Is Mark losing his goddamn mind? There's supposed to be

27 volumes isn't hard when you have entire pages that have a picture of refuse floating in a scummy pond, the letter E or random phrases like "WUZ" taking up entire pages

Does this have an actual intricate plot, and discernible ideas, and stuff?

Someone on /lit/ said it's supposed to be a parody of YA series.

>>8407578
Yes it's a gimmick. Why would you even have to ask?

>>8407578
MZD is pretty dedicated to semiotics though
I for one think he might be onto something

Will anyone actually read the whole thing? It's apparently incomprehsible.

>>8407600
House of Leaves had gimmicky elements but actually strung together into a really compelling read, it's one of my favorite contemporary examples of """"experimental"""" fiction.

I'm hoping it'll start to come together, maybe with a second read, or some sort of context.

>>8407660
House of leaves wasn't 27 volumes.

>>8407607
I really should make another push for The Fifty Year Sword. I tried reading it and just quickly lost what was happening

>>8407612
He said if people aren't reading it it's not going to get finished. According to him HoL was a movie, Familiar is a TV show.

>>8407702
What's the feel of it compared to HoL?

>>8407722
If it was a tv show it would've been cancelled after the first episode.

>>8407740
It's just dialogue. The entire thing is just people speaking to each other, only denoted by the color of the quotation marks. There's no narration describing anything. I tried reading it before getting on medication so I struggled to focus on what was happening.

>>8407578
>Is it a gimmick /lit/?
Yes. Danielewski is one of the greatest hacks of our age.

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>>8407745
Nice try John, but you're still the top 10 spots in 3 greatest hacks of our time

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>>8407745
I'll agree with you on The Familiar, but have you read House of Leaves?
What didn't you like about it?
Danielewski really isn't a popular enough author to make a living off of hack "psuedo-intellectual" "art" pieces, which is why the Familiar is so confusing
He needs something accessible to lead people from HoL to his future work, but TF is turning me and a lot of people off

>>8407742
but the next few episodes have already been produced, so they're aired, too.
to keep wit the analogy

>>8407754
House of Leaves was his only real "hit". Everything he's done since that has been met with mixed reception at best. I think he's just a one-hit wonder t b h.

>>8407751
When John Green writes his modern New Sincerity doorstopper you'll see why he's the spiritual successor to Thomas Pynchon and David Foster Wallace.

>>8407744
That book is like a hundred pages, dude. Just finish it. It's essentially a spooky campfire story so maybe save it for October to get into the Halloween spirit. That's what I like to do >:^)

It's supposed to be like a tv show, but why anyone would aspire to become like one of the most creatively bankrupt forms of entertainment is beyond me.

>>8407754
>isn't a popular enough author to make a living
IIRC he got a massive (like 1 million$) advance for the first 3-4 volumes of The Familiar, so I don't think it's that.

>>8407612
It's not incomprehensible, but it's the kind of series that will only start coming together after several doorstopper volumes. The thing is, IMO they're not in the least good enough (they are interesting, though) to warrant reading more than 2-3 of them. I personally quit halfway through the second one.

>>8408386
mad men and the sopranos are the pinnacle of modern art

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>>8408483
Unfortunately true.

>>8408483
Yeah, because the rest of modern art sucks in comparison to a show about a bunch of mamma mias playing with guns.

>>8408397
It's common for big name literary writers to get silly advances like that. It helps the publisher's prestige. He'll never earn out on it though.

As for whether it's comprehensible, I was going by amazon reviews posted by self proclaimed Danielewski fans.

Is The Familiar as terribly pretentious as it sounds? It strikes me as something an edgy, poetry-loving, Wiccan high school girl would write.

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>>8408551
Nevermind, I got my answer.

>>8408483
For every mad men there are 20 honey bobos

>>8408504
The show is about the fragility of human relationships and modern American life. What the hell are you talking about?

>>8408322
I was going through some shit when I tried reading it. I mostly read philosophical treatises or history shit so I admit literature can be beyond me at times. House of Leaves is the most "experimental" I've gotten with literature.

>>8407660
Why put experimental between inverted commas?

>>8407754
I have, and it's the horror elements are the only interesting things about it, mainly because almost everything else was completely unoriginal.

>>8409892
Because I don't want to be shit on by the board because "real" experimental fiction "actually" means something obscure that I am not aware of and will then proceed to list examples that maybe .01% of the board will know exist and 90% will pretend to know and to have read

Which makes me wonder, why do I post here at all

>>8410221
How so?
By unoriginal do you mean it relied too heavily on tropes?
I thought the tiered format was fairly original
Editor>Johnny>Zampano>Navidson>House was pretty novel.

>>8407578

Its probably a sincere experiment. Of course the academia-media-publishing industrial complex has taken control over the ability to proclaim works of art as good or bad, including of course the ability to choose the criterion.

so of course we get this topic filled with pseuds too scared of saying what they really think and too scared to say they like or dislike something without the stamp of approval from academics.

>>8411681

You should be more confident about your posts, and not worry whether or not the shitposters will try and ruin things because that's their goal.

>>8407578
I read the first one, the prose is nothing special at all and basically nothing happens in the entire book. I'm not waiting 10 years and spending hundreds of dollars on these. Read the entire book in a couple hours too, spread out over about a week.

>>8412134
Actually scratch that, it was about 4 hours total.

>>8411694
The only review of it that I've read was vaguely positive and I still think the series is a retarded idea.