First Impression Thoughts
I have just--and I really do mean JUST--finished American Gods , by Neil Gaiman. Or, to put it in other words, I have just blown about five hours of evening since I got home from work, in and around supper, checking the Internet, and not doing anything useful or creative, on speeding through the latter 3/5 of this modern fantasy work (to give it some sort of a genre... I'm not sure that's a fair label, but it fits). A few months ago, you might recall, I read Coraline, which was my introduction to Gaiman, and I immensely enjoyed it. This time... I'm not so sure...
To be scrupulously fair, one should never evaluate a piece of fiction immediately after finishing it, especially if it was finished in a one fell swoop of a read that not only included the last chapter, but half of the rising action before the climax as well. However, first impressions are telling, even if they don't tell everything.
Certainly, I liked it. After all, I couldn't put it down. I picked it up at Chapters two days ago, and I've already finished it--despite being gone almost all day yesterday and working a full day's shift today. I can't fault Gaiman his ability to suck the reader into the story, to make him follow the characters and the plot religiously (yes, that's a very deliberate pun)... but I can't help feeling... I don't know.... cheated maybe. Or, no: not cheated. Perhaps it's more that I disagree.
Now, given that I am the Catholic seminarian buzzing around the friends' lists, you're undoubtedly going to think, if you've read the book, that obviously Formy is going to have issues with the blatant Paganism and the lack of treatment--or worse, the relative treatment--given to Christianity. However, it was not the blatant paganism that bothered me. I liked that, the setting of the scene and the historical tiebacks, the integration of the convinced faith of the heathens intertwined with the immigrant stories. That I liked, because I can suspect belief and live in a literary world of gods and kobolds. After all, knowing that was the premise and choosing to read, how could I object to that? No, the difficulty for Formy was not that the world had gods, but that it didn't have gods enough.
Behind the gods, at the metaphysical terminus of the story, it was not a metaphysics of legends and gods, but a modern philosophy. Underpinning this world--and, not at all coincidentally, turning "reality" into a mere stage, to be be circumvented by going backstage--is a sort of Eastern, ever-spinning wheel, a reality that does not define things but lets them bleed together. Gaiman, to his credit, does not go too far with this--even when Shadow disappears into "death" and finds his peace in Nirvanic nothingness, this is not made ultimate state of being. The world of American Gods remains, at least nominally, polytheistic not pantheistic, but it comes perilously close at times. I suppose, really, that a framework of some sort is necessary to hold up not only the conflicting problems of a scientific (which, I must drive home, is a Christian-derived worldview) history and supernatural religions, but all the mass tangle of MANY incompatible religions--I suppose, in those circumstances, a framework of some sort is required. Perhaps it merely that, having whetted my appetite on the Norse gods, I wanted more of the relentless march to Ragnarok and less of the unchanging wheel of time spinning.
As I write this, it occurs to me I might not be making sense. After all, aren't Odin and Loki, in their incarnations as the two-man con artists, the ultimate avatars for free will, working against history and the fates, and even their prior European incarnations to yield the desired effect on the American scene? Well... no. The thing is, I felt remarkably let down when Odin and Loki were revealed to be in cahoots. I felt cheated when I didn't get the grand confrontation between the mighty old gods of nature and the paisley gods of post-modernism. It was not that this wasn't consistent with the characters, it was that it was inconsistent with the tenor of my hopes for the story. I had not expected Odin to be a hero, but I had expected the quality of the heroic in him, and when I did not get even much of a villain, I was disappointed. The titanic clash of the implacable gods did not happen, but was allayed instead--a kind of symbolic relativism that says the old gods and the new can get along--that the real enemy is... um... well, at least I must credit Gaiman for not saying, so much, that there is a real enemy. But perhaps no enemy is even worse than a bad one.
Basically, the climax of the story disappointed me. Shadow revives Laura--but the hope of eucatastrophe is not fulfilled, for she has only had time turned back long enough to play her part. Having reconciled myself to Odin and Loki being swindlers, I didn't even get to see them win. Shadow sacrifices himself for... who? Everyone, really. But who does he save? He promises to save Laura, but the most she gets is peace--something he held her back from with his golden coin, so that she can be a plot device to save his life, kill Loki... I dunno, I really didn't find that resolved to my satisfaction, at all. And he dies for Odin... but Odin just... dies. He comes back to life long enough to gloat, but the battle is not fought for him, and he doesn't even die a villain so much as he fades away.
The denouément/Epilogue was much more satisfying. The wrapping up of the Lakeside tale, though remarkably understated, was perfect, plot-wise. Hinzelmann's outing as a trickster is more satisfying than Odin's--even though I saw it coming just as little. Less, even. The car on ice, the stories, the lake-making... that wrap-up fit together beautifully, like magnificent clockwork. The white knight killed the dragon there, and the ending was suitable.
All in all... as the writing of an over-long post will do, I'm winding down a bit energy-wise, and as the rectory cools off a bit towards bedtime, I'm losing that verve of heat and discomfort that tends to accompany reading something too long in one spot, so I'm wondering if I'm being over-harsh... but, regardless, I think it's fair to say that--though I much enjoyed it--American Gods was doomed to leave me a bit dissatisfied, given my Catholic/philosophical predilections, and coming hard on the heels of Chesterton--who, I'll grant, is perhaps too vervently orthodox for some tastes (most of my friends' list, indeed, probably would object to his conclusions, though how they could reject his arguments, I don't know)--but the brilliancy of his arguments, for me, is so much that they proceed from what I would call literary or artistic premises. With that as the immediately prior literary intake--and given my immediate identification with it--Gaiman basically had to either live up to it, or disappoint.
