We’re back for round two aboard the glorious, out-of-control Tilt-a-Whirl that is Good Omens. My name is Meghan and I’m excited to see you again! Everyone have a good week? Are you ready for more apocalyptic madness? Let’s get the show on the road!
Summary
Anathema Device is a little girl who knows what’s up, thanks to the book written by her ancestor, Agnes Nutter. This book spells out everything that’s going to happen in the world, right up until the apocalypse. Anathema isn’t overly concerned about that, though; she mostly likes seeing where her name pops up. For now, she reads under the covers with a flashlight, like all children do, and flips through the old tome.
Picking up where we left him in the last installment, Crowley drives away from the hospital, chewing over the gravity of the events he’s just set in motion. As a demon, he’s in favor of the apocalypse in theory, of course. The real thing, though? Maybe not. He thought he’d have more time. He’s been coasting on his demonic duties as well—why bother giving it a 100% when humans can do so much worse to each other than he could? He once ended up getting special commendation for the Spanish Inquisition even though he was just in the area for a bit of vacation at the time. His frenemy the angel Aziraphale tried to explain humanity to him but the lesson didn’t take. And speaking of Aziraphale…Crowley veers down the road and decides to make a very important call.
Meanwhile, Mr. Young is still being subjected to the chattering onslaught of Sister Mary Loquacious. Baby names are hard at the best of times (hell, I know someone who took a solid two months to name a dog) and Mr. Young keeps shooting down all her suggestions. That is, until a classic emerges. What about Adam? Mr. Young mulls this over. Adam might do just fine…
Elsewhere, a young Newton Pulsifer is working late into the night. His experiment with electricity goes very well: this time he only blows the power to his house and not to the whole town. Yes, indeed, he’s really improving! He’s convinced his future lies in the realm of electricity and computers. If only they would stop breaking around him. Then again, Agnes Nutter’s book may have something to say about that.
Aziraphale and Crowley talk in a park about how awful the apocalypse will be for each side. Heaven would be insufferable and smug while Hell… the less said about that the better. Aziraphale tries valiantly to uphold Heaven’s line of reasoning but he has to admit that Crowley has a point. The end of the world would be miserable for everyone. No more nice restaurants or lovely books, no more good music and charming little shops. The angel’s resolve cracks under that logic and together they agree that something must be done. Their hands are tied, though. Neither can disobey their masters or be seen to be helping the other. So, they decide to hedge their bets…and get drunk.
They discuss the nature of time, of how tasteless Heaven is (The Sound of Music for all eternity!), and a little bird that has to go a bloody great way to sharpen its beak on a mountain. Aziraphale is agonized. Heaven sounds like Hell, when you get right down to it. Crowley has a plan, though. They decide to thwart each other and use their infernal and divine influences on the child, hoping to make him grow up a certain way. And, just maybe, they’ll cancel each other out and nothing at all will happen. It’s worth a shot, at least. After all, they have everything to lose.
Leaving Aziraphale and Crowley to plot, the other big players begin to make their way to the fore. A woman named Scarlett is selling illegal arms in the midst of a small civil war that she hopes will become a massive one. She skips town, ready for a holiday, leaving behind blood and strife in her wake. A man named Sable is relaxing in a restaurant, going over figures for his new cookbook. People lose weight simply by not eating. It’s a bestseller. A skeleton calling herself a fashion model asks him to sign her book and he does so with a flourish, proud of his accomplishments. There is also Mr. White—he’s as nondescript as they get, going unnoticed while doing odd jobs in places like Chernobyl and Three Mile Island. Currently he’s working on an oil tanker headed to Japan. Tragedy strikes somehow and the oil floods out of the ship, polluting the ocean and killing all the wildlife. There is a final member of this happy band, but he (it?) is nameless and very, very busy.
The American diplomat’s baby son has been named Warlock and soon has a household full of people attending to his every need. There is a rather devilish nanny and a kindly gardener. As he grows up, he is educated by two tutors, one who teaches him about dictators and warlords and another who points him toward studying artists and civil rights leaders. They both read to him from the Book of Revelation. Warlock doesn’t seem bothered one way or another about this odd curriculum, leaving Crowley concerned. Surely by now the child would have shown an aptitude in one direction or another. Something is wrong, but what could it be?
Commentary
Hoo boy, and we are off to the races! The babies have been switched, time marches on, and Aziraphale and Crowley make some rather important decisions. We are introduced to characters who will be extremely important later, like Anathema and the four horsemen. There’s also some delightful little background information about Aziraphale’s rare book collection and how Agnes Nutter’s book of prophecy came to be. Gaiman and Pratchett leave no stone unturned. We get the history for everything in this book.
