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The Fifty Year Sword

by Mark Z. Danielewski (Goodreads Author)

3.57 of 5 stars 3.57 · rating details · 1,650 ratings · 319 reviews

Those who read Danielewski before, will be aware that his expansive realistic writing is simply unique in its kind. For those who have not read House of Leaves, this could be the very opportunity to get to meet easily with his border-seeking literature, that has already appealed to so many fans.

One late October evening at an East Texas
ranch, Chintana, a seamstress recoveri...more

Hardcover, 100 pages

Published September 2006 by De Bezige Bij (first published 2005)

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Nov 03, 2012 karen rated it 2 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: october-is-spooky

candy??

what's this??

okay, so maybe it's not as bad as all that. and maybe as a live shadow show "performed only on halloween night," this would have been more enjoyable to me. but as a book read on halloween night, by someone desperate for distraction after being a hurricane shut-in for a week, it was pretty but not terrifically entertaining.

pretty isn't cutting it.

84 likes · like · see review

Mar 03, 2013 Nathan "N.R." Gaddis marked it as to-read · review of another edition

Without providing a polemical piece on quantitative starrage ratings practiced so frequently in a consumer driven society, for THIS book, I've removed any trace of a star and imply no intention-to-mean by so doing. Sometime to revisit this objet d’art. But probably not until after Only Revolutions, and that one will be deferred.

____________
The following is an execrable review written by someone who had already turned off his mind and did not bother to attempt to understand the book. For an inte...more Without providing a polemical piece on quantitative starrage ratings practiced so frequently in a consumer driven society, for THIS book, I've removed any trace of a star and imply no intention-to-mean by so doing. Sometime to revisit this objet d’art. But probably not until after Only Revolutions, and that one will be deferred.

____________
The following is an execrable review written by someone who had already turned off his mind and did not bother to attempt to understand the book. For an intelligent review of this book see either this goodreads review or this prophie review. Meanwhile, instead of Liking this review, pass on over to a review of a book which deserves a Like even if the Review doesn’t deserve that Like. Say hello to my Cat. And then Like the five star reviews by Megha, Ali, Jonfaith, MJ, David, Jesse, and then tolle, lege. I do this with all the love for House of Leaves which lovers of HoL’s rightfully possess. But that book is no longer and never again shall be MZD.

______________
~~MZD~~ has created a book object

with his newest {re}publication, his

~~Fifty~~ (50) ~~Year Sword~~.

To flex my failed French, we’ll call it

objet d’art.

Something.

It is/was/will be performed avec
           de la musique.  

Maybe here you will find yourself with
                   bits and bytes 



4 your iBook.

i’Objet d’art.

It is stitched with red thread.

~~MZD~~’s little book-story is a childrens’ story, one of by for ~~five~~(5)orphans. Perhaps a childrens’ books for adults’ books? But, yes, only that it requires [doesn’t it?] the imaginative imaginary we find only among our youngest. Perhaps.

Won’t it lead us?

to turn to other

childrens’ books de-sign-ed for the adult; one thinking here of Herrs Coover and Herrs Theroux?

Q:  (view spoiler)[But what about the story? (hide spoiler)]

~~A: White pages~~

______________
what went befour; cf Comments won thru twinty
(view spoiler)(less)

32 likes · like · see review

Mar 01, 2013 Anthony Vacca rated it 1 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: 2013, great-job-your-book-sucks

Let’s go ahead and get this out on the table: this review is going to be very slight on the graces and heavy on the sins of Mark Danielewski’s The Fifty Year Sword. So here are the graces, such as they are:

What we have here is a short horror story à la Stephen King (and nowhere near as good), about a Halloween party that takes a dark turn when a stranger arrives with a long black box and proceeds to tell a story. That’s the plot; the rest are the twists and bloody turns you’d expect from a horro...more

39 likes · like · see review

Oct 16, 2012 Hadrian rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: american, fiction, fantasy

