 American Gods by Neil Gaiman is pretty well known, decently beloved, pretty well regarded, but also really polarizing. And whenever you bring up American Gods and people talk about a Gaiman, people are like, well, and start bringing in asterisks and caveats. I think the big question that comes up with American Gods most often is can you start there? If you're interested in reading Gaiman, can you start with American Gods? I think most people say no. Most people say you should not start with American Gods. I am one of those people. I say that you should not start with American Gods, even though that is where I started. I think one of the reasons people say this, this is one of the reasons I say it, is that it's nothing like what Gaiman's other books are like. It's not indicative of his style. It's not indicative of the nature of his work in general. However, American Gods is exactly like all of Gaiman's work smushed together. So if you wanna take a big swig from the fire hose of Gaiman's abilities, American Gods will give you Neil Gaiman's abilities as a novelist, short story writer, urban fantasy writer, historical fantasy writer, horror writer, mythology, mythology retelling, retelling in general, violence, sex, social commentary, graphic novel. If you, there is a graphic novel version of American Gods, so you can even see his abilities as a graphic novelist. So yeah, American Gods is nothing like his other works. It's like all of his other works, all at once. So I think expectations are really important when going into anything. They kind of have the capacity to make or break your experience with something. If you have the wrong expectations about something, even if it's something that you would have ultimately liked, it can be the reason you disliked it because you thought you would get a specific thing out of it and you did not, or you thought that you wouldn't get something and you did end up getting that, whatever it is. So I think expectations are a big reason why American Gods is something that people are like, hang on, don't start there. Because I think it's almost impossible to set the right expectations for someone going into American Gods. And you might end up liking it but I feel like most people picking up American Gods when they begin to read it, they're like, okay, no, this is not at all what I imagined it would be like. What do most people expect? Okay, they expect a story about America. It's in the freaking title. They expect it to be fantasy, which it is. They expect it to be pretty dark because it's gay men and I feel like most cover art and like kind of like synopses, whatever like you might have picked up kind of like biosmosis would give you the impression it's gonna be kind of dark and it's gonna have some kind of reference to mythology, to deity, to anthropomorphize gods or something. It's again, it's in the freaking title. And are those expectations wrong? No, and yes. So American Gods, I came to the conclusion is like an impressionist painting as a novel. So an impressionist painting, individual brushstrokes on it looks strange. They look unconnected, they look nonsensical. But when you step back and see them all together, you see the whole of the image that those disparate strokes are coming together to form. So in American Gods, the individual elements of this story that I just like listed for you, they feel unconnected, they feel nonsensical, they feel strange, they feel out of place. But then if you step back when you finished it, you understand the whole that those disparate parts are coming together to form. So like the format and the structure of the book kind of contributes to this. There's sort of like three-ish parts of this book. So you've got Shadows Road Trip. Shadow Moon is like the protagonist. I say that, I mean like he is, that's not disputed, but really not his story, but he is the protagonist. So you have like this road trip of his that's kind of the glue that binds together the whole of this novel. Then you have like Coming to America. Coming to America is the short stories that are included basically in this novel. So these are like weaving the tapestry of America together in the background, forming kind of like the backdrop for Shadow's story to take place upon. And then we have the gods being at war. That is ostensibly what this book is about, but neither Shadows Road Trip nor the Coming to America stories are about that. And yet both of them have to be about that because the book is about that. So the thing that the book is about cannot be seen up close. Like when reading Shadows Journey or when reading the Coming to America stories, like an impressionist painting, when you look at these individual parts of it, they are just these brush strokes. But when you step back and you take them as a whole, suddenly the story of the gods being at war is visible where it wasn't visible when you were just going through the individual bits. So if there are three parts of this book, there's like physically going through it, there's Shadows Quest and the Coming to America stories. These are like, this is what's happening in the book. That's what the book is going to be having in it. But the book itself, the whole of it is the gods being at war. And so that's why I say there's like three-ish parts of the book. So pros and cons. Well, the protagonist is an ex-con. But the book is long, it's