"...academic math..."

[hello?]

Beginning with this quote: "Only Revolutions is a piece that I see as written outside the present industry of academia. I don't believe there's a vocabulary yet that can adequately address what's going on. That kind of academic math doesn't exist now." I'd like to start an investigation into what the Hell he means by this.

I really know very little about "the industry of academia" so I'm probably the least qualified person on the board to bring this up. But whatever.

In contrast to House of Leaves, as you can see in the concordance, Only Revolutions says nothing about houses or dwelling places of any kind, nothing about parents, nothing about religions, and especially not the word "or", which I take to mean nothing about binary oppositions.

So I was just wondering if these were the issues with which academia is obsessed; from what little I know about literary criticism, a good deal of it seems to be concerned with, well, everything in the concordance. Rather than setting itself in opposition to the critical paradigms, however -- which House of Leaves seemed to do with its exhaustive lists that apophatically defined what the house/book <i>wasn't</i> -- Only Revolutions seems to gleefully <i>ignore</i> everything that occupies the realm of literary criticism, except for the the mirrored references in the concordance.

Even as it seems to ignore certain issues, however, Only Revolutions seeks to invert them; the red and blue of House of Leaves rotate 180 degrees on the color wheel to become the green and gold of the O's. The concordance being printed backwards seems to indicate that we are on the other side of the looking glass when we enter the world of Only Revolutions.

House of Leaves was obsessed with darkness, but Mark has claimed that, in Only Revolutions, there is not even any light (the concordance lists every color of the rainbow); the book seems to reflect neither darkness nor its opposite.

I'm wondering if it was Mark's intention for Only Revolutions to occupy, or even be responsible for, the 'gaps' -- the lacunae in certain chapters of House of Leaves, the 17 missing pages, and by extension everything academia isn't blanketing in criticism -- or if something else entirely is going on.

I don't know.

[John B.]

You've asked an interesting question here. For what it's worth, I'll tell you what I thought when I read that.

Within its world, HoL is (or aspires to be), among other things, a work of scholarship; it's winking and nodding in the direction of not just literary criticism but the sciences, philosophy, history, etc. But, as I sort of say toward the bottom of this post (http://www.houseofleaves.com/forum/showpost.php?p=76624&postcount=1), OR isn't interested in playing games with textual authority. It creates its own world; whatever truth we find in it will be on its own terms and not in appeals to Other Authorities.

Another possibility:
MZD is not shy about saying within range of microphones that no novel has been written that's quite like this one. Thus, it's not easily pigeon-holed or schematized (beyond very-broadly identifying it as a picaresque). We lit crit types love our pigeon holes.

Well, maybe. We'll see what others might have to say about this.

[modiFIed]

In light of MZD's quote, this may take some more thought after all. I felt we had pretty much nailed a lot of what was realized in OR, though we may have been skipping over what was attempted for the most part.

I'm usually uncomfortable when getting into authorial intent. But MZD seems to invite the inquiry - his interviews are taking the form of a gauntlet tossed at the feet of Academia. Fair enough. But if his challenge is for the academy to develop a new mathematics to explain the new form he invents, I believe it's first necessary to establish that it is in fact a new form and not merely a new stylistic approach.

That is, it's not a new form just because he says it is. Walt Whitman claimed the same--and he was right. Is MZD?

I'm not concluding anything, just positing.

Hello?'s comments make a great start. Where to next?

[aslidsiksoraksi]

Am I the only one who thinks MZD has gotten a little big for his britches? HoL was a revolutionary work, no doubt, and its safe to say that it has changed my life in more ways than one, but when I got OR I must confess to being a little dissapointed.

But then, there were really only two options when he decided to continue writing:
1. write a normal book - everyone thinks hes lost his touch
2. write something insane - cement himself as a one trick dog

Now I'm not saying that OR is a bad book or anything, but I do think that it has gone a bit over the top. It seems to have sacrificed gripping narrative and ignored the reader entirely to produce something to be thought about more than read. While this is all well and good, and perhaps I'm not his target market, I find it to be just like HoL, with more nonsense and fewer interesting ideas.

