At Least This Explains All The Cat T-Shirts

[fearful_syzygy]

Unless, of course, "installment" isn't synonymous with volume.

Seems it is, at least for the author of that article. "Installment" is what it says in the caption, but in the body it says "The novel will be released on a rapid timeline almost unheard-of in the publishing industry: one volume every three months, beginning in 2014."

[heartbreak]

of Leaves was about a movie. is a movie. The Familiar is a TV show?

[consider us dead]

I fear I might not last the distance...

[ThereIsNoDarkSky]

Also, did anyone notice in the article, the summary is that it's about a girl who saves a cat? Is this new information, or do you think the writer of the article was just getting a little ahead of himself?

[heartbreak]

Also, did anyone notice in the article, the summary is that it's about a girl who saves a cat? Is this new information, or do you think the writer of the article was just getting a little ahead of himself?

Saves vs finds?

[kaseycarpenter]

I imagine the 1MM was paid to MZD, and of course a nice slice to his agent, WF. Sorry, wrong agent - should read JRW of WME.

[ThereIsNoDarkSky]

Saves vs finds?

Yeah! Those are rather different events!

[Slow Dog Noodle]

Hold on everybody. Let me get the mat out first.

[po-m]

Damn. That's what we get for encouraging him by talking about his other books for so long. This is all our fault, really.
p.s. The first comment under the article is kind of ironically amusing.

[John _Rage]

The first comment under the article is kind of ironically amusing.

That's what I'm here for.

[heartbreak]

Just crunching a few page numbers.

If each volume is 50 pages, the entire thing will be 1350 pages.

100 pages per volume, 2700 pages total.

Considering how much work and effort he puts into every page, the timeline for release is really no surprise.

[Emöjk]

50 pages? This seems rather short. But then again, it depends on what is on each page.

[heartbreak]

50 pages? This seems rather short. But then again, it depends on what is on each page.

A conservative estimate to illustrate how massively long it will be.

[Hazel]

http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/jack...-familiar.html

[ThereIsNoDarkSky]

...Huh. I liked the first article better.

[po-m]

It would also be nice to be able to find this shit on our own instead of having it spoonfed to us. It's not like we have much to do around here lately anyway.

[Magda]

Speaking of Dickens (in the article): it seems really that we return to former times. The count makes his public announcements through the papers now. Will he use "we" instead of "I" in future? :)

The novel will be a steampunk novel!

Good news in the last sentence: OR will be out in German; the publishing house announces it for March 2012.

[heartbreak]

Yeah! Those are rather different events!

Ok. I'm starting to see your point. I think I've been hanging around veterinarians in training for too long. Where finding a cat is synonymous with rescuing it. But I can see how this could be the difference between Johnny and Johnnie.

[Emöjk]

It would also be nice to be able to find this shit on our own instead of having it spoonfed to us. It's not like we have much to do around here lately anyway.

Yes, he should leave cryptic clues on his twitter account for us to decode into the publication date!

...You're kidding, right?

[po-m]

Fuck no. There's a large margin between posting a link to every major newspaper that regurgitates his press release and having to decrypt ridiculous twitter messages. It's called Google.

[Splendorr]

Reading, Which Is Developed In Duration.
or, some entirely unintelligible bits by Jackie D.

1. Does not one lose what counts?

2. Everything that defies a geometrical-mechanical framework — and not only the pieces which cannot be constrained by curves and helices, not only force and quality, which are meaning itself, but also duration that which is pure qualitative heterogeneity within movement —*is reduced to the appearance of the inessential for the sake of this essentialism or teleological structuralism.
3. ... theatrical or novelistic movement ...
4. ... more organicist than topographical ...
5. This aesthetic which neutralizes duration and force as the difference between the acorn and the oak, is not autonomously Proust's or Claudel's. It translates a metaphysics. Proust also calls "time in its pure state" the "atemporal" or the "eternal."
6. The truth of time is not temporal.
7. Analogously (analogously only), time as irreversible succession, is, according to Claudel, only the phenomenon, the epidermis, the surface image of the essential truth of the universe as it is conceived and created by God. This truth has absolute simultaneity.
8. Like God, Claudel, the creator and composer, "has a taste for things that exist together."
9. "Time is manipulated like an accordion, for our pleasure," such that "hours last and days are passed over."
10. "In any event, reading, which is developed in duration".
11. "Similar to a 'painting in movement,' the book is revealed only in successive fragments."

12. "The task of the demanding reader consists in overturning this natural tendency of the book, so that it may present itself in its entirety to the mind's scrutiny. The only complete reading is the one which transforms the book into a simultaneous network of reciprocal relationships: it is then that surprises emerge."

13. (What surprises? How can simultaneity hold surprises in store? Rather, it neutralizes the surprise of nonsimultaneity. Surprises emerge from the dialogue between the simultaneous and the nonsimultaneous.)
14. Simultaneity is the myth of a total reading or description, promoted to the status of a regulatory ideal. ... By saying "simultaneity" instead of space, one attempts to concentrate time instead of forgetting it. "Duration thus takes on the illusory form of a homogeneous milieu, and the union between these two terms, space and duration, is simultaneity, which could be defined as the intersection of time with space."
15. In this demand for the flat and the horizontal, what is intolerable for structuralism is indeed the richness implied by the volume, every element of signification that cannot be spread out into the simultaneity of a form.

16. But is it by chance that the book is, first and foremost, volume?

17. Kafka says, "Writing's lack of independence of the world, its dependence on the maid who tends the fire, on the cat warming itself by the stove; it is even dependent on the poor old human being warming himself by the stove."

18. The inconveniency arising from the enormous bulk of volumes, induced them to make use of only a single figure to signify several things.

We've all been reading these books over the course of years, anyway. This is part of that. This is the same as that. We are always doing (again) what we have (not quite) done.

[po-m]

This is your brain on drugs.

[ThereIsNoDarkSky]

po-m, while I do certainly enjoy the convenience of this information (lit and burned through like a cigarette), I agree with you in full! I wasn't around during the release of OR, and I envy all who got to witness and participate in the release process.

[fearful_syzygy]

This is your brain on drugs.

Actually it's mostly his brain on Derrida (which may be the same thing), Writing and Difference (Routledge 2001) 23-29.

[po-m]

Actually it's mostly his brain on Derrida (which may be the same thing), Writing and Difference (Routledge 2001) 23-29.

Yeah, but the S.O.B. could sure reason his way out of it.

[Johnny Truant]

So the This is Your Library interview was interesting. We got to hear more about Mark's trip to Burning Man: "I dislike heat. I dislike crowds of people. I dislike loud techno music. So I went to Burning Man." We got confirmation that Redwood is a character in The Familiar. Oh, and a chance encounter Mark had with Redwood in the desert. Plus, Mark seemed awfully familiar with pop-up books...

Special non-Familiar bonus revelation: Sewing projects involved with the U.S. Edition of T50YS?

The whole thing will soon be up in Archive format at yowie.com for your viewing pleasure.

[heartbreak]

Nice! Thanks JT! Redwood as a character? Now that's an interesting spin.

[marsjams13]

very very. Thanks JT!

[John _Rage]

Wow awesome! Thanks for the update JT!

[technocookie]

Just a further update on JT's promise: the interview is now up at yowie. I can't post links, but it's the first result for the search "Mark Danielewski" . The interview proper starts at about 1h30m.