American Gods

by Neil Gaiman

  For a weird moment I thought it was a joke, then I realised it wasn’t.

  “Douglas Adams is dead,” I said.

  “Yes,” said the interviewer. “I know. Did you ever meet him?”

  I said yes. And I was obviously shaken enough that the interviewer offered to stop for half an hour, and I said no, it was fine, we should carry on.

  After that the interview was pretty much a bust. Or at least, I don’t remember anything else that was said. (Sorry, Justin.)

  I’d known Douglas fairly well in the 80s — interviewed him originally for Penthouse then used the leftover material in a dozen other magazines, then in 1987 I wrote “Don’t Panic — The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy Companion” for Titan Books, which involved lots more interviews with Douglas and his friends and colleagues, and lots more spending time in his flat going through his files and archives looking for cool stuff.

  Saw him at David Gilmour’s 50th birthday party, in 1996, and I told him how the Neverwhere TV series was going, and he said at least it wouldn’t be the same experience he’d had with the Hitchhiker TV series, but it was.

  Saw him in Minneapolis a couple of years ago for a signing for the Starship Titanic game. (Only a dozen people came to the signing. He started out by demonstrating the game, but it kept crashing and he couldn’t get out of one of the opening sequences. It was kind of sad.) He’d previously asked me to work on a radio adaptation of the later Hitchhiker’s Books, and I’d said no as I didn’t have the time.

  We’d e-mail from time to time.

  He was a very brilliant man. (Not said lightly. I think he really was one of those astonishingly rare people who saw things differently and more clearly and from a different angle.) I don’t think he liked the process of writing very much to begin with, and I think he liked it less and less as time went on. Probably, he wasn’t meant to be a writer. I’m not sure that he ever figured out what it was that he did want to do; I suspect it’s something they don’t have a concept for yet, let alone a name — and if he’d been around when this thing was around (World Designer? Explainer?) he would have done it brilliantly.

  (I hope that his death isn’t followed by the publishing of all the stuff he hadn’t wanted to see print.)

  He was immensely kind and generous, with his time and his material, to a young journalist, over 15 years ago; and watching how he, and how Alan Moore (who I met around the same time), treated their fans and other people – graciously, kindly and generously – taught that young journalist an awful lot about how famous authors ought to behave. And how most of them don’t.

  & I’ll miss him. posted by Neil Gaiman 3:08 PM

  * * *

  Sunday, May 13, 2001

  Spent a large chunk of yesterday replying to fanmail. (I always try to answer it. It goes into a box, and three or four times a year I clean out the box, scrawling postcards that answer questions & say thank you as best I can in the room on the back of a postcard.) I don’t do it as often as I should, and get a wholly disproportionate sense of accomplishment when it’s all replied to, and the box is filled with postcards.

  And I pulled out my copy of Don’t Panic (the original Titan edition of 1987, not the reissue that Dave Dickson wrote extras for at the end, nor the US Pocket Books edition where page 42 – which we’d left intentionally blank because the first time I’d printed out the book page 42 was [not on purpose, just a glitch from whatever computer program I was using to word process in those dim dark days] a blank piece of paper with “page 42” on it, and that seemed improbable enough to be some kind of a sign – on the US Pocket Books edition Page 42 was just part of the book. . . ) and I read the book I’d written fourteen years ago, and heard Douglas’s voice all the way through it, affable, baffled, warm and dry.

  There are worse ways to say goodbye. And it may have been a strange one, but it worked, and we take our goodbyes where we can.posted by Neil Gaiman 8:40 AM

  * * *

  Tuesday, May 15, 2001

  So, today brought an envelope, and in it, the finished book cover for American Gods. It’s lovely. Big lightning bolt on the cover, gold letters, and the back cover is covered with wonderful blurbs, many of them melted down from ones already posted here. Also photo of me, with smoke in background and messy hair. Author delighted. Finished books should arrive on the 31st of May. Author excited.

  Also e-mail today saying American Gods has been sold to Czechoslavakia and to France, which gives us the first two foreign sales.

  The most interesting American Gods call was from the editor of the e-book edition of American Gods, which will be published at the same time as the novel, asking about what kind of things we can add to the e-book: I suggested that we add this journal. . .

  posted by Neil Gaiman 8:29 PM

  * * *

  Wednesday, May 16, 2001

  * * *

  There is nowhere in the whole world quite as strange or as special as The House on the Rock. Parts of Chapters 5 and 6 of the novel take place there — stuff happens, and some characters get to ride the World’s Largest Carousel.

