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Nicholas Rombes's avatar

This is such a rich, deep read. Some the phrasing rings so nicely: "What I realized, after The Familiar had ended, is that this sort of flat, bloodless, hardstop truth of things, this market reality, is the exact sort of tragedy that Mark Danielewski’s fiction salves." This is one I'm going to read several times. I remember reading The Familiar, volumes 1 through 4, and falling into their world, but not as deeply as I fell into House of Leaves. I wonder if there's something about when (in our lives) and where (in an author's canon of work) we first "meet" an author. The ground zero of our reading. I'd read House of Leaves first (and then a great short story of his in the now defunct Black Clock magazine) and nothing subsequent has quite resonated like those. But what if I'd read The Familiar first, and then found my way to House of Leaves? Can the heat generated by our first experience ever be matched?

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Ken Baumann's avatar

Thank you for this. I'm loving your style—divergent, but returning again and again with a reverent respect to the author, their intentions, and the natures which ultimately drive the production of their work.

My favorite line: "At no point in our several hours of conversation do I feel he is unprepared to talk about aliens." Perfect.

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