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Laura's Reviews > American Gods
American Gods
by Neil Gaiman (Goodreads Author)
by Neil Gaiman (Goodreads Author)
Laura's review
bookshelves: cthulhu, hero-s-journey, monsters, science-fiction, canon, favorites
Mar 04, 12
bookshelves: cthulhu, hero-s-journey, monsters, science-fiction, canon, favorites
read count: 4
** spoiler alert **
One of the best books about the hero's journey through the shadow of death ever. No, just one of the best books ever. My dearly departed erstwhile co-clerk, Bernie Friedman, may he rest in peace, gave me daily rhapsodic updates when he read it on my recommendation once upon a time. Unflinching and unsentimental, without being cruel.
3/4/12 update:
I recommended American Gods to a friend. Later, we had this email conversation (slightly edited)
Him:
So yeah, that was awesome. What should I read next? I handily included your past suggestions at the bottom of this email.
Me:
Neat! The New York Times review whinged on about the lack of Jesus, which made me roll my eyes.
The short story sequel to American Gods, The Monarch of the Glen, is worth tracking down. But for a book, Terry Pratchett’s The Nation.
Me:
Yea, I actually preferred the lack of Jesus (which incidentally is true throughout my life). I will check out the Nation.
Sent from a small error prone device.
Me:
Dude. Shadow’s Jesus. Just Jesus-Christ-Son-of-Odin/Hercules/Baldur/Krishna/Orpheus/Osiris/Persephone, all the dying and risen gods that the Christians incorporated into their mythology, rather than the Jesus Christ Santorum thinks he worships. Fathered by a god on a virgin; mother took him into a foreign land to hide him from a murderous father figure; died on a tree at 33; walked through the underworld; brought back to the world accomplish stuff? Only he rebels against his dad. Good thing too. And later is reconciled to him. Because Neil Gaiman may have created the Serial Killers Convention and written two of the most disturbing fan fiction treatments of Lovecraft I’ve ever read, but he’s still a very nice guy.
Him:
Guess I need to read it again.
3/4/12 update:
I recommended American Gods to a friend. Later, we had this email conversation (slightly edited)
Him:
So yeah, that was awesome. What should I read next? I handily included your past suggestions at the bottom of this email.
Me:
Neat! The New York Times review whinged on about the lack of Jesus, which made me roll my eyes.
The short story sequel to American Gods, The Monarch of the Glen, is worth tracking down. But for a book, Terry Pratchett’s The Nation.
Me:
Yea, I actually preferred the lack of Jesus (which incidentally is true throughout my life). I will check out the Nation.
Sent from a small error prone device.
Me:
Dude. Shadow’s Jesus. Just Jesus-Christ-Son-of-Odin/Hercules/Baldur/Krishna/Orpheus/Osiris/Persephone, all the dying and risen gods that the Christians incorporated into their mythology, rather than the Jesus Christ Santorum thinks he worships. Fathered by a god on a virgin; mother took him into a foreign land to hide him from a murderous father figure; died on a tree at 33; walked through the underworld; brought back to the world accomplish stuff? Only he rebels against his dad. Good thing too. And later is reconciled to him. Because Neil Gaiman may have created the Serial Killers Convention and written two of the most disturbing fan fiction treatments of Lovecraft I’ve ever read, but he’s still a very nice guy.
Him:
Guess I need to read it again.
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Jason wrote: "There are dead-and-risen analogs in the book, but there's also a simple reason for leaving Jesus out of the story. Ignoring, for the moment, the complications of the Trinity, the whole point of mon..."That depends to no small extent how seriously you take the very modern claim that “you shall have no other gods before me” necessarily means that there are no other gods. Plenty of Christians have believed – do believe -- that they should worship just the one (/3) without disbelieving in other gods. Those demons Jesus cast into the pigs had to come from somewhere. And I know professing Christians now who believe in Krishna. Not Christians who believe the bible is the inerrant word of god, but that’s a fairly modern claim too. Shrug. I think we’re gonna disagree on this one, old friend.
The late, great, Bernie Friedman (my old co-clerk who worked on FIVE APOLLO MISSIONS) sent me daily rhapsodic updates as he was reading American Gods. When he finished, he sent me a note that started "So Shadow was Jesus Christ, son of Odin." I think he really put thumb on it.
Yeah, there are other gods in the Hebrew scriptures. The claim is originally (that is, in what scholars believe to be the oldest texts in the Bible) that the God of Israel is stronger than the gods of the other people. In addition, there are verses which appear to describe God as at the head of a council of gods. Only later did the claim become that there was only one God.Anyhoo, I think we both agree that there are Jesus-analogs in the story, and I have a conjecture as to why there's no character named Jesus in the story.
Jason wrote: "Anyhoo, I think we both agree that there are Jesus-analogs in the story, and I have a conjecture as to why there's no character named Jesus in the story. ..."
I'd go beyond Jesus analog and say Shadow's a classic syncretic amalgam of dying and resurrected gods that includes a very strong Jesus component. He's "really" Baldur, of course, but Baldur got his character all squished up with Jesus in the stories we got, so that gets all recursive really fast. And he’s “really” Osiris/Horus, as that conversation he has with the crazed Horus while dying on the tree really brings home, but early Christians copied a lot of their Mary/Jesus iconography from Isis/Osiris, so that just plays with another syncretism. It’s all a rich tapestry.
What’s your conjecture?
It would be difficult to include Jesus (or God the Father) in a polytheistic story like this one without mocking Him, or at least knocking them down at least a peg or two. Odin is not lowered (much) by putting him in a story with the Greek or Egyptian pantheons, but Jesus would be.
Imagine Jesus's exclusive claims (there is no way to the Father but through me) and Jehovah's (You shall have no other gods before me) in a context in which there are lots of other gods just as powerful as they are. It would be a different kind of story, one in which Neil Gaiman is mocking the gods - at least, he would be mocking those two.