Making statements like "there is no vocabulary that can adequately express this now." and things like that are just his way of putting himself above the academic community, taking some sort of 'I'm a genius look at this book' stance. Like modiFIed said, claiming to have invented a new form doesn't make it so. Only time and the 'academic' canon will tell whether or not MZD's experiments in literature are worth anything.

[katatonic]

If you had completed three such differently daunting tasks such as HoL and OR and T50YS (from what I've heard), wouldn't you praise yourself, too?

I don't think he's gone "over the top" - he's gone in a completely different direction than most fiction writers, and even from himself.

And I wouldn't say that OR has fewer interesting ideas. They are certainly of a different nature, at least in presentation. In my opinion, they are no less valid, just subtler.

[John B.]

Aslid,
I'd actually make the argument that, good as HoL is, it's actually the more deriviative work--what makes it good is the fact that it pushes to their logical conclusions ideas found in the books to which it's indebted. No crime in that: it's difficult to think of a truly great novel that doesn't do that. Granted, while I like OR's story, its central characters don't have the interiority of HoL's characters--but that's because OR's constructedness is more the point here than HoL's architecture. Sam and Hailey, whatever their charms, are actually in service to the novel's various ordering devices.

One can certainly argue whether that has resulted in "good art"--the reviews are decidedly mixed on that score. But this brings me to Kat's comment:


And I wouldn't say that OR has fewer interesting ideas. They are certainly of a different nature, at least in presentation. In my opinion, they are no less valid, just subtler.

This is where the "academic math" part comes in. Again, keeping in mind that "original" is not always equivalent to "good," because lit crit, as hello? says above, feels it is its job, these days, to seek out connections between a given text and the Things of This World, your garden-variety critic is going to struggle a bit with OR--seeing as it so assiduously attempts to create its own world while history whizzes by our heroes like so many barely-read highway signs (or RSS feeds).

Maybe--just maybe--OR is a kind of literalizing of the principles of Formalism, the idea that the work itself, not theory, biography, etc., should guide our reading of it. There's something in its obsessive orderedness that seems ancient, mythic, as though it's arguing, Despite the chaos of Now, there's an overarching structure that gives form to existence. An anti-postmodernism, or a truly post-postmodernism. I don't know how "subtle" that is, but it's nevertheless true that "academic math" either doesn't have a language for this novel or will have to relearn one it has long since forgotten.

[modiFIed]

Ha ha - a return to formalism would be akin to the return of the first golden crocus in the spring, pushing up through the frosty crust of neo-Marxism, New Historicism, radical Feminism, Post-mosdernism, Post-structuralism, etc.

I think you have something there. But it would seem to argue for a return to basics, as you mention, rather than a new system of weights and measures.


your garden-variety critic is going to struggle a bit with OR

Which I think is a salient point here. Most of the criticism we've seen so far appears to be consumer-oriented or amateur. A bit of an irony that, in fact, no academic critics appear to have weighed in on OR just yet.

Perhaps they're waiting to see which way the wind blows before they risk their careeers on an unpopular analytical tack. Or they're formulating that new math.

We need our reps from Columbia and Cambridge to weigh in here. Or even Florida State! Gentlemen?

[fearful_syzygy]

The only mention of OR I've heard around here was the girl in the bookshop who told me she'd been eyeing it from across the room because it had 'a really cool cover'.

I told her to wait till she'd opened it.

[Raminagrobis]

Here's my take on it. It's a very generalized one, and not at all based on personal experience (my own experience of academia is confined to dead authors, preferably writing in dead languages). And I'm pretty much repeating a lot of what's already been said by John B. and modi (because I agree with them, as always).

The thing is, it seems to me, the register of HoL is essentially parodic. It plays games with genre, with its intertexts, with literary convention, all of which it takes self-consciously 'too far'. In a way it is a kind of writing 'against language', very much in the lineage of all those familiar obsessions of (late) twentieth-century literature: the perceived inadequacies of language, all the epistemological uncertainties those entail, the 'calculated failure' of literature itself. All this is very easy for academics to write about (indeed the text does a reasonably good job of it itself), because these days literary critics are, on the whole, people who don't really like literature that much: they like 'reading against the grain', 'putting pressure on the weak points', 'exposing the mechanisms' and all that stuff; they like 'reading into' but they don't really like, well, just 'reading'.