And he didn't disappoint that much, let me restate. I'm motivated to create, which is the mark of a good creator, but the disappointment is there too. We expect the most, after all, from those we think most capable of giving it. I knew Gaiman was excellent--I still do--so I wanted nought but excellence from him.
To be scrupulously fair, one should never evaluate a piece of fiction immediately after finishing it, especially if it was finished in a one fell swoop of a read that not only included the last chapter, but half of the rising action before the climax as well. However, first impressions are telling, even if they don't tell everything.
Certainly, I liked it. After all, I couldn't put it down. I picked it up at Chapters two days ago, and I've already finished it--despite being gone almost all day yesterday and working a full day's shift today. I can't fault Gaiman his ability to suck the reader into the story, to make him follow the characters and the plot religiously (yes, that's a very deliberate pun)... but I can't help feeling... I don't know.... cheated maybe. Or, no: not cheated. Perhaps it's more that I disagree.
Now, given that I am the Catholic seminarian buzzing around the friends' lists, you're undoubtedly going to think, if you've read the book, that obviously Formy is going to have issues with the blatant Paganism and the lack of treatment--or worse, the relative treatment--given to Christianity. However, it was not the blatant paganism that bothered me. I liked that, the setting of the scene and the historical tiebacks, the integration of the convinced faith of the heathens intertwined with the immigrant stories. That I liked, because I can suspect belief and live in a literary world of gods and kobolds. After all, knowing that was the premise and choosing to read, how could I object to that? No, the difficulty for Formy was not that the world had gods, but that it didn't have gods enough.
Behind the gods, at the metaphysical terminus of the story, it was not a metaphysics of legends and gods, but a modern philosophy. Underpinning this world--and, not at all coincidentally, turning "reality" into a mere stage, to be be circumvented by going backstage--is a sort of Eastern, ever-spinning wheel, a reality that does not define things but lets them bleed together. Gaiman, to his credit, does not go too far with this--even when Shadow disappears into "death" and finds his peace in Nirvanic nothingness, this is not made ultimate state of being. The world of American Gods remains, at least nominally, polytheistic not pantheistic, but it comes perilously close at times. I suppose, really, that a framework of some sort is necessary to hold up not only the conflicting problems of a scientific (which, I must drive home, is a Christian-derived worldview) history and supernatural religions, but all the mass tangle of MANY incompatible religions--I suppose, in those circumstances, a framework of some sort is required. Perhaps it merely that, having whetted my appetite on the Norse gods, I wanted more of the relentless march to Ragnarok and less of the unchanging wheel of time spinning.
As I write this, it occurs to me I might not be making sense. After all, aren't Odin and Loki, in their incarnations as the two-man con artists, the ultimate avatars for free will, working against history and the fates, and even their prior European incarnations to yield the desired effect on the American scene? Well... no. The thing is, I felt remarkably let down when Odin and Loki were revealed to be in cahoots. I felt cheated when I didn't get the grand confrontation between the mighty old gods of nature and the paisley gods of post-modernism. It was not that this wasn't consistent with the characters, it was that it was inconsistent with the tenor of my hopes for the story. I had not expected Odin to be a hero, but I had expected the quality of the heroic in him, and when I did not get even much of a villain, I was disappointed. The titanic clash of the implacable gods did not happen, but was allayed instead--a kind of symbolic relativism that says the old gods and the new can get along--that the real enemy is... um... well, at least I must credit Gaiman for not saying, so much, that there is a real enemy. But perhaps no enemy is even worse than a bad one.
Basically, the climax of the story disappointed me. Shadow revives Laura--but the hope of eucatastrophe is not fulfilled, for she has only had time turned back long enough to play her part. Having reconciled myself to Odin and Loki being swindlers, I didn't even get to see them win. Shadow sacrifices himself for... who? Everyone, really. But who does he save? He promises to save Laura, but the most she gets is peace--something he held her back from with his golden coin, so that she can be a plot device to save his life, kill Loki... I dunno, I really didn't find that resolved to my satisfaction, at all. And he dies for Odin... but Odin just... dies. He comes back to life long enough to gloat, but the battle is not fought for him, and he doesn't even die a villain so much as he fades away.
The denouément/Epilogue was much more satisfying. The wrapping up of the Lakeside tale, though remarkably understated, was perfect, plot-wise. Hinzelmann's outing as a trickster is more satisfying than Odin's--even though I saw it coming just as little. Less, even. The car on ice, the stories, the lake-making... that wrap-up fit together beautifully, like magnificent clockwork. The white knight killed the dragon there, and the ending was suitable.
All in all... as the writing of an over-long post will do, I'm winding down a bit energy-wise, and as the rectory cools off a bit towards bedtime, I'm losing that verve of heat and discomfort that tends to accompany reading something too long in one spot, so I'm wondering if I'm being over-harsh... but, regardless, I think it's fair to say that--though I much enjoyed it--American Gods was doomed to leave me a bit dissatisfied, given my Catholic/philosophical predilections, and coming hard on the heels of Chesterton--who, I'll grant, is perhaps too vervently orthodox for some tastes (most of my friends' list, indeed, probably would object to his conclusions, though how they could reject his arguments, I don't know)--but the brilliancy of his arguments, for me, is so much that they proceed from what I would call literary or artistic premises. With that as the immediately prior literary intake--and given my immediate identification with it--Gaiman basically had to either live up to it, or disappoint.
And he didn't disappoint that much, let me restate. I'm motivated to create, which is the mark of a good creator, but the disappointment is there too. We expect the most, after all, from those we think most capable of giving it. I knew Gaiman was excellent--I still do--so I wanted nought but excellence from him.