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A review by rbreade
Gods Without Men by Hari Kunzru
The title comes from Balzac's 1830 short story, "Une Passion dans le desert": "Dans le desert, voyez-vous, il y a tout, et il n'y a rien...c'est dieu sans les hommes," which, translated, is "In the desert, you see, there is everything and nothing...It is God without men."
Kunzru accomplishes the feat of weaving southwestern Native American mythology into a story that also includes autism, UFO fever as experienced from the 1940s through the 1970s, stock-market-prediction models, and the making of methamphetamine. He does an especially good job capturing the double-nature of the trickster god, Coyote, who throughout most of the novel gleefully sows his brand of chaos and change into the world. Here he is usually malicious, even while displaying threads of--good is too simple and inaccurate a word, so let's say his schemes seem to nudge a fractured, sick world toward healing, whether intentionally or not. And the section on human nature, especially the sort that loves Internet anonymity, is merciless as it reveals that culture's semi-literate hatefulness.
Kunzru accomplishes the feat of weaving southwestern Native American mythology into a story that also includes autism, UFO fever as experienced from the 1940s through the 1970s, stock-market-prediction models, and the making of methamphetamine. He does an especially good job capturing the double-nature of the trickster god, Coyote, who throughout most of the novel gleefully sows his brand of chaos and change into the world. Here he is usually malicious, even while displaying threads of--good is too simple and inaccurate a word, so let's say his schemes seem to nudge a fractured, sick world toward healing, whether intentionally or not. And the section on human nature, especially the sort that loves Internet anonymity, is merciless as it reveals that culture's semi-literate hatefulness.