected, unimagined, unthought, a representation of the thing, and not the thing itself. “
-American Gods, p. 8
 
Want something to read that temporarily lifts you up to a view above the anxiety and uncertainty in our current political climate?
 
An experience that provides larger picture with historical, spiritual and meta-physical perspectives?
 
Try reading American Gods a novel by Neil Gaiman
a British author who takes his characters on a road trip through the heartlands of the United States,
where roadside attractions are places of power, where most gods are recognized as foreigners and all gods need sacrifices, offerings,
belief in order to survive.
 
The narrative reads like a pulp fiction American detective novel.
The protagonist is a black man named Shadow who has recently been released from prison.
He accepts a job from a white man who leads him into a world of ancient gods on the brink of extinction, abandoned and scattered throughout the American landscape, left to make it on their own. As the novel unfolds it takes brief pit stops to tell the plights of individual gods.
 
“That’s what it is like for my kind of people…we fed on belief, on prayers, on love. It takes a lot of people believing just the tiniest bit to sustain us. That’s what we need, instead of food. Belief.”
American Gods, p. 254
 
American Gods is full of metaphors that offer poetic perspectives of the American psyche.
In one example the question emerges: How would you find the exact center of the United States?
In the novel a tourist attraction is built at the center of the United States and nobody comes to visit it.
 
 “The exact center of America is a tiny run down park, an empty church, a pile of stones, and a derelict motel”  
American Gods, p.380
 
Like a norm in statistics, it is an estimated space between realities and not a reality in and of itself.
It all depends on the frame you draw around it. How does one define the center?
Do you include Alaska? ​The United States is not a circle.
In the novel the center is described as a place of “Negative Sacredness.”
 
“Places where they can build no temples. Places people will not come, and will leave as soon as they can. “
American Gods, p. 383  

"...a land that has no time for gods, and here at the center it has less time for us than anywhere. It's a no-man's land, a place of truce, and we observe our truces. We have no choice."
American Gods, p. 398

Compromise, collaboration and the right to disagree are vital to democracies.
While the center may leave us feeling less than 100%, frustrated and disappointed its vital to our liberty.
 
Chapters often begin with quotes and poems from other writers that offer a variety of insights into the character of our country.
 
Here is a poem from a 19th century poet (American Gods, p.117 ):
 
Wide open and unguarded stand our gates,
And through them passes a wild motley throng.
Men from Volga and Tartar steppes.
Featureless figures from Hoang-ho,
Malayan, Scythian, Teuton, Kelt and Slav,
Flying the Old World’s poverty and scorn;
These bringing with them unknown gods and rites,
Those tiger passions here to stretch their claws,
In street and alley what strange tongues are these,
Accents of menace in our ear,
Voices that once the Tower of Babel knew.

"Unguarded Gates," Thomas Bailey Aldrich, 1832  

The fate of these old gods appears to be in conflict with newer, more modern gods, like technology, media and corporations.
However as the plot thickens everything gets more complicated and less clear. (Sound familiar?)
 
It’s like the mixed up fairy tales and role confusion themes found in modern children’s books, young adult novels and many current TV series and movies.
 
Does anyone remember Fractured Fairy Tales  from Rocky and Bullwinkle?
 
Check out the eerily accurate and twisted plot lines with complex character development of super heroes born out of World War II in the TV and movies series based on Marvel Comic Books:
Agents of Shield
Agent Carter
Dr. Strange
Ironman
The Hulk
Captain America
and many more.........
 
Hard not to believe that Hydra (the evil organization focused on world domination) is not behind all this.
 
“The organization's motto references the myth of the Hydra, stating that "if a head is cut off, two more will take its place", proclaiming their resilience and growing strength in the face of resistance.”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydra_(comics)
 
 
The seeds of the discontented are against integration. They express dis-ease, dis-satisfaction and often paranoid thinking. They are a symptom that something may be out of balance, a reason to review our histories, the shadows of our own minds and track relationships.
​ Integration through cooperation happens over time through the experience of self-knowledge, trust in conflict and through developing
​good form.

Look for the upcoming American Gods TV series on Starz
 
Looking for some background music to channel your angst try:
Leonard Cohen’s prophetic album The Future (1992)
Check out his video on Vemo of the song “Democracy is coming to the USA,”

"It's coming through a hole in the air
From those nights in Tiananmen Square
It's coming from the feel
That this ain't exactly real
Or it's real, but it ain't exactly there
From the wars against disorder
From the sirens night and day
From the fires of the homeless
From the ashes of the gay
Democracy is coming to the USA

It's coming through a crack in the wall
On a visionary flood of alcohol
From the staggering account
Of the Sermon on the Mount
Which I don't pretend to understand at all
It's coming from the silence
On the dock of the bay,
From the brave, the bold, the battered
Heart of Chevrolet
Democracy is coming to the USA

It's coming from the sorrow in the street
The holy places where the races meet
From the homicidal bitchin'
That goes down in every kitchen
To determine who will serve and who will eat
From the wells of disappointment
Where the women kneel to pray
For the grace of God in the desert here
And the desert far away:
Democracy is coming to the USA

Sail on, sail on
O mighty Ship of State
To the Shores of Need
Past the Reefs of Greed
Through the Squalls of Hate
Sail on, sail on, sail on, sail on

It's coming to America first
The cradle of the best and of the worst
It's here they got the range
And the machinery for change
And it's here they got the spiritual thirst
It's here the family's broken
And it's here the lonely say
That the heart has got to open
In a fundamental way
Democracy is coming to the USA

It's coming from the women and the men
O baby, we'll be making love again
We'll be going down so deep
The river's going to weep,
And the mountain's going to shout Amen
It's coming like the tidal flood
Beneath the lunar sway
Imperial, mysterious
In amorous array
Democracy is coming to the USA

Sail on, sail on 
I'm sentimental, if you know what I mean
I love the country but I can't stand the scene
And I'm neither left or right
I'm just staying home tonight
Getting lost in that hopeless little screen
But I'm stubborn as those garbage bags
That Time cannot decay
I'm junk but I'm still holding up
This little wild bouquet
Democracy is coming to the USA"

Songwriters: Leonard Cohen
Democracy lyrics © Sony/ATV Music Publishing LLC


 

 

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