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Library | Call Number | Status |
|---|---|---|
Searching... Silver Falls Library | FIC DANIELEWSKI | Searching... Unknown |
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Summary
Summary
Sam:
They were with us before Romeo & Juliet. And long after too. Because they're forever around. Or so both claim, carolling gleefully:
We're allways sixteen.
Sam & Hailey, powered by an ever-rotating fleet of cars, from Model T to Lincoln Continental, career from the Civil War to the Cold War, barrelling down through the Appalachians, up the Mississippi River, across the Badlands, finally cutting a nation in half as they try to outrace History itself.
By turns beguiling and gripping, finally worldwrecking, Only Revolutions is unlike anything ever published before, a remarkable feat of heart and intellect, moving us with the journey of two kids, perpetually of summer, perpetually sixteen, who give up everything except each other.
Hailey:
They were with us before Tristan & Isolde. And long after too. Because they're forever around. Or so both claim, gleefully carolling:
We're allways sixteen.
Hailey & Sam, powered by an ever-rotating fleet of cars, from Shelby Mustang to Sumover Linx, careen from the Civil Rights Movement to the Iraq War, tearing down to New Orleans, up the Mississippi River, across Montana, finally cutting a nation in half as they try to outrace History itself.
By turns enticing and exhilarating, finally breathtaking, Only Revolutions is unlike anything ever conceived before, a remarkable feat of heart and intellect, moving us with the journey of two kids, perpetually of summer, perpetually sixteen, who give up everything except each other.
Author Notes
Mark Z. Danielewski is the author of House of Leaves, The Whalestoe Letters, Only Revolutions, The Fifty Year Sword, and The Familiar.
(Bowker Author Biography)
Reviews (4)
Publisher's Weekly Review
A pastiche of Joyce and Beckett, with heapings of Derrida's Glas and Thomas Pynchon's The Crying of Lot 49 thrown in for good measure, Danielewski's follow-up to House of Leaves is a similarly dizzying tour of the modernist and postmodernist heights and a similarly impressive tour de force. It comprises two monologues, one by Sam and one by Hailey, both "Allmighty sixteen and freeeeee," each narrating the same road trip, or set of neo-globo-revolutionary events or a revolution's end: "Everyone loves the Dream but I kill it." Figuring out what's happening is a big part of reading the book. The verse-riffs narrations, endlessly alliterative and punning (like Joyce) and playfully, bleakly existential (like Beckett), begin at opposite ends of the book, upside down from one another, with each page divided and shared. Each gets 180 words per page, but in type that gets smaller as they get closer to their ends (Glas was more haphazard), so they each gets exactly half a page only at the midway point of the book: page 180 or half of a revolution of 360 degrees. A time line of world events, from November 22, 1863 ("the abolition of slavery"), to January 19, 2063 (blank, like everything from January 18, 2006, on), runs down the side of every page. The page numbers, when riffled flip-book style, revolve. The book's design is a marvel, and as a feat of Pynchonesque puzzlebookdom, it's magnificent. The book's difficulty, though, carries a self-consciousness that Joyce & Co. decidedly lack, and the jury will be out on whether the tricks are of the for-art's-sake variety or more like a terrific video game. (Sept. 5) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Kirkus Review
The daunting maze explored in Danielewski's Borgesian first novel, House of Leaves (2000), only hinted at the depths to be plumbed in its intimidatingly innovative successor. It's a love story, road novel and paean to untrammeled freedom, presented in dual free-verse narratives spoken by Sam and Hailey, two 16-year-old vagabonds who embark on a mythic and allegorical journey across America, in a succession of variously acquired automobiles, during an expanding time period that stretches from the American Civil War to the immediate present. Rebels and malcontents, they repeatedly indulge in Whitmanesque, Rabelaisian arias ("I'm The World which / The Mountain descends from and / I laugh because it tickles"), while proclaiming their allegiance to nothing but each other ("Liberty and Love are one"), and eluding or battling characters emblematic of entrenched interests, convention and complacency (e.g., "Mad Robber Barons," "Hoovercrats"). The publisher helpfully suggests reading eight pages of Sam's story, then flipping the volume upside-down and reversing it, for eight pages in Hailey's voice, until the two narratives meet in the middle of the book. Further complications arise from chronological enumerations of historical events on each page's margins and versified comments on every page presented, upside-down, at the bottom of said page. Self-indulgence? Surely. But there's a real story here, and a persuasive sense that the couple's wild ride is a kind of creation myth that mirrors, as it presumes to explain, America's unruly energies--as Sam and Hailey experience Hailey's brief dalliance with a macho avatar of military, militant power ("The Creep"), an Ongoing Party in New Orleans, a farcical hospital stay following an apparent overdose and an escape to the heartland and a climactic encounter with "the peril pursuing US." They're Bonnie and Clyde, Tristan and Isolde, an X-rated Archie and Veronica and perhaps All in the Family's embattled liberal couple Mike and Gloria. You have to work at it, but it's a trip well worth taking. Copyright ©Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Booklist Review
The second novel from cult author Danielewski ( House of Leaves, 2000) consists of the dual free-verse narratives of 16-year-old Hailey and Sam, which are meant to be read in tandem; eight pages of Hailey's story are to be read first, then the volume needs to be flipped upside down and read in reverse for Sam's story, until the two narratives meet in the middle. With a Jack Kerouac-like reverence for the open road and a Dr. Seuss-like feel for wordplay, Danielewski tells an epic love story as the two teens travel across time, from the Civil War to the year 2063, in vehicles ranging from a Model T to a Mustang. Though outside forces threaten to undermine them, the two remain forever 16 and madly in love. Danielewski may free his young lovers from narrative constraints, but his readers are not so lucky--many will find the neck-craning and book-turning to be too interactive for their taste. Still, this creative paean to the velocity of young lovers and the vibrancy of American culture is sure to wow the experimental-fiction camp. --Joanne Wilkinson Copyright 2006 Booklist
Library Journal Review
Two wayward kids named Sam and Hailey bounce through American history on the ultimate road trip. With (appropriately) a 12-city tour; from the author of the noteworthy House of Leaves. (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.