MZD, if nothing else, is an experimenter as much as he is a storyteller. His first and most famous book, House of Leaves, is a great bulk of a book, a maze within itself, brutally tearing at the art of the novel and our own fears. Only Revolutions, by contrast, is a rotten egg, forcing the reader to spin the book every eight pages for little reward. If you try and crack it open with further analysis, you get only a turgid rotten mass inside. Despite all of its attempts at technical innovation, i...more

22 likes · like · see review

Nov 16, 2012 Michelle rated it 1 of 5 stars · review of another edition Recommends it for: Masochists, Suckas

Shelves: olio, disappointments

"'Barf barf barf barf barf barf barf

barf barf barf barf barf barf.

"'Dumb dumb dumb dumb dumb

dumb dumb dumb dumb dumb.

"'I can't believe I spent money on

this

piece of crap.'"

"'Should have learned my lesson

after
Only Revolutions.

18 likes · like · see review

Dec 08, 2012 Ali rated it 2 of 5 stars · review of another edition Recommends it for: Danielewski altar worshippers/completists, if you must.

Formerly a status with comments, but reviewfied and expanded per NR'S request. I like this format better, anyway, because the character limits don't keep me down and limit my creativity as much as those status updates. Consider this my version of sticking it to the man, man! *Insert bong hits.*

The Fifty Year Sword is a special book. Not because of its content, which is as I suspected so average it's average, but because my reading of it marks the only time in my wunnerful wunnerful Goodreadsexpe...more Formerly a status with comments, but reviewfied and expanded per NR'S request. I like this format better, anyway, because the character limits don't keep me down and limit my creativity as much as those status updates. Consider this my version of sticking it to the man, man! *Insert bong hits.*

The Fifty Year Sword is a special book. Not because of its content, which is as I suspected so average it's average, but because my reading of it marks the only time in my wunnerful wunnerful Goodreadsexperience that:
1. I am able to read three hundred pages in twenty minutes, a twenty minutes interupted at the halfway point by a longish visit to Goodreads to read NR'S review of the book and the comments posted to it. I would follow this by saying that all three hundred pages were packed densely with endless paragraphs of palid and purple prose that I was instantly able to decode as I read because my mind, being a remarkable, precious object brimming with intelligence that dazzles my peers when I put it on display by sawing the top off my head, which in turn is quite large as a normally sized cranium is unable to contain a brain this enormous and finely tuned, resulting in my getting stuck in doors on ocasion meaning that five or six people have to shove my shoulders until I pop through them and fall to the floor and throw up my hands to prevent my brain from spilling out of me, a fine price to pay for being so smart, I think, has, due to experiencing the finest and most difficult literature literature has to offer, become accustomed to such writing, but I can't do that, because I would quickly be called out and surely have to leave Goodreads due to my Ostracization for being a dirty liar and an egoist and because of my neverending sadness end up living in a cabin in the woods slaughtering my own meals and once in a while encountering children who, once they have stopped screaming at the sight of my hideous visage, will eventually with the aid of ropes and grrumbled threats sit down to listen to the tale of how a simple lie on Goodreads lead me here and ruined my life. No, the reason this was possible is because the book is less than nine thousand words in total. In comparison, for those who pay no attention to word counts and statistics, the average short story is around five to six thousand words, and six is a stretch, the novella is from fifteen to thirty thousand words (definitions vary), a James Patterson thriller is between seventy and eighty-five thousand words, and a book the size of, let's say, Gravity's Rainbow is about 330000 words. 288 pages should be able to contain, if all the white space were removed, a James patterson thriller. But here, it doesn't, because half of the pages are blank, and the illustrations take up the vast majority of the book's space. It is not unusual to find less than five words on one page, meaning any reasonably fast reader can get through this thing in less than half an hour. Fifty Year Sword could be the only book ever published with so many pages, so little of which is deticated to text, barring works that contain only illustrations. The whole poem, without the illustrations and white space, could comfortably fit into twenty-five pages. and

2. I am using the traditional Goodreads rating system rather than my own subjective one. To wit: it was okay. I thought of giving it a three at first, but considered that other books I've given three stars to are far from okay, in fact I rather like most of them, but FYS didn't match up to those. So two it is.

