American Gods
Review
by: Li
Rapkin 
Written
by: Neil Gaiman
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Neil Gaiman
describes his latest novel as “A sort of weird, sprawling
picaresque epic, which starts out relatively small and gets
larger.” Said assertion is a masterpiece of British understatement.
Ever since
I first read Sandman, I’ve thought of Neil Gaiman as
sort of a post-punk Joseph Campbell. American Gods
confirms it. The apparent premise of the novel is that America
is a bad place to be a god, because humans did not evolve
in this hemisphere. All of the gods, demons, folk heroes,
and assorted supernatural critters that exist in America are
there because someone who believed in them came here, and
whether it was 14,000 B. C. or 1778 makes no difference. Plenty
of fiction has dealt with the concept that gods (and monsters)
require believers and sacrifices in order to exist, and modern
life has left the old gods in the lurch. In American Gods,
the down and out deities are out to do something about it.
The novel
opens as the main character, Shadow, is a few weeks away from
getting out of prison. He’s more than ready to go back to
being an average, law-abiding citizen with a wife, a job,
and a home. These best-laid plans not only go astray, but
wildly askew, as Shadow becomes an errand boy/enforcer for
the enigmatic Mr. Wednesday. Mr. Wednesday is trying to organize
the remaining old gods-an activity he describes as “like herding
cats in a straight line”-against the newer gods of Media and
Technology. One of the aspects of the book that I enjoyed
the most was how ancient gods make their way in the modern
world. Anubis is a mortician and the fertility goddess of
the ancient Middle East is a hooker in L. A. If you’re not
familiar with mythology, you’ll still enjoy the book-some
of the references are pretty obscure. The best part of the
novel is the way Gaiman plays with mythic themes-loyalty,
a hero’s journey, the cycle of birth, death, and rebirth,
sacrifice, and paying no attention to the man behind the curtain.
If you’re
already a Gaiman fan, you’ll love this book, and if you’re
not, read it anyway.
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