Only The Gods Are Real ... And Documented!

Renata Sancken

By Kim De Vries
May 1, 2007

Renata is living a real life fantasy; she created a website about a Neil Gaiman novel, he liked it, signed the guest book, linked there from his journal, and then recommended her to a publisher! Sometimes you really do just have to do something cool, and people will recognize it.

Sequential Tart: First, tell us a little bit about yourself.

Renata Sancken: My name is Renata. I am a herbivorous carbon-based lifeform, powered mainly by coffee and Diet Dr Pepper. I’m 21 years old and I’m an English/history double major at Grinnell College. (It’s in Iowa.) Here I’m the editor of our humor newspaper, The B&S. (It’s like The Onion, but of inferior quality.) I’m also a member of the history department Student Educational Policy Committee, which reviews professors, interviews candidates, and basically represents student opinion to the history department. I also volunteer once a week at a nearby prison through the Grinnell Prison Writer’s Workshop; a friend and I co-teach a literature course. I also get paid to make sandwiches. In between all that, I go to class and take care of my pet fish, Trey. My two greatest fears are cephalopods (particularly the giant squid) and the Yellowstone Supervolcano.

ST: Are you generally a reader of comic books and/or speculative fiction? How would you describe your reading interests?

RS: I like to read good books of any genre! My tastes are kind of all over the place, I guess. I do like comics, but my town doesn’t have a comic store and I don’t have a lot of funds to spend on comics, so I’m limited to the local library’s collection — which is growing at a nice pace, luckily! I recently checked out a couple volumes of Ultimate X-Men and really enjoyed them. I’ve loved Steve Purcell’s Sam and Max for a long time (and I’m tired of having my hopes of a new game dashed!) and I like a lot of Alan Moore’s work. Right now I’m also taking a class called Japanese Comics and War, and we’re reading different mangas that were written in response to World War II. It’s very fascinating! In terms of speculative fiction, I have to say my exposure is spotty. In junior high I, um, read a whole lot of Star Wars novelizations. Increasingly I realize that I haven’t read a lot of the “greats” — sadly, no Phillip K. Dick or Isaac Asimov or anything, and my only Bradbury is Fahrenheit 451. Eep! But I do often enjoy the genre, and am trying to become more widely-read in it.

Aside from comics/graphic novels, I like non-fiction and essays, and Sarah Vowell, Bill Bryson, and David Sedaris are three of my favorite authors. I like contemporary fiction with mythological references: Neil of course, and Margaret Atwood, Witi Ihimaera, Salman Rushdie, Sherman Alexie. I like humor in most genres: Kurt Vonnegut, Douglas Adams, Mark Twain, Lemony Snicket. I like short stories. Sorry this is long-winded — I’m an English major, so I like to talk about books a lot!

ST: How did you first encounter Neil Gaiman's work and what attracted you to it?

RS: I’m a big fan of Tori Amos, and a Tori fan website I was looking at, Here In My Head, has a little section about Tori and Neil’s friendship and the allusions they make to each other in their works. The first thing I read was Stardust, because I thought it sounded like a fun read and I loved that Tori talked about it in one of her songs. Then I pretty much worked my way through the rest of his stuff; Sandman took the longest, because I had to buy the graphic novels one by one from used booksellers! Well worth the investment, though. I guess what I like about Neil is that he generally combines a lot of characteristics I like in books — humor and mythology and history and wonderful, interesting characters.

ST: What prompted you to begin a concordance of the deities in American Gods?

RS: Well, pretty recently after I read American Gods, I was reading something else about the names of the days of the week (I don’t remember what it was, possibly some sort of magazine “Did you know?” sidebar or something) and it mentioned that the English word Wednesday comes from Woden’s Day. I hadn’t known that before and it kind of blew my mind! And it made me wonder how much else I had missed on my first readthrough of the book, so I searched online looking for a website with more information. I couldn’t find one, so I impulsively decided to start one.

ST: Which God is your favorite and why?

RS: Hmm! I think I will have to go with Athena. She’s pretty badass, and I love that she’s the Goddess of wisdom and war. I also have to give it up for Clio, the muse of history.

ST: You've made quite a large collection of Gods and it must have been time consuming. What other challenges did this project pose for you?

RS: Figuring out who some of the more obscure Gods were was a definite challenge, but Google is a pretty amazing tool. Right now, keeping the site updated is a challenge! I always feel really guilty about the number of email suggestions I have piled up in my inbox, and yet I never quite find the time to do it. Lazy, lazy.

ST: What was the most interesting thing you discovered while researching all of the different Gods?

RS: I’m not sure if I could pick just one! The original Woden’s Day (and Thor’s Day and Freya’s Day) fact was pretty interesting. The Hinzelmann myth, too. Overall, it’s been fascinating to see how many different mythologies there are, and how different cultures have different interpretations of the same archetype.

