Mark Z. Danielewski’s highly anticipated “Only Revolutions” shocked his loyal readership when it hit shelves. Three hundred and sixty pages of bright text with jagged linebreaks and sentence fragments make for dazzling if intimidating read.
“Only Revolutions”, nominated for the 2006 National Book Award, follows up Danielewski’s cult bestseller, “House of Leaves”, in which typographical gimmicks like multiple typefaces, vertical and diagonal text, and a two-color format add visual to verbal stimulation. “Only Revolutions” takes this one step further. The page numbers rotate flip-book style, and each page holds 360 words of the narrative. Each side of the book appears to be the front cover, and indeed the novel starts from both ends. Two 360-page narratives (a full revolution) end where the other begins.
By creating two narratives physically and verbally separate within the bounds of a single cover, Danielewski explores the circularity of history and the very nature of revolutions. One protagonist, Sam, starts his journey at the end of the Civil War; the other, Hailey, starts hers a hundred years later on the day Kennedy was shot. Their stories parallel each other: despite living a hundred years apart, the characters meet, fall in love and travel across the country in an orgiastic road trip replete with period cars and teenage conundrums. Historical marginalia line each page, ambiguously pointing to events the story may or may not concern itself with.
But the plot is less concerned with revolutions than its setting would suggest. Hailey and Sam have lots of sex, usually with each other but sometimes within groups. They find jobs, quit them, and struggle with the law of the land. They narrowly elude their constant pursuers “The Creep” and “Them.” Most pages fill up with the characters’ interior monologues, meditations on love and liberty and life. Neither character ages, and the scraps of plot take a back seat to philosophical and physical meanderings. This, along with the book’s physical aspects, suggests that the title might have something more circular in mind.
Ultimately, Danielewski weaves the physical and verbal aspects of his work to form a coherent whole. The book’s physical beauty contributes to the exploration of the polysemous title, and the dizzying energy of Danielewski’s words saves “Only Revolutions” from “Finnegan’s Wake”-like abstruseness. His palpable, rhythmic language whisks the story far from the realm of the ordinary novel into something more personal, something between a literary experiment and a vibrant new epic.
