I'm sure everyone has some little annotation they want to post. Nothing big. Nothing major. Just something you noticed.

For example.

When Shadow is in the lake after finding Alison McGovern's corpse, he survives by using a technique from an old Tony Curtis movie he saw as a kid.

The movie is Houdini (1953). In it Tony Curtis as Harry Houdini uses the technique after an act goes wrong and he can't find the hole in the ice through which he's supposed to surface after escaping from a trunk.

OK. Your turn.

I think they must have gotten that from the Houdini biography, which I read a LONG time ago as a kid...

but I still remember the scene in the book, it made quite the impression on me...

Has anyone noticed all the references to Houdini? I am still trying to figure out why they are there.

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Originally posted by boi4pele:
Has anyone noticed all the references to Houdini? I am still trying to figure out why they are there.

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I know of two, off the top of my head. The first is the reference early in the book that Houdini died by drowning, and a hint that something very similar was going to happen to Shadow later in the book. Later it was that escape. That pair was specifically for foreshadowing.

There's several threads in the book about magic, both 'real' magic and the magic the gods use (alternatively, "both 'real' magic and stage magic"). Shadow's coin tricks are a good example. The purpose for the coin tricks was both a quirk for shadow as well as to show the reader what tricks Neil Gaiman is going to pull with giving hints. There is a lot of misdirection in the text whenever he is giving hints about what's going on, just like you would do with a coin trick.

=Brian

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Originally posted by Ntolnry:
The purpose for the coin tricks was both a quirk for shadow as well as to show the reader what tricks Neil Gaiman is going to pull with giving hints. There is a lot of misdirection in the text whenever he is giving hints about what's going on, just like you would do with a coin trick.

=Brian

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Wow, I had not realized that... no do now that you mention it, either Would you mind putting some example?

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Originally posted by cloverheart:
Wow, I had not realized that... no do now that you mention it, either Would you mind putting some example?

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My favorite example are the pages around 252, which is the Coming to America 1778 interlude with the slaves.

He spends a lot of time in the preceding chapter giving huge hints about what's happening to the kids in lakeside. He'd do lots of little things like have people immediately theorize on why the kids were disappearing ("She's vanished" "Yup...Silly kid used to hhitchhike up to the Humane Society..."). You start thinking that there's definitely something wrong going on, and he gives you everything you need to know. He even ends the chapter with Shadow passing by the car parked out on the ice, right after listing all of the kids that have disappeared during the winter. Every. Single. Year.

And, as I said, the chapter ends with, "Shadow took his milk and drove away, past the gas station and the klunker on the ice, and over the bridge and home."

So, there's the coin. Now, the distractor. Next page:
"There was a girl, and her uncle sold her, wrote Mr. Ibis in his perfect copperplate handwriting."

Then he goes on for a page and a half, not really explaining what this was about, just that there was a girl and her father sold her. Over and over it repeats. This is a huge flag of "Bad thing happening to a child to explain a disappearance."

By the time you get around to the meat of the story, you realize that it has to do with africa and slaves and nothing at all about the disappearing children in lakeside. But it was just close enough and topical enough to the lakeside kids, and it went on long enough, that you've forgotten all about what was happening with lakeside.

And that's how a coin trick is done. You see the coin when the magician wants you to, and you are distracted when the magician wants you distracted. It happen all throughout the book.

=Brian

Another character I noticed. When Shadow arrives in San Francisco, there is a young girl on the street(no older than fourteen) with a grey mutt. She is described as having orange and purple hair. He tosses a coin to her and she looks at him, bewildered. He says to her "Go buy dog food".
My theory: This girl is Delerium from the Sandman series. Gaiman says it was his favourite character to write in the Sandman series. She's got a grey mutt (and in the Sandman series she receives a grey mutt named Bartleby from her brother Destruction).
That's it.

NICK

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Originally posted by baronsidekick:
My theory: This girl is Delerium from the Sandman series. Gaiman says it was his favourite character to write in the Sandman series. She's got a grey mutt (and in the Sandman series she receives a grey mutt named Bartleby from her brother Destruction).

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Barnabas, actually. But yes, I believe it's been confirmed that it's them.

American Gods ties in with Sandman in another way too!
In Norse mythology Loki was left chained up underground until the end of the world, but in American Gods he's out and about with no mention of this.
He did make his escape in Sandman though, and was never recaptured...

(alternatively the Norse version of Loki might still be chained up, and it's only the American version that's walking around)

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Originally posted by Worldsend:
American Gods ties in with Sandman in another way too!
In Norse mythology Loki was left chained up underground until the end of the world, but in American Gods he's out and about with no mention of this.
He did make his escape in Sandman though, and was never recaptured...

(alternatively the Norse version of Loki might still be chained up, and it's only the American version that's walking around)

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Actually, towards the end of "The Kindly Ones" Loki *was* recaptured and taken back to his cavern. The Corinthian claimed his eyes and left him there where Odin found him and took him back for his further binding. It was Robin Goodfellow, called The Puck who was left to bound about the Known (and Unknown) Worlds.



[This message has been edited by Tanis Fane (edited 03-18-2002).]

Right you are!
(Damn, I knew I shouldn't have left it for one and a half years since I last read The Kindly Ones, but I was abroad and my copy was at home. Oh, how it hurt...)

Just thought of something related to the Houdini link. Houdini spent a good portion of his life unveiling scam artists. Shadow seems to be comparable to Houdini in some ways. Odd, that.