GIVE US HALF STARS MOTHERFUCKERS!

Further elaboration on both points. As if you need more:
1. It was really seven minutes in. I had been reading for some time, looked at my progress, marvelled that I was already 48% through the book, idly wondered if something had gone wrong in my conversion of it, went to Goodreads, read NR's review, read the comments, read other reviews and concluded most of them were worthless because all they said amounted to "I H8 THIS BOOK BECAUSE IT IS BAD HOUSE OF LEAVES WAS THE BEST EVER BUT THIS BOOK IS TEH WORST EVER", with the exception of one which explained the format, that every other page is blank and there are often no more than ten words on a page, at which point I went back to reading comforted in the knowledge that nothing had gone wrong and I did indeed have the entire book and was finished five minutes or so
later.
2. I wonder if had I been able to see the illustrations and the different coloured text my experience with the book wouldn't have been so... unremarkable. Despite HOL's highly visual nature I found that I could enjoy it even not being able to experience much of the pyrotechnics in which Danielewski engages, but this is if anything more visual, to the extent that I theorize the illustrations may be crucial to propperly reading the text and to do without them might kill any enjoyment there would ordinarily be. As it was, without all that visual shit, I was left with a diversionary, escapist little poem that did almost nothing for me. It wasn't challenging, it wasn't especially fun to read, it simply existed. I think I'm forgetting it already.

It was about an avocado, right?

Right?(less)

14 likes · like · see review

Jan 07, 2013 Bonnie rated it 1 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: adult, fantasy, eek-the-creepies, read-in-2013, seriously-disappointing, library

'What I have to tell you,' he began slowly. 'I must show you. But what I show you I must also tell you. I have only myself and where I've been and what I found and what I now bring. And it will frighten you.'

I'm sure the majority of people that braved House of Leaves would likely never be willing to pick up another Danielewski book again. I know I wasn't planning to, but somehow this ended up going home with me. Quite similar to House of Leaves in that it also has strange formatting and a trippy...more 'What I have to tell you,' he began slowly. 'I must show you. But what I show you I must also tell you. I have only myself and where I've been and what I found and what I now bring. And it will frighten you.'

I'm sure the majority of people that braved House of Leaves would likely never be willing to pick up another Danielewski book again. I know I wasn't planning to, but somehow this ended up going home with me. Quite similar to House of Leaves in that it also has strange formatting and a trippy story that doesn't appear to make any sort of sense. But this one really made no sense, at all.

Any book that starts off the first page with straight-up instructions should be given up on immediately. It's a BOOK. You read the words. No instructions required. But no, we get this long diatribe which the below is only a small section:
'...with characterizing phrases, temporal references, and even more quotation marks hopelessly nested within reiterating nests of still more marks; to delineate their respective and independently conducted interviews, colored quotation marks are used instead...'
If I was smart, I would have stopped there, said:

And went on with my life reading literature which didn't require instructions, or colored quotation marks. Not that the colored quotation marks actually made any fucking sense to begin with. I mean seriously, 1 is supposed to be a light purple, 2 is a yellowish, 3 is an orange, 4 is a red, and 5 is like a dark purple. And each number is supposed to be a different narrator except all the quotations are jumbled. My first thought was that you weren't meant to read the book straight through but read according to the color, but that didn't form coherent sentences so... basically, I ignored the quotation marks, read it in its entirety from the first word to the last, and that didn't really make much more sense than the other way.

Once you get past the first confusing 60 pages or so and get to the root of the story, about the man that came for the five orphans with the large box with five latches. He tells a story of how he obtained that box, and how it's up to the children to open it up. The book jacket was the part that really sold me though... a sword that can kill an idea? Whoa, trippy. Except... it wasn't ever in the book. Yeah, no answer to that either.

