A Rant: American Gods by Neil Gaimen

There I said it. I’m going to stand here behind a metaphorical tree until the lynch mob have moved off.
Ok? Is it safe?
Right, let me explain. Gaimen’s books have never grabbed me. But in the wake of Good Omens fandom I concluded that maybe I hadn’t given them a fair go, after all, this many people can’t be wrong, can they? By now I should know better than to think like this, because yes they absolutely can.

Sacrificing Structure

Looking at American Gods, the second season of Good Omens and the Stardust novel, a pattern emerges. Gaimen has a great imagination. He loves a set-up and payoff and he does them very well. Look at how he brings characters from the beginning of the story back at the end. He loves pursuing metaphors and deep themes. The problem is he does all this at the expense of narrative structure.

I first noticed it in Good Omens season two. Remember how let down the audience felt? How rushed it seemed at the end? Because it was. The main story was supposed to be the romance (that was where the emotional arc was happening) but out of 6 episodes the entire romance plot arc was done in the last two episodes (ending at the third-act breakup). Everything before that was filler. At the time I assumed it was a decision that was made by the TV-people, since it’s the sort of cheap gimmick media loves. Now I am not so sure.

Another example would be Stardust where each character or plot arc just fizzled out, wand waved into the happily ever after. The book had the kick of a wet paper bag. It holds the dubious title as the only book where I thought the movie far superior.

Divine Flop

American gods has the same problem, it is too long. I landed up reading the ‘authors preferred text’ extended edition (because that was what they had at the library). Gaimen claims to have returned over 12 000 words cut from the first draft. And I have to ask: If the editor told you the book was too long and you agreed with her that it was the right call – then why the fuck would you put all that fluff back in the book? Does the author think so little of his reader’s time? I still suspect that the shorter version had the same problem. The entire Lakeside section could have had the chop – that was a book on its own, and we already had a plot to keep track of.

And what at the end of the day was the arc here? Shadow starts (after he learns of Laura’s death) feeling lost and with nowhere to go. He ends the story wandering aimlessly around Europe, lost and with nowhere to go. The climax, and his entire purpose in the story, was to waltz into the no-man’s-land between the opposing sides and give a speech about how they had all been duped. That was what resolved the conflict. Can you see why I found it unsatisfying? Now you can make an argument about how he did learn lots of things during his time on the world tree and it was all forgotten and that it is a metaphor for life. And I will tell you to take a long walk off a short pier. I am not huddled on my couch alone under a blanket because I want a dose of real life right now. If the story has to be high-brow and meaningful it should at least have the decency of being entertaining first.

Furthermore, Shadow is kind-of a nothing character – he has no emotion, so the story has no weight. He says it himself (to Wednesday): “Since I learned she was screwing Robbie. That one hurt”, (not that you as the reader noticed it at the time). “Everything else just sits on the surface.” Laura says it further: “You’re like this big, solid, man-shaped hole in the world.” Now obviously this is by design but it doesn’t make for a compelling protagonist if nothing ever fazes him. Take for example the incredibly long period on the world tree, none of which left any impression on me even as I read it. There is a section where he chooses the road of hard truths and walks down a path reliving the worst moments of his life. It ends with the big reveal. And then we get to the next cross roads and I have no idea what hard truths he learned from all that (except the reveal). Did he regret those life choices? Did it hurt to see? Did he wish he could go back and fix them? What was the point of it all?

The problem with a book this long is that it gets boring, and becomes a slog to get through. And what is particularly important in this case; it becomes impossible to keep track of all the story threads and bread crumbs. Meaning the payoff for them is rendered useless. It’s not a payoff if I have to spend several minutes trying to remember who the hell this was referring to.

Gaimen lacks or chooses not to employ that subtle skill good authors have of showing what are breadcrumbs I should keep an eye on and what is filler. Take Bilquis. She is introduced in the first chapter but she only appears again near the end to be murdered. That was her entire contribution to the story.
[Aside: but it also annoys me that the Queen of Sheba is reduced to a prostitute in this, I mean why? And she eats people with her vagina. Like really, Gaimen, did we need to visualise that? There is a conversation to be had about Gaimen and misogyny based on this and a deeply problematic chapter in the first Sandman ‘book’. But that is a conversation for another day].
Loki was another wasted character, whose purpose ran out after the big reveal; which is possibly why I still don’t understand what his character was supposed to get out of the war anyway.

Now I know that there is a lot of deeper meaning that is winging over my head. But that is what I mean, there is too much stuff to keep track of, to think deeply about any of it; too many distractions and competing ideas. A good twist will not a good book make, there has to be more.

It didn’t help (for me) that the best way to get the most out of this book was to have an encyclopedic knowledge of world mythology. I don’t. Also my main job requires a lot of research, I’m not doing it for my leisure time too.

I like that the Native American gods were remaining determinedly neutral, even I could see the symbolism of that. But why did they not count as gods? What was fundamentally the difference? And why did they (in the person of the buffalo-headed man) choose Shadow as their ‘hero’? They were waiting to collect him when he died (temporarily) and were disappointed when he failed to. But why? What did this white guy have to offer them? What was the danger of any of this to them? I don’t know, but it smells of white-saviour to me.

Furthermore, if the gods exist as manifestations of human belief (not an idea Gaimen came up with, by the way) then why is it possible to kill them? With normal weapons? Surely the only thing that can kill them is a complete lack of belief? The idea that they were killable lacks an internal logic.

More Showing, less Telling

This is probably projecting, given that I had just had feedback from my writing teachers, but I couldn’t help noticing that their comments to me seemed to apply to this book. Gaimen could have done with slowing down his scenes and supplying more sensory details to build the setting and moment. For example, returning to the road of hard truths I mentioned earlier, I cant tell if the memories come as ‘dioramas’ with time to walk between each one – what did that look like? What did he feel after each? Or was it just reliving the memories one after the other? Its a significant scene and I don’t have a clear image of it in my mind.

That was a long book rant, but it was a long book. At least I can finally put the Gaimen debate to bed: not for me, thank you. Not for me.