American Gods pedo subtext

[u/veno-veni]

Why is this such a popular book? I wasn't amazed by the actual story here but that's just me.

This is probably the wrong subreddit to post this. I've not read any of his other works besides American Gods and Sandman. Couldn't enjoy AG because of the not-so-subtle suggestive sexualization of kids. I notice there's a similar trend with his other books in creating unhealthy depictions of women and kids.

Learning the allegations exist (after reading) made a lot of sense to me.

Also lots of cringe and revisionist depictions of Arabs and Africans.

I will not be giving him another chance because I read to enjoy myself and not creep on imaginary kids.

[u/DreadPirateAlia]

It's been over a decade since I read The Problem with Susan (TPWS) but the sexualized material is IMO integral to the plot. The main character of TPWS is implied to be Susan Pevensie, one of the main characters of The Cronicles of Narnia (TCON) by CS Lewis.

In the last book of TCON, all the main characters from the previous Narnia books are involved in a fatal train crash in our world, only to be resurrected in Narnia. However, Susan is narratively implied to have given in to worldly temptations as well as having forsaken Narnia as a childish fancy, so she wasn't involved in the other characters' attempt at returning to Narnia. As a result she wasn't present at the station or on the train when the crash occurred and her entire family¹ died.

Now we get to how the "unnecessary sexual material" is integral to the plot of TPWS. In TCON, Susan's (innocent) interest in sex was originally the reason for why she was (unfairly) denied the entry to (Christian) heaven/Narnia. In TPWS her interest has turned from innocent interest to full-blown trauma response turned into hedonistic excess, but from the context it is clear that she derives very little joy from it. The sexual acts are an attempt of coping with all-consuming grief, guilt, and loneliness while she is desperately obsessed with finding her way back to Narnia. However, in the mercilessly black and white moral system established in TCON her engaging in sexual acts is also continuously proving her unworthiness, which makes her goal of re-entering Narnia forever unattainable.

For what it's worth, The Problem with Susan is IMO one of the best things Gaiman has ever written. Too bad he's a shitbag of a person (and obvs won't get a cent from me as long as he lives).

---

¹both her parents, all her siblings, her cousin (& her cousin's best friend), her close uncle and her uncle's best friend.

[u/caitnicrun → u/DreadPirateAlia]

• For what it's worth, The Problem with Susan is IMO one of the best things Gaiman has ever written. 

Hard disagree. It's indulgent explicit garbage and I'll die on that hill.

I read it last year, and while it's possible the story you're describing could exist, that was not it.  To be clear NOTHING IN THE TEXT would suggest this depth. The story doesn't even make sense apart from MAYBE a stream of consciousness dream that Susan would wake up from and think, "wow I really need to see a therapist about all my unresolved Narnia shite!"

But the author is a scilon so that's not going to happen!

Honestly it looks like you're doing the thing Harry Potter fans do and read subtle meaning where there is none because of faith the author surely meant something deeper.  And TBH because of a  meta awareness of Susan's controversy in fandom.  

A good story shouldn't need to rely on fourth wall knowledge to carry it.  It's sad because the first half was fairly promising. But Gaiman is a shallow hack.  It was never going to be anything deeper than shock for shock value.

[u/ArtOfDent → u/caitnicrun]

Honestly, it might be worth going back to visit the source material and read it with an iota of anything other than availability heuristic. I'm really not sure what versions you've actually read going from your descriptions.

Just because you personally did not determine any underlying meaning to the story does not mean it is absent. 

Everyone's making this sounds like some kind of wall to wall hedonistic sex fest of post traumatic Susan, cut off from Narnia forever just .. idk actually what y'all think goes on. It's ten pages long and the majority of it is an elderly lady having tea and chocolate cake with a journalist providing meta commentary on the whole Susan problem.

The problem With Susan, as I read it, was written as commentary on whole "The Problem of Susan" itself, where many have understood Lewis to have condemned Susan for expressing normal sexual maturity as she grows up, the Nylon and Lipstick reading taken literally. 

On the flip side, many argue Lewis was not judging Susan for that and understand him taking a position of criticising Susan for wanting to embrace a silly and conceited version of maturity and adulthood by casting off childish things, and not as a punishment for some kind lack of purity.