Only Revolutions seems to me to be much more 'at home' with language. Obviously the consonance with modernist ideas – which John B argued very cogently elsewhere – cannot be ignored (all that breaking-down of no-longer viable modes of expression and rebuilding of a vast and complex-structured edifice from the ruins), but this is a book that is not so weighted down under the gravamina of tradition: it wears its influences lightly, and the melodies it modulates to are, so to speak, unheard. I would almost see it as reaching back yet further than that. OK, not quite as high as the Second Sophistic, perhaps, but the exuberance, the at-homeness of a language whose proliferations and ramifications do not of necessity speak of malaise and ruination, suggest to me an analogue in early modern writing. There is a sense that pushing language to its limits (at least where those limits are as well-defined as they are here) need not break it, need not open up those cracks and fissures in the surface of discourse, because language is capable of repairing itself, and it is, in the end, anchored to the world. Words can be imbued with genuine feeling, can be made to speak of real loves and real deaths; or they can skip off on their own and revel in their promiscuity. Either way, here we seem to be moving always with the flow of words, not vainly against it. And that, I think, is good, especially for those of us who believe that literature is best written (and read) by those who love literature, not by those who wish to see it destroyed.

[aslidsiksoraksi]

Actually you all make quite good points. While I can't claim to be as well versed in literary theory as the majority of people here (but I'm only 17 I've got time), my point wasn't so much anything to do with revolutionary new forms or anything of that nature.

To me, MZD, instead of proclaiming his genius with the comments mentioned above, should have let his work speak for itself. His comments feel a little cocky and conceited - and while producing Hol, OR, ATLOM and all the rest certainly gives him a right to brag, it doesn't mean he has to.

But as Raminograbis says "they like 'reading into' but they don't really like, well, just 'reading'."

To just 'read' OR is not to my taste, and that is my issue with the book. I find the plot to be less than exhilirating, and for this I blame the intense structure of the book. It is much harder to write an entertaining and gripping novel when you are bound by various parameters (60 words a page per character, dates on the side, the plants submitted by forum members earlier, so on). MZD could have gotten across his ideas without all the fancy formatting and the book would not have suffered. Like I said, it wasn't the typography and mysterious footnotes that got me in HoL, it was the idea of the house itself.

It is for this reason that, while HoL is my favorite book, Borges takes the cake as favorite author. The house is essentially a Borgesian idea, and that is what, to me, is the most interesting.

[katatonic]

To just 'read' OR is not to my taste, and that is my issue with the book. I find the plot to be less than exhilirating, and for this I blame the intense structure of the book. It is much harder to write an entertaining and gripping novel when you are bound by various parameters (60 words a page per character, dates on the side, the plants submitted by forum members earlier, so on). MZD could have gotten across his ideas without all the fancy formatting and the book would not have suffered. Like I said, it wasn't the typography and mysterious footnotes that got me in HoL, it was the idea of the house itself.
He addressed the plot thing last night - that certainly, HoL was plot driven, because it was plots on top of plots. He chose to make OR more character driven, because that's what the book is about - Sam and Hailey.
He was not bound by those parameters, because he created them.. He wasn't forced to stay within those lines, he chose to.
So you liked the idea of the house, but not of teenagers who can seemingly do anything, over a VERY large span of time? While,of course, it's your right to not really enjoy the book, or at least not enjoy it as much as HoL. I just really like it.

[John B.]

He addressed the plot thing last night - that certainly, HoL was plot driven, because it was plots on top of plots. He chose to make OR more character driven, because that's what the book is about - Sam and Hailey.
He was not bound by those parameters, because he created them.. He wasn't forced to stay within those lines, he chose to.


Kat,

This might more properly be a question for a PM, but it has some bearing on this thread's topic, too, I think.

That part I've bolded--did MZD himself say OR is "character-driven"? If he did, I will need to think about either his meaning for that term or my own. I just hope it's not much more demanding than long division.

[katatonic]

He may not have said "driven," (I can't be sure) but it was along those lines.

