Neat! I’m astounded that none of the Amazon reviews I’ve seen have mentioned House Of Leaves. The concept and execution seem very similar. Looking forward to it.
Yup. My immediate thought was, “It’s like House of Leaves! With bits you can lose!”
I hope this will be authentic to the J.J. Abrams tradition and will include:
- Literary depictions of lens-flares
- Abandonment of major plot points for no particular reason
- A nonsensical ending that makes one regret ever spending time on it.
How do they fit lens flares in a book?
Really inventive concept, though i wonder if there isn’t a hidden ARG associated with this… if not then it seems like a lost opportunity.
How do I get in on that “conceived of” deal? Any writers want to do the actual work? I’ll be your ideas man in exchange for top billing.
People are desperate to ride the JJ Abrams train. Not so for the freshacconci train.
House of Leaves. I am attempting to suppress a shudder as I consider that title again. “S” looks like a beautiful work, to say the least. Curious to see how it reads…
He made a TV show–carnival ride–plodding snoozefest that thought it was a book, and now a book that thinks it’s a TV show–carnival ride (and that looks to me like a plodding snoozefest). Quite an innovator, that J. J.
Amazon currently has it ranked #1 in the category of “Sea Adventure Fiction”: poor Homer, poor Melville, poor O’Brian.
It would be great to actually read excerpts of the book: I kind of feel bad snarking about it, but it does seem like a mid-concept mishmash of Danielewski, Safran Foer’s Bruno Schulz book, and those Griffin and Sabine books from way back, with a dash of Myst and those oh-so-sly viral hijinks that Abrams uses to promote his films and TV. Which could be either lots of fun or the worstest ever.
I, too, thought the whole thing had Griffin and Sabine written all over it, so to speak.
Good luck getting an intact copy from the library. At least House of Leaves just had unusual printing.
House of Leaves was my thought, too. Also, I want to go on record to say that any book with loose pieces in it is a terrible idea.
When you think about it, a deliberately burned page is kind of like a lensflare for a book.
Kind of.
Hmm. I don’t buy it. No lens flare.
It’s the first installment in a prequel trilogy to Thomas Pynchon’s V.
A good library will bind the loose pieces into the book.
Unless it’s some kind of bizarre DRM / loaning prevention. The book just falls apart as you read it, so you can only ever really read it once. You can share this book with others IF you can remember where to stuff everything back in.
Abrams is no newbie to print experimentation. Re his Wired magazine special issue: http://www.wired.com/wired/issue/17-05
