Bingeing On Gods

The second week of the class was dedicated on bingeing texts. Ward, Katie, Mara, Allison, and Will were in the group reading American Gods by Neil Gaiman. The text was long with the tenth anniversary edition consisting of over five hundred and fifty pages. Within the text Neil Gaiman had short chapters where he told stories about various gods, which were never again mentioned, in order to give more backstory (?).

For the second binge Katie did not enjoy reading Neil Gaiman’s American Gods. She felt as though the characters were flat and vast in numbers, which made it difficult to follow. During our group binge we, as a group, discussed wanting to have had more information on the various gods. Katie thought it would have been nice if we had this information due to it helping understand the characters in addition to the small amount of information we were told about them. Katie felt that if she had known some of the mythology behind the various characters then she may have enjoyed the text more than she actually did, though she speculates on whether or not if she had the opportunity to have spent more time with the text then she would have enjoyed it more.

Mara started the second binge with high hopes. She chose American Gods because she felt that the story line would be thought provoking, and would encourage in-depth thought and analysis. She unfortunately was disillusioned with the book. Throughout the first day, she couldn’t help but check her watch every half hour at least as time seemed to slow down. She tried to get into her reading rhythm, as she tried to make rituals like making tea, putting on cozy socks, sitting by a window with natural light all of which were unsuccessful in helping her enjoy the book. Mara continued through the second and third day to look for some sort of meaning that she could apply to her life, and for something that spoke to her on a deeper level that would stick with her. She was again disappointed. The pleasure and profit that she hoped to come from this piece of literature did not come to fruition.

Katie and Mara

Ward Sandberg also felt that the characters did not have a lot of flavor to them. The idea was thrown out there that this maybe because he is a comic book artist as well. His characters could be described as archetypal. Wednesday is the bad guy, but to us that’s all he is. We see him as Odin and as the All Father, but other than that we don’t really know much about him or his character. In a word, Neil Gaiman’s characters are bland, and that’s really how Ward felt about them.  

Will Burton, another student in the American Gods group, said that reading American Gods taught him the importance of characterization. “One of the biggest lessons that I learned from this binge is that no story can survive off of plot entirely, there must be a balance between characterization and plot. This is evident in American Gods by the fact that Neil Gaiman focuses more on plot than on character development and really loses the readers because of the lack of attachment to characters,” he said. Will also points out that any novel that focuses primarily on plot rather than characterization will not keep the readers invested because it is hard to maintain any level of investment in a story about characters that people do not care about or feel any type of emotion towards. In his opinion American Gods definitely suffers from this lack of characterization and it is really the only weak point of the story. “The narrative style of the novel is great and the plot is extremely strong and I found myself to be very intrigued when I read the novel. The problem is that this interest in the novel fades as the book goes on because of the lack of characterization,” said Will. Overall he felt that the lack of characterization in the novel turned a potentially great story into at best a mediocre one.

      Allison was initially excited about American Gods. After the first day she felt like the text had a lot to offer. It had an exciting premise and had the potential to provoke a lot of discussion about the presence of religion in American society. However, the book failed to fulfill this potential. In the second day of the binge, Allison read the second half of the book. She continued to enjoy the variety in the point of view. On the third day, she read Gaiman's Stardust and was disappointed by the lack characterization and felt like the book would have functioned better as a short story by cutting the unmemorable parts of the plot. However, Allison did enjoy taking the time to read and letting her brain enter the words and imagine the worlds of the text.

Ward, Will, and Allison