[modiFIed]

I would tend to agree with the notion, at least at the highest level. It's all about Sam, Hailey, and what happens with/to/between them.

There's a third main character though - US.

[Raminagrobis]

They're not well-drawn characters in the traditional sense though, are they? By the very design of the novel, they're not well differentiated individuals whose character guides the narrative with any degree of specificity. This isn't really a novel of psychological realism.

But I can see why you might say that the novel is more character-based than plot-based: isn't character basically style anyway?

[modiFIed]

No, you're right, they're avatars. Thus the "highest level" qualifier. At its core it's naturalistic, romantic, atavistic, nativistic.

I still won't guess what MZD is attempting, but what he achieves is a kind of Whitmanesque/Blakean ode to youth/experience/life/death/pessimism/optimism.

There - that should hold you for a while.

EDIT: mispelled nativistic.

[Raminagrobis]

I still won't guess what MZD is attempting, but what he achieves is a kind of Whitmanesque/Blakean ode to youth/experience/life/death/pessimism/optimism.

That sounds good, I'll gladly go along with that.

Appropriate (is it?) that you describe it as an 'ode'. Its mode is essentially more lyrical (in the strict sense) than narrative, with all that entails: and there are no characters in lyric other than the implied 'I' of the poetic consciousness.

[modiFIed]

there are no characters in lyric other than the implied 'I' of the poetic consciousness.

Yes, exactly. Keats' nightingale, etc.

[nicolae]

I have to agree with aslid. Like him, I'm not a lit major, and certainly don't have the encyclopedic knowledge of literature that many of you seem to display, but I still have an opinion, so here it goes.

I don't like OR nearly half as much as I liked HoL, or even T50YS. MZD seems to have spurned many storytelling principles in return for a little bit of mystery. Mystery, of course, drew me to House of Leaves, but HoL had deep plot, and deeper characters. As I read OR I honestly connect with neither Sam nor Hailey. I don't really care what happens to either of them, and that disappoints me. When I read HoL, I wanted Johnny to get better, I was hopeful when he told the story of his two doctor friends in Seattle making him exercise and eat tofu and all that, and felt a little betrayed when he said it was all bullshit. It was compelling.

I agree wholeheartedly that MZD's head is swollen now. Is he any less a genius? No. But he's less of a storyteller. His themes, and all the great subtleties in OR are wonderful, but I really am disappointed.

When reading OR I was reminded of what Steven King "said" in HoL. To paraphrase: People love to argue over whether Moby Dick was representitive of the search for God, meaning, etc, but they always seem to forget that Moby Dick is also just the story of sailors hunting a whale. (I know you guys already mentioned "reading into" instead of reading.

With OR, its almost like MZD doesn't really want you to think about the fact that Sam and Hailey are two teenagers who "give up everything but eachother." And that's a damn shame, because that is a really beautiful foundation, but it got lost. For me anyway.

[Raminagrobis]

But as Raminograbis says "they like 'reading into' but they don't really like, well, just 'reading'."



When reading OR I was reminded of what Steven King "said" in HoL. To paraphrase: People love to argue over whether Moby Dick was representitive of the search for God, meaning, etc, but they always seem to forget that Moby Dick is also just the story of sailors hunting a whale. (I know you guys already mentioned "reading into" instead of reading.

I can appreciate your point of view, but I'm not quite sure I agree with the gloss you're both putting on the reading/reading into distinction. By 'reading into' I meant a sort of adversarial attitude towards the text, a compulsion to impose on it (forcefully) a certain theoretical framework, regardless of whether or not that framework 'fits', a desire to 'do violence' to the text. By 'just reading', I didn't necessarily mean 'getting immersed in the story', 'identifying with the characters', 'being entertained', or any of those things usually associated with the experience of reading the realist novel. I also meant thorough analysis, an attentiveness to the language, an alertness to its ambiguities and ironies, an approach that is broad enough to set ideas in different contexts, to entertain different readings, a sensitivity to formal and thematic elements of the text, a refusal to be satisfied with 'it's just a story', a willingness to work hard at coming to an understanding. And the cultivation of an awareness of the horizon of expectations you bring the text as you make it. And lots of other things too. 'Just reading' is not some sort of passive involvement in the text, it is an active process too.