meandering, it's pretty tonally inconsistent. It feels directionless. The protagonist lacks agency. There's a reason for that. But nonetheless, when you're reading it, it feels less compelling a lot of the times for people because the protagonist lacks agency. The pacing is strange and there are just so many disparate elements that there's have apparently nothing connecting them. But pros, the pros is good. There's like a huge scope to this story, making it quite epic. The stories within stories, if that's something that you like, it feels kind of like more bang for your buck, you know, that you've paid for a story and you ended up getting more stories within that story. There are lots of Easter eggs and not just the literal ones because Easter is a character. But like there's lots of nods to various things either like within the book itself, that are things that you can catch that are connections across the book, but also Easter eggs just for like mythology, for story, for America. The commentary that's present throughout the book, not like constantly, but like that can be found in different parts of the book includes conversation about history, about faith and belief, like the nature of it, about modernity, about America as like a concept, about individual purpose, like the purpose of the individual, narrative as identity, and identity as narrative, morality, nationhood, nation-state, again tied into like the idea of America, shared identity and purpose, there's the purpose of the individual but the purpose of the collective. The book is also for all its darkness, it is quite amusing. There's a lot of humor in it, Neil Gaiman. He's not as like obviously ha ha, funny as Terry Bratchett most of the time, but he does like to include a lot of dark humor. The plot is really intricate and layered. There are quite high stakes in this plot. The gods are at war. Does it get more high stakes than that? And yet the characters are oddly relatable even though it's a story about gods because they're pretty down to earth, these anthropomorphized versions of them. And overall, Shadow's Journey, it's kind of an American Odyssey if you're into that kind of thing. Like that shape of a story can be quite appealing. So given how messy American gods is, adaptation and interpretation can be quite tricky. So a lot of Gaiman's writing is very figurative and adaptation has to make a lot of figurative things literal in order to depict them. So Gaiman uses a lot of like metaphors and like kind of strange ways of describing things, symbols and abstract concepts, and you have to make those like physical and specific. They think you're kind of, it's okay because once those guys get to know you, they'll see what I see, but you're not random and you're specific. In order to depict them on screen. You know, he'll say something is like this, I don't think this is a real example, but it's something like describing something as being the absence of color. And it's like, okay, like if you write that in a book, I can like go with that, but how the FDU depict that, you know? So it's like, that's kind of the nature of his writing. He's like doing these kind of like vague, amorphous conceptual things that you're like, in a book, you can get away with that, but how do you do that on screen? American guys, as I've said, is kind of all over the place. They think you're kind of random. Kind of what I've been talking about this whole time. And movies and TV typically seek to have a fairly recognizable and standard plot structure, whether it be episodic or ongoing. American guys is both episodic and ongoing, but even the ongoing part, which would be kind of Shadow's journey, even that is extremely episodic. Lots of like side and fetch quests and seemingly to no purpose. Do you think you're kind of random? So TV is more episodic, so that should be helpful. That should be the way to go, right? American gods is also really long. So again, TV would probably be ideal. So you could get like a long mini series out of it, maybe two seasons of a mini series, but more than that, you're kind of dragging it out now. And it's already a story that a lot of people feel drags. But American gods is not a series. It's a whole painting. This whole American gods as an impressionist painting only works if you're able to kind of like hold all the pieces in your mind and see them as a whole. When you have a long ongoing series that just goes on and on and on and stretches and already meandering plot longer and longer and longer, the ability to like see the wood instead of the trees becomes more and more impossible. And it is the wood that satisfies. It is like this whole that you have to be able to see in order to like finally kind of get it. So a long book that feels complete at its conclusion versus a show that never feels complete because it just kind of like keeps going and going and blundering along, never getting to any point and never allowing you to step back and see the thing. And then of course, as always, interpretation chips away at layers of meaning. When you're adapting something, you have to decide how to interpret something in a specific way, most of the time and kind of like stick with that. And your interpretation kind of has to be consistent within the adaptation. So this erodes layers of interpretation and meaning. It's kind of like Schrodinger's interpretation. You