Need kindling for that campfire this weekend, bring your copy of American God's

I anticipated this read for a year and when it first arrived on the shelves I was there with my 25 bucks in my gullable little fist, smiling ear to ear, oblivious to the pure fluff inside.

Clearly, Giaman botched what could have, in the right hands, been exqusite. Maybe, even with Gaiman's sublime imagination, his fortay of creating - unbeknown to him - did not, or was illprparied to operate in such a theme.
Frankly, I wish Gaiman had had the sense, and commen desancy to recognize his failure before it meet the eyes of the publisher. This could have spared the shy consumer from seeing a novel with a similure theme and declining it upon thinking how bad Giaman's vision had been.

This was the first book that I remarked, while reading it : "I could have written better." And, I could have!

I mean....come on! Seriously! If you don't think this piece simply bad you could'nt honestly, and with good conscious pretend it to be better than ok. And when it is a 460 pg. book that is mediacore by a no-holds-bar badass it's a tragic waste of down time. A movie would have been diffrent, a movie of this inflated grade would'nt have made me want to cry.
I WANT MY LOST AFTERNOON BACK & my 25 bucks too!

I'm always amazed at the variety of responses to the book. You are not alone in thinking it's utterly horrid, I've heard many express the same opinion. (I'm not one of them, I liked it). Quite a few thought the opposite, especially everyone giving out awards in 2001 as it won almost every single one including the Hugo.

So, in your opinion, how can a book cause such divergant views among its readers?

I personally liked it -but not as much as I've liked ANY other Gaiman stuff... I was a bit let-down when I finished the book... There were a few parts while reading it that made me shake my head (not regarding style as I'm not a native speaker)... Still I enjoyed it...
I want to re-read it to confirm my original opinion or to let it down -I read it too fast, I have almost forgot what it's all about... I am embarassingly aware that I missed a lot of stuff when reading it (especially since reading the forums here).
I want to ask, Eldritch, why was it you didn't like it exactly?

I loved the idea and the theme and the mood is ok, but just... I guess sometimes it feels like this great big epic, sometimes not... Maybe it's intentional and I failed to see it, maybe it's a narrative flaw...
Also, I felt a lot of stuff from Sandman (in terms of style, concepts and character type) was in tere -but not in a good way. I felt like Neil was writing Sandman for the great US audience -simplified. I know Neil has common themes in all his works, but I never felt that way reading Neverwhere, Stardust or short stories.

But as I said, I have to re-read it.

Our earnest moderator may give me some harshness for saying this, but, please, if you're going to post a negative opinion on an author's web-site, have the courtesy to check your spelling and grammar first, if only to make you opinion more intelligible and coherent.

I'm with clover on this one: it wasn't nearly up to the par of much of his other stuff. I did enjoy some sections, like the musty middle Americana and Shadow's dream-quest, but large sections felt rather flat and forced.

“This library has something offensive to everyone. If you are not offended by something we own, please complain.” - Dorothy Broderick

It is always propper to replie if someone has taken the time to give your expresions attention, yet I am at a quandry. I can't really replie with out being totaly honest, and on this book it's a little brutel.

you can be as honest as you like with critiques, just explain clearly why you think what you do

Fine. I was waiting for that green light. THE HUGO AWARD! Oh....well.....it does'nt suprise me. Afterall, how many cruddy novels get the number one new york times best saler slapped on it. I compare the anticipation, and actual experince of American Gods with Barker's Imajica.
I must say what it boils down to is a blind unduanting loyalty many fans hold for their favored writters.
Then there is the cold hard fact that many can't admite. Most individules are heard meterial. It's easer to settle, easy to have the mindset of enjoying it for what it is, and in doing so we delude are sleves, and shut-out what it lacks. I realize the signifigance, and amount of lacking exsist on a continume. American Gods was high on that barometer.
And it might be asked : what gives me the athority to dectate its lack. My qualifications to boast this seemingly outragous piousness rest on my taste, the way my creativity works. Gaiman and I have a scary similarity with imagination. I concived the title American Gods, and similure plot for a future book. The universe - behaving in mischievous Loki fashion - also provided Gaiman
with his vision. Perhapes this seems a little hard to swallow but if you knew me it would be thought a perfectly natrual acurance.

What did you think of the other books nominated for the Hugo?

