Oh, did I hate this book. It was actually painful to slog through it hoping for some kind of clarity. I’ll do my best to review it.
So, the protagonist, Johnny Truant, an apprentice tattoo artist, finds a manuscript in the very bizarre apartment of a dead neighbor that he had never met, named Zampanò. It’s ostensibly about a documentary about a house with some mystery. Even though he’s no writer, he decides he’s going to finish it himself and submit it for publication.
The documentary Zampanò wrote about is called The Navidson Record, and it alleges to be a kind of Blair Witch found footage thing about horrible things that happened in a house occupied by the Navidson family. I enjoyed that part of the book, the descriptions of what was going on in this house, the possible causes, the effects on and of the inhabitants, etc. It’s twisty and mindbendy and the kind of thing I like.
BUT…
In the course of “fact checking” this manuscript, which is already rife with footnotes, sources, photos, clippings, and other such detritus from Zampanò, Truant begins to add his own notes, footnotes, and rambling personal anecdotes that have little relevance. As you move through the book, it gets weirder and weirder from a readability standpoint. Several pages have between one and twenty-ish words per page. Some pages have several words that are spread in random patterns across the page, and some pages you have to turn the book upside down to read. There are also two fonts, between Zampanò and Truant, and several more for other characters. Some “meaningful” words are different colors, and there’s little explanation as to why. It’s clear that Danielewski put some work into creating as confusing a mess as he could. Kudos, I guess?
Eventually, it becomes clear that Zampanò was quite possibly losing his mind prior to his death. The book documents Truant’s increasingly loose grasp on his own reality as he obsesses over this manuscript, his life, the documentary’s truth or fiction, and a bunch of other stuff I cared not a whit about hearing. There are stories within stories within stories and not a ONE of them is resolved in any way, shape, or form, and after the time I spent wading through it, I did not appreciate this lack of a payoff.
I found this book to be overwrought, highly precious, and pretentious. To me, it was written in such a way that seems designed to make you feel like a complete dimwit for not “getting it”. I chose it for the laudatory reviews, but really, it’s one of those books that you’ll get explained to you by some book clubber in owlishly framed eyeglasses with fake lenses that tries to make you understand how thoroughly you missed the point. I understand the cult of praise for the book – I’m sure some folks enjoyed wading through the entire book only to find they had been duped, and then going back to the 54,610,358 exhibits, footnotes, letters, and characters to find out at exactly what point they had been duped. Not me. Life’s too short.
I’m 100% with renowned wit Dorothy Parker here: “It’s not a book to be tossed lightly aside — it should be thrown with great force.”
The Amy Experience 