2008 Woodie Awards
Somewhere over the rainbow
Road Trip
Cameron Summers
Issue date: 5/6/07 Section: Entertainment
As the semester draws to a close, we all make plans for the summer. Some of us intend to relax, and some of us intend to work; many of us will go on a trip, traveling abroad or close to home.
Travel is a very important event in literature--most books include either a metaphoric or actual journey, and a very few contain both. Many authors have tried to tackle the idea of the journey, all the way from Homer and Chaucer to Jack Kerouac and Hunter S. Thompson. In fantasy, journeys are just as important; Lord of the Rings is little more than a fantastic travelogue.
Perhaps the best travel narrative in contemporary fantasy, though, is Neil Gaiman's American Gods; a road novel featuring Old World deities brought to the New World by immigrant populations, a couple of con men, and good old-fashioned American Forteana.
Often described as something like "Jack Kerouac's version of Lord of the Rings", American Gods focuses on a man known only as "Shadow"; an ex-con guilty of being an accessory to bank robbery who was recently released from prison. Like Odysseus, Shadow wants nothing more than to return home to his wife, and pick up his life where he left off. He intends to stay out of sight, living a normal life.
But also like Odysseus, the Gods have different plans for Shadow. He comes home to find his wife and best friend dead in an automobile accident, and nothing waiting for him.
This all changes, however, when the mysterious Mr. Wednesday--a grizzled old with a glass eye and a finely made suit--enters Shadow's life, and offers him a job. He is to be Wednesday's driver and secretary, assisting Wednesday in his mysterious quest.
The two of them travel across a god-haunted America, visiting sites that Wednesday calls "places of power", and meeting with strange individuals that Shadow slowly discovers are gods brought to America by immigrants and explorers from the old world. Wednesday is a very old and powerful god, and is forming an alliance with other refugee deities; the goal of this alliance is to resist the encroachment of newer Gods--Gods of the Internet and Television.
Travel is a very important event in literature--most books include either a metaphoric or actual journey, and a very few contain both. Many authors have tried to tackle the idea of the journey, all the way from Homer and Chaucer to Jack Kerouac and Hunter S. Thompson. In fantasy, journeys are just as important; Lord of the Rings is little more than a fantastic travelogue.
Perhaps the best travel narrative in contemporary fantasy, though, is Neil Gaiman's American Gods; a road novel featuring Old World deities brought to the New World by immigrant populations, a couple of con men, and good old-fashioned American Forteana.
Often described as something like "Jack Kerouac's version of Lord of the Rings", American Gods focuses on a man known only as "Shadow"; an ex-con guilty of being an accessory to bank robbery who was recently released from prison. Like Odysseus, Shadow wants nothing more than to return home to his wife, and pick up his life where he left off. He intends to stay out of sight, living a normal life.
But also like Odysseus, the Gods have different plans for Shadow. He comes home to find his wife and best friend dead in an automobile accident, and nothing waiting for him.
This all changes, however, when the mysterious Mr. Wednesday--a grizzled old with a glass eye and a finely made suit--enters Shadow's life, and offers him a job. He is to be Wednesday's driver and secretary, assisting Wednesday in his mysterious quest.
The two of them travel across a god-haunted America, visiting sites that Wednesday calls "places of power", and meeting with strange individuals that Shadow slowly discovers are gods brought to America by immigrants and explorers from the old world. Wednesday is a very old and powerful god, and is forming an alliance with other refugee deities; the goal of this alliance is to resist the encroachment of newer Gods--Gods of the Internet and Television.
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