No, I don’t have time to get involved, but here are a few comments.
To be honest, the thing I remember most about American Gods was having to persuade Neil to turn up at Worldcon in San José without letting on that he had won. He was certain he had no chance, and also he was in the middle of writing the screenplay for Beowulf at the time and rather busy. Thankfully he did make it, and also made that famous acceptance speech. He also treated Kevin and myself to a fabulous sushi dinner after the con to thank us for nagging him into turning up, because he’s that sort of guy.
None of that, however, has anything to do with the book. For that, all I can offer is the review that I wrote of it back in 2001. I don’t claim that it is in any way definitive, and I suspect that the main thing #1b1t will prove is that there are as many ways of reading a book as there are readers.
I was very glad that you finally convinced Neil to come. All summer long he kept waffling about whether or not he was coming. Since I was managing the ceremony that year, I really needed to know one way or the other and while I got many e-mails from him they usually didn’t have a definitive answer. It wasn’t until two days before the ceremony that I was able to move him permanently out of the “maybe” column.