  Nobody’s allowed to ride the World’s Largest Carousel in real life. It just goes round and round and round, like something from the Weisinger-era Fortress of Solitude.

  I drove for 3 hours to get there. Jeff, the photographer, had a whole crew of people waiting. First, make-up. Then, the initial set up: a double-exposure picture of me and the strange nipple-revealing shop-window dummy mannequin angels that hang from the roof of the Carousel room. (One of the photos from today will illustrate the review in the Entertainment Weekly books section.)

  Then down to floor level and over to the Carousel for shots of me with the strange animals moving round and round in the background. I spent most of the time trying not to look vaguely goofy. (This is my default mode in photographs. It’s not intentional. Some people tell me I take good photographs, and I have to explain that that’s only because they mostly don’t print the goofy ones. The infamous CBLDF iguana photo is a good example of the kind of photo that people usually don’t see. Goofy.)

  The best part of spending 4 hours having your photo taken is often talking to the photographer. This was kind of out of the question here — the sheer volume of the music in the Carousel Room is initially almost unbearable; after about 20 minutes it becomes a sort of background noise and you kind of tune it out. . . but for the four hours of the shoot, Jeff and I communicated mostly by hand gestures of the “turn left,” and “chin up” variety, because the music was so loud you couldn’t hear anything, especially when all the kettle-drums started banging.

  (And for the breaks Jeff was off setting up the next shot. I chatted to Dolores, his assistant, and signed her hardback of Sandman: THE WAKE. She hasn’t read it yet, as she says if she does then the story will be over.)

  The carousel room is the hottest room in the House on the Rock. It’s the 20,000 lightbulbs from the carousel that keep it so warm, said Bill, the man on carousel duty (he’s been doing it for 16 years, making sure no-one vaults the fence and climbs onto any of the animals). I was cooking in the Jonathan Carroll leather jacket.

  As the shoot wound down, Jeff and I got to chat a little. “How would you like me to make you look?” he asked. “Brooding, mysterious, scary, friendly — what kind of impression are you trying to give?”

  I thought for a moment, and realised that I had no idea. “Could you make me look surprisingly fuckable for a writer, please?”

  He laughed (and so did the rest of the crew) and said he’d do his best.

  And we wrapped up the shoot, then I ate and drove another three hours back.

  Actually, I’d settle for brooding.

  Really, I’d settle for not very goofy.

  posted by Neil Gaiman 11:11 PM

  * * *

  Monday, May 28, 2001

  I’m home. Hurrah. . . 22 Hours on planes and in airports, and it’s just nice to be in my own house, with kids all around, and I got to say things I haven’t had a
chance to say in two weeks, things like “What do you mean —you’re going out? You’ve still got two English essays to finish, and a hundred-question physics test, and all that homework’s due tomorrow. Of course you aren’t going out.”

  I walked in the garden:the asparagus is high as an elephant’s eye, and for that matter, so is the rhubarb. (Which is rather unnerving, actually.)

  So waiting for me, when I got home, was a finished copy of American Gods.

  This made me very happy.

  The first thing I thought when I saw it was how much thicker it was than I’d expected. (465 pages plus about 15 pages of front matter. Or to put it another way, it’s over an inch thick.) Also, how very much it looks like a real book.

  The cover is lovely.

  I opened it up very carefully. Black endpapers. Yum. . .

  The first rule of new books is this: when your new book arrives, and you open it to a random page, and look at it, you will see a typo, and your heart will sink. It may be the only typo (er, typographical error) in the whole book, but you will see it immediately.

  So I very carefully didn’t open it to a random page. I opened it to the first page (CAVEAT, AND WARNING FOR TRAVELERS) and read that instead. Half way down the page I noticed a comma that I could have sworn used to be a full stop. . .

  But other than that, it looks lovely. Wonderful. Really cool. I checked the Icelandic, and that was now right, and all the weird copyediting things seem to be fine. The permissions are all there on the copyright page. Along with the weirdest little library of congress filing thing I’ve ever seen.

  This is what it says:

  American gods: a novel /by Neil Gaiman — 1st edp. cmISBN 0-380-97365-01.National characteristics, American — Fiction. 2. Spiritual warfare - Fiction. 3 Ex-prisoners - Fiction. 4. Bodyguards - Fiction 5. Widowers - Fiction I. Title

  And I wonder, who picks these categories? What do they base them on? I mean, while it is undoubtedly true that Shadow, our more-or-less hero, is an ex-prisoner, and that his wife is killed in a car crash early in the book; but I feel deeply sorry for anyone who goes into it looking for fiction about widowers, ex-prisoners or bodyguards; while all the people looking for the things it has in abundance, like history and geography and mythology, like dreams and confidence tricks and sacrifice, Roadside Attractions and lakes and coin magic and funeral homes go by the wayside.

