# American Gods



## Shaver (May 2, 2012)

This television adaptation of Gaiman's masterpiece does not fail to deliver. Each adjustment of the tale, in order to translate the source novel to a screenplay, serves only to update and enhance the relevance of the concealed and eternal conflict for which it is intended to depict. I do not bestow the honour lightly - this is something of a masterpiece.

Let us consider that the three most powerful forces in our Universe are:

3. Belief

2. Stories/Ideas

1. Imagination

Without stories/ideas there are no beliefs and without imagination there are no stories/ideas and it is belief that defines our reality. Science is a peculiar strain of belief which exists by believing in itself but magic (or religion, at your preference) requires believers.

As a whippersnapper I eagerly devoured every myth, each folklore, every fairy tale, each legend (the pantheon of Norse Gods particularly resonating due to my bloodline but) stories consumed with ravenous glee. All of those stories - and more - collide here in American Gods.

Such grandiose and elementary themes - wounded Gods bound to wood forever dying then resurrected, from sacrificial blood to crack cocaine, these subjects of worship are explored with wit and gravity.

A meta commentary in which our narrative existence is both the tool of dissection and the subject which is dissected, the role that we cast for ourselves, the stage, the script and the theme of our lives - what we believe is the index to who we are and the situation that we perform within. The well chosen words with power to change the world.

Ian McShane, an actor who in Lovejoy was symptomatic of all I despised as representative of lowest common denominator drivel but, latterly become a magnificent and convincing presence provides a remarkable turn as the personification of the All Father.

Read the book first and then watch the show.

Tell 'em the trickster god of language sent ya.


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## Shaver (May 2, 2012)

I have just tidied up the above statement as it lacked coherent structure - my apologies to anyone who read it in its original format which was more a stream of consciousness than it was an analysis.


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