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strange_aeonsI just finished reading American Gods. Again. I finished reading it at around six twenty today, and realized some time later that I needed to read the epilogue a second time, to match the number of times I'd read everything before it. I wasn't ready for the book to be over the first time I read it, so I refused to let it be. And like I said, I have a completeness fetish.
I think the thing that keeps me coming back to Neil Gaiman, the thing above all other things, is his ability to write things that are absolutely right. I'm talking about the little things. The details. What I am not talking about is facts. Anyone can write facts, barring extenuating circumstances.
There's a bit in American Gods with a carousel, and the animal that the protagonist chooses to ride is absolutely right. I wouldn't have thought of it — of course not; he's not my character, though he does bear a slightly creepy surface resemblance to The Hero of the WIP — but when I read it I thought, 'Oh, of course,' and from that point on it could never possibly have been anything else.
That's what I'm talking about.
I think the thing that keeps me coming back to Neil Gaiman, the thing above all other things, is his ability to write things that are absolutely right. I'm talking about the little things. The details. What I am not talking about is facts. Anyone can write facts, barring extenuating circumstances.
There's a bit in American Gods with a carousel, and the animal that the protagonist chooses to ride is absolutely right. I wouldn't have thought of it — of course not; he's not my character, though he does bear a slightly creepy surface resemblance to The Hero of the WIP — but when I read it I thought, 'Oh, of course,' and from that point on it could never possibly have been anything else.
That's what I'm talking about.