This is basically a large jumbled poem, except it's not even that large. Images took up the majority of the 288 pages and no text ever appeared on the right pages (reasoning for that is left unknown). So basically the book likely could have been condensed down to about 50 pages tops. I can only imagine what his publisher thought. I imagine it would've been something like this:
"So, you have a 50 page story but you want to make it 288 pages, not print anything on every other page but sometimes include large images that are completely irrelevant to the story and also include colored quotation marks that appear at random AND include instructions that the reader is supposed to understand but likely never will? Yeah, okay, sure, why not."(less)

6 likes · like · see review

Oct 20, 2012 Amy Nicole rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: e-books, 2011, reviewed

The story itself is short but morbid and fantastical. A mysterious storyteller visits a party one night and tells five orphans a story about the Fifty Year Sword: one that is invisible but deadly. Definitely recommend.

It's written using quotes (from five different narrators) that are pieced together in a poem-like way to create the story. It was difficult to adjust to that pattern at first, but once you get in the rhythm it's great. The plot really picks up about halfway through, and it becomes...more

8 likes · like · see review

Jul 30, 2012 Caleb Ross rated it 1 of 5 stars

This, a video review of Mark Z. Danielewski's The Fifty Year Sword, which gets released in the US in October 2012. Not many people have read this one. And if I can help it, not many more will.

Help me spread the good word by clicking the Like button under the YouTube video. Also, why not subscribe while you're at it?

12 likes · like · see review

Aug 11, 2008 Brian rated it 3 of 5 stars

Recommended to Brian by: Amy Barklow

Shelves: fantasy-fairy-tale

This was written to be a kid's story of sorts. It is short. The art is great. The story is well told. It really picks up about halfway through. You should be able to easily read this book in one sitting. The main idea, without giving anything away, is that there is this sword with an invisible blade. If it slices someone it is razor sharp, but the cut will not appear for 50 years. It is about actions and consequences. About things changing over time.

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Nov 01, 2012 Jaclyn Michelle rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

http://wineandabook.com/2012/10/23/re...

The Fifty Year Sword was originally published in 2005 as a limited edition, and is usually only performed on Halloween night as a live shadow show. This month, however, it was re-released by Pantheon Books and I jumped at the chance to get my hands on a copy.

Like Danielewski's previous work, the story being told is as important as how it's being told, which is as important as how it looks as it's being told. As in House of Leaves, which used multiple fonts...more

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Dec 05, 2012 JJVid rated it 1 of 5 stars · review of another edition

1) Objective description, 2) my review, 3) recapitulation of format.

1) Every other page is blank, the reason for this is not readily apparent (even after reading the book). The pages with text comprise at most 1/5th of a full page, and at minimum a single word "me." The margins (in all four edges) are generous. In total, the book comprises ~30 full pages of text, and that approximation is generous. The artwork is very fine, and the pages are printed on thick paper. The physical quality of the bo...more

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Feb 10, 2013 Ben Peek rated it 2 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Originally published in a limited edition in 2005, then performed in 2010, Mark Z. Danielewski's The Fifty Year Sword was finally released in the US in 2012.

A short story more than a novel or a novella, The Fifty Year Sword takes place on Halloween, when Chintana arrives at a party. She is unsure if she should attend, given that the party is in part a celebration of the birthday of Belinda Kite, the woman with whom her husband recently had an affair, but attend she does, running into five childr...more Originally published in a limited edition in 2005, then performed in 2010, Mark Z. Danielewski's The Fifty Year Sword was finally released in the US in 2012.

