AAMMEERRIICCAANN GGOODDSS A N O V E L nneeiill ggaaiimmaann Every effort has been made to locate and contact the copyright owners of material repro- duced 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. “Old Friends” Music and Lyrics by Stephen Sondheim. Copyright © 1981 Rilting Music, Inc. All Rights Reserved. Used by Permission. warner bros. publications u.s. inc., Miami, FL 33014. “In the Dark with You” by Greg Brown. Copyright © 1985 by Hacklebarney Music/ASCAP. Used by Permission. All rights reserved. The lines from “in just—.” Copyright 1923, 1951, © 1991 by the Trustees for the E.E. Cummings Trust. Copyright © 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. © 1964 Bennie Benjamin Music Inc. © 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, edit- ed by Richard J. Finneran. Copyright © 1924 by Macmillan Publishing Company; copy- right renewed © 1952 by Bertha Georgie Yeats. AMERICAN GODS. Copyright © 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 non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any infor- mation storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of PerfectBound™. ON THE ROAD TO AMERICAN GODS: SELECTED PASSAGES FROM NEIL GAIMAN’S ONLINE JOURNAL© 2001 by Neil Gaiman. PerfectBound ™ and the PerfectBound™ logo are trademarks of HarperCollins Publishers Adobe Acrobat E-Book Reader edition v 1. June 2001 ISBN 0-06- 001060-6 Print edition first published in 2001 HarperCollins Publishers 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 Caveat, and Warning for Travelers This is a work of fiction, not a guidebook. While the geography of the United States of America in this tale is not entirely imaginary—many of the landmarks in this book can be visited, paths can be followed, ways can be mapped—I have taken liberties. Fewer liberties than you might imagine, but liberties nonetheless. Permission has neither been asked nor given for the use of real places in this story when they appear, I expect that the owners of Rock City or the House on the Rock, and the hunters who own the motel in the center of America, are as perplexed as anyone would be to find their properties in here. I have obscured the location of several of the places in this book: the town of Lakeside, for example, and the farm with the ash tree an hour south of Blacksburg. You may look for them if you wish. You might even find them. Furthermore, it goes without saying that all of the people, living, dead, and otherwise in this story are fictional or used in a fictional con- text. Only the gods are real. For absent friends—Kathy Acker and Roger Zelazny, and all points between One question that has always intrigued me is what happens to demonic beings when immigrants move from their homelands. Irish-Americans remember the fairies, Norwegian-Americans the nisser, Greek- Americans the vrykólakas,but only in relation to events remembered in the Old Country. When I once asked why such demons are not seen in America, my informants giggled confusedly and said “They’re scared to pass the ocean, it’s too far,” pointing out that Christ and the apostles never came to America. —Richard Dorson, “A Theory for American Folklore,” American Folklore and the Historian (University of Chicago Press, 1971)