got any good reads? (indie, solo, quote) - Music Banter Music Banter

Go Back   Music Banter > Community Center > The Lounge
got any good reads? got any good reads? (indie, solo, quote)
Register Blogging Today's Posts
Welcome to Music Banter Forum! Make sure to register - it's free and very quick! You have to register before you can post and participate in our discussions with over 70,000 other registered members. After you create your free account, you will be able to customize many options, you will have the full access to over 1,100,000 posts.

 
 
Thread Tools Display Modes
Prev Previous Post   Next Post Next
Old 04-15-2006, 10:19 AM   #11 (permalink)
Muck Fusic
 
IamAlejo's Avatar
 
Join Date: Dec 2003
Location: Virginia Beach
Posts: 1,575
Default


Quote:
Had The Blair Witch Project been a book instead of a film, and had it been written by, say, Nabokov at his most playful, revised by Stephen King at his most cerebral, and typeset by the futurist editors of Blast at their most avant-garde, the result might have been something like House of Leaves. Mark Z. Danielewski's first novel has a lot going on: notably the discovery of a pseudoacademic monograph called The Navidson Record, written by a blind man named Zampanò, about a nonexistent documentary film--which itself is about a photojournalist who finds a house that has supernatural, surreal qualities. (The inner dimensions, for example, are measurably larger than the outer ones.) In addition to this Russian-doll layering of narrators, Danielewski packs in poems, scientific lists, collages, Polaroids, appendices of fake correspondence and "various quotes," single lines of prose placed any which way on the page, crossed-out passages, and so on.

Now that we've reached the post-postmodern era, presumably there's nobody left who needs liberating from the strictures of conventional fiction. So apart from its narrative high jinks, what does House of Leaves have to offer? According to Johnny Truant, the tattoo-shop apprentice who discovers Zampanò's work, once you read The Navidson Record,

"For some reason, you will no longer be the person you believed you once were. You'll detect slow and subtle shifts going on all around you, more importantly shifts in you. Worse, you'll realize it's always been shifting, like a shimmer of sorts, a vast shimmer, only dark like a room. But you won't understand why or how."
It's one of those intertwined books, with four stories going on at once. I loved it. Absolutely loved it. But you do have to have the devotion to sit through and read it, as it's not just a one- or two-sit reader.
__________________
a man, a plan, a canal, panama
IamAlejo is offline   Reply With Quote
 

« Previous Thread | Next Thread »

Similar Threads


Terms & Privacy - Contact Us - Music Banter - Archive - Top

© 2003-2025 Advameg, Inc.