A short story more than a novel or a novella, The Fifty Year Sword takes place on Halloween, when Chintana arrives at a party. She is unsure if she should attend, given that the party is in part a celebration of the birthday of Belinda Kite, the woman with whom her husband recently had an affair, but attend she does, running into five children, their social worker, and a storyteller who has arrived with a case to tell them the tale of how he found the sword inside. A soft horror story, it takes no real work to figure out that something bad will befall someone during the party, but in case you can't figure it out, Danielewski foreshadows it fairly easily, offering no twists, shocks, or reveals at the end. All of this sounds pretty slight and, to be honest, it really is--there's not a lot of substance here for the price that you will pay for the book, especially in terms of narrative, or prose invention.

Partly, the problem is how the book is narrated. Stepping out of a traditional narration in the form of a first person, second, or third narration, Danielewski tells the events of the night through five speakers, each of them identified by different coloured speech marks. These are the children, older now, and Danielewski attempts to create that cross stitched narrative by bringing both their younger and older voices to it. A good idea, it is unfortunately let down as Danielewski produces the cardinal sin of the narrative choice and offers no difference in each of the five voices who narrate the story, their conversation overlapping each and defined only by differently coloured speech marks. Now, before you think that harsh, let me assure you that there are plenty of options that Danielewski has open to himself, from changes of grammar, stronger language choices, etc. He doesn't need to fall into the trap of bad comic book accents to distinguish the difference, which perhaps he thought he would, given that no attempt has been made to provide to give them distinguishing qualities. In the end, his sin of prose ends up turning the voices of The Fifty Year Sword into the voices of a script, waiting from an actor to give them flesh, to have them spoken, of which I am sure the later performances would have exactly done. There, the overlapping, interrupted, broken narrative of five voices would have become a thing of fabulousness. Here, however, on the page, you can be forgiven for thinking it's one voice, and one voice retelling a story that, at its base, is a fairly uninspired short story.

But, to be fair, Danielewski is not just about narrative, and the substance of his work is not provided just through that, no. His use of page space, and in this case, his use of it in conjunction of images of real stitching to create an illustrated novel, bring a nice weight to the book. It has a good resonance with his narrative, allowing the reader to pick up on the story that binds the five children together, that sows their lives to Chintana's, to Belinda Kite's, and to all of those who attended the party. For the most part, the illustrations work well, though my one criticism is that they never seem to be sure if they are part of the narrative or an accompanying illustration, which creates a sense of imbalance in their use. There are also long sections where they just don't appear in the book, leaving a huge amount of white space to occupy the early pages. The downside of this it that it further leaves the reader with an impression of book not having a lot of content to it, either in its story, its ambition with the page, or its structural play.

In the end, I kept returning to that. No matter your opinion of Danielewski's previous novels, there's no arguing that there is a lot of substance in both, and that is, in truth, what is lacking in The Fifty Year Sword. The design of the book is so that it gives you the impression of being a weighter work, one that will engage you for more than thirty, forty minutes, wherein the actual content of it doesn't support that. It was the kind of piece that, if it were part of a collection, a portion of a larger display of Danielewski's shorter work, it would be considered interesting. Coupled with half a dozen other similarly sized projects, The Fifty Year Sword would result in a nice, meaty volume of work. After all, there was nothing I overtly disliked in it, despite the lack of difference in each and every voice that narrated, and there were things to like, such as when the children opened the case. But there's no denying that there's really just not much there for what you pay.

Bit of a shame, really.(less)

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May 23, 2013 Chris rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: adult, dark, illustrated, life, horror

I give Danielewski points for finding an inventive and original way to tell his story, and for the story itself, which I enjoyed.

Unfortunately, the frame for the story (that frames a story within it), the form and structure of the words on the page, the artwork, and everything about this book imply there are layers upon layers of meaning to be found by the astute and careful reader. Which means I'm too lazy and obtuse a reader for the book, the layers are too obscure for the average reader, or t...more

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May 02, 2013 Life Between Coffee Spoons rated it 2 of 5 stars · review of another edition

After reading and loving House of Leaves, I've looked for other books by Danieleswki for a while. It was by total chance that I wandered by this one on the new book shelf at the library, and I eagerly snapped it up.