One of my favorite bits is the care and detail that goes into the long running joke about spies feeding ducks. Members of MI5, the CIA, and the KGB all swapping information while wearing sleek raincoats and tossing bread to very discerning ducks. It’s one of those moments that just makes so much sense. Who goes out specifically to feed ducks? Have you? I certainly haven’t. Must be spies. Of course! Case closed.
Buy the Book
The City in the Middle of the Night
Crowley is incredibly good at not so much directly tempting Aziraphale but letting him see for himself how the arguments on the angelic side are less than perfect. Aziraphale is very precise and has excellent taste. An eternity with only movie musicals filled with nuns and singing children sounds particularly horrible, apparently. It reminds me of the “Harmony Hut” scene in Addams Family Values. You’re trapped in a hellscape of cheerful pastels and charmingly saccharine films. No wonder it scares Aziraphale so much. Could you imagine spending eternity locked in the Harmony Hut?
The Four Horsemen are also impressively and slyly introduced. Each gets only a small number of pages, but they make a huge impact. They’re personified so perfectly. Famine is the one who also seems the most plausible, even today, given how many kooky, literally killer diet trends are out there. If this book had been written in 2018, Famine would be an Instagram influencer peddling bogus “slimming teas” and juice detoxes.
Also, drunk Crowley and Aziraphale are an absolute delight, and I sincerely hope that scene makes it into the show. I still wonder if they’re going to update the action for 2018, or if it will stay firmly set in the ’90s. The trailer doesn’t really offer us a clue one way or another. Part of me has my fingers crossed, rooting for the ’90s. This is a story that should exist before the internet and smartphones became omnipresent. Then again, can you imagine how on point Crowley’s Twitter feed would be?
Pun Corner
Yes, my friends, it’s time for another trip to Pun Corner:
Aziraphale beamed.
“You know, I’d never have thought of that,” he said. “Godfathers. Well, I’ll be damned.”
“It’s not too bad,” said Crowley, “when you get used to it.”
Boom: perfect set up, then Crowley knocks it out of the park. A+ work, everyone.
(In the footnote in Scarlett’s section): “Nominally a city. It was the size of an English county town, or, translated into American terms, a shopping mall.” Ouch. Valid, but ouch.
“Aziraphale popped another deviled egg into his mouth, and washed it down with coffee.” And then, a moment later, “Aziraphale helped himself to Crowley’s slice of angel cake.”So, you’re telling me that the the angel is eating deviled eggs and the demon is having angel cake? This book is too good and too pure for this world, guys. It’s too perfect. Two little sentences about snacks express more about these two and their relationship than ten thousand words could. Also, Aziraphale, taking something from another’s plate? What happened to “Thou shalt not steal”?
This was a fantastic section of the book, and it only keeps getting better. Next week we get to “Wednesday” and meet the fearsome hellhound who will join the Antichrist. Make sure to read the entire “Wednesday” chapter, pages 73 to 126 in the paperback edition—if you hit “Thursday,” you’ve gone too far! I’ll see you all next Monday for Part Three!
Meghan Ball is an avid reader, writer, and lifelong fan of science fiction and fantasy. When she isn’t losing to a video game or playing the guitar badly, she’s writing short fiction and spending way too much time on Twitter. You can find her there @EldritchGirl. She currently lives in a weird part of New Jersey.
The traffic warden bit- Crowley disappears his wheel clamps, and Aziraphale sets the ticket book on fire. Both think the ‘other side’ invented traffic wardens.
Really enjoying this reread! I just had my first child 2 weeks ago and have been reading Good Omens to her during our late night/early morning feeding/hangout sessions.
No reference to the Buggre Alle This Bible? Probably my favorite throwaway gag in the book.
One of the things I’m really looking forward to is the adaptation of the Horesepersons for the modern times, in much the same way that they did for American Gods. Is War going to be a hawkish blonde Fox News Type? Is Pollution going to be constantly secreting microplastics? I think Famine and of course… the other one… are relatively good as they are.
Aziraphale and Crowley are my favorite campy gay couple. A posh lunch and talking about business, I would read an ongoing series about them just catching up week to week.
