Mark Z. Danielewski

House of Leaves is something really interesting--and yes, I am going to say I was crushed by Mark Z. Danielewski's next book Only Revolutions.

House of Leaves is a book for adventurers, for people who understand books have parts and spokes and gears inside and you can like some parts and not others. And yet it's still a brilliant work. The National Geographic style exploration in the book is excellent, the footnotes are worth it, the minotaur is still making me actually nervous.

I even approve of the multi-colored footnotes--MAKE SURE you read a copy with ALL the colors. This is the only time I've ever approved of super modern meta stuff like this. In JJ Abrams recent mysterious/exciting book S [ie. the letter 'S'], he puts in tons of footnotes, but it doens't work. His relationships don't work, just like Mark Z. Now I consider S to be a well intentioned first time misshapen cookie, I think his next piece will fix many of his problems, or work around them.

Isn't that the absolute mark of brilliance? The fact that he revitalized an ancient myth? Mark Z is on my list with Nolan--I will be his maid or housekeeper for free if he needs one. Society owes them something!

Now, there are flaws in the book of course, like the opening, for one. And the way the wife has a heroic moment with her husband that doesn't really ring true after the lack of focus on them as people. They're just not interesting--they're the random person in Lovecraft or Hawthorne's scary stories. But nothing can bring Mark Z. down, he's that talented.

He should get a Gugghenheim grant, I tell you. As long as he doesn't do another Only Revolutions. I feel like I know what he was going for, but he needed someone to challenge him, pare him down, let him rethink his own ideas like in a fugue in classical music.

But think of the blind Borges like figure who knows so much about that mysterious little short film, and the slowly growing terror. I didn't mind how he had the text reform and mutate, it was well done--but the regular text was scary enough.

He did it, he won. He succeeded. It was chilling--he beat the whole horror genre in 700 pages. I got a little into the recent book Night Film by Marisha Pessl but while it had some great ideas, they weren't developed enough. I can't wait to see what she does next. Also, the cover was great and clever.