Do the words meta, post-modern, or experimental make you cringe when used to describe books? Then turn back now. I feel the need to say that up front because many people seem to go into this book expecting a horror novel and wind up wasting their money. Just take a look at the genres that goodreads lists this as. Horror, fiction, fantasy, and mystery. With inapt labels like that, it's easy to see how people could get the wrong idea.
This is not a horror novel, nor is it a mystery novel or a fantasy novel. This book is, among many other things, a personal story about the author's parents presented as experimental literary fiction that's thinly veiled as a horror novel. Confused? Good, stay that way for now, and don't think too hard about what I just said. I'm not that into horror novels, and I generally like post-modern and experimental stuff, and I knew what I was getting into when I bought this. Know what you're getting into, that's all I'm trying to say.
Here's the basic concept as clear and concise as I can tell it. There are essentially three narrators that will be addressing you, the reader.
1) Zampano, an old blind man
2) Johnny Truant, a thirty-something druggie
3) The "editors"
Johnny's friend, Lude, knows Zampano because he lives in the same apartment building. The old man, ominously, tells Lude he's going to die soon, and does. After the body is gone, Lude and Johnny sneak into the apartment to take a look around at Zampano's things. They find a crazy manuscript, which Johnny takes home with him.
The manuscript is a non-fiction book/dissertation about a documentary called "The Navidson Record." The Navidson Record is about a famous photojournalist named Will Navidson and his family moving into a new house that is bigger on the inside. When I say non-fiction, I mean it. It reads like a textbook. On every page there are footnotes about other articles and other books that reference this documentary that, by all accounts, doesn't exist (I'll get to this in a second).
It starts out simple at first. After the family returns home from vacation they notice a hallway on the second floor connecting two bedrooms that wasn't there before. They track down a blueprint of the building and see that there is a space between the walls, although it's not supposed to be a finished hallway with doors. Okay, no big deal, maybe they didn't notice the doors before, it's a new house after all and they had just moved in before going on vacation. Then comes the realization that measuring the house through that hallway results in an extra inch that shouldn't exist, and that can't be explained. Then a new door appears, on the first floor this time, that should lead to an empty back yard but instead leads to a long, dark hallway that extends into an endless labyrinth of cavernous, thousand-foot rooms that leads to god knows where and contains god knows what, and the exploration of this door is the main focus of the documentary.
So Johnny finds this manuscript, reads it, edits it, adds his own footnotes relating to research he's done on Zampano's life and the manuscript contents (translations of foreign phrases, for instance), but also personal tangents about his own life and stream of consciousness ramblings. In the prologue where he explains how he found the manuscript, he also says that The Navidson Record doesn't actually exist. Johnny's editors also appear in footnotes and in the first say they have never met Johnny Truant in person, only communicating via letters and rare phone calls. Weird, right?
What follows is 528 pages of an interwoven, multi-layered story. On the one hand, you have Zampano's non-fiction book about this fictitious documentary, which simmers as a slow-paced "found-footage" horror novel that can be unsettling, thought-provoking, but is likely to disappoint hardcore horror fans looking for adrenaline-pumping scares.
Then you have Johnny's story, told through long footnotes, which is more vague and slow to reveal itself, but the basic idea is that although he knows the manuscript is fiction, the act of reading it causes him to lose his marbles. Whether the manuscript or Johnny's brain chemistry is to blame is up to the reader. Whether Johnny is even telling the truth is up to the reader. And, to be honest, Johnny's parts can sometimes be hard to read because he's just pitiable and depressing and the stream of consciousness prose can wear down your focus. It gets Joyce-esque at times, though only for short stretches, because Danielewski is a nice man who wants you to have a good time, unlike Joyce, who hates you and hates fun. Then the "story" part ends, and you have 130 pages of appendices (which you should read) which include things like:
Zampano's writings which are not a part of The Navidson Record
The obituary of Johnny's dad
Childhood letters from Johnny's crazy, institutionalized, long dead mother
Poems
So what does it all mean?
Well, it means a clever and perhaps over-educated man named Mark Danielewski decided to write a novel that experiments with the format of the novel, that pushes the boundaries of what a novel can be and what it can do. While much of it could quite fairly be called a gimmick, and it won't be redefining how all novels are written going forward, it's a gimmick that works, that is unique, that is stimulating, that is discussion-worthy, that makes the world more interesting by existing, and isn't that what good art is supposed to do? It is an unmitigated success at being singular, and because it is singular it will inspire intense love and intense hatred from different people.
