American Gods

I didn’t really know what kind of book I wanted to write until, in the summer of 1998, I found myself spending forty-eight hours in Reykjavík, in Iceland, and in the middle of that stay I knew what my next book was. A bunch of fragments of plot, an unwieldy assortment of characters, and something faintly resembling a structure came together in my head. Maybe it was because I was far enough away from America to see it clearly, maybe it was just that its time had come. It would be a thriller, and a murder mystery, and a romance, and a road trip. It would be about the immigrant experience, about what people believed in when they came to America. And about what happened to the things that they believed. I’m English. I like being English. I’ve kept my passport. I’ve as much of my accent as I could. And I’d lived in the U.S. for almost nine years. Long enough to know that everything I’d learned about it from the movies was wrong.

I wanted to write about myths. I wanted to write about America as a mythic place.

I went back to my hotel room and wrote a three-page-long rough outline—more of a loose description of the book I had in my head. I tried calling it Magic America (after the Blur song), and that didn’t seem right. I tried calling it King of America (after the Elvis Costello album) and that didn’t seem right either. So I wrote American Gods (not after anything) at the top of the first page of the outline, and figured I’d come up with a better title sooner or later.

I’d not started writing the novel by the time the publisher sent me the cover. It showed a road and a lightning bolt and, in large letters, a title: American Gods. There seemed no point in fighting it—to be honest, I was starting to like it—and I started to write.

It’s a big book, but then America’s a big country, and trying to fit it into a book was hard enough.

American Gods is the story of a man called Shadow, and the job he is offered when he gets out of prison. It is the story of a road trip. It tells the story of a small Midwestern town, and the disappearances that occur there every winter. I discovered, as I wrote it, why roadside attractions are the most sacred places in America. I learned a lot about gods, and about secret organizations, and wars. I discovered many other strange byways and moments. Some of them delighted me. A few scared me. Some of them amazed me.

When it was almost done, when all that remained was to pull together all the diverse strands, I left the country again, holed up in a huge, cold, old house in Ireland, and typed all that was left to type, shivering, beside a peat fire.

And then the book was done, and I stopped. Looking back on it, it wasn’t really that I’d dared, rather that I had no choice.

This is an expanded version of the essay written for the Borders website in March 2001, and which appears on www.neilgaiman.com.

OTHER BOOKS BY NEIL GAIMAN

FOR ADULTS

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 (with illustrations by Dave McKean)

M Is for Magic

Coraline (with illustrations 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 (with illustrations by Dave McKean)

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.