I didn't mean to sound quite so pompous there, but you get the gist.

[heartbreak]

Just a quick note, great thread guys. Much kudos Hello?

As to the structure of Only Revolutions, I think it is important, just as in House Of Leaves. With HoL I had the experiance of getting lost inside the book, when they got lost exploring. I could not figure out for the life of me where I was suppossed to turn to next, or if I was just suppossed to follow the same path over and over and over, without the type set of the book, I don't think that would have happened, that is part of what makes HoL great in my mind.

As to Only Revolutions, the structure itself imbodies revolutions, 360 words per page (except towards the end of Hailey's story where the gutters are empty) 360 pages, SAMANDHAILEYAND 15 letters, 360/15=24 24 hours to a day, another revolution. I think it all goes to state over and over again that the two people/concepts/ideas that we are reading about are present throughout history, they just keep repeating, revolving into others.

As to the flora and fauna, and the instances in history embedded from his readers... You were there and so when they happen to come across themselves in the book they are there, allthough I missed the THAT submissions, my voice was included in Revolutions of Ruin, and now I feel like I am there as well, we're allways sixteen, I am one of them now, one of the concepts, or one of the ideas they imbody.

Now I'm late for school, gotta run, once again great posting everyone. I'm excited about the discussion going on in this thread.

[nicolae]

I didn't make myself clear. I don't mean to put any gloss on the whole reading into idea. My intention was a comparison of OR and HoL. Let me try to word it better. While House of Leaves was a veritable labyrinth of words, with meanings hidden all over the place, it was still at heart a great story. To put it closer to your idea (Raminagrobis), while that theoretical framework was certainly applicable to HoL, one could indeed delve into it with the same "passive" attitude as something written by say, Hemingway or Fitzgerald, and still be completely absorbed by it (I was on my very first read through). I'm putting passive in quotations because although every text requires, in however small a way, a conscious participation on behalf of the reader, very few require it on the level of OR. House of Leaves is enhanced by such participation, but it is not actually required. Without this intense scrutiny OR's story is lost, or so I feel.

[hello?]

At one level, I can't help thinking he used the word 'math' deliberately to hint that Only Revolutions is in many ways more an equation than a novel.

The main complaint that's coming up in this thread indicates that fans of HoL miss the 'plot' when they read OR; maybe the problem is plot is being thought of as something that must take the form of sequential events?

I believe that the language itself, the themes running throughout, <i>are</i> the plot; a story is being told without the reader even realizing it. Not a story in any traditional sense, of course, but you can almost trace arcs of certain themes --key words rising and falling in prominence, that <i>seem</i> like a plot. At least to me. It may be character driven, but I think the characters are the words. Or maybe the things represented by the words as they flow from Hailey and Sam's mouths. Pens?

In a certain sense, the way the plot is constructed is more like a complex equation than a story. I don't know whether or not this has been attempted by other authors, but if it has I'm unaware of it. Yes, math has been used to determine the structure of novels before; OuLiPo's famous for it, but the thing with OuLiPo is that the math is usually part of an <i>arbitrary</i> constraint, isn't it? With Only Revolutions, it's a much more constructed equation. It <i>has</i> to be an equation to function properly. MZD in a role more like that of god designing the physics of the universe, etc. Which I guess ties into OR as "old school" modernism more than anything.

I don't know, that's what came to mind when I considered Only Revolutions as "math."

Oh, and I guess the reader-submitted items (animal, plant, car, history) would be considered the "variables."

[hello?]

In <a href="http://www.lacitybeat.com/article.php?id=4376&IssueNum=172">this interview</a>, he refers to the style in which OR is written as "quantum verse"...

So perhaps academic math is still in it's Newtonian phase?

Maybe Only Revolutions can only be described in terms of probabilities?

[sutrix]

The main complaint that's coming up in this thread indicates that fans of HoL miss the 'plot' when they read OR...

For me it's the intrigue that was missing. HoL had me at the very first description. Or simply doesn't inspire that sort of intrigue when you first hear about it.

[kevinjbowman]

In a certain sense, the way the plot is constructed is more like a complex equation than a story. I don't know whether or not this has been attempted by other authors, but if it has I'm unaware of it.

