Why do Danielewski fans disregard this masterpiece?

why do Danielewski fans disregard this masterpiece?

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I don't. I have a first edition, signed. All of his books are great though. Don't really have a favorite.

>All his books are great
even Fifty Year Sword?

It's better than a lot of the schlock that gets passed off as good fiction these days. So yes, even FYS.

fair enough, but it's still a disappointment considering that it's from the same author that made HoL, OR, TF, and C4

Do not all authors release something that to them may seem sincerely wonderful and the reception is a dull roar? That's life. He has more hits and more innovation with the medium than 98% of his contemporaries. I'd call that a win.

also fair. I'm still annoyed this happened with TF, which has much more sustenance than FYS and was still dropped after the publisher after Volume 5

It took me more reads to understand than HoL but yeah, it's pretty great.

I just met Danielewski last week at a talk. He didn't talk about TF or his new release "The Little Blue Kite" he was more focused on HoL still. For good reason, since according to him the streaming services are knocking down his door to adapt it into a series. I could see that happening to TF and then the publisher asking for more books later. He just had a baby. He needs rest.

I will never be okay with an adaptation of HoL, and OR will only ever work as either a book or a minimalist stage play, but now that I think about it, I would actually be okay with it if TF were turned into a show. it would probably never be as good as the original books, but it's his only work that could survive such a process and still resemble the original

Agreed. Especially how the different sections are split up. They do shit like that in shows already.

I read it. Though I enjoyed parts I certainly couldn't grasp it as a whole. It was just too obtuse for me. On Familiar book 2 now and I'm enjoying it much more.

I had it the other way around; individual parts were too opaque for me to make heads or tails of, but thinking about it as a whole is the really interesting part for me

Because as with most Danielewski works it has some gimmicks with little to no payoff. Flipping a book upside down over and over is fun the first few times but when there isn't any meat on the bones it just becomes a chore.
He pulled off House of Leaves and even that was questionable. In my opinion he's not a bad guy, but he's not very talented.

I don't really think of OR's bidirectionality to be a gimmick; it's a genuine attempt at writing a book that revolves around (pun unintended) an unconventional feature and thematically linking said feature to the narrative. The Fifty Year Sword has five different narrators that finish each other's sentences and illustrations that look like thread work; both of these unconventional features are unconnected to the narrative except for the most superficial of details (five children? five locks? five narrators? oooooo). these are gimmicks
it is not a gimmick, however, to do something weird, but then justify it with tons of thematic content regarding the feature (flipping the book is a revolution, which connects to the title, the colored O's, the timeframe, the recurring idea of political revolution, the fact that the second half mirrors the first, the fact that the story begins and ends on the same mountain, the fact that Sam and Hailey are in a literal timeloop, the fact that the chapter from pg 174-184 can be read backwards without loss of information, the fact that there are 360 pages in the book and 180 words per perspective per page which corresponds to the number of degrees in a circle, the fact that the page numbers physically revolve each other, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera). I feel hesitant to call something a gimmick when it's fleshed out this far

>there arere 360 pages in the book and 180 words per perspective per page which corresponds to the number of degrees in a circle,

>"flipping" the book is a revolution

those two are definitely gimmicks. They don't add anything comprehensive to the theme, it's arbitrary and tacky.

>arbitrary
>adjective
>Based on random choice or personal whim, rather than any reason or system.

yeah, see this user . you're being purposefully obtuse

probably a samefag, but yeah, that's arbitrary.
The "system of reason" you describe is full of presumptions and generally tackiness.

As long as retarded people call Danielewski's writing gimmicky, the innovation of literature will be stunted. Very sad.

>it is literally inconceivable that more than one person disagree with me, so it must be that these two comments are from the same person
okay? I guess. anyway, please give specific criticisms rather than general statements like "that's tacky and presumptuous"
agreed, but you could have gone without the "Very sad" at the end, it sounds like Trump's twitter feed

I already did.
turning a book is too heavy-handed and meta, classic gimmick. hiding a specific number of pages, words (not even characters), is pretty imperceivable and does nothing to enhance the story's themes, which is all a novel really is, a collection of patterned themes, so the rest of the ideas you listed work, but those two are definitely gimmicks sorry.

that makes sense, but I still feel like it can't be considered a gimmick per se if it's consistent with thematic content. I see where you're coming from, since this is not a universal excuse; turning a book about game shows into a game show would most likely end up being gimmicky. even then, this seems like such a small deviation that it's hard to decry, and I really don't see what's so heavy handed about it