pynchon in American Gods; American Gods in me

[Antonin Scriabin]

I would say *American Gods *is Gaiman's best novel, but his writing in
the *Sandman
*graphic novels is much better, and his short story collections
(particularly *Fragile Things*) his best work of all.  For some reason, his
novels never really worked for me.  He seems better suited to different
formats.* *


On Thu, May 16, 2013 at 8:01 AM, Markekohut <markekohut at yahoo.com> wrote:

> Shakespeare drew on no work of the fictional imagination more than
> Ovid....Montaigne, Plutarch for non-fic ( w Hollinshed's history)
>
> Sent from my iPad
>
> On May 16, 2013, at 7:03 AM, "Monte Davis" <montedavis at verizon.net> wrote:
>
> > JT> how myths change and stay the same.  How we carry them and they carry
> > us. how myths change and stay the same.  How we carry them and they carry
> > us.
> >
> > I like your characterization of AG, and especially this: not a bad
> capsule
> > characterization of Joseph Campbell, incidentally.
> >
> > Track down a copy of Alan Garner's The Owl Service (1967,
> > http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Owl_Service), in which three English
> and
> > Welsh teenagers reenact (as their parents did) a triangle from the
> > Mabinogion. The book is nominally "young adult" -- sure, so are
> Huckleberry
> > Finn and Animal Farm and Romeo and Juliet. Short, pared-down, more
> dialogue
> > than exposition or description. Ambiguity as intense and central as that
> in
> > The Turn of the Screw: almost everything that happens could be magic and
> > undead 800-year-old spirits, or could just as well be stressed-out,
> > fantasizing/hallucinating kids behaving in ways unconsciously learned
> from
> > their parents. Explain it with archetypes, or just admit it: a myth is
> > living them.
> >
> > If something more "adult" and "sophisticated" and "realist" (heh) is
> > required, Robertson Davies' splendid Deptford trilogy
> > (http://www.amazon.com/Deptford-Trilogy-Robertson-Davies/dp/0140147551)
> > covers a lot of the same ground, with explicitly Jungian gloss built in.
> >
> > Ovid's Metamorphoses is the prime wellspring. There's a reason it's been
> > the source -- direct or indirect -- for more Western literature and art
> than
> > any other single classical work. Ovid knew that we can't help
> encountering
> > (and being) Narcissus, Eurydice, Midas, Medea, Icarus, Arachne and the
> rest
> > at transformative moments throughout our lives. Slothrop glimpsing
> Katje's
> > "terrible Face That Is no Face", a goddess' mask..? Roger realizing that
> for
> > postwar Jessica he will be "a mistake thank God she didn't make"..? Pure
> > Actaeon and Diana.
> >
> >
> > -----Original Message-----
> > From: owner-pynchon-l at waste.org [mailto:owner-pynchon-l at waste.org] On
> Behalf
> > Of Joseph Tracy
> > Sent: Wednesday, May 15, 2013 1:19 PM
> > To: P-list List
> > Subject: pynchon in American Gods; American Gods in me
> >
> > This scene takes place after the main character has died  after 9 days
> tied
> > to the world ash ( in honor of the murdered Odin)and is doing a review of
> > his past while entering the underworld. He is remembering his mother's
> death
> > bed and seeing himself reading a book by her bedside.
> >
> > "Shadow wondered what the book was, and he walked around the hospital
> bed to
> > inspect it more closely. He stood between the bed and the chair looking
> from
> > the one to the other, the big boy hunched into his chair, his nose
> buried in
> > Gravity's Rainbow, trying to escape from his mother's death into London
> > during the blitz, the fictional madness of the book no escape and no
> > excuse."
> >
> > Gaiman, Neil (2011-06-21). American Gods: The Tenth Anniversary Edition:
> A
> > Novel (p. 421). HarperCollins. Kindle Edition.
> >
> > Gaiman's prose is a storyteller's. He doesn't do long complex sentences
> or
> > formal experimentation. But he knows what he is about and American Gods
> is
> > rather like doing a vicarious back flip off the high dive into shallow
> water
> > and missing the concrete because shallow can get pretty deep, surprising
> and
> > exhilarating. I'm finding it enjoyable both as escape and as a
> consideration
> > of how myths change and stay the same.  How we carry them and they carry
> us.
> >
> > I'm just back from Okinawa and San Francisco and think I have slept off
> the
> > jet lag. Okinawa is both different and familiar with both medieval
> castles
> > feminist shamanism  and jet fighter bases. I was born in San Francisco
> and
> > the geology and flora of the entire region are home but the city itself
> has
> > always been an impenetrable mystery of immense dimensions. Still, it
> soothes
> > me at the same time it indifferently mocks my estrangement.
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
>
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