It's not as complex as OR but <a href="http://www.ryman-novel.com/">here</a> is a hypertext novel with no real plot -- it's definitely character-driven -- in which the author has imposed certain numerical constraints. I'm surprised it hasn't been mentioned in this forum yet. It used to be listed as an example of ergodic literature on Wikipedia (however, the page seems to have been recently refactored and the examples are no longer listed).

[Rinehart]

With all the talk of OR's "lyricism" and its being "character-driven" we seem to have ignored the fact that there is very definitely a plot here.

Events happen, and they are presented to us in an (ultimately) comprehensible order. Almost every detail, factoid, or reading that we do here on the forums reminds us that this novel moves and pro/regresses. Hell, even the fact that the "history gutter" accompanies the entire reading suggests the underlying presence of a plot progression punctuated by significant events.

In HoL, we read plot for the sake of uncovering character; perhaps in OR we are forced to read character for the sake of uncovering plot.

I enjoyed reading HoL, but ultimately it was more fun than it was rewarding. The characters and plot weren't all that compelling, but the presentation and puzzles were. With OR, MZD's given me something both lasting and fun.

The "academic math" is totally unnecessary in enjoying or reading this book. Yes, it begs to be calculated, measured, figured, and weighed at every step, but it doesn't need to be. Do we need to know about Burroughs' "cut-up" method in order to enjoy The Soft Machine? I don't think so. Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar. Sometimes a whale is just a whale. Sometimes an O is just an O (even when it's also just an O or an O).

[murasamune]

For me it's the intrigue that was missing. HoL had me at the very first description. Or simply doesn't inspire that sort of intrigue when you first hear about it.

yeah. its just not as interesting as just a story, in my opinion, because its a love story. which is why i appreciate all the little nuts to crack (i'll definitely let the world know when i even begin to scratch one) this book really is twice as complex as HOL.. once again in my humble opinion

[hello?]

The "academic math" is totally unnecessary in enjoying or reading this book. Yes, it begs to be calculated, measured, figured, and weighed at every step, but it doesn't need to be. Do we need to know about Burroughs' "cut-up" method in order to enjoy The Soft Machine? I don't think so. Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar. Sometimes a whale is just a whale. Sometimes an O is just an O (even when it's also just an O or an O).

That's fine. But I'm curious. Who said I don't enjoy reading Only Revolutions? And who's to say I don't enjoy pondering what MZD means by "academic math"? Should the two be mutually exclusive? I don't think so.

But now that you've brought it up, I'd like to hear about this "cut-up" method: if MZD is being honest about OR being outside the present industry of academia, then perhaps the only way to define it is by apophasis.

???

[Rinehart]

That's fine. But I'm curious. Who said I don't enjoy reading Only Revolutions? And who's to say I don't enjoy pondering what MZD means by "academic math"? Should the two be mutually exclusive? I don't think so.
I don't think anyone said you didn't enjoy it. I was referring to those on this thread who said they preferred HoL to OR. Enjoy whatever you want. I was just surprised to see how many people think there's no plot in OR.


But now that you've brought it up, I'd like to hear about this "cut-up" method: if MZD is being honest about OR being outside the present industry of academia, then perhaps the only way to define it is by apophasis.
For info on WSB's cut-up method, check this (http://www.lucaspickford.com/burrcutups.htm) out.

For an academic who does seem to have a working vocabulary for OR, check out N. Katherine Hayles's review (http://www.amazon.com/gp/cdp/member-reviews/A1ASQDSG2E8SGQ/ref=cm_cr_auth/102-0307843-3445763?ie=UTF8) on Amazon.

I will say, however, that one of the great things about OR is that it employs the old cinematic "trick" of making all of its readers/viewers into instant critics. To a certain degree, academia has been obviated in OR by asking all of its readers to perform "academic math" (willingly!).

[modiFIed]

I was just surprised to see how many people think there's no plot in OR.


I'm not seeing that. We had been discussing MZD's comment that OR is "character-driven". It is. But who said there's no plot?



