It's weird.
Bewertet mit 3 Sternen
See there is this dude Johnny Truant who finds a book – or rather a box of loose sheets of papers, some typed, some written by hand, some burned at the edges others inked out, sometimes they are pages of paragraphs neatly typed on typewriter, sometimes there is only one line scrawled on the back of a receipt – in the apartment of his buddy’s deceased neighbour Zampanò – who died under mysterious circumstances – and thinks: Hey, I’m gonna make a book out of this or something.
This book in the book turns out to be an academic study about the same-tilted film, The Navidson Record. A film that apparently doesn’t even exists in Truant’s and Zampanòs universe. So every cross reference, every quote and every source Zampanò gives, is made up… Well not every one… There are some – those who aren’t directly associated with that mysterious film – who are actually real in even our – Mark Z. Danielewki’s, mine and your (so as real as it can get, you know) – universe.
The Navidson Record, that film no one (not even those who are quoted giving their opinion about it) ever heard of, is a documentary by Will Navidson, a famous, Pulitzer price winning photographer no one ever heard of, about a house on Ash Tree Lane, a house which probably never existed either, not even one of the many “scholars” Zampanò “quoted” being able to pinpoint it’s location. A house which denied the laws of physics by being bigger on the inside and constantly growing and sometimes even growling.
The whole book is completed with the comments of a bunch of nameless editors who also added a second Appendix in the second edition prints, including The Whalestoe Letters Truant’s mother wrote him when he was a teenager and other fun stuff to explore.
So actually your reading two stories – actually it feels like 20 all mixed up and tangled until you can’t tell them apart – at the same time: the plot of that obscure documentary in form of a (foran academic standards poorly written) dissertation and Johnny Truant’s (past and present) life in weird and sometimes weirdly poetic footnotes. What both stories – all twenty of them – have in common is the madness. Not just the madness in the way they are presented – sometimes there are pages with only ten or six or one word(s) on it, sometimes you need to rotate the book or put it upside down to continue reading – but also as a main theme.
Johnny Truant, who get’s paranoid while editing the book, his mother Pelafina, who was committed to an mental institution when he was a child, long before the story takes place, Zampanò, who was probably the sanest of them all, but you got to have some loose screws to come up with something like that, Will Navidson, who got nearly pushed over the edge by that unexplainable force in his own house and almost lost his partner Karen Green, who’s insecurity’s about their relationship and crippling claustrophobia grew the longer she was confronted with the unspeakable madness of what was supposed to be her new home and of course Holloway Roberts, who leads most of the Explorations described in The Navidson Record and… well… let’s just say he doesn’t take the dark and endless cold of those ever changing rooms that well, okay? Don’t wanna spoil that drollery for you. Just in case you wanna read that book… Which I would recommend… Kind of…
I say kind of, because I liked that weird book and it’s even weirder story, but it was also kind of exhausting to read… Not just because you have to toss and turn that abnormal sized, wibbely wobbely paperback around to continue reading, constantly skipping between The Navidson Record, Johnny Truant’s life story and the appendixes… But also because Zampanòs train of thoughts – when he isn’t just “retelling” the story of that documentary, but actually analysing it – can be challenging and boring at times.
Sometimes I found my eyes only skimming those paragraphs, having to force myself to reread the last page, because maybe there would be another one of those beautiful, nonsensical sentences hidden in this boring lecture, which I could post on tumblr to attract the hipsters and get crazy internet famous (got 19 notes on one of them, I hope the fame doesn’t get to my head and stuff…)
But seriously there really are some beautiful, mind blowing quotes in that book. I would quote a few, have them all underlined in my copy, but that one is not within reach, like I already mentioned… I can only give you one of those I posted on tumblr:
>>And where there is no Echo there is no description of space or love. There is only silence.<<
…(which isn’t even the best) and a page number I scribbled down on a post-it note for that I wouldn’t forget to post that incredible quote about “killing an hour”, which I of course forgot. To post it, not the page number… (I wrote that one down… Difficult to forget something you wrote down and stuck to the wall next to your bed, right?) It’s 543. If you happen to have a copy of the second edition at hand you’re allowed to look it up and tell me what that quote says exactly… Thanks in advantage.
So after that uninteresting part about lost quotes, I hope not to be at a loss while counting the stars:
Story: As I mentioned already, it’s weird. But weird isn’t a bad sign (although it’s not always a good sign either) and I was actually really intrigued by the story of The Navidson Record. With Johnny’s story…. not that much. But that had more to do with his line of thought getting more and more incomprehensibly with his growing madness, so still ★★★★☆.
Idea: Defiantly an original one. ★★★★★.
Story Development: A little slow at times, but still ★★★☆☆.
Artistic Realization: I can just talk about the second edition paperback here, but that one really is a beauty. The unusual size may be a bit impractical, especially for travelling, but the elaborate formatting and the full-coloured pictures and collages make up for it without a doubt. But all that skipping can be kind of distracting. ★★★★☆.
Writing: Weird. Just weird. Most of the time beautifully so, but sometimes it’s hard to follow the plot lines. ★★★☆☆
Depth: Like I said, good hipster quote material. ★★★★☆
Humor: I huffed a laugh or two, but it isn’t really meant to be a comedy, but there is some good satire going on, so ★★★★☆.
Characters (and the reasonableness of their development): Well, they all go crazy, but that is easily comprehensible and they all do it in a way that fit’s their scripted character traits and the plot. Weirdly enough, I only really cared for the minor characters. ★★★☆☆.
All-in-all: Like the title says: That book was weird and there were times I was so absorbed in the depth of those dark corridors it holds, that I caught myself a cold, because I couldn’t pause my reading for those five seconds it would have taken to close the window. Sadly the narrative couldn’t keep me in that stage for all those 709 pages and especially Johnny Truants poetic rambling can be exhausting. But if you like philosophical satirical stuff, you might enjoy wandering the endless depths of the House of Leaves. ★★★☆☆.