So, I don’t know much about the demographic for this blog, but I’m going to assume that you’re savvy internet users who actually acquired the power of literacy and therefore have read books. The reason I ask is that you and everyone should really read House of Leaves, by Mark Z. Danielewski. Its an extremely meta, disturbing and twisty novel about a house that subtly changes around its owners, no wait, it’s about a documentary made by the homeowners about this bizarre phenomenon, no wait, its actually about an academic book written about said documentary (which doesn’t exist), no wait! Its about a washed up LA tattoo artist who finds a manuscript in his dead neighbour’s apartment about a fictional documentary about a fictional house that has supernatural properties. Plus some stuff about his crazy ass mum. I think you get the gist. Its mental stuff, supporting footnotes, different typefaces, strange shapes made out of texts and all kinds of other weird shit. Read it, its awesome.

The primary reason I bring all this up, beside expanding your cultural horizons, is that Mr Danielewski has recently signed a deal with publishers Pantheon for a 27 part serial novel called The Familiar, due to begin sometime in 2014, with each part released every three months. Knowing Danielewski, it’ll require appendacies and large quantities of alcohol to truly appreciate it. He’s also made a lot of money for this deal, which makes starving artist types like me feel bad.

But heh, I’m looking forward to it. And it’ll be interesting reading something serialised. These days we’ve been conditioned to read novel sized chunks of work, or short story collections, with only a few famous authors, such as Stephen King, experimenting with serialised narratives. But this wasn’t always the case. In the 19th Century serialised literature was all the rage, most famously with the works of Charles Dickens. Anyways, if you’re some kind of bibliophile looking for something different, check out House of Leaves and set a date in your diary for The Familiar.

[The Guardian]

30 Nov This entry was written by badbabbler and published on November 30, 2011 at 9:19 PM. It’s filed under artsy, Story Time and tagged House of Leaves, literature, Mark Z Danielewski, scary stories, The Familiar, why aren't I rich and famous?, World of publishing. Bookmark the permalink. Follow any comments here with the RSS feed for this post.