There’s so many great lines and little moments in this section, but I’ve always loved the fact that “The Golden Girls” is mentioned as one of Crowley’s favorite shows. It just makes me so happy to imagine him with his feet up, eating cheesecake angel cake and cackling at the one-liners :)
I also loved the Buggre All This bible like #3. I’ve done typesetting and it’s so accurate in the sense of a very time consuming task that gets almost nowhere over hours yet needs to be done. The running gag of spies doing transfers everywhere is also never not funny.
The ducks in St James park was really funny, especially because they remind me of my own dogs (labradors) who are trained like that and come running if certain sequences of events happen.
The bit where Crowley contemplates various ways to ensure only his chosen nanny arrives to be interviewed, finally settling on a “wildcat tube strike” for some reason tickles my funny bone :-)
Enjoying the re-read, the hardest part of course being stopping, but seeing what the other participants found funny is interesting so I shall persevere in putting the brakes on ;-)
I sometimes go to feed the ducks down by the pond. I think you have to live somewhere with a pond to get the duck thing. If you have a river or a canal then you get swans turning up instead of ducks and those things are vicious.
Or seagulls. That’s a mistake you only make once, one way or another.
Rant-lecture-headcanon-fest first:
I hate the Horsepersons. Hate, not loathe. If I loathed them, I would avoid thinking about them. As Pratchett said in the Discworld books, hate is the opposite of love and just as attractive. I’m obsessed with them.
They’re so real, so believable. I see their handiwork in the news every day. Therein lies their demonic temptation to readers. It’s so easy to blame them as the guiding force behind all of our horrible, irrational, self-destructive pursuits – even though Crowley squarely blames humanity for the worst of our atrocities right here.
War may have it easiest, as she is never unpopular. She inflames our inborn aggression, lust, possessiveness, and prejudice, and then guides us to take it out on each other. She arms the angry and angers the armed. The people most harmed by wars may hate her, but they’re not the ones she persuades. As the saying goes, “When elephants fight, it’s the grass that suffers.”
Famine…the old black fox has had the longest experience in deceit. Unlike War, he makes us go against our deepest drive – to feed ourselves and our people. Here we see his success at persuading individuals to voluntarily starve themselves, an impressive accomplishment. But I headcanon that he also guides – and has always guided – governments, farmers etc. toward methods of food production and distribution that lead to massive waste, unequal access, and destruction, even in the best of times, and immense vulnerability to things going wrong, e.g. dependence on monocultures like Ireland’s blight-stricken potatoes. It appears that he doesn’t actually create the droughts, floods etc. that often destroy food systems (though Pollution eventually managed to do that with climate change), but he guides humans into practices that greatly magnify their impacts.
Pollution is the youngest, but he learns fast. He’s seldom admired, though Janine Benyus wrote of possessing a rubberstamp bearing “downright heroic-looking smokestacks,” a triumph of industrial glorification. He mostly works quietly to cause durable destruction and then evades the blame for it, as we see here. I’m sure Famine taught him the art of strategic retreat, replacing vilified chemicals or technologies with equally nasty ones, leaving people with no choice that isn’t destructive, so our every day is a tithe to him even when we know he’ll one day kill us. I hate him far more than the others, for he has most personally threatened me and mine.
I have little to say about the other currently-acknowledged Horseperson, as his on-page actions are briefer and less malicious.
All that said, I didn’t hate them at this point in my first read. They truly became nightmares and monsters when they pushed those buttons.
Incidentally, and this is a fact, one man had a major role in inventing leaded gasoline and some of the first chloroflourocarbons, among other things. He then developed polio, invented a mobility-assistance machine, and was killed by it. I think of him as an agent of Pollution, helpfully removed by not-retired Pestilence before his improbable track record could incite suspicion.
@3. KefkaPalazzo
And The Golde Diggers 1589.
Though I think my favorite scene is famine and his accountant having dinner, poor accountant;)
I didn’t think of it last week, but the Annotated Pratchett Files include Good Omens. So I’ll post the annotations from that as we go, if I may. Here are the annotations from Part One:
– [cover] The weird blue/red neon thingy surrounding the ‘666’ on the cover of the UK hardcover version of Good Omens is actually a map of the M25 London orbital motorway, mentioned in the text as “evidence for the hidden hand of Satan in the affairs of Man”.
A copy of the Good Omens cover can be found on the L-space Web.
– [p. vii] “[…] the angel, whose name was Aziraphale.”
On the subject of the correct pronunciation of the name, Terry says:
“It should be Azz-ear-raf-AE-el, but we got into the habit of pronouncing it Azz-ear-raf-ail, so I guess that’s the right way now.”