Obviously I knew to expect something strange and experimental, but HoL, this is not. The story revolves around a housekeeper and five orphans who have gathered for a party. There, they hear a tale from a story teller about the eponymous sword. However, all that exists are sparse snipp...more

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Apr 15, 2013 Scott Paul rated it 1 of 5 stars · review of another edition

A glowing write up on Slate.com left me excited to read 'The Fifty Year Sword', which was commended as an inventive and promising implementation of the ebook format.

It is not. It is the sort of story one might make up ad hoc for a child at bedtime. It is told in affected, muddled prose that is sometimes dressed up with animated illustrations and text the likes of which one might see in a tedious, unskippable Flash animation introduction to an inelegant and over-designed web site. It is occasiona...more

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Mar 29, 2013 Stacia rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: 2013

Well, I got my cup of coffee & read this in one sitting. My initial thoughts....

It reads very well as a piece of ongoing modern poetry. (I don't even consider myself a fan of poetry.) At first, I wondered if I should try to read each color quote as a separate thread, but quickly discarded that notion. I didn't really try to keep the different 'speakers' straight, rather read it straight-through as voices interweaving. I enjoyed Danielewski's word-play too -- sometimes giving a lighter edge,...more

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Mar 21, 2013 Sara rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: 2013, library-book, current-fiction, horror

Mark Z. Danielewski originally wrote this story tone distributed in small limited edition copies, and eventually it was turned into a play that was performed on Halloween night. This is a very short story/novella that has the 'Danielewski' touch- he uses colors and images to enhance the reading experience.

The story is told from a narrative of five orphans, each sentence being pieced together, and revolves around a birthday party. Belinda Kite is celebrating her 50th birthday party and she invit...more

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Mar 06, 2013 Maggie rated it 1 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Well, this was a complete waste of time. It's a mildly interesting (at best) six-page short story stretched over 284 pages. Told by five different speakers, orphaned children, who all speak exactly the same, saying only a word or phrase each before another jumps in, with their speech offset only by different-colored quotation marks. Pretty, but distracting and unnecessary. Normally, when using different voices to tell a story, those voices tend to sound different, have a different perspective, o...more

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Mar 02, 2013 Bobby rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

3.0 stars out of 5. I received House of Leaves as a gift some years ago and received The Fifty Year Sword as a gift this past Christmas. I expected the terse format to be broken and knew the words could appear anywhere on the page, it was a nice break having just finished a very long book. There will be spoilers ahead. I did not like the main character's name- Chintana. There were some other unusual names and words in the book, some of them worked as mysterious and interesting, but Chintana soun...more

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Jan 12, 2013 Nathan Titus rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

My favorite part of this book was the evil storyteller and his story. In particular, the man with no arms. The sword illustrations for that scene really need to be lingered on. I really can't understand why so many people didn't like this book. It's true that the colored quotation marks don't make that much sense, but once you ignore them and just read the story, it becomes trippy and creepy and surreal. The only thing that prevents a 5 star rating is:

1)It was too short. Since it was originally...more

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Jan 13, 2013 Melanti rated it 1 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: horror, library, 2013, illustrated, short-story-novella

One of the most impressive things I can say about House of Leaves is that all typography that looks insane if you're randomly flipping through the pages makes perfect sense while you're reading it. But with this one, for me the non-standard typography detracts from the book.

With House of Leaves, the typography echoed the story. As the characters twisted and turned through the labyrinthine hallways, you had to twist and turn your book to keep up with them. As they moved further down a dark hallwa...more

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Jan 09, 2013 Beth Browne rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Holy cow. This book is something else. I actually put it back on the shelf at first because it looked too weird and then something made me pick it up again. It's a very strange tale told in a very unusual way, with illustrations that didn't add much, imo, until the gaspifering end. And yes, the author is marvelously fond of combining words in quirky and extremely charming ways.