I'm an idote on awards. I only reacted agoged to sound like I knew more than I did. I know of 3 or 4 type of literature awards. If you could tell me what these other books were, and if I read them I'll give you my opinion.

btw, your post didn't actually say what you disliked about AG, just why it got popular when it didn't deserve to (herd mentality).
Oh, and I asked Neil awhile ago via the FAQ how much the promotion of AG had to do with it winning awards like the Hugo, and the answer was little to none:
(from FAQ)
question: How much, in your opinion, has the publicity and promotions
surrounding AG helped it win all of those awards? Would your book, with the
same exact text as now, still have won the Hugo if it hadn't been promoted
the way it was and if you hadn't already gained some name recognition?


Bit too hypothetical to answer. I think they probably helped, at least insofar as awards get voted on by people, and they don't vote for you if they haven't read your book, and a lot of people obviously read it and enjoyed it, and voted for it. (I doubt it made any difference to the Bram Stoker Award.) But then, books which aren't published as bestsellers frequently win Hugos, and, looking at the information over at http://dpsinfo.com/awardweb/hugos/index.html where you can look at the nominees and the winners of the Hugos going back to caveman days it's pretty obvious that the voters vote for who they want to win, and the bestsellerness or otherwise mostly doesn't have lot to do with the result.


(One thing that fascinates me, looking at the old Hugo information, is the number of Fantasy novels and stories that have won Hugos in the past -- Heinlein's Stranger in a Strange Land, Zelazny's This Immortal and Lord of Light, for example or Avram Davidson's "Or All the Seas With Oysters" and Bob Bloch's "That Hellbound Train". Makes me feel part of a tradition, rather than an interloper.)

I really, really like AG. I think it's better than "neverwhere", "coraline", and "stardust" put together. I don't live in the midwest, to me it was interesting to see a view (distorted though it may have been by Neil's perception) of a U.S not normally seen by those who live abroad.

I liked Neil's way of describing the many different cultures which the U.S "volkgeist" is comprised of. And I love the characters, from Horus to Sam Black-crow, they're all believable and usually likeable.

I honestly do think it's a masterpiece, and I'm very curious as to why you dislike it so much.

"we are the music makers, and we are the dreamers of dreams"

Ok -- a leprechaun in a bar comes out of nowhere gives Shadow a coin "the wrong coin" which is supose to go to another person, but does'nt follow up with that. Shadow takes this coin, throws it in his wives grave. She comes back to him as a decomposing corps. Why? What real purpose
did this serve?

I liked the weird parts of that one charcter (forgot name) threatening Shadow with a hammer, but why take it to the extreme of Shadow returning to get whacked by it? As a show of bravery? Integrity? You ask me -- looks like dreaded melodrama.

Then their is Odin which in the book is the norse god of war. But in reality Odin is basicly the god of passion,and wisdom in the norse mythose, which when this is taken into acount the ending is just one big hole. Odin, being the god of war was supose to get all these gods to war it out, making the whole affair a sacrfice to himself, and Loki as Loki's part to due with what he is and has done to get the story to this climaxe.

Alright, next is Shadow being a demigod, a spawn of Odin - or rather Odin's avatar. This just seemed to be squeezed in as a hastey patchwork for yet another hole - probobly the biggest -- as an explination to a gods intrest and seeming need for a mortal (the main charcter.)

Unless I am forgetting, or overlooking something, which I'm sure I am this is my last complaint::::::The whole floundering quality of the book. The only event/place in which Shadow was in America that seemed to go anywhere what-so-ever was those awsome parts -breathed with tons of life - dealing with the car out on the frozen lake. ( I don't remember the state)
Anyway -- it seemed Neil wanted to make a road-trip type of book and barrowed a Jack Kerouac mode for this. It seemed completly incompatable for a deeply involved plot.

And why do all the characters have squared fingers?

I'm no literati but I disagree with you about the book having a floundering quality.

Shadow doesn't know wednesday and doesn't really like him. His only ambition throughout the book is to help his wife, if it hadn't been for Laura, shadow would've remained a nonentity and the battle in the end wouldn't have been averted.

The leprechaun was hired by Wednesday to test shadow's mettle, he tells shadow all about it in kairo. He is in the books for two reasons, as far as I can tell. The first is as a device for getting laura out of the grave. the second is that he is a good character in his own right and the book would be less good without him.

In the last book shadow ties up all the loose ends, czernobog was a loose end. I don't think that bit should've gone differently.

Odin is amongst other things a god of battle and death. The casting of a spear over a battle and dedicating it to odin was a practiced custom, I don't understand your problem there.

I suppose it wasn't necessary to make shadow odin's son, except for the vigil bit. Odin's son hanging on the world-tree for nine days is different than a particularly tough mortal hanging on a tree for nine days.