And about the name’s origin:
“It was made up but… er… from real ingredients. [The name] Aziraphale could be shoved in a list of ‘real’ angels and would fit right in…”
For instance, Islam recognizes the Archangels Jibril, Mikhail, Azrael (see also the annotation for p. 9 of Reaper Man ), and Israfel (the subject of Edgar Allan Poe’s well-known poem of the same name), whereas from Christianity we get such names as Raphael, Gabriel, Michael, and Uriel.
– [p. viii] “It was going to be a dark and stormy night.”
See the annotation for p. 7 of Soul Music .
– [p. 1] “Archbishop James Usher (1581-1656) published Annales Veteris Et Novi Testamenti in 1654, which suggested that the Heaven and the Earth were created in 4004 BC.“
This is true in spirit, but almost completely wrong in nit-picking detail, which leads me to conclude that Terry and Neil used sloppy secondary sources for their research.
The man’s name was spelled Ussher, the book’s name was actually Annales Veteris Testamenti (Annals of the Old Testament), it was published in 1650, and it was Ussher himself who pinpointed the time of creation at noon, October 23, 4004 BC — not nine o’clock in the morning.
For a fascinating explanation of why it would really be very unfair of us to ridicule Ussher’s findings, I refer the interested reader to the essay ‘Fall in the House of Ussher’ by Stephen Jay Gould, which appeared in his excellent collection Eight Little Piggies.
– [p. 3] “[…] all tapes left in a car for more than about a fortnight metamorphose into ‘Best of Queen’ albums.”
In an interview in Comics Buyer’s Guide with Terry and Neil, shortly after the American release of Good Omens, Terry proposed the theory that, when you’re driving through the country late at night, and there’s nothing on the radio, you find yourself stopping in at an all-night gas station and looking through the tape rack; the only thing there remotely tolerable is a Best of Queen, so you buy that. Two weeks later you can’t remember how the thing got there, so you get rid of it, only to go through the same process again. Neil’s theory was that tapes really do turn into Best of Queen albums.
– [p. 3] “[…] he was currently wondering vaguely who Moey and Chandon were”.
The Queen song ‘Killer Queen’ contains the line: “She keeps the Moët et Chandon in a pretty cabinet”. Freddie Mercury’s pronunciation is indeed such that, if you don’t already know what he’s singing, this part of the lyrics can be extremely puzzling.
– [p. 8] “…I will not let you go (let him go)…”
This sentence, and the ‘scaramouche’ line a few paragraphs before, are taken from Queen’s legendary song ‘Bohemian Rhapsody’. This line is misquoted though. The actual song goes: “We will not let you go (let him go)”.
– [p. 13] “Sister Mary had expected an American diplomat to look like Blake Carrington or J. R. Ewing.”
Leading male characters in the 1980s Power Soaps Dynasty (Blake Carrington played by John Forsythe) and Dallas (J. R. Ewing played by Larry Hagman). The general image is of somewhat rugged American masculinity. In a suit.
The Good Omens paperback replaces “an American diplomat” with “the American Cultural Attache”.
– [p. 13] “With a little old lady as the sleuth, […]”
Not a reference to Agatha Christie’s Miss Marple, but rather to Angela Landsbury’s character in the TV show Murder, She Wrote (there are not many “avuncular sheriffs” in the Miss Marple books).
+ [p. 15] “He’d seen a Ken Russell film once. There had been nuns in it.”
This might have been, for instance, the 1971 film The Devils, a study of a French nunnery that had supposedly turned to Satanism. This movie was so controversial that to this day Warner Brothers refuse to release it uncut in the US, so that viewers will just have to imagine for themselves the undoubtedly crucial scenes of crazed naked nuns sexually assaulting a statue of Christ.
– [p. 17] “‘Wormwood’s a nice name,’ said the nun, remembering her classics. ‘Or Damien. Damien’s very popular.'”
Damien refers to the protagonist of the various Omen movies (see the annotation for p. 40). Wormwood is the name of the junior devil in The Screwtape Letters by C. S. Lewis. This is a series of letters from a senior devil (Screwtape) to a junior devil (Wormwood) about Wormwood’s attempted temptation of a man in war-time London.
Wormwood is also the plant which according to tradition sprang up from the track of the serpent as it writhed along the ground when it was driven out of the Garden of Eden.
Here are the annotations for Part Two:
(Note: “I” refers to the annotator, not me)
– [p. 19] “‘Hell is empty, and all the devils are here.’”
A well-known quote from Shakespeare’s The Tempest, act 1, scene 2.
– [p. 19] “That Hieronymus Bosch. What a weirdo.”