My only qualm with the book, which isn't enough of a qualm to even mark it down one star, is the confusing use of color...more

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Jan 03, 2013 Eri-chan rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Aesthetically, this book is stunning. The cover is embossed; the pages, weighty and ever-so-subtly textured; the printing, crisp and clear; the text layout, intriguing; and the embroidered illustrations, truly unique and beautiful. Its a gorgeous work of visual art and for that reason alone I hope to own a copy of my own.

The story itself is brief but suitably creepy, certainly worthy of Halloween-night retellings. The idea of a live shadow play is intriguing, and I hear Danielewski is planning a...more Aesthetically, this book is stunning. The cover is embossed; the pages, weighty and ever-so-subtly textured; the printing, crisp and clear; the text layout, intriguing; and the embroidered illustrations, truly unique and beautiful. Its a gorgeous work of visual art and for that reason alone I hope to own a copy of my own.

The story itself is brief but suitably creepy, certainly worthy of Halloween-night retellings. The idea of a live shadow play is intriguing, and I hear Danielewski is planning a full stage production... sign me up!

However, the signature quirk to this book - the story is told through snippets of "quotes" from 5 different people, strung together to form a continuous narrative - to me seems extraneous and unnecessary, and added little to the overall experience. I started out making careful note of the color of the quotation marks which preceded each snippet, as the color was meant to differentiate between "speakers" and I was sure it would be significant, but this made it almsot impossible for me to actually retain the story itself and I gave up after a few pages. Its perfectly easy to just ignore the quotes entirely and read the narrative as you would any other, which from my perspective did not adversely affect my understanding of the story; so, why bother with this conceit? Is it just because Danielewski is expected to turn narrative conventions on their heads in everything he writes than he continues to do so, or did this really mean something significant? I honestly don't know.

The ficticious words (almost entirely formed by combining two existing words into something that, presumably, is meant to take on the definition or at least implication of both) are also worth mentioning, in that I found them more interesting than his 5-narrator scheme, but also essentially unnecessary. Eventually I found I read right over these words when they appeared, taking their meaning based on context, and stopped puzzling over the wider ramifications of each one. I think these are worth revisiting from a purely linguistic sense, but again, they were inessential to my experience of the book's plot.

I suppose at some point I'd also go back to this and try to tease out exactly what is going on with the 5 narrators, but the pull that House of Leaves generated is definitely not there.(less)

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Dec 22, 2012 Ambre Lee rated it 1 of 5 stars · review of another edition

I performed a read aloud to my husband on the 405 on our way to ThinkSpace-who interrupted me rudely with-what a pretentious (insert offensive but fun expletive)-I overrode his insertion with loudness and dramatics-trying to envision the puppet show enactment of the story. Is it-I asked he-so horrible to listen to as it is to read? It is-said he- abhorrent.
As it were, the 405 was terribly backed-up and we had no other means of entertainment. I tried ploughing through more pages-read with intensi...more

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Dec 19, 2012 Ned rated it 1 of 5 stars · review of another edition

This story may work as the script for a puppet show (which the author apparently performs each Halloween). It most emphatically does not work as a book.

The book is very short; you can probably read the text in 30 minutes or so. I'd encourage you to do so in the aisle of your bookstore so you can see what you're buying. The plot is so slight as to be nearly invisible (like the blade of the titular sword) and for this reason it really rankles when the final climactic scene turns out to be so utte...more

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Dec 18, 2012 Dale R. Wilsey Jr. rated it 2 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: 2-star, fiction

A first and possibly last venture into Danielewski pages. I was lent this book from a friend of mine. She thought that maybe I'd enjoy it. I can't say that there weren't moments or excerpts which I did, actually, enjoy. Some pieces I may have even found beautifully tragic:

...in spite of so many climbing / figures / on so many / paths, I was completely / alone up there. / Far worse than the / petrified shadows and the falling / notes, the multiplication upon / multiplication of my own solitude /

...more A first and possibly last venture into Danielewski pages. I was lent this book from a friend of mine. She thought that maybe I'd enjoy it. I can't say that there weren't moments or excerpts which I did, actually, enjoy. Some pieces I may have even found beautifully tragic:

...in spite of so many climbing / figures / on so many / paths, I was completely / alone up there. / Far worse than the / petrified shadows and the falling / notes, the multiplication upon / multiplication of my own solitude / brought me rapididly to the edge of despair...

