Monday, July 16, 2012

American Gods

Reading for Tuesday, July 17

Gaiman, American Gods, 103-177
   For tomorrow read (or reread) 103-177, where we will see Gaiman explore sacred space and roadside religion.  In the meantime, I'll revise the syllabus to pare down the Gaiman and make room for an extra film day.

Looking forward to your comments below!

5 comments:

  1. http://www.thehouseontherock.com/HOTR_AttractionMain.htm
    The house on the rock, features preeminently in the scheduled readings.

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  2. Throughout the book so far they have kept referencing that a 'storm is coming'. After getting this far in the book, I'm thinking there may be some sort of epic "battle" that is going to go on between the 'old' gods and the 'new' ones. During the meeting of the Gods (p 137) Wednesday starts talking about how they are being forgotten, that people stopped believing and that they have been having to just survive, "...We exist in the cracks at the edges of society. Old gods, here in this new land without gods" (137). He goes on to talk about gods of credit cards and internet etc and how much they hate them and how they will rise against the old gods. Wednesday says that it is time to act... hence the storm. Fast forwarding to page 170 when Sam and Shadow are in the car together - he brings up gods to her and she thinks that its just 'brains' though she asks him if he thinks gods are still around and he said that maybe they were but people wouldn't know it. Sam says, "These days people see space aliens. Back then they saw gods" (170). I thought this was interesting and kind of tied in our reading about the death of god and our discussion today in class.

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  3. Gaiman goes into a interesting idea which is prevalent within psycho-social and religious disciplines of study. That of tele-visual replacement of in-home religious rituals and communion.
    Back in the day a home & family would gather around some type of altar for familial comfort and because there wasnt much else to do after dinner. The stories of the gods were told over and over, turning from strict prayer-like repetition to a pantomime of mystical ancient histories about the gods' exploits and, even more enjoyable, stories about the gods' interaction with mankind.
    This became theater, theater became movies, movies became television. There was still a sense of familial closeness within television, at its inception. However, television became the internet and everyone has internet in their private spaces, which in some opinions, is fragmenting the last vestiges of the nuclear family.

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  4. I apologize for my late post. I really enjoyed diving into these pages for a second time. I enjoyed the story of Odin on page 171, I didn't really pay attention to it the first time I read. I noticed alot of things the second time that I missed the first. Neil Gaiman really doesnt waste a thing anyone says to add to the plot. On page 175, shadow is headed to Cairo, and the story is just beginning to unfold.

    Michael McCarthy

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  5. Heres some info about Howard Finster, the artist and creator of Paradise Gardens in Ga.

    http://www.finster.com/
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Howard_Finster

    This is a link to the first REM video which was filmed there in 1980-81:

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ac0oaXhz1u8

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