For an academic who does seem to have a working vocabulary for OR, check out N. Katherine Hayles's review (http://www.amazon.com/gp/cdp/member-reviews/A1ASQDSG2E8SGQ/ref=cm_cr_auth/102-0307843-3445763?ie=UTF8) on Amazon.


Well, she pretty much condenses everything we've been saying here into a precis. So what's new? Also, I only have the ARC, not the hardcover, but I thought the "No w Here Found" concordance was a list of words not in the book? Which would make her assertion that the book is "generated" from that lsting quite a bit wrong. Although maybe I have that wrong.

[Rinehart]

There were a few suggestions that OR is either plotless or less interested in plot. Here are some choice bits (apologies in advance for the lengthy list of quotes):

It seems to have sacrificed gripping narrative and ignored the reader entirely to produce something to be thought about more than read. and:

I find the plot to be less than exhilirating, and for this I blame the intense structure of the book. It is much harder to write an entertaining and gripping novel when you are bound by various parameters a paraphrasing of MZD:

certainly, HoL was plot driven, because it was plots on top of plots. He chose to make OR more character driven, because that's what the book is about - Sam and Hailey. and again:

I can see why you might say that the novel is more character-based than plot-based: isn't character basically style anyway? more:

Its mode is essentially more lyrical (in the strict sense) than narrative a bit of a stretch, but I think this use of "storytelling" matches the idea of "plot" (where "mystery" refers to the book's puzzle elements, not its mystery plotting):

MZD seems to have spurned many storytelling principles in return for a little bit of mystery. Another person remarking on the same thing I have:

The main complaint that's coming up in this thread indicates that fans of HoL miss the 'plot' when they read OR; maybe the problem is plot is being thought of as something that must take the form of sequential events? a parallel to another "plotless" work driven by "character":

It's not as complex as OR but here (http://www.ryman-novel.com/) is a hypertext novel with no real plot -- it's definitely character-driven
So I'm not sure that I'm off-base in saying that many people in this thread seem to think OR has a less obvious plot, has no plot, or is less interested in plot. Nor do I think I'm creating a strawman by saying that I disagree with that sentiment.

Regardless of how interested I am in the idea that "character" is being opposed (loosely) to "plot" by readers of OR, I think it's absolutely worth noting the transformation plot undergoes in this work. Not only does it resemble the plotting of avant-garde works (embedded, absent, suggested, achronological, layered, etc.), but it also attaches itself to specific linguistic markers and textual materials (the transformations of words over time, of letters, of fonts, etc., etc.).

As for what Hayles actually says in her article, sure, she may or may not agree with some of the conclusions drawn in these forums, but I think she's the first full-time "academic" I've come across to positively review the book. I can't promise she says anything new, but she has a recognizable name in academic circles. So there's at least one visible taker on MZD's dare. Remember, too, that her review is one among many in the "customer reviews" section. I only happened to recognize her name as I was reading through them.

[modiFIed]

So rather than admit your error, you're spinning your own bald assertion regarding all those who claim "there is no plot" to a softened version - that OR is "less interested in plot." That makes sense, since none of the quotes you provide assert specifically that there is "no plot."

Because, as I observed, no one claims that. To claim a work is more "driven" by characters, or more "character-based" than "plot-based," is not to say it has no plot.

As for Ms. Hayles, you didn't address my basic concern that she actually seems to have her facts wrong. If she is indeed an academic, she is probably better suited to Amazon reviews (no peer reviews there). Not that that's your problem. But for the record, a truly "academic" review would probably not ignore the entire remainder of the Western canon in conducting its analysis. Even the stock Amazon reviewer--some poor underpaid grad student locked in a broom closet, no doubt-- draws upon more knowledge of the Western literary tradition than Hayles.

So, nothing personal, but I still don't agree with you at all.

[Rinehart]

So rather than admit your error, you're spinning your own bald assertion regarding all those who claim "there is no plot" to a softened version - that OR is "less interested in plot." That makes sense, since none of the quotes you provide assert specifically that there is "no plot."
"Bald assertion"? Wow, I didn't realize I was doing something so serious! [edited out vitriol]


As for Ms. Hayles, you didn't address my basic concern that she actually seems to have her facts wrong.
I didn't realize I needed to answer for someone else's apparent "mistakes."