But small passages and bits of a thread do not hold me together for an entire (do not take that word to signify lengthy) book.

While I was reading, and before I knew any better, I couldn't help but imagine this as a stage play of some sort. Low and behold, this was performed as a shadow show. It would probably do better to stay as such.

Many of the things complained about in other reviews I can look past. The formatting of the words does not bother me at all. I knew Danielewski was known for playing with format in extreme ways just by flipping through a copy of House of Leaves which still sits on a shelf in a closet unread at my father's house. Reading lots of poetry, as I am oft to do, significantly improves my tolerance for experimenting in format. I can see where it may get annoying for the casual reader, however.

The blank pages seemed wasteful and unneeded. As far as I can guess, MZD kept them blank to keep from cluttering the format up more than it needed to be...but who knows where his mind was with the decision.

The illustrations were interesting, but used, mostly, as a sort of background noise with no real form or true image. Abstract would be the word I'm looking for. However, some of the images held a more solid form and idea. I'll give the book points for that. Maybe he could have dressed up the blank pages with some more of this. But I digress.

The story line, at first, is rather jumbled and garbled. Eventually it comes around and you get used to MZD's penchant for fabricating words out of already-existent words. Well, it's more of an intentional misspelling or addition of extra letters rather than a fabrication which are prone to breaking up the pace of the story. Maybe that was his intention. Who the hell knows?

I suppose I can't do too much complaining seeing as how it took me less than an hour to read the book. It's also a plus that I didn't have to purchase it. So, I gave it a shot. It was OK, but I'm almost indifferent about it save for the few little pieces I did get some enjoyment out of. If you're curious, you could always find it on the shelf and read it in the store. It wont take you long.

After this read, I'm confident that the (probably) dusty copy of House of Leaves will remain unread. At least for the foreseeable future.(less)

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Dec 07, 2012 Kwinks rated it 2 of 5 stars · review of another edition

As an OG who read HOL years ago and still have not received my t shirt that says "I survived House of Leaves", I picked up the Fifty Year Sword with zero intention of reading it. I was drawn to the holes in the cover. Flipping through, I saw how short it was and thought: how bad could it be?
Other reviewers have done a great job of listing what is different about this story, so I wont get into it. Personally, I thought the book jacket copy was way cooler than the story itself. A sword that kil...more

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Dec 04, 2012 Scott rated it 1 of 5 stars

It's official. Mark Z. Danielewski has lost his mind.

Let's get my quick impressions out of the way first. This book is attempt at ee cummings in long form with little drawings throughout. It's nearly incomprehensible for half of the book, then resumes a fairly straightforward narrative that leads... NOWHERE.

"House of Leaves" was so good, so very very good and scary and different. Danielewski really proved himself to be a fresh and fascinating voice in literature... Then came "Only Revolutions,"...more

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Nov 26, 2012 Liam Day rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

The Fifty Year Sword is an unusual book. It is relatively short, especially compared to Danielewski's other books. Its illustrations are stitching, not drawings. It is told by five people who interrupt each other while telling the story. It begins with a sewing woman going to a dinner party hosted by an old man who is rarely seen, even though a woman that she very much dislikes will be there. Then a storyteller arrives for five orphans who have come to the party with a social worker. The majorit...more

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About Mark Z. Danielewski

Mark Z. Danielewski is an American author. He is the son of Polish avant-garde film director Tad Danielewski and the brother of singer and songwriter Annie Decatur Danielewski, a.k.a. Poe.

Danielewski studied English Literature at Yale. He then decided to move to Berkeley, California, where he took a summer program in Latin at the University of California, Berkeley. He also spent time in Paris, pre...more

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