Only Revolutions: A Novel
by Mark Z. Danielewski
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Book Summary Information
Author: Mark Z. DanielewskiEdition: Hardcover
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language); English (Published)
Published: 2006-09-12
ISBN: 0375421769
Number of pages: 384
Publisher: Pantheon
Book Reviews of Only Revolutions: A Novel
Book Review: "Sticking US again to the World"
Summary: 4 Stars
Only Revolutions is so different in scope from House of Leaves that a comparison isn't really appropriate. However, because both books directly involve permutations of form, typography and layout, they raise an important question: do Danielewski's stylistic innovations actually create the possibility for new kinds of narrative experience; or are these flourishes merely superfluous accessory, commodity indulgence, gimmickry?
Despite it's overly gluttonous orientation to detail and intellectual intrigue, House of Leaves does achieve a kind of cinematic typography as topography, where the experience of reading the book itself deepens one's immersion in the narrative. The same is certainly true of Only Revolutions.
However with Only Revolutions Danielewski has done more than simply involve the layout of the book in enhancing the narrative - it seems that he has actually created a narrative that could not exist without the physical structure and rigors of form employed in its telling.
Sam and Hailey are godlike, explosive and irrepressible, pissing rivers and burping clouds, dynamos of American energy careening across the landscape and rolling thru history, propelling and propelled. Yet they are also by turns frightened, abused and ever adolescent. Only Revolutions is mythic and thickly allegorical, written in a changing slangy epically infused prose-poetry pair of voices.
The book is incredibly structured, literature as architecture, which makes possible the continuous symmetries, correlations, divergences, and emergent over-lays of meaning. Among other things, there are 360 pages, each with 36 lines per page. These constrictions create a style suitable for the mythic mode, but one that is also often fragmented, convoluted and overly abstract. This, along with the abundance of made-up words, suggests the feeling and freedom of adolescence, but isn't always easy to read. And like the narrative, the language itself captures some sense of the dangers --for both the characters and the country-- of remaining perpetually adolescent, ignorant of responsibility and consequence, carrying on without care.
By the same turn, however, the book itself often feels incredibly constrained by its structure, and the narrative sags to an over-long lull in the middle. With his rigorous numerical control of words, Danielewski seems to have tried to make an art into a science, and as a result the story suffers. Only Revolutions can be frustrating, even occasionally plodding, but I find, to my surprise, that after revolving thru once, the book invites me in again for another spin...
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