Now I want to go back to reading American Gods again. I wound up wanting to like the IDEA behind this novel much more than the actual tale or the subject of the idea. I mean, I probably would have enjoyed it MORE had it gotten REALLY wonky with some better self-referential, partway meta core myths to work from, but this one hearkens back to a mix of Grail and directly-earlier influences. So why did I give this four stars instead of five, if I like the basic idea so much? Especially since it won the World Fantasy Award in '85? The obsession cuts away at all the other things that make a person real until they are both bigger than life and much, much less. Or here's a big concern: regular people becoming myth and thereby gaining. The quest for the mythological not-girl, brothers killing brothers. Maybe a bit like this: San Greal = Sang Real. Or, if you want to look at it in a different way, it's the Grail quest motif as a symbol for the generative impulse. In this book, we're treated to an IDEA of fantasy that is part-Jungian but mostly a Freudian obsessional extreme. The '80s are a time of huge psychological infusion in literature and I always tend to like the IDEA of that more than the actual works that use it. Aren't they all an interrelated tapestry? I tend to love the era's SF and horror, so I often feel like I'm poo-pooing it unnecessarily. okay." to a "hate" relationship to most 80's fantasy.
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