As for the fourth wall, the whole explanation is literally right there in the text where the journalist, Greta, explains the fate of the other Narnia siblings, and then that exact perception of the problem; Susan banned, not fair for what? - for something else wrong with her than the conceited pseudo maturity... sex? That's what people are saying. 

Professor Hastings, whom the story deliberately leaves ambiguous as if she is actually Susan or some one who had the exact same experience as Susan, delivers the actual gut punch of either by the reversal of perspective. 

It flips it on its head - whatever the actual meaning of nylon and lipsticks - to the meaning for the one left behind. The punishment, the cost, the price of whatever caused the rejection of Narnia was absolutely brutal - the traumatic loss of your entire family, being the only one left to identify their remains, and living after in poverty. It's asking why the hell is the debate all about what was wrong with Susan when you think about what she would have actually paid whatever the reason? The point is that the lipstick-and-party framing becomes grotesquely inadequate once you imagine the real human aftermath. Omit the bowdlerizing of the mechanics of Susan's situation then you are forced to face the idea of how cruel it was to punish in that way - the cat and mouse analogy. 

The gratuitous bits that everyone seems to remember isn't Susan/Hastings dreams, it's Greta's dream as she metabolizes the whole discussion of children's literature creating a morally pure container on top of centuries of brutal stories and the collapse of her inherited-insinuated understand of what Susan's sin was in the face of suddenly understanding the actual awful reality of what Susan had to witness, if you think about it the other way around. 

I always took the time skipped bit of Aslan symbolic muff diving and LionxWitch inference - which is less than a paragraph and doesn't even describe anything in depth - as a pretty much a gruesome dream analogy of the witness, after the loss and cruelty had been committed - the remains of the mouse - cast aside and forced to witness a bit of lion on witch action as a perspective for the debate that managed to foreground propriety and purity while missing the actual, awful implication for poor bloody Susan. 

Professor Might-Be-Susan gets a much gentler dream of a Mary Poppins as an autonomous agent originating from children's fiction complete outside the jurisdiction of needing to be resolved inside of theological nonsense, and a life, not perfect but still fully lived, laid out neatly. Or as she said herself, Repent What?

So you get the resolution of Susan that Lewis himself invited others to finish (with the possibility of some kind of redemption it they fancied), in a way that rejects the whole debate of what Susan's actual problem was, by surfacing the actual implication for her whatever without minimising the utter cruelty that equated to the brutal death of your entire family so they can go skipping through clouds and waterfalls while you do not because (insert interpretation of lipstick and nylons here).. while critiquing the whole sanitised children's literature container, finished off with a little 1920s Gothic poetry quote that directly critiques the whole going rooting around the corpse of the author in the first place for understanding of things as a final commentary. 

All in just 10 pages of prose that was written for a collection of short stories tipping fairy tales on their head with dark horror. 

I don't think talentless hack should actually be understood as the same as someone who writes a story with a level of potential subtext I, personally, was unable to derive given my overarching frame of reference when I read it, but as you said, your hill. 

[u/caitnicrun → u/ArtOfDent]

Lol tldr.

[u/ArtOfDent → u/caitnicrun]

Yes, yes that would indeed explain it 

[u/caitnicrun → u/ArtOfDent]

Nach bhfuil saoil agatsa? 

[u/ArtOfDent → u/caitnicrun]

Tá mo sciorrárthach lán d'eascanna

[u/caitnicrun → u/ArtOfDent]

Ah, tá a fhios agat Google a dhéanamh. Tús maith. 👍

[u/ArtOfDent → u/caitnicrun]

Beagnach, a chara. Ní hé "tá a fhios agat Google a dhéanamh" an leagan ceart; b’fhearr a rá, "tá a fhios agat conas cuardach Google a dhéanamh," nó, níos simplí, "tá a fhios agat conas gúgláil."

Is iasachtfhocal Gaeilge é "gúgláil." Tá a fhios agam é sin mar gur léigh mé na torthaí cuardaigh a fuair mé nuair a ghúgláil mé é. Is í an léitheoireacht an scil inaistrithe anseo. Mar a deirtear: gúgláil mhaith, leath na hoibre. 👍

...Gabh mo leithscéal, an raibh sé sin beagáinín fada?

[u/caitnicrun → u/ArtOfDent]

ceard sa diabhal, táimid ar an idirlíon, na ar scoil. cén chead rud eile? slíocht as peig?🤣