Customer Reviews

Only Revolutions

5 star:		(18)
4 star:		(15)
3 star:		(5)
2 star:		(6)
1 star:		(24)

 

 

Old editions of the Guinness Book of World Records often noted a weird achievement in writing - a novel called "Gadsby" (Earnest V. Wright, 1939) that does not contain the letter E. This is known as a lipogram, or a work in which the writing is constrained by an enforced method. But would anyone remember "Gadsby" for its story? Or is that supposedly unique method its only memorable quality? This kind of incredulous infamy is likely to be the fate of this tome from Danielewski. Imagine that you have spent years working on your personal manifesto, and you expect everyone to be as excited about it as you are. But then you're devastated to find that your labor of love is only appreciated by half the people who read it, while the other half just DON'T GET IT or don't find your work to be as important as you think it is. Half of the reviews here offer ecstatic praise for Danielewski's unique visual and semantic methods of writing. But don't assume that the negative reviewers here simply DON'T GET IT. These are people who, like me, probably loved (and GOT) Danielewski's masterful "House of Leaves." But this book is much less likeable and is nowhere near as rewarding. The negative reviewers who appear that they DON'T GET IT actually have been given no reason to try to get it.

That's because this story accomplishes very little, other than the creative non-linear methods. Of course, Danielewski has concocted a storytelling schema that is truly unique, and I can appreciate the mechanical focus on the numbers 180 and 360, and the running theme of revolutions in the book's graphical layout. You may even dig the main premise about the literally timeless and ageless road trip, while Danielewski's creative language constructions and period slang can be quite likeable. But where does this story go beyond its contribution to the book's visual and mechanical methods? Hence, this will likely be remembered as Danielewski's Gadsby - a book that's unique for reasons other than a memorable story, empathetic characters, or insightful themes. Plus, you really have to wonder about a book in which the publisher has to suggest HOW to read it. Most of us would rather spend our time on books where the publisher doesn't have to tell you to simply start on page 1 and read forward to the end. [~doomsdayer520~]

Mark Z. Danielewski stunned readers with his debut, "House of Leaves," a bizarre down-the-rabbit-hole tale of madness, surreality and a house where space is unending.

Now six years later, Danielewski has produced his follow-up -- the equally strange, scintillating road-trip novel "Only Revolutions." The format is mind-bending, the characters equally strange -- and Danielewski hasn't lost his touch for the compelling, poignant, the postmodern, and the post-weird.

Hailey and Sam are a pair of eternal teenagers, apparently untouched by time either physically or psychologically ("We're always sixteen!"). They careen through much of American history -- past and present -- in a changing fleet of cars, touching down in various important places and times.

But though they have no responsibilities, Hailey and Sam are not free of cares. As they run through the US, they seem to be enmeshed in the goings-on of wars, parties, exploration and social revolution (the Civil War). Will they escape the oppressive THEM pursuing them, or lose what is most important to them?

For a cult author, there's always a question about whether they can stay fresh and cutting-edge. Fortunately, Danielewski has outrun that particular concern. "Only Revolutions" is written in the same surreal freestyle as "House of Leaves," but the author never forgets to include the story as well.

And as the Escherian plot unwinds ("unfolds" just doesn't fit), it becomes obvious that this is actually two stories: a love story, and a sort of American allegory. They are rebels and free spirits, running up against bizarre characters -- like the multi-military Creep -- who seem symbolic of the nastier sides of our society. Hailey and Sam are the ones who represent the better side of the country.

Danielewski is still fascinated by places/people where time and space are warped. That includes the entire book -- every page. Each page has a scramble of quotes and text on its sides. There is vivid abstract poetry, blank pages (the future), geometric plotting, shrinking pages, mysterious side-notes submitted by Danielewski's fans...

... and oh yeah, you can flip the book upside down and read the two different "sides" of the story. One is Hailey, one is Sam. They are compared to legendary lovers like Tristan and Isolde, Romeo and Juliet, but that's not too far off. Their love evolves as they do, and by the end they are more endearing if less vibrant than at the start of their story.

"Only Revolutions" is both a work of postmodern art and an endearing novel, and while it's hard work to follow Hailey and Sam to the end of their journey, it's worth the trip. Absolutely brilliant.

Mark, did you start to believe your own hype? Did you feel compelled to venture further out than House of Leaves? Did you just start with a really bad idea and stay the course?