It means that while there are answers, you will have to work for them. I mean this both figuratively and literally. On the literal side, there is a letter in the appendices that is written in a simple code, which you will have to translate into a coherent message with pen and paper. And that's a code that is plainly said to be a code. There are other codes that are truly hidden.
Many sections have weird, cluttered layouts that make the act of reading them hard, and make tracking down the right footnote a scavenger hunt. You'll be presented with footnotes that make no sense until you realize the text is broken up over several pages and presented backwards. There are a lot of elements to the story, little throwaway lines and facts that you need to remember, or write down. How did Johnny's dad die. How did Navidson's dad die. Stuff like that. While it's not absolutely necessary, I'd recommend having a notebook handy starting on page one. I have an amazing memory, took notes here and there, and still wish I'd taken more. Like I said, this book is work. It's fun work though, depending on your tastes and personality. I'm an INTP and I loved it. Your mileage may vary.
On the figurative side, the book still won't hold your hand and spell out what it all means in flashing neon. That's up to you to figure out by gathering all the evidence together and deconstructing the book on several different levels by asking yourself what's true and what isn't, what matters and what doesn't, what's literal and what's figurative, what's the metanarrative, what's the subtext. Ultimately it's up to you to decide when you're satisfied with your answer.
While this is nowhere near as open to interpretation as most books you'd label as post-modern or modernist, it is still open to interpretation compared to a typical novel, which isn't open to interpretation at all. There are no easy answers, no definitive answers, but there are satisfying answers that I firmly believe are more or less what the author intended, if you're willing to put in the effort to discover them and have a flexible mind that delights in abstract concepts. Alternatively there are, of course, existing breakdowns of it on the internet that you can turn to for some help, although none I've read have gone far enough into speculation. They present facts and evidence, point out what's true or not, but none of them have drawn the kind of final conclusion that I've drawn. That's how it should be. You should decide for yourself. If none of this sounds like fun to you, I recommend giving this one a pass
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Beware of Quality Issues
Received the book and discovered that there are wrinkles and deep creases all throughout the book. Some of the pages have cut marks close to the binding, as pictured.I'm returning the book today for a replacement that will arrive around the 9th.
Top reviews from other countries
Thiago Sardenberg
Mais que um livro: uma experiência
Reviewed in Brazil on July 15, 2021
Thiago Sardenberg
Reviewed in Brazil on July 15, 2021
Em primeiro lugar, me chamou a atenção o fato de que não temos uma só narrativa acontecendo: são múltiplas narrativas, e múltiplas formas de lidar com elas. As notas de rodapé, por exemplo, vão ganhando vida, aumentando cada vez mais (como as próprias dimensões da casa, que são "dinâmicas") e ganham suas próprias notas de rodapé! (algumas são do tamanho de uma página inteira, outras atravessam páginas...). Você meio que pode escolher a forma como vai interagir com elas, o que confere uma experiência única para cada leitor.
A coisa então vai ficando cada vez mais rocambolesca, literalmente!, e você tem que ir girando o livro para conseguir ler - são blocos de notas e narrativas em todas as direções. Isso é engraçado no início, mas depois torna-se meio que uma inconveniência. Estou certo que a intenção do autor era a de causar uma sensação de tontura no leitor - conseguiu!
Entretanto, enquanto algumas páginas tem informações em excesso, outras são deixadas intencionalmente vazias - ou quase. A disposição das frases, seu layout, reflete sensações, ou algo que está sendo descrito na narrativa, evocando, por exemplo, claustrofobia ou agorafobia. O layout enfatiza tudo isso, não é meramente estilo!
Este é um livro sobre um livro acadêmico sobre um documentário fictício, sobre uma casa com dimensões impossíveis, que se retrai e expande como organismo, e que guarda uma escuridão que a tudo devora. Mas também é uma história de amor, de loucura, e não deixa de ser uma sátira de escritos acadêmicos também. Tudo isso, com a aparência de um "livro de horror". Voltas e voltas....
No fim, o que dizer? Mais que um livro, é uma experiência. Recomendo escutar simultaneamente o álbum Haunted, da Poe, irmã do autor, que complementa a experiência do livro!
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