Only Revolutions - Hardcover

Danielewski, Mark Z

3.22

5,692 ratings by Goodreads

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0385611382 ISBN 13: 9780385611381

Publisher: Doubleday, 2006

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From Mark Z Danielewski, author of the cult bestseller House of Leaves, comes the astonishing Only Revolutions, a shoot-from-the-hip American road novel about Sam and Hailey - two wayward and wild kids who magically career across the American mainland and from the Civil Rights Movement to the Iraq War and beyond. Powered by an ever-evolving fleet of cars, these two teenagers never age and never stop. They crash parties in New Orleans, barrel up the Mississippi, and blast through the Badlands, cutting a nation in half as they try to outrace History itself. And where this journey takes them is what sets the pages, even the actual book, turning. Alternating between Hailey and Sam, this kaleidoscopic novel spins the strangest, most gripping and lyrical love story published in more than a generation.

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Review:

KIRKUS REVIEWS
7/15/06
starred review
The daunting maze explored in Danielewski s Borgesian first novel, "House of Leaves "(2000), only hinted at the depths to be plumbed in its intimidatingly innovative successor.
It s a love story, road novel and paean to untrammeled freedom, presented in dual free-verse narratives spoken by Sam and Hailey, two 16-year-old vagabonds who embark on a mythic and allegorical journey across America, in a succession of variously acquired automobiles, during an expanding time period that stretches from the American Civil War to the immediate present. Rebels and malcontents, they repeatedly indulge in Whitmanesque, Rabelaisian arias ( I m The World which / The Mountain descends from and / I laugh because it tickles ), while proclaiming their allegiance to nothing but each other ( Liberty and Love are one ), and eluding or battling characters emblematic of entrenched interests, convention and complacency (e.g., Mad Robber Barons, Hoovercrats ). The publisher helpfully suggests reading eight pages of Sam s story, then flipping the volume upside-down and reversing it, for eight pages in Hailey s voice, until the two narratives meet in the middle of the book. Further complications arise from chronological enumerations of historical events on each page s margins and versified comments on every page presented, upside-down, at the bottom of said page. Self-indulgence? Surely. But there s a real story here, and a persuasive sense that the couple s wild ride is a kind of creation myth that mirrors, as it presumes to explain, America s unruly energies --- as Sam and Hailey experience Hailey s brief dalliance with a macho avatar of military, militant power ( The Creep ), an Ongoing Party in New Orleans, a farcical hospital stay following an apparent overdose and an escape to the heartland and a climactic encounter with the peril pursuing US. They re Bonnie and Clyde, Tristan and Isolde, an X-rated Archie and Veronica and perhaps "All in the Family" s embattled liberal couple Mike and Gloria.
You have to work at it, but it s a trip well worth taking.
"(First printing of 100,000. Agent: J. Warren Frazier/John Hawkins & Associates)
" In his new novel, the author of "House of Leaves" is up to his old tricks multicolored and upside-down text and some flabbergasting new ones, including a double-ended structure that obliges the reader to flip the book every eight pages. "The New Yorker
" Ambitious, meticulous, and original, Danielewski continues to survey the frontiers of the novel . . . The book hurtles you straight onto the road and into the split-screen vortex of the folie a deux of its couple. "Los Angeles City Beat"
A lot is expected of Danielewski as a novelist who forgoes conventions, and he certainly delivers in his latest effort. "San Fransico Chronicle
""A brisk page-turner . . . the heart of the book is its language, a patois somewhere between Kerouac's swagger and Joyce's chin-stroking wordplay. . . . "Only Revolutions" reveals an even stranger side of Danielewski. "Los Angeles Times"
"
""

KIRKUS REVIEWS
7/15/06
starred review
The daunting maze explored in Danielewski's Borgesian first novel, House of Leaves (2000), only hinted at the depths to be plumbed in its intimidatingly innovative successor.
It's a love story, road novel and paean to untrammeled freedom, presented in dual free-verse narratives spoken by Sam and Hailey, two 16-year-old vagabonds who embark on a mythic and allegorical journey across America, in a succession of variously acquired automobiles, during an expanding time period that stretches from the American Civil War to the immediate present. Rebels and malcontents, they repeatedly indulge in Whitmanesque, Rabelaisian arias ("I'm The World which / The Mountain descends from and / I laugh because it tickles"), while proclaiming their allegiance to nothing but each other ("Liberty and Love are one"), and eluding or battling characters emblematic of entrenched interests, convention and complacency (e.g., "Mad Robber Barons," "Hoovercrats"). The publisher helpfully suggests reading eight pages of Sam's story, then flipping the volume upside-down and reversing it, for eight pages in Hailey's voice, until the two narratives meet in the middle of the book. Further complications arise from chronological enumerations of historical events on each page's margins and versified comments on every page presented, upside-down, at the bottom of said page. Self-indulgence? Surely. But there's a real story here, and a persuasive sense that the couple's wild ride is a kind of creation myth that mirrors, as it presumes to explain, America's unruly energies --- as Sam and Hailey experience Hailey's brief dalliance with a macho avatar of military, militant power ("The Creep"), an Ongoing Party in New Orleans, a farcical hospital stay following an apparent overdose and an escape to the heartland and a climactic encounter with "the peril pursuing US." They're Bonnie and Clyde, Tristan and Isolde, an X-rated Archie and Veronica and perhaps All in the Family's embattled liberal couple Mike and Gloria.
You have to work at it, but it's a trip well worth taking.
(First printing of 100,000. Agent: J. Warren Frazier/John Hawkins & Associates)
"In his new novel, the author of House of Leaves is up to his old tricks-multicolored and upside-down text-and some flabbergasting new ones, including a double-ended structure that obliges the reader to flip the book every eight pages."-The New Yorker
"Ambitious, meticulous, and original, Danielewski continues to survey the frontiers of the novel . . . The book hurtles you straight onto the road and into the split-screen vortex of the folie a deux of its couple."-Los Angeles City Beat
"A lot is expected of Danielewski as a novelist who forgoes conventions, and he certainly delivers in his latest effort." -San Fransico Chronicle
"A brisk page-turner . . . the heart of the book is its language, a patois somewhere between Kerouac's swagger and Joyce's chin-stroking wordplay. . . . Only Revolutions reveals an even stranger side of Danielewski." -Los Angeles Times

From the Publisher:

`Danielewski's formidable literary intelligence . . . has here
composed a startling and versatile pair of voices, and a manner of
storytelling which is at once hallucinatory, vague and slyly punning, and
also possessed finally of an authentically tragic register . . . Once
you're attuned to its extraordinary music, there is no way out except
through the end.'
Guardian

'Dazzling prose . . . a step on from his first book . . . Danielewski's
beautiful, Joycean jabberwocky becomes all the more compelling the further
into each end you delve.'
New Statesman

`Danielewski certainly has a way with words. When he soars, he can be
breathtaking, and there are passages that are positively Joycean.'
Sean O'Hagan, Observer

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