And I didn't realize all the characters had squared fingers, I'll go burn my copy now.

"we are the music makers, and we are the dreamers of dreams"

quote:

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a leprechaun in a bar comes out of nowhere gives Shadow a coin "the wrong coin" which is supose to go to another person, but does'nt follow up with that

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re: Mad Sweeney & the coin. I looked it up in the book as I remembered it differently than you:

"I did it like he said. I did it all like he said, but I gave you the wrong coin. It wasn't meant to be that coin. That's meant for royalty. You see? I shouldn't even have been able to take it. That's the coin you'd give to the king of America himself. Not some pissant bastard like you or me." (paperback 217)

Mad Sweeney isn't saying he's supposed to give the King the coin. Think of it like instead of a girl taking her own toilette water to school, she took he mom's $80 an ounce perfume. The girl is in trouble if she doesn't get it back. It's not that the item was meant for someone, it's that they weren't suppossed to have it in the first place.

It goes on about how Shadow gave it away of his own free will. It's one of those rules-of-faerie type of things, which is why the plot thread didn't continue after Mad Sweeney was punished - Shadow wasn't at fault.
It's a bit like in the Vess issue of Books of Magic - trading items of equal value. Mad Sweeney took a coin which gave life. He couldn't return it, so he paid for it with his life.

quote:

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Originally posted by Dweller in Darkness:
... if you're going to post a negative opinion on an author's web-site, have the courtesy to check your spelling and grammar first, if only to make you opinion more intelligible and coherent...

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I wanted to mention that on my earlier post... Not that I think you HAVE to write correctly... but I'm finding it VERY difficult to understand Eldritch's posts because of the mistakes... And as I always say, if I who am foreign (for you ), take my time and effort in trying to express myself correctly so everyone understands, I would appreciate others doing the same.
Especially people who claim "I could've written that" -which is a rather arrogant thing to say when you're making such mistakes as "are" instead of "our"...
Eldritch, i hope you don't take offense coz I am not trying to provoke you... just asking for a bit more of concern about your writing. Please?
(I'll reply to your thoughts when I get the time to assimilate them )

I have to say I'm with Fatpigeon here. I think American Gods works very well. I suspect part of your problem, Eldritch, might be that the style of story telling is unfamiliar to you - its very much the seanachie (anybody better gaelic correct my spelling here) style which most people in the US wouldn't be very used to. I grew up on it, so it didn't bother me, and as a result, what you called floundering, I saw as the traditional storytelling. To take diversions and rambles away from the main tale is not floundering, its an ancient mode of narrative that predates Christianity. The loose ends are eventually tied off, there is a reason for every wander taken by character or narrator. A second read might help...

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'I'm insane. What's his excuse?'

I also has a sort of Germanic feel to it, with some plot-lines never fully resolving, leaving other stories for others to tell.

“This library has something offensive to everyone. If you are not offended by something we own, please complain.” - Dorothy Broderick

Just found this quote in Neil's journal, wanted to post it here:

"I think the people who dislike American Gods dislike it more than anything I've done. On the other hand, they seem to be outnumbered by the ones who like it more than anything I've done."
-June 10 2002

Just wanted to show that as a sign of general trends among the fans. The haters are not alone, the lovers are not alone. Fascinating.

So, I finally read AG, this week. I liked it. A lot.

I'm still not quite sure what Eldrich's problem is with the book. It seems that he decided to not like it and, when pressed for the reasons for his dislike, clutched at straws for an explanation. On the one hand, he complains that there is no follow through with the Mad Sweeny line, then, on the other hand, complains when Shadow goes to tie up the loose end with the hammer business. And he fixates on the minutae about "Square fingers." (Could that description be a nod to the comic book artists like Jack Kirby who have long portrayed the gods with square fingers? Just a thought.)

I suggest that if Eldrich can write better than this, he should do it and share it with us all. He certainly hasn't shown any evidence of that talent here.

"You get what everyone gets. You get a lifetime." -- Death

the problem with american gods is its a short story spread into a novel.

The idea that forgotten, old-country gods must battle the new “gods” technology and science is a good idea, but to stretch it into 400 pages means theres a whole lotta parts where nothing happens.

At about one hundred pages I kept waiting for some grand revelation, for the story to take a turn and hook me for the duration, but I got a lame story about a sunken car!

I will say that the best part of the whole book, is the whole thing with the wife—those were the best parts for me. You really see gaimans genius in handling people.