Hieronymus Bosch was a 15th century Dutch painter of religious visions that dealt in particular with the torments of Hell and the subjects of sin and punishment.
– [p. 20] “‘I don’t think there’s anything wrong with Errol. Or Cary.’”
Refers to movie stars Errol Flynn and Cary Grant.
– [p. 26] “And he had a complete set of the Infamous Bibles, individually named from errors in typesetting.”
There have been many Infamous Bibles, and all of the ones mentioned in this paragraph, except for the Charing Cross Bible and the Buggre Alle This Bible, actually did exist.
As usual, it is Brewer who has all the relevant information. The Unrighteous Bible and the Wicked Bible are as Terry and Neil describe them. In addition, there is:
Discharge Bible: An edition printed in 1806 containing “discharge” for “charge” in 1Timothy 5:21: “I discharge thee before God […] that thou observe these things […]”.
Treacle Bible: A popular name for the Bishops’ Bible, 1568 because in it, Jeremiah 8:22 reads “Is there no treacle in Gilead” instead of “Is there no balm in Gilead”.
Standing Fishes Bible: An edition of 1806 in which Ezekiel 47:10 reads: “And it shall come to pass that the fishes [instead of: fishers] shall stand upon it.”
Also mentioned by Brewer are the Ears To Ear Bible, the Rosin Bible and the Rebecca’s Camels Bible.
[p. 28] The three lost Shakespeare plays.
The Trapping Of The Mouse refers to Agatha Christie’s The Mousetrap (which as of 2008 has been running for more than 55 consecutive years in London), who in turn named her play after the play-within-a-play that occurs in… Hamlet.
Golde Diggers Of 1589 refers to the series of movie musicals with similar names made in 1933, 1935 and 1937.
The Comedie Of Robin Hoode, Or The Forest Of Sherwoode is not directly traceable to something specific, but there have been of course many famous Robin Hood movies, from the legendary 1938 production with Errol Flynn, Basil Rathbone and Olivia de Havilland to the more contemporary 1991 Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves, starring Kevin Costner.
– [p. 31] “‘I mean, d’you know what eternity is? There’s this big mountain, see, a mile high, at the end of the universe, and once every thousand years there’s this little bird–‘”
Crowley’s description of eternity is from the hell-and-damnation speech in James Joyce’s Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man.
– [p. 36] “They were doing drinks in a restaurant called Top of the Sixes, on the top of 666 Fifth Avenue, New York.”
The name and address were real when Good Omens was written: there actually used to be such a restaurant on top of 666 Fifth Avenue. Somewhen in the 90s it was closed and converted to the Grand Havana Room, a cigar bar private club.
The rest of the building is of course also still very much in use, amongst others by Citigroup, Brooks Brothers and the National Basketball Association.
– [p. 40] “‘I am Nanny Astoreth,’ she told him.”
Astoreth or Ashtaroth was the Zidonian goddess-moon in Syrian mythology. No, I have no idea who the Zidonians were, but undoubtedly they were heathens, and therefore presumably on Evil’s side by default.
– [p. 40] “‘What a delightful child,’ she said. ‘He’ll be wanting a little tricycle soon.’”
The ‘mother’ in the 1976 horror movie The Omen (which is all about the Antichrist being raised in a normal household) was forced over the edge of an upstairs railing by little Damien on his tricycle.
– [p. 40] The nursery rhyme Nanny Astoreth sings to Warlock:
is a parody of the English original:
Accompanied (in some versions) by fingers marching up the small child as appropriate and stopping to tickle for the last line.
– [p. 40] “‘Bwuvver Fwancis the gardener says I mus’ selfwesswy pwactise virtue an’ wuv to all wivving things,’ said Warlock.”
The gardener is none other than Saint Francis of Assisi. Note also the “flocks of birds settled all over him at every opportunity” bit earlier on.
– [p. 42] “The message had come during Cheers, one of Crowley’s favourite television programmes. Woody the barman had […]”
In the American edition of Good Omens, this scene was changed to refer to the series The Golden Girls and the character Rose. (The effect remains the same).
Nobody knows the reason for this change, since both are American sitcoms anyway. Speaking personally, I think Crowley is definitely a Cheers person, and would not have liked The Golden Girls at all.
@13: all that material, and no explanation of who nursery-teacher successors Harrison and Cortese were? I think I picked up all the others on early reading (before there was a web, let alone a concordance on it), but I’m missing these. (One item the concordance is missing: during the duck feeding there’s a furtive man in a Cambridge tie, which is a pointer to the UK’s worst spy scandal, the Cambridge Five.