I've come to feel Only Revulsion for this beast.

I can't tell what happened here, but this is book is a mess. I honestly couldn't finish this thing because I felt that, somewhere, Danielewski was having a laugh at his readers' expense. Lemme give you some background.

Danielewski wrote House of Leaves, one of the most complex and multi-layered novels I've read. And even better, it had a unique and well spun tale in it (several infact, like Russian Dolls, but the House is the main one.) I loved this book. The author even made the book's physical layout as complex and involoved as the story was. At first, the House's layout looked like a gimmick, but no; it actually enhanced th quality of the tale.

Since then he's published a spin off novel and now.... this beast.

As I said, the reason the layout in House of Leaves was not a gimmick is because it actually enhanced the tale. In this book, you have sprawling chaos up one side of the page and down the other, literaly. The tale... a sort of eternal love tale begins in this crazed stream of conciousness that is accented my enlarging and shifting fonts; when you finish with the point of view of one character, you flip the book over and begin reading from the other's perspective. The layout here is a gimmick.

It is a gimmick because not only does the layout fail to improve the text, it renders what is already Near Incomprehensible into A Damned Mess of Words.

I'm trying to find more to write but... look I'm sorry to write this but if you liked House of Leaves or enjoy a well wrought tale please back away from the Revolutions.

Why is it getting so many positive reviews? Dear reader, I have several theories. Maybe they were impressed by the layout. Maybe they had a brain seziure and now like this sorta verbal mess. My guess though is, much like myslef, they were truly won over by House of Leaves and try to redeem this mess as much as they can. I did my best to like this book too. But reality stepped in.

By the by, despite this book being a catastrophe of words, I'm still waiting and hoping for his next.

(And no Mark, even a soundtrack by Poe will not help this heap.)

I loved "House of Leaves," I think it's really a masterpiece of experimental fiction, so I was excited when I heard that Danielewski had come out with a new novel. Likewise I wasn't put off by the experimental elements of the book: the duelling narratives written in either direction on each page, the list of historical tidbits from a given date.

But when you get past all these schticky elements there's not much to "Only Revolutions." Whereas "House of Leaves" had a fascinating story at its core and explored interesting themes, when you strip away all the gimicks "Only Revolutions" seems to be a prose poem about a love affair between two egomaniacal teenagers who drift apart and then find each other again and again (and who claim to have superhuman powers although I haven't found any evidence that this is actually the case) and which is set in no clear time or place.

I've tried a couple of times, but I couldn't for the life of me get into this story. I also found the stream-of-consciousness list of historical data on each page (+50% of which is stuff that I've never heard of before, and I was a history major) to be really annoying because I felt obligated to read through it even though it was really dry. In the end, I've just about written off this novel as unreadable.

I loved House of Leaves, its unconventionality, its layers. I could not stand this book. Make sure you understand this is a book of verse - a long narrative poem (and yes, it rhymes). I just could not get into it, the language annoyed me, the characters were not interesting to me. Was there a plot of some kind? It didn't work for me, which is really frustrating if you know what Danielewski is capable of.

To put it mildly, this is a difficult book. As a follow up to House of Leaves, I wasn't surprised at the unique design and writing style. And since HoL had so much hidden beneath the surface for those who took the time to dig for it, I have to assume that this book has more to it than just nonsensical free-verse poetry and unconventional typography. Unfortunately, I'll never know for sure because, to be completely honest, I gave up.

Part of House of Leaves' brilliance is Danielewski's ability to shift back and forth between very different writing styles. That's why when I began reading Only Revolutions, I took the writing style in stride. After reading a few pages though, it dawned on me that maybe the whole thing was written like this. After scanning the rest of the book I realized that it was indeed written that way all the way through. That was a disappointing moment. The book is now taking up space on my shelf.

The people giving this book one star are being honest with themselves and with you. I'm sure that some of the positive reviews are from people who genuinely enjoyed the book. Some of the positive reviews simply seem like an opportunity for the reviewer to puff themselves up intellectually above those who "just didn't get it". Welcome to the Internet.

If you've never read Danielewski, go get House of Leaves immediately. It's awesome. I hope his next one isn't like this.

