I personally loved american Gods, all the way through. Same with everything Neils written that I've read so far. my only quibble with AG is a small pedantic point. When Shadow figures out where all the dead bodies are in the lake and swims down, he sees, and I quote, "more than a hundred" cars under the lake. If the cars are dropped ata rate of one a year and this book is set in late 1999 early 2000 with its millenial themes, that means that they were dropping cars in the lake at least thirty years before cars were mass produced. How could you have a clunker when cars were brand new?

Other than that though, it were a marvellous piece of work

maybe before horseless carriages, they used carriages (without horses)?

Henry Ford was mass producing the Model T as early as 1908 I think, so it's not out of the question. I know that he invented the concept of the production line.

if the car is from 1908, then unless the story is in 2009, there wouldn't be more than 100 cars at a rate of 1 a year, which was the original point

When Shadow is in the Underworld, he is walking down the stairs and it clearly states he is barefoot. When he gets to the River, he takes off his shoes. That point bothers me more than the autos...

...it never says in the story that *only* one car a year was left on the ice. In a place of ice fishing, it woud not be unusual to have one or three fall in each winter.

Neil talked about the shoes somewhere on his journal, IIRC, and sai they were intentional. I guess because it was a dream.

I've loaned my copy of American Gods out but I was sure there was a line in there in that final chapter about cars and other things (I figured wagons) going through the ice, somewhere in that section. Does anyone know what I meant?

"If the cars are dropped ata rate of one a year and this book is set in late 1999 early 2000 with its millenial themes"

Is there a date given? I assumed it was near future.

Kim

"And what else would they have dragged out onto the lake, Shadow wondered, before there were cars?"

Page 437 of the 1st edition Americal hardback. And it says there are "scores of them" in my edition. I don't know if they changed it for different editions, or if you're looking in a different place.

As for the shoes, Venus is quite correct, Neil said shortly after the book was released that the shoes were done on purpose. If I had to guess, it was because the symbolism of removing the shoes was important for dream logic.

=Brian

[This message has been edited by Ntolnry (edited 04-07-2002).]

Page 475 of my edition of the book
"Each one, he knew, without any question, had a dead child in the trunk. There were more than a hundred of them."

It is definitively stated in the book that only one child vanishes each year and that only one clunker is left on the ice. It's not a major quibble, but it's a quibble. a slight flaw in this masterpiece. i'm certain that there are enough references to date the book at the dawn of the new millenium. maybe if Neil is reading this board he can enlightn us.

That's interesting. Which edition do you have?

In any case, there's no reason why there can't be over 100 vehicles in the lake (presuming it's a large enough lake), and as the quote from the book I pulled indicated, there were obviously things used aside from cars before then. It's just, rather than Shadow thinking, "Oh, look, there's a carriage from before the time of cars" or similar, he simply wondered what the vehicles from before might have been.

=Brian

quote:

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Originally posted by Ntolnry:
That's interesting. Which edition do you have?

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Just compared:
UK edition says more than 100
US edition says scores

That's just odd. The edition for a country that knows what a "score" actually is gets "more than 100" and the country who wouldn't know a "score" if it fell on its collective noggin doesn't get an explanation. I'm guessing some copy editor in the UK saw "scores," consulted a dictionary and decided Neil meant "more than 100."

Must have been an American copy editor who'd infiltrated the publishing company for some reason.

I dunno. I mean, almost all americans know the phrase "Four score and seven years ago", and chances are good that, at least at one point, they learned what a score was. I don't honestly know how prevalent the use of 'score' as a unit of measurement is in England. It seems like something the English would know better, but appearances are often deceiving.

Or it could just be something that was removed from all editions after the first.

=Brian

[This message has been edited by Ntolnry (edited 04-09-2002).]

So score means a hundred? I just thought it meant "lots of". Never managed to understand the "Four score and seven years ago..." thing.
At least I got to learn something

A score is twenty. Without doubt. A human lifespan according to, er, somebody a long time ago, was "3 score years and 10", or 75 in modernspeak.

quote:

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Originally posted by Worldsend:
A score is twenty. Without doubt. A human lifespan according to, er, somebody a long time ago, was "3 score years and 10", or 75 in modernspeak.

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3 score + 10 = 75? Is that using the old New Math?

I realise that now, yes.
Numbers were never my strong point.

[This message has been edited by Worldsend (edited 04-10-2002).]

totally irrelevant, but - the 'person a long time ago' is a bilical character, whose name i've now forgotten. anyway, trivia for the day.

biblical. i meant biblical.