American Gods (73 page)

Authors: Neil Gaiman

BOOK: American Gods

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Monday, May 28, 2001

I'm home. Hurrah.Â .Â . 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 âyou'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.Â .Â .

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.Â .Â .

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 â 1st edp. cmISBN 0-380-97365-01.National characteristics, American â 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 â Fiction.” And âNational 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
.

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M Is for Magic

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(illustrated by Charles Vess)

The Dangerous Alphabet
(illustrated by Chris Grimly)

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(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, Â© 1951 by Robert Frost, copyright 1923, 1969 by Henry Holt and Co. Reprinted by permission of Henry Holt and Company, LLC.

The lines from “in just-.” Copyright 1923, 1951, Â© 1991 by the Trustees for the E.E. Cummings Trust. Copyright Â© 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. Â© 1964 Bennie Benjamin Music Inc. Â© 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 Â© 1924 by Macmillan Publishing Company; copyright renewed Â© 1952 by Bertha Georgie Yeats.

AMERICAN GODS
. Copyright Â© 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.

EPub Edition Â© JUNE 2013 ISBN 9780061792663

Version 06022014

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