ST: What sort of response to the website have you gotten?

RS: When I first put the site up, I didn’t really get any response at all. Then about a month later, I got an email notification that someone had signed the guestbook. It was ... Neil Gaiman. I almost wet myself! Then I got several more emails — Neil posted the link on his blog, which gets about 8 billion hits a day. Since then I get a fairly regular stream of emails with additions and corrections. Generally, people are pretty thankful for the site, a lot of people have been pretty excited to find out about X God or Y myth.

ST: Have you actually talked to Neil Gaiman about it?

RS: Yes, by email a few times and also in person a few times. The first time in person was in a booksigning line, so it was very rushed and I was very shy and awkward, but he said nice things and signed my books and it was all very lovely! I was also fortunate enough to attend the Fiddler’s Green Sandman Convention, and I talked to Neil a few more times there. Again, I was super awkward and he was lovely.

ST: Your concordance has now been published as part of a magnificent and expensive edition from Hill House; how did you get involved with that?

RS: Hill House sent me an email about it, mentioning that Neil had suggested using my website’s content as a side book to the lettered edition of American Gods and asked if I would be willing to participate. Well, duh, of course I would! So I edited the site’s content a bit and wrote a different introduction and sent it back to them. It was all very surreal. After that, it was a long time before I heard anything back from them and I wasn’t sure if it was actually going to happen. But it did, and they sent me a copy of both of their gorgeous editions. Combined they are more valuable (and more aesthetically pleasing) than my car! It still blows my mind a little to think about it, honestly.

ST: This trajectory of making what could be viewed as a fan site to becoming a recognized authority would be a kind of dream come true for many people ....

RS: This isn’t a question ;) But yes, it was a dream come true! More than that, it was beyond a dream! How could I have ever imagined that there could be something even more exciting than being linked to from Neil Gaiman’s blog?

ST: You also have published an essay on Sandman #50, "Ramadan," in the collection The Sandman Papers; what do you think about the state of scholarship on Gaiman and his works?

RS: Oh my, talk about a question I am unqualified to answer! I really enjoyed The Sandman Papers, but I can’t say I’m up-to-date on Gaiman scholarship. I’m excited to see that academic work on Gaiman exists, clearly, since there is a lot of depth there that can be explored.

ST: Would you like to create online projects in the future? If yes, what might interest you?

RS: Well, I would like to update my American Gods website eventually, I've really been slacking on that. Anyway, other than that, I guess I can't really think of anything, but then I'm graduating in a month and I have severe trouble thinking of any sort of future beyond commencement.

ST: You and I were recently on a Gaiman panel at an academic conference; what did you think of the audience and their reactions?

RS: First of all, I thought the framing of the panel was interesting, since it was in the Mythology section rather than Comics or Contemporary Literature or something. I wonder if that context colored audience reaction, since most of the discussion afterwards was more about Jung and Joseph Campbell than Neil. And, of course, they all seemed like very smart people with excellent taste in panel attendence.

ST: What kinds of reactions do you get when you tell people you are researching or writing about a comic book or fantasy novel?

RS: Well … honestly, it doesn’t come up in conversation too often! My parents are both very proud and very confused about the whole thing. My friends who also like Neil Gaiman were very excited about it. Basically, I’m afraid of sounding really pretentious, so I don’t tell people about it unless it seems relevant to something.

ST: It used to be a real problem for people trying to write about comics or fantasy fiction, etc. that others wouldn't see them as legitimate genres to study. Is this problem just gone? Or do you think you've simply not spoken to anyone who might disapprove?

RS: I think it's probably some of both. I'm not a terribly confrontational person, so I would try to avoid talking about it to anyone I think would disapprove. However, just based on my personal experience, I think comics are definitely entering the academic sphere. This year alone I've been assigned graphic novels as texts in two classes (Barefoot Gen by Keiji Nakazawa in a World War II class and Epileptic by David B. in a disability studies class).

ST: Do you plan to continue studying and writing about Gaiman's work?

RS: I think this partially depends on what I end up doing for the rest of my life! Right now I have my plate full with class-related papers to write, and not much time for Gaiman academia on the side. However, I definitely plan to continue reading Gaiman’s work ;)

ST: What else does the future hold for you?

RS: An excellent question, and one I’m still trying to figure out! I’m applying for the Peace Corps as well as Grinnell Corps (which is basically like a mini Peace Corps run through Grinnell). Either way, I’d like to spend a few years a) giving something back to the world and b) living in another country! After that right now I’m thinking about grad school in library science, but who knows?

Note: Since the interview was conducted, Renata has posted on her blog that she will be joining the Peace Corps. Congratulations Renata!

Only The Gods Are Real — Renata's divine concordance to American Gods
The Boron Narratives — Renata's blog
Hill House Publishers — The fabulously beautiful and fabulously expensive signed, lettered edition.
Here In My Head — A Tori Amos fan site