One of the things I love about this section is how it sparkles despite the amount of scene-setting in it. Infodumps can be horribly clumsy, or tolerable, but what we get here is brilliant — we laugh even while being told what fools these mortals be.
Crowley and Aziraphale are fun to read about indeed, when they’re not discussing the apocalypse.
When my brother was three, my cousins gave him one of those customized books, in which he saved a bunch of dinosaurs from a volcanic eruption.
I can’t read in darkness with a flashlight. I’ve tried, but I’m so nearsighted that I have to put my face almost against the cage, leaving no room for a flashlight.
“A decent English name, like people had in the Bible.” *snort*
“Saul’s nice.” I have a cousin named Saul.
“Newton was certain the future would be in computers.” You have no idea, kid.
Why did the baby swap plan involve burning the Chattering Order’s convent afterward?
I’ve gone out specifically to feed ducks. I have a neighbor who keeps her creekside yard covered in sunflower seeds specifically to feed ducks (and pigeons and squirrels). I’m not a secret agent. She might be, though.
“I don’t think there’s an ineffable. I think people should eff anything they can.” – One of my creative writing professors in college
If Heaven has no sushi restaurants, I definitely don’t want to end up there.
Kumbolaland had “the strategic importance of a banana”? One banana may not have much importance (unless it’s contaminated with devastating fungus, thanks, Pestilence), but the industry is ruddy important in some places.
If the model (I missed her name-spelling) had memorized more Scripture, she might have realized who she was dealing with, as one of the human motorcyclists later will. But it probably wouldn’t have affected the situation much. And he didn’t worry about it, given that he told her where his own quote was from.
“There was no place where he was a stranger.” Heh. Except Westeros, where he’s the Stranger. :-p
I kinda like that Crowley took the form of a woman for his part in tutoring Warlock. A reminder of the mutability of a demon’s form, though that was established early on when we meet him first as a snake and then a man. But who or what is Rover?
@@.-@: Having a blonde War would disrupt the Biblical color coding of the Horsepersons, though they might do it anyway. But Pollution might well secrete microplastics.
@8: Or geese. I once visited a certain park in Kentucky and a bunch of geese immediately came crowding around me, making me flee in fear.
@11: I initially thought Famine’s accountant was a demon, given her alleged interest in eating the other diners (well, “wondering how they would taste”). But she’s more likely a human afflicted with constant hunger while in his presence, as humans generally are. I once dreamed that they were lovers, him bedding her to keep her loyal.
Who goes out specifically to feed ducks? Have you?
Of course! Though bread is bad for them. Oats and peas are better. It’s great standing by the side of the canal and throwing in a bit of bread to a duck and 2 mins later you have a flock all asking for food. Mallards are nice, muscovies are a whole lot more aggressive.
@15 – “Why did the baby swap plan involve burning the Chattering Order’s convent afterward?”
Given that Crowley and Aziraphale went to the convent to see if they had any records of the baby swap, the burning was to destroy exactly those records.
Of course, if Down There had really wanted to tidy things up, they’d have left the nuns inside while Hastur burned it. Maybe that sort of creativity requires mortal levels of evil.
@17 I had the same thought. That’s a lot of loose ends they left lying around.
@15
I dunno. That sounds exactly like the sort of things a secret agent would say, wouldn’t they. :)
@@@@@ 15 – Aziraphale refers to his “little team”, which I always interpreted, along with my own impression on reading, to mean that the nanny and the gardener weren’t C & A in disguise but separate people who were working for them. Rover’s just the nanny’s dog.
@20: I never caught that. I assumed Crowley and Aziraphale were working alone.
@13 two thoughts on the annotations
At the time the book was being written, 666 5th Avenue was also the home of DC Comics
If I remember right, Neil used an interrupted episode of Cheers in American Gods
@15
“the strategic importance of a banana” also refers to the United Fruit Company, who destabilised governments and even started a war in Central America to maintain control of the banana trade. The phrase banana republic meaning a corrupt third world country is due to those guys.
Well, in Famine’s second (?) scene, his Snacks and Meals are described as “having the nutritional value of a Sony Walkman”, so I think the banana line was just a line for scale: there was nothing there, but War made everyone fight over it anyway.
The story of the bird sharpening its beak on the mountain is older than James Joyce: it’s in the brothers Grimm story The Shepherd Boy at least, in the early eighteenth century, and I expect it’s a lot older as a folk tale in Europe.