  Still, I like “Spiritual warfare — Fiction.” And ‘National characteristics, American”. I like that, too, in a weird way.

  * * *

  About the Author

  NEIL GAIMAN is the critically acclaimed and award-winning author of the novels Neverwhere, Stardust, the Sandman series of graphic novels, and Smoke and Mirrors, a collection of short fiction. He is coauthor of the novel Good Omens with Terry Pratchett. Among his many awards are the World Fantasy Award and the Bram Stoker Award. Originally from England, Gaiman now lives in the United States.

  Visit his website at www.neilgaiman.com.

  Discover great authors, exclusive offers, and more at hc.com.

  Also by Neil Gaiman

  For Adults

  The Truth is a Cave in the Black Mountains (illustrated by Ed Campbell)

  The Ocean at the End of the Lane

  Stories (edited with Al Sarrantonio)

  Fragile Things

  Anansi Boys

  American Gods

  Stardust

  Smoke and Mirrors

  Neverwhere

  Good Omens (with Terry Pratchett)

  For All Ages

  The Graveyard Book (illustrated by Dave McKean)

  M Is for Magic

  Coraline (illustrated by Dave McKean)

  Odd and the Frost Giants (illustrated by Brett Helquist)

  Crazy Hair (illustrated by Dave McKean)

  Blueberry Girl (illustrated by Charles Vess)

  The Dangerous Alphabet (illustrated by Chris Grimly)

  The Day I Swapped My Dad for Two Goldfish (illustrated by Dave McKean)

  The Wolves in the Walls (illustrated by Dave McKean)

  Credits

  Cover design by Russel Gordon

  Cover photograph illustration by Kamil Vojnar

  Copyright

  Every effort has been made to locate and contact the copyright owners of material reproduced in this book. Omissions brought to our attention will be corrected in subsequent editions. We gratefully acknowledge the following for granting permission to use their material in this book:

  Excerpt from “The Witch of Coos” from Two Witches from The Poetry of Robert Frost, edited by Edward Connery Lathem, © 1951 by Robert Frost, copyright 1923, 1969 by Henry Holt and Co. Reprinted by permission of Henry Holt and Company, LLC.

  “Tango Till They’re Sore” by Tom Waits. Copyright © 1985 by JALMA Music.Used by Permission. All rights reserved.

  “Old Friends” Music and Lyrics by Stephen Sondheim. Copyright © 1981 Rilting Music, Inc. All Rights Reserved. Used by Permission. warner bros. publications u.s. inc., Miami, FL 33014.

  “In the Dark with You” by Greg Brown. Copyright © 1985 by Hacklebarney Music/ASCAP. Used by Permission. All rights reserved.

  The lines from “in just-.” Copyright 1923, 1951, © 1991 by the Trustees for the E.E. Cummings Trust. Copyright © 1976 by George James Firmage, from Complete Poems 1904-1962 by E.E. Cummings, edited by George J. Firmage. Used by permission of Liveright Publishing Corporation.

  “Don’t Let Me Be Misunderstood,” by Bennie Benjamin, Sol Marcus and Gloria Caldwell. © 1964 Bennie Benjamin Music Inc. © Renewed, assigned to WB Music Corp., Bennie Benjamin Music, Inc. and Chris-N-Jen Music. All rights o/b/o Bennie Benjamin Music Inc. administered by Chappell & Co. All rights reserved. Used by Permission. WARNER BROS. PUBLICATIONS U.S. INC., Miami, FL 33014.

  Excerpt from “The Second Coming” reprinted with the permission of Scribner, a Division of Simon & Schuster, Inc., from The Poems of W.B. Yeats: A New Edition, edited by Richard J. Finneran. Copyright © 1924 by Macmillan Publishing Company; copyright renewed © 1952 by Bertha Georgie Yeats.

  Excerpt from The Ocean at the End of the Lane copyright © 2013 by Neil Gaiman

  AMERICAN GODS. Copyright © 2001 by Neil Gaiman. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.

  ON THE ROAD TO AMERICAN GODS: SELECTED PASSAGES FROM NEIL GAIMAN’S ONLINE JOURNAL © 2001 by Neil Gaiman.

  EPub Edition © JUNE 2013 ISBN 9780061792663

  Version 06022014

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