know, like in a book, you can leave something kind of vague and everyone can bring their own meaning to it. And then when you adapt it, you kind of have to pick one of those. And now it can't be a variety of different things. It's this one thing that this director chose or the screenwriter chose or whatever. You're not random, but you're specific. And that's not to say that film can't have ambiguity. Film definitely can't have ambiguity on layers of meaning, but film is an art form in itself. And typically when film is able to do that, it's because someone has written a story for film. And so film is the medium that was in mind when the story was conceived. And ambiguity that is possible in film, which is different from ambiguity, it's possible in a book, is what was like in mind when it was conceived. Whereas a book was not conceived without in mind. And when you're adapting book to screen, you're limited by that and kind of have to make more concrete decisions. It can be done. You can still include ambiguity when adapting book to screen. I'm not saying it's impossible, but it is much, much more difficult. Can you start with American Gods? Absolutely. However, only if you go unprepared for what it is and what it is not going to be, only if you know going in that it both is and is not a good example of gay men's work in general, only if you go in interested in the project of it. And only if you go into it with a good deal of patience and as Mara from books like Woe would say going with it-ness. But I still don't recommend you start with American Gods. For one thing, there's too many ifs. I think it is easier to appreciate everything that it's doing and everything that gay men is bringing to it. If you are already familiar with all the types of things that gay men has done is interested in doing and is capable of writing. Again, I did start with American Gods and I did enjoy it and I did appreciate it. But I think rereading it after having read the majority of gay men's work, I appreciate it so much more. I'm partly cause you're rereading anything you tend to appreciate it more the second time. But I think having read a bunch of gay men's work and seeing how he's kind of brought all of these skills to the table with American Gods, you don't really appreciate that or see that as well the first time through if you've never read his work before. Because once those guys get to know you, they'll see what I see. But you're not random, but you're specific. So starting with American Gods, I think is a little bit like starting with the Avengers and then going back and watching Captain America and Thor and Iron Man. So like you can do that, you absolutely can and people have done that. But I do think most people would say that that would be doing things the wrong way around. American Gods is in so many ways a culmination, a combination of gay men's many skills and talents. And these like talents are assembled, if you will, in American Gods. And that is what's most satisfying to witness. And that is most satisfying to witness if you've seen these things in their solo forms and now you can appreciate them assembling. American Gods is also a tome. It's a big ask if you're gonna start with that book. Gay men usually writes pretty short things. Even his novels are pretty short usually. And bigger books are just a bigger commitment. So asking people to start with American Gods if they've never read gay men before. And it's this like long ass meandering tome of a monstrosity. That's I think why people who are fans of gay men are like, don't start there, it'll put you off. It's brilliant, but it'll put you off. Because again, it's just, it's a big ask. And ultimately it's very much not for everyone. And again, I don't, I mean, gay men is probably not for everyone, although I maintain that there is a gay man for everyone because he does have a quite a huge variety of skills and a variety of types of writing that he's capable of. But American Gods is definitely not for everyone. Other gay men books, there are some gay men books that I feel more generally, I could just kind of broadly recommend to people. And I feel like most people would enjoy them. American Gods is not one of those. I think it's brilliant, but it's very much not everyone's cup of tea. It's a unique and bizarre project that is executed in a unique and bizarre way. And it's what makes it so special and brilliant and also makes it have less sort of broad appeal. Because if you're choosing to do something kind of out there, that's like taking a big risk. And it means that it's a higher chance of people not liking it because it's more out there. It's a bigger risk. Usually the risky things have like the highest payoff, the highest, you know, high risk, high reward. So it makes it more brilliant than a lot of mundane things, but it means it puts a lot of people off. But if you really want to start with American Gods then bon voyage and buckle up because it's a bumpy ride. Let me know in the comments down below if you've read American Gods, if you agree or disagree with my assessment of American Gods, if you do think people should start there or if you agree that people should not start there. Whatever you want to let me know. I post videos on Saturdays. Other random houses will be on Saturdays. So like and subscribe for my Patreon if you feel so inclined and I'll see you when I see.