ift.tt/eA8V8J So. Here is what we have to date with all things Familiar. A timeline, if you will. The first mention of the project was:091510 You can read about that revelation in an interview I conducted here: ift.tt/1u4mOeZ The first mention of a character in the book was:101512 (the interview was slated for 9/15, I was a bit late in getting it done, life, etc...) ift.tt/1u4mOf0 News of advance/deal from Pantheon: ift.tt/1u4mPQa The TF twitter updates: These came on the scene and then stopped. Perhaps in favor for the boxes that were to come later, perhaps because they were analog to volumes that were as of yet unwritten? Either way, their numbering was not chronological, so that would lend one to believe that they were tied to something else, and knowing we have 27 volumes to work with, and knowing that only the first 5 or so were written (it is unknown at what level of completion they were) at that time, so if nothing else, this is a convenient place to start. “How many raindrops?” #TF1 - 091610 How do we remember this emptiness so in fullness we won’t forget? #TF2 - 100710 “Life is allways surpassing us by.” #TF3 - 110410 “Hell is never in the fall, only in the impact.” #TF4 - 111110 “It’s not what said that matters but what is arranged and the voice you hear that goes unsounded...” #TF5 - 112510 “To live many lives is heaven. Hell is to not live even one.” #TF3 - 112610 ift.tt/1u4mOf5 We tried to describe a world. Therein lay our vanity. We never tried to circumscribe the world. Therein lay our salvation. #TF5 - 122510 ift.tt/1u4mOf7 “Everyone has two hearts: the one that lies to help the hurt and the one that tells the truth despite the hurt.” #TF4 - 031711 Here is a rather exhaustive breakdown of the boxes - at least by GPS coordinates: ift.tt/1u4mOf9 The black boxes (27): These were black. And made for a dramatic presentation on Facebook and Instagram - where one normally sees, what is perhaps, familiar, is the banal domestic scene or crafted meal, even a pet, gussied up with a thin film of drama via some filter. But not here. Here we get dead, cold, or all encompassing, deep, forever (forgotten? or remembered?) The sum of all histogram colors, or the absence of anything and everything? Or was the black box meant to act as a blinder to the code, which we found out later, with thanks to XXX were GPS coordinates. Color, even black, in the world of MZD doesn’t exist independent of meaning. Coupled with the deadpan accuracy of the release of the info, every The Hubble boxes (15 to date): After a predictable number of black boxes, we saw a change in them, not in coordinates, those still existed, but in their photographic accompaniment. Now we are given deep-space Hubble shots, many of which appear to be part of a larger mosaic, a cosmic quilt, something one would assume pleasingly familiar to MZD. News of release date: 051915 Funny - all I had to do was ask. Though in truth I didn’t ask about the release date per se, just about possible dates for an upcoming interview, and was thrown the bone of the release date. This was revealed on 7/14/2014 via Penguin/Random House, which owns Pantheon, among others. Parable #9: The Hopeless Animal and the End of Nature Audio file here: ift.tt/1t9CYG0 My (ir)relevant take on it here: ift.tt/1u4mOfc Parable #8: Z is for Zoo: Video file here: ift.tt/1t9CYG5 My (ir)relevant take on it here: ift.tt/1t9CXSt The latest TF announcement and a wordpress site that has sprung up: Announcement: From Pantheon Spring 2015 Catalog: “The Familiar One Rainy Day in May Trade paperback 880 pages $24.00 On sale 05/19/15 From the universally acclaimed, genre-busting author of House of Leaves comes a new book as dazzling as it is riveting . . . A page-turner from start to finish, ranging from Southeast Asia to Mexico to Venice, Italy, and Venice, California, with characters as diverse as a therapist-in-training whose daughters prove far more complex than her patients, an ambitious East-L.A. gang member hired for violence, two scientists on the run in Marfa, Texas, a recovering addict in Singapore summoned by a powerful but desperate billionaire, a programmer near Silicon Beach whose game engine just might augur far more than he suspects, and at the very heart a 12-year-old girl who one rainy day in May sets out from Echo Park to get a dog only to find something else . . . something that will not only alter her life but threaten the world we all think we know and the future we take for granted.” Site: ift.tt/1t9CYGd About section: “Beginning in January 2015, this will be the discussion board for a cross-institutional reading of advance (black & white) copies of Volume 1 of Mark Z. Danielewski’s The Familiar, which is slated for publication in late spring 2015. Discussion leaders will be teaching separate courses on topics ranging from contemporary literature to methods of literary analysis and media studies, all of which will feature The Familiar on the syllabus. To the extent that is possible–with allowances for differences in academic calendars–we will teach the novel at the same point in our respective terms and attempt to coordinate our class conversations. We will be posting discussion threads and inviting commentary from all students and general readers. Participants Rita Raley, University of California, Santa Barbara Amy J. Elias, University of Tennessee, Knoxville Alison Gibbons, De Montfort University Kate Marshall, University of Notre Dame Colin Milburn, University of California, Davis Julia Panko, Weber State University Lindsay Thomas, Clemson University” Conclusions: MZD has gone on record stating that HoL was his take on the book, the printed page - and the reader who chooses to mine that particular vein will be richly rewarded, if nothing else in the identities of the women that Johnny Truant encounters along his journey. Clara English from Oxford being one of the best ever. He then went on to explain how OR was his take on music, 360, repetition, increase/decrease, scales, cyclical storytelling, almost hymnal, melodic and repetitious without being rote. Balance, which is synonymous with harmony. Finally, he let us in on the idea that The Familiar will be his take on the small screen, our humble television. 27 volumes, a pilot, a season and a few specials? Of course that is about all we’ve come to know, overtly, from his mouth - he’s told us that it is about a 12 year old girl who finds a kitten. And then he told us that Redwood will feature as a character, though event he idea of “character” in this sense seems to skirt around the standard definition, despite, or in fact in spite of, the overt reference to HoL - to which all MZD writings at some point pay at least token homage to. The Parables give us much to think about as well, but are they just diversions as he claims, even protests against? OR are they another layer of meta that feeds the imagination of what is to come? We do not know and he likes it that way. And if we are honest and mature in our appreciation for art, we like it that way too. Color scheme: Black and Pink TF “Even Chucky will run.” A call for cat photos. 2 iPads. “All kidding aside, when you think of the 2D nature of a PDF against say, the scalability and compactness of vector characters/fonts - imagine how big one might have to blow up a word map of interconnect dialogues that go down into the electronic page by zooming in to ever-increasing levels of tiny font. Think of the layers. think of the paragraphs of information that could be stored in the single dot of an i and how big a pdf (converted as an image no doubt to retain lines of connectivity) would have to be, if nothing else for an editor to pour over. Think about all this micro/macro verso/recto terrestrial/Hubble GPS data weve been given. Think about that film in school on the power of tens, how the further you go in either direction, you just get more data. Now apply that to literature, to what MZD would want for the simple e-book. IF he did what he has done on 2D dead trees, I cant imagine hed settle for the status quo in digital boundaries either, especially given his reverence/defiance of frames. Just another pet theory of mine.” Thoughts on the mechanics of the story. The film ift.tt/1z9kfdr and what it means to the vector graphic nature of what we might expect from TF. *Obviously some of this is a work in progress, and I will be clarifying, amending, massaging as the needs and time arise. Grant me some latitude.
Posted on: Tue, 16 Sep 2014 23:29:58 +0000
Trending Topics
Recently Viewed Topics
© 2015