If she is indeed an academic, she is probably better suited to Amazon reviews (no peer reviews there). Not that that's your problem.
To the first, ouch; I thought I was doing her and us here a favor by linking to a review that was positive and generally thoughtful. To the second, true.


But for the record, a truly "academic" review would probably not ignore the entire remainder of the Western canon in conducting its analysis.
I'm not quite sure what you're referring to here. You're critiquing a review for what it doesn't allude to? Does it need its own MZD-style concordance of "words not in the book"?


Even the stock Amazon reviewer--some poor underpaid grad student locked in a broom closet, no doubt-- draws upon more knowledge of the Western literary tradition than Hayles.
If the "stock Amazon reviewer" is, in fact, "some poor underpaid grad student," academia is in a sorrier state than I imagined. Here I was thinking that grad students scored lots of chicks, drugs, and money.
[edited further vitriol]

[hello?]

You's guys crack me up.

[thepimpatron]

i think that the whole thing seems a little "off" to me the plot sucks in my opinion its full off things that don't seem to realy mater at all and then the use of animals and plants seems wonton at best like he just picked them out of a list just to get the same hype going for it tha house of leaves had i think that threw the interviews that i have read and the fact i can't even get a copy of the 50 year sword for less then fing 300 $ that the athor that i have come to know and love has disapointed me with this book although i still hold out for the idea that the academic math bs is going to amount to something a formula or something

[CpVb006]

One sentence for the lose.

Also for the lose, poor reasoning.

[Alwin]

Hi all, here are some thoughts from a new guy ;)

I think what MZD means is the following: usually when a novel is discussed it is evaluated on a number of criteria/aspects, like plot development, writing style, chararcter development, historical content, etc. The underlying assumption here is that there exists a sufficient number N of criteria such that when the novel is evaluated by all N criteria, there is not much more to say about it. This may not be exactly true, but only approximately is enough to make my point. The book OR, however, cannot be evaluated in this way imo, i.e., there do not (yet) exist such a list of criteria to grasp approximately all of the book's features.

There is a nice links with "maths" and "equations" here. A mathematical model, consisting of equations, is usually constructed to "model" or describe a reallife situation. However, a model is always only a simplification of reality and is never reality itself. I.e., there do not exist N equations summing up the world or some part of it. Imo, the book OR tries to capture almost everything. It strives to get as close to reality as possible and thus it cannot be represented by a model, or a set of equations (read: evaluated by a set of criteria).

Another link is spirituality (Samsara, reincarnation, cycles everywhere). Often, the state of Nirvana (and equivalents) is described by a long list of things/states it is not, or both. This does not completely describe Nirvana, but approximates it from different sides. In fact, Nirvana cannot be described completely in this way, or any other way. Imo, this also holds for the book OR.

On the side: this is probably also why some people do not like the book when they only consider the plot. The plot is only a small part of OR, a much smaller part compared to "ordinary" books.

[Alwin]

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<!--g-->Hi again. I just realized (I'm slow) that Deconstructionism is probably important in this context. I googled it and found this definition: "A term tied very closely to postmodernism, deconstructionism is a challenge to the attempt to establish any ultimate or secure meaning in a text. Basing itself in language analysis, it seeks to "deconstruct" the ideological biases (gender, racial, economic, political, cultural) and traditional assumptions that infect all histories, as well as philosophical and religious "truths." "



Now if we try to "deconstruct" OR what are we left with? My hypothesis: NOTHING !! And another hypothesis: this has been the goal of MZD all along!

More of the definition I found: "Deconstructionism is based on the premise that much of human history, in trying to understand, and then define, reality has led to various forms of domination - of nature, of people of color, of the poor, of homosexuals, etc. Like postmodernism, deconstructionism finds concrete experience more valid than abstract ideas and, therefore, refutes any attempts to produce a history, or a truth. In other words, the multiplicities and contingencies of human experience necessarily bring knowledge down to the local and specific level, and challenge the tendency to centralize power through the claims of an ultimate truth which must be accepted or obeyed by all."

Sounds like the masterplan for OR to me. Any thoughts?

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