This post is a long time coming, and very much overdue, but I felt that I should a quick and dirty review of the most recent work by my favorite author- Mark Z. Danielewski-
Only Revolutions, if any of you are interested in picking it up.
I'll begin by saying that I was flat-out annoyed by the book. Somewhere in its 360 (or is that 720?) pages is an extremely engrossing narrative, but it is next to impossible to follow due to the gimmicky formatting which favors style over substance. the book is not intended to be read in a traditional manner; after reading 8 pages from one side of the story, the reader is supposed flip the book and read 8 pages from the other (n.b. each cover of the book represents half of the narrative told by each of the protagonists- Sam and Hailey- and the two stories run, concurrently (or is that concordantly?) from their respective front to back). A glimpse at
the page layout should remove any confusion from my rather lacking description, but not- unfortunately- from the reader's experience.
This is forgiven in time as Danielewski's writing and choice of word play (complex enough to satisfy enough the most exacting etymologists) is as clever and sharp as it was in his seminal work,
House of Leaves, if not better. And after a few chapters, some readers will enjoy this aspect of the book as they look for correlated words, phrases, and related etymologies between the corresponding halves of the protagonists' mutual tale.
Sentence structure is cleverly rearranged in each corresponding 8-page installment of a protagonist's story, while the focus and content of each chapter grows more similar in style and scope as the story approaches the middle of the narrative. As the two characters move away from this period of concordance (his word, not mine), the narratives once again diverge until they are almost completely at odd with one another.
For those who won't enjoy this aspect of the story, there is more bad news ahead. Danielewski included a rather bizarre- and in my decidedly less-than-humble opinion, unnecessary- 200 year timeline of world history in the gutter of the pages... which is an entirely appropriate place for it to reside. Readers will scrutinize this timeline for hidden meaning, codes, and/or context and will find nothing of value in it save for the subtle reference to the birthday of his sister- singer, artist and lyricist, Poe- and a thumping distraction from the flow of the narrative.
The gimmick of the timeline is that although the protagonists (who, I should mention, are perpetually, somewhat magically, 16-years-old) are together throughout the whole of the story, they are constantly separated by a period of 100 years*, a gap which- despite the touching and prosaically powerful middle 8 pages of concordance, when their narratives "meet"- is never closed... or even explained. In order to contextualize their allochronicity, Danielewski inserted the timeline in the narrative, focusing on the major news events of the arbitrary year on which a page takes place.
Try reading your favorite book with Billy Joel's We Didn't Start the Fire blaring out of speakers and inch from your head and you might have a rough idea of how distracting this timeline was to the development of the story.
Which, finally, brings us to the touted plot itself. Two sixteen-year-olds, very much in love, cavorting through the annals of American history in, "...an ever-rotating fleet of cars" (which, by the way, is a completely irrelevant detail to the story. Because it is mentioned by every single review of the book, I've decided, as such, to include here for a sense of completeness), unfettered by any thoughts that do not immediately concern themselves.
At face value, it's an extremely intriguing- and deceptively simple- plot device which all of us can, hopefully, relate to. Further, I can't think of a better way to ground an otherwise high-concept book in something more simple than a love story between two 16-year-olds. Much like the rest of the book, however, the author falters in the execution of the plot as he has his semi-omnipotent narrators inexplicably run out of money and take jobs in a diner for, oh, 150 pages of the book. While that is perhaps the most likely outcome for their tawdry love affair if it occurred in the real world (and didn't end with one, or both, of them turning tricks in a bus station for spare change and breath mints), it makes for a jarring and unwelcome dose of banal reality in an otherwise fantastic story.
Would Lord of the Rings be anywhere near as popular as it is if Gandalf had to take a few years off to raise funds for the war effort against Sauron? The two lovers in Only Revolutions, Hailey and Sam, can literally call down the wrath of nature and bring the naked energies of love and hatred to bear on each other and all that they meet. And yet somehow they are stymied by an empty bank account? To say that it is unconvincing is being generous. By the time you read page 100 or so of their time in the diner, languishing under the cruel comments and advances of a waiter whose ethnicity varies between Italian and Greek, depending on the narrator, you'll be wondering what allure there is to the rest of the book.
The answer is, unfortunately, not all that much. The requisite Danielewski touches and references are present throughout the entire book. For the first half of the book when Sam makes reference to an animal, or Hailey makes reference to a plant, the name of the fauna or flora, the name is in bold after meeting at concordance in the middle of the text this feature inexplicably inverts itself.
Intriguingly, the journey of the two protagonists is physically represented by two included ribbons which serve as bookmarks: one green (Sam) and one yellow (Hailey). As you read through the first half of the books, the narratives (broken down into 8 page chapters) begin to become closer approximations of one another, with fewer details being changed between revolutions of the book. When the ribbons meet in the middle-that is to say,
concordance- the text for the corresponding 8 pages of each protagonist are, for the first and only time, identical. As the ribbons move away from each other, toward their respective- and yet mutual- end, the narratives once again begin to diverge with the meanings and events relayed becoming increasingly distorted. While many fans have decried the inclusion of the ribbons as the most gimmicky formating trick included by the author, I personally found them to be the most enjoyable. ...mostly because there was nothing to distract from them and they served as a means of grounding the vicissitudes of distance (both physical and emotional) between the Sam and Hailey.
Overall, I would give the book a solid B with an A+++ for effort. If you choose to read it and opt to completely disregard the timeline in the gutter, you may well begin to hear the narrative start to sing as Danielewski's erudite wordplay imbues the story an energy more powerful than any of his formatting tweaks ever could. If you've never read Danielewski before, don't start with this one. House of Leaves is rightfully regarded as his best work, and there is nothing in Only Revolutions which could challenge it for that particular distinction.
*-In the most stunning capitulation to the Gen Ex crowd, Danielewski chooses the assassination of JFK as the starting point of Hailey's narrative and the ending point of Sam's. ...which is a curious choice as there cannot be any personal connection, given the fact that he was born roughly three years post facto.
