I will write about both of these here, now!
I've been reading Neil Gaiman's American Gods at the recommendation of C -- I have a copy on the Libby app on my phone, and I'm working my way through it slowly. Shadow, our large, recently-released-from-prison protagonist, is employed as a bodyguard/handyman by a fellow named Wednesday, and early on in the book the two drive to Chicago like an underworld Cassidy and Kerouac to recruit someone that Wednesday needs for...something. We don't know -- all we know is Wednesday wants Czernobog to join them. Shadow and Wednesday show up at the apartment Czernobog shares with three Russian sisters, and they walk in the living room to see a checkerboard sitting on the table, and Wednesday makes some sort of request for Czernobog to go with them, and Czernobog says, "Nyet."
As they wait for dinner Czerno starts talking about his glory days working in the Chicago stockyards. He describes in detail his role as a "knocker," smashing cows' skulls in with a sledgehammer to kill them. The cows would be brought to him and he'd bash their heads in just the right spot, artfully, he says, and then they'd be taken away to have the blood drained and the head cut off and another cow would be brought in. He smiles wistfully. He flexes his now-paltry arm. And that's all we know about Czernobog.
Until...
"Let's play checkers," Czerno says to Shadow.
"Okay." (Shadow to Czernobog)
"Don't play checkers with him. You'll regret it," warns Wednesday.
Czerno, ignoring W: "Let's make it interesting."
Again, all we know is that Shadow works for Wednesday, Wednesday wants Czerno to go with them, Czerno refused, and Czerno was a sledgehammer cow killer. And so unfolds the game of checkers:
Shadow says that if he wins, Czernobog must do as his (Shadow's) boss requests and go with them.
Czernobog laughs and says alrighty, okay, but if and when he wins, he gets to knock Shadow in the back of the head with a sledgehammer.
And Shadow says yes. Goddamn.
So off they go, in the highest-stakes game of checkers imaginable. Shadow, playing for his life and for his strange devotion to his new boss, and the crazy old Russian, playing for the glory, the art, of whacking down an animal with a sledgehammer. You can feel the sweat, the strain, the hesitation, the tension, centered on a low table in a dingy badly lit apartment, where all of a sudden something so small has become huge.
I thought it was a cool scene, and an interesting scene, because it demonstrates a simple principle that shows up all over fiction -- stakes. Checkers is not interesting. But life-or-death checkers -- well, that'll make your squirrels run, so to speak. Moreover, Gaiman does a cool thing manipulating the amount of information the audience has. I'd argue he gives us just enough to keep us hooked through the cheek while still keeping some bait in the bucket. We know Wednesday needs Czerno. We don't know what for. That's enough for Shadow (W's employee/mentee), and it's enough for the audience for the scene. We don't need the rest to be fully invested.
And we know Czerno doesn't want to go with them. Great. The only other thing we know about this Russian fella at the time is that he longs for the days of bashing animal skulls. We don't know if he's bashed people, we don't know if he got off to it, if it made him feel like a man after struggling with his masculine identity -- we don't need any of that! All we need is to know that the guy liked bashing as a young man, and he wants to bash again.
One guy wants one thing, one guy wants another, and they have to work it out. It's simple, it's straightforward, it's high-stakes, and it's all it takes to tickle the dramatic sensibility.
So, imagine a stage. Totally dark, one spotlight. A woman drinks from a plastic gallon of water. Another lady comes running in. "Gimme some of that there water," she says.
Lady one wipes her mouth. "I'm gonna drink all this fricken water and there ain't a dang thing you can do about it."
Lady two takes a step closer.
Drama. Neat-o.
The other thing I'll briefly note is that I finished a book called Deep Survival: Who Lives, Who Dies, and Why by Laurence Gonzales. I didn't love it, but there was a passage in the appendix that stood out to me.
Gonzales is talking about why we choose to pursue dangerous activities in the first place when we know that there are often incredible risks involved.
"No, some people would rather not see it, but the bull is there for all of us. Some of us choose to pass the cape in front of its horns. To live life is to risk it. And when you feel the rush of air and catch the stink of hot breath in your face, you enter the secret order of those who have seen their own death close up. It makes us live that much more intensely" (296).
"The bull is there for all of us." What a great metaphor. I'm not going to sledgehammer it dead (ha!) with an explanation. Gotta get up off the couch.
Comments