Line #22 Creator/MarkZDanielewski


1	[[quoteright:350:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/image_47.jpeg]]
2	[[caption-width-right:350:''"We all create stories to protect ourselves."'']]
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4	Mark Z. Danielewski (born March 5, 1966) is an American author best known for ''Literature/HouseOfLeaves''. His works all employ unique and unconventional styles in terms of [[UnconventionalFormatting the formatting of the text itself]], and also are somewhat infamous for [[MindScrew being very confusing a good portion of the time]].
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6	His works so far include:
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8	[[index]]
9	* ''Literature/HouseOfLeaves'' (2000)
10	* ''Literature/OnlyRevolutions'' (2006)
11	* ''Literature/TheFiftyYearSword'' (initial very-limited release 2005, trade edition release 2012)
12	* ''Literature/TheFamiliar'' Season One (Vols. 1-5) (Originally planned to be a series of 27 books released over a long period of time, paused since 2018 / Volume 5)
13	* ''Literature/TheLittleBlueKite'' (2019)
14	[[/index]]
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16	Each of his books is formatted in a way meant to reference an altogether different art medium - ''House of Leaves'' is connected to the movie, ''Only Revolutions'' is connected to music, ''The Fifty Year Sword'' is connected to campfire stories, and ''The Familiar'' is connected to television series. This is reflected by the style of the books, such as Only Revolutions being written in a somewhat musical, poetry-esque style, and The Familiar being released in several small pieces.
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18	Music/{{Poe}} is his sister, and their works are somewhat connected.
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20	!! Tropes commonly used by MZD
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22	* BilingualBonus: Sometimes you get translations next to the usage of other languages, but not all the time. Literature/TheFamiliar takes it [[ExaggeratedTrope up to eleven]] by including not only about a dozen human languages (including Chinese and Arabic), but also inserting C++ computer code.
23	* CallBack: In his works there often are references to his earlier works. All in all his works begin to approach a SharedUniverse.
24	** The "allways" from ''Only Revolutions'' appearing in ''The Fifty Year Sword'' and ''The Familiar'' - with "allways" itself being possibly connected to House of Leaves (hallways.)
25	** ''The Familiar'' refers to Literature/HouseOfLeaves by printing instances of the word "House" in blue, as in that earlier book.
26	* ColorMotif:
27	** Pink is an important and recurring color in ''The Familiar'', which has pink on the cover, some words printed in pink, and a protagonist who really loves the color pink--whenever her clothes or her other stuff are described they are pink.
28	** House of Leaves does it with black, with many references to how extremely black everything in the house is, plus having a black cover itself. Also it prints the word "House" always in blue.
29	* GratuitousForeignLanguage:
30	** ''House of Leaves'' has a.o. French, German and Latin - some parts translated, others not.
31	** ''The Familiar'' has a few narrators whose native language is not English and sometimes interject their native language (namely, Spanish, Arabic, Turkish, Armenian or Mandarin) in the narrative.
32	* MindScrew: In both content and style, which makes his books controversial as figuring out ''how'' to read them must be accomplished before beginning to figure out what's going on.
33	* SpiritualSuccessor: In terms of his thematic and stylistic preoccupations, he's something of an heir to Creator/JorgeLuisBorges.
34	* TitleDrop: Usually at least one per book, often more. ''House of Leaves'' brings this to its logical conclusion [[spoiler:by having a character ''literally'' read the book ''House of Leaves'']].
35	* UnconventionalFormatting: The master of it. Colored text, upside-down text, a myriad of fonts, text arranged in the shape of what's going on in the book, raining text, footnote labyrinths... the guy does it all. He's gone on record as disowning any adaptations of ''House of Leaves'' in any format other than print, though considering how bizarre that book is, successfully adapting it would be a challenge in and of itself.

Context Creator / MarkZDanielewski