Psychedelic love

MARK Z. DANIELEWSKI’s first novel, “House of Leaves,” was a 700-page cinematic horror story about a house slightly larger on the inside than on the outside -- lots of dark, growling, ever-expanding passageways behind a mysterious closet door leading nowhere. The stuff of nightmares. The text of this metaphorical, metaphysically minded opus ran left to right, upside down and in circles and was layered with haunting illustrations, photo collages and meaty footnotes painting a parallel narrative. “Gimmicky,” I scoffed; and it was. But I read through to the end, if just to find out what happened. Because the book was also very, very good -- itself bigger on the inside than it looked from the outside.

“House of Leaves” outgrew the cultural parameters into which it was born, drawing a loyal cult following of hipsters, techies, intellectuals, artists, outcasts and literati on the Internet; reactions morphed, sales soared; it was praised by the literary establishment. With his sapphire-blue hair and rock-musician sister Poe (who recorded an album, “Haunted,” inspired by the book), Danielewski began to resemble a 21st century, multimedia-savvy punk rock poet. He performed a five-minute portion of “House of Leaves” with Poe at a Dallas rock concert, a reading interrupted by a roaring, stadium-size standing ovation. The “remastered, full-color edition” of “House of Leaves” is now taught in universities and dissected in works of literary criticism.

“Only Revolutions,” Danielewski’s much anticipated follow-up -- for which there’s a fancy, flash-animation website, with charged-up devotees immersed in online analysis even before the publication date -- is, at its heart, a simple teenage love story. Sam and Hailey, perpetually 16 in a universe where time is malleable and permeable, embark on a circuitous road trip across the U.S. over the course of 200 years, from 1863 to 2063. It’s part “Bonnie and Clyde” or “Badlands” (with John Mellencamp’s “Jack and Diane” as the soundtrack), part H.G. Wells’ “The Time Machine” and part Jack Kerouac’s “On the Road.” Easy enough to digest. Except that “Only Revolutions” is told entirely in cryptic free verse, a sort of 360-page prose poem. Then there’s the issue of narrative structure. Like Julio Cortazar’s 1966 classic, “Hopscotch,” the “story” is nonlinear and told from different perspectives -- but Danielewski has catapulted the concept a step further. His dual narratives begin at opposite ends of the book, so the reader has to flip it over and upside down when shifting between them.

Meanwhile, there’s a vertical sidebar of historical minutiae running throughout: contextual notes on everything from the “abolition of slavery, confiscation of property, and territorial vassalage” in 1863 to Hurricane Katrina and the “Tigris River trample.” (Interestingly enough, Danielewski hasn’t invented events for 2007 and beyond.)

The result is a dizzying, psychedelic he said-she said. As Sam tells it, he is “manly, serene, fantastically handsome,” and Hailey, who has gold eyes flecked with green, is dowdy and fearful behind the wheel of a Ford 999 Racer. In Hailey’s version, she is “solemn, calm. Exquisite,” and it is Sam who is awkward and clumsy; he has green eyes flecked with gold and he’s driving a Shelby Mustang. And yet they love each other. Their journey is infused with adolescent urgency, a sense of searching, longing and lust.

Sam:

-- Love’s all.

-- Liberty, The Broke One objects.

-- Love and Liberty are one.

-- And Marriage? Where Love accepting Liberty’s end secures Love’s undoing.

Hailey:

-- Liberty’s all.

-- Love, The Broke One complains.

-- Liberty and Love are one.

-- And Divorce? There’s how Liberty paying Love’s cost finds liberty lost.

Fortunately, like “Hopscotch,” “Only Revolutions” comes with brief user instructions (read eight pages of Sam, then turn it over and read eight pages of Hailey; rinse and repeat). But given that the book consists of 45 of these eight-page sets, with exactly 180 words on each page, the typeface progressively diminishing in size until the parallel narratives meet in the middle, reading it could well require office supplies -- in my case, two bookmarks, three sets of Post-its, a dictionary, a ruler, a stapler (don’t ask) and a calculator, along with a bottle of Bordeaux. I pushed all the way through and even found parts of it enjoyable -- maybe less like a history of love than advanced Sudoku over Sunday brunch.

The experimental, nonlinear novel is, of course, nothing new -- although, by definition, in pushing boundaries, each take on the genre is entirely new. And Danielewski has, essentially, created “the mathematical, Web-inspired, interactive, free verse novel.” It’s experimental on every conceivable level: linguistically, visually, conceptually, tangibly. It even breaks convention in the writing process. Using the Web in a cyclical fashion, Danielewski published early snippets of the book online under the working title “That” and asked fans to suggest historical tidbits to weave into the manuscript. There are now audio excerpts of the book on the author’s website. So, in a sense, “Only Revolutions” is also a populist novel.

Is it gimmicky and self-important? Undeniably. Is it a substitute for good, clean writing and a well-crafted story? No. But “Only Revolutions” is not without sweeping ambition and fierce intelligence. A phenomenon shot through with the cool factor, it succeeds as an experiment in both design and book publishing. As literature, however, it’s cryptic to the point of paralysis, utterly inaccessible, almost burdensome. James Joyce’s “Finnegans Wake” was linguistically playful, David Foster Wallace’s books are admittedly difficult, Shelley Jackson’s “Skin” doesn’t even exist in any one printed place -- but it’s possible to unearth beauty, pathos, insight and substance in these works. The opacity of “Only Revolutions” may be its biggest flaw: If no one beyond a small, marginalized fan base is going to reach the end, then what’s the point?

It could be that, like Hailey and Sam’s wild ride, Danielewski means the journey to be the destination, regardless of where it leads or how long it lasts. Because the author has spent more time on pacing and packaging than on the story, “Only Revolutions,” with its multiple entry points, is really about the reading experience. Danielewski’s intention simply may be to illuminate the limits to which the novel can be stretched, the many different ways a book can now be read.

“Only Revolutions” will likely infuriate traditionalists, who (like one friend of mine) might well call it “ejaculations of ink on paper.” But it’s also a quintessential novel of our time, embodying, as it does, art / technology / literature / design and the spirit of experimentation. In an era when the media landscape is more fractured and saturating than ever before, when the glossy packaging of products (from books to bath gel) is increasingly important, when novels are downloaded onto iPods and sampled on cellphones and the blogosphere has created an insatiable appetite for information, immediacy and interactivity -- amid all this, “Only Revolutions” makes sense. Danielewski, a publicity-minded, artistic pioneer at once talented and superficial, could be the voice of the budding, literary online cognoscenti. For better or worse.

Whether or not you go for this kind of thing, “Only Revolutions” should be paid attention to, if only because of how it embraces and utilizes new technology and how, in turn, that technology has shaped it. Those who take it on as pleasure reading are advised to keep Post-its -- and patience -- handy. The experience might be worth it. After all, when “On the Road” was published in 1957, Truman Capote infamously called it a “piece of dreck” that was “typing” rather than “writing.” It would be easy to make the same mistake regarding html. *