I wanted to respond to the over all feeling of being upset about the reading I felt from classmates before class. I ask why? What is it that is truly upsetting? By taking a look as other posts it is clear that many observations were made and with that being said why not interpret these findings in order to discover meaning within the text?

This is what I have tried to do and it has made the book quite interesting. I see it as almost a from of poetry with the occasional prose and have decided to try and comprehend it as such. The style is very interesting to me and not only do I find reading this book soothing and enthralling to explore but also as a chance to discover new things. Never have I seen anything like this. It truly expands the horizons of what is art and literature and where may they overlap.

Perhaps it is my growing up in a residential arts high school, but I have always been taught to dig deeper. Plenty of literature may not “make sense” to the reader and though, I do not know which genre I would place Only Revolutions, I do know that there is reasoning behind the authors choice.

Another statement I heard from one of my colleagues is that “I hate literature that is written solely to be analyzed” and to you I ask, was it? What is it that makes you think that Danielewski would write a “mystery book” just so others would analyze?

Do we have to analyze all texts with the mind or can we allow them to effect us on the emotional level?

Lastly I wanted to discuss the idea of time-something many of us have posted about in our comments. We have two characters…100 years apart that interact with one another. This baffles the heck out of me and I have not a clue why either. The only applications I have with time and the novel is the disconnect and circular figure of a clock. It is almost as if even time revolves and that once one end of the book is finished you could nearly begin back at the other side and start again.

Salvador Dalí has painted a picture entitled “The Persistence of Memory” and it can be found below. I feel that this relates in the somewhat abstract sense of the picture.

I saw it as the combination of realism and the abstract – very similar to that of Only Revolutions. Dalí takes something real and distorts it giving it deeper meaning and thus more lessons to be learned (it just takes a little digging).

 

The Persistence of Memory - Salvador Dalí

The Persistence of Memory – Salvador Dalí