I loved Danielewski's "House of Leaves" - one of my top 5 books of all time. Fun, scary, original, and challenging in the most entertaining way. I wasn't expecting more of the same with this book - that would be a disservice to the author. Still, after reading about 70 pages and barely comprehending more than a page's worth of what was going on, I gave up. If it weren't for the jacket synopsis, I doubt I would have gleaned that much. I guess if you enjoy random words thrown together in a self-indulgent imitation of poetry, this might possibly be of interest to you. For me, it ranks as one of the biggest literary disappointments of my life. The literary crash and burn.

I didn't think I was going to enjoy this book because of the dizzying poetic style of writing. Those of you that are used to linear sentences and thoughts, be prepared to train your brain to step away from them.

After I became used to the style I found that I couldn't put the book down. The overall design of the book is nothing short of awesome: two built-in bookmarks (a green one for Sam and a gold one for Hailey), rotating page numbers, half and half dedicated pages that start large in the beginning of the story and end up small towards the end, etc, etc... not to mention the inside mirror cover. There's so much to uncover here that it makes it so much more than a simple novel. Not an easy read by any means but extremely rewarding.

If you liked House of Leaves, you will definitely dig this one. It's a great story about limitless dedication, freedom and love that the two main characters share throughout the years.

In the end you won't know where one story begins and the other ends. It's only revolutions. And it is a tale that keeps on revolving in your mind after you've turned the last page(s).

Enjoy.

I was doing some browsing in a local book store one day when I came across "Only Revolutions". Seeing as how "House of Leaves" had impressed me as much as it did I bought "Only Revolutions" with no hesitation. When I first began reading it it was late at night and at first I thought I was having a hard time following the story because I was so tired. So I opted to set the book aside and wait until the next morning to resume my reading. Well the next morning I began the book anew and found myself as confused as ever. After about fifteen minutes of flipping back and forth between the stories of Sam and Hailey and attempting to make some sense of the words that were laid out in front of me I lost my patience, shut the book, set it down and haven't touched it in three months. With "House of Leaves" Danielewski proved to us that not only could he write a complex, multi-layered story but that he could make it work and work beautifully. "Only Revolutions" falls extremely short of what I was expecting. In a nutshell: Great plot, horrible execution.

Mark Danielewski, after the pyrotechnic brilliance of his first novel "House of Leaves," now follows with another adventure in the nature of language, narrative, and combinatorial possibilities. Apparently modeled after the French Oulipo (Workshop for Potential Literature), "Only Revolutions" is a tour de force exploring the endless combinatorial possibilities of language. The apparent protagonists, Sam and Hailey, are not so much representations of human beings as repesentations of language's possibilities for endless novelty and renewal. The cycles they instantiate revolve around the number "8." (The publisher advises readers to read 8 pages at a time from each narrative, one starting at one end of the book, the other from the other end). H is the 8th letter from the beginning of the alphabet; S is the 8th letter from the end. The text is generated (either manually or algorithmically or some combination of both) from the words in the concordance, printed on the book's endpapers in 8 major clusters. 8 + 8 is sixteen; hence Sam and Hailey are said to be "allways sixteen." In the pseudo-narratives describing (creating) their adventures, the infinite combinatorial possibilities of language are recycled in "revolutions." The same letters and words not only create new combinations but also neologisms--new coinages--made out of parts of words whose signification we can immediately intuit by putting together the parts. There are 360 pages in the text, Sam's psudeo-narrative going from 1863 to 1963, Hailey's from 1963 to 2063, with JFK's assasination providing the single date on which they can meet. "Revolutions," signifying both circular movement and radical change, provides the motif for the book's visual communication, which include colored "O's" and "0's" as well as a plethora of other dazzling visual effects. At the book's center, the circular page notation counting Sam's pages on one side of the circle, Hailey's on the other, shows 180/181 on one side of the center spread, 181/180 on the other. The offset, the slight asymmetry signified here, is important in generating endless novelty, corresponding to what physicists call "symmetry breaking," a crucial event in the formation of the universe. This visual/verbal book, filled with connundrums, verbal and numerical puzzles, clever plays on the idea of "revolutions," and explorations into the nature of language, is sure to occupy fans of Mark Danielewski for endless hours of fun, frustation, puzzlement, and enlightenment. Enter at your own risk; this is a work that invites readers to cross wits with this brilliant and endlessly inventive writer. N. Katherine Hayles