Re-Imagining American Mythology

American Gods by Neil Gaiman, reviewed by Steve on November 28 2008.

Neil Gaiman's novel takes place during the present day in the Midwest. The main premise is that gods do not cease to exist unless people stop believing in them. Likewise, new gods can be born from a prevailing belief that takes root. However, this causes a degree of tension between the old gods, who do not want to fade away, and the new gods, who wish to dominate and/or eliminate the old gods.

The story starts with a man named Shadow, who had been incarcerated for aggravated assault three years before. Shadow is released early because his wife, Laura, had been killed in a car accident. Likewise, Shadow's best friend, who had promised that Shadow would have his position back at the gym, dies in a car accident. Shadow later discovers that Laura and his best friend died in the same car accident, and that the two were having an affair.

As Shadow's plans to resume his old life come to a screeching halt--his wife is now dead and he has no job--an odd, old man sitting next to him in an airplane offers to employ him as his right-hand man. Despite Shadow's reluctance and his attempts to refuse, he finds himself wholly unable to say no.

It turns out that the odd, old man is none other than Odin, who is on a quest to unite the old gods and confront the new. These new gods--gods of freeways, the internet, electricity, mass media, and instant gratification--do not wish to relinquish their hegemonic power, and actively pursue Odin and Shadow throughout their quest.

Along the way, Shadow meets the other old gods--Anubis, Horus, Czernobog, Anansi, Loki, Thor, and others--as Odin tries to explain their plight as old gods and requests their aid. He largely meets with resistance from the old gods, who seem to have become lazy and complacent in their waning existence. However, Odin's shocking murder serves as a call to arms for the old gods, who have only just realized the danger that the new gods pose to them. With Shadow acting more or less as their leader, the old gods set out to confront the new gods and prevent their own extinction.

Neil Gaiman's narrative cleverly integrates and re-imagines world mythologies in the American landscape. Odin seems to serve as his mouthpiece when he says that, "When the people came to America, they brought us with them...They brought me, and Loki and Thor, Anansi and the Lion-God, Leprechauns and Kobolds and Banshees, Kubera and Fraue Holle and Ashtaroth ..." America is therefore not just a a melting pot of people and cultures, but also of beliefs, cultural myths, stories, legends, and religions.

In the same way, Neil Gaiman re-imagines the myths of the American landscape. He steers clear of iconic locales such as New York City, San Francisco, Las Vegas, Los Angeles, Boston, Washington, D.C., and the like, which have already carved out their iconic and mythological existence. Instead, he allows the Midwest its own voice to describe its own mythology.

Despite the critical acclaim for this novel, American Gods does have some serious drawbacks. The story is told by an omnicient, but rather distant, narrator, and as such, the reader often feels distant and disengaged from the story. Likewise, Shadow seems to bumble through the narrative without much willpower of his own. He seems to act more as a lackey than a hero, simply doing what he is told and traveling place to place without any sense of purpose. It is not until the last third of the novel where he finally begins to take the initiative and act on his own, and this seems to be mostly because he has no one to tell him what to do, since Odin is dead by this point in the story.

Likewise, while Gaiman has a thematic reason for naming his characters the way that he does, the names read like those of an immature writer. For instance, Odin introduces himself as Wednesday, which makes sense and has meaning to it
(Odin-->Woden-->Woden's day-->Wednesday), but it feels simplistic. The same applies to Shadow and others, who do have a deeper meaning behind their name, but nonetheless it seems lazy, trite, and simplistic.

In all, I would have to rate this novel as a 2.5 out of 5. While the novel is rich and complex for meaning under the surface, it does not read well as an entertaining piece. There are sections that are wonderfully entertaining, but more often than not, I did not feel any connection to the characters, nor did I feel compelled to keep reading. I only finished the novel because I wanted to see if it would get any better, which unfortunately did not happen.