Re-Crossing the Old Threshold

First published at Jawbreaker Zine, October 2019

For the second time in just a few years, I’ve finished my favourite novel. It feels like decades 

since I last stepped over the threshold, breathed a sigh of relief and escaped from this book. Like 

the main character, Will Navidson, I felt I needed to explore the strange, deranged world of this 

book again, recross my old paths and throw myself back into the void. 

Like the labyrinthian hallway at the heart of this book, the pages shift and distort 

themselves until you’re not sure you’re heading in the right direction. You sit on the morning 

train and turn the book upside down, side to side and upright again just to keep up. 

This story 

jumps 

around 

a lot. 

I t s l o w s r i g h t d o w n 

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At times it feels like it doesn’t want to be read. In fact, upon second reading, this book 

DEFINITELY DOES NOT WANT TO BE READ! 

At other times, it has your full atte 

ntion, wrapped up in a tight tiny box. 

Sometimes it whispers so quietly that you can barely make out what is being said. What does this book mean? It is unfathomable. 

THEN SUDDENLY IT IS SCREAMING IN YOUR FACE 

AND BEGGING TO BE HEARD, TO BE STUDIED AND 

UNDERSTOOD. HEAR ME! HEAR ME! HEAR ME! 

I was pulled back into these pages by an urge to know deeper, to explore the mysteries of this 

bizarre text and feel that fear again. This is the only book to ever truly scare me. 

JOHHNY TRUANT is always intruding upon the central 

narrative with his endless footnotes. Although his tangents 

appear disjointed and fragmentary at first, you quickly adapt 

and become helplessly drawn into his story too. By the end of 

the novel, it’s close to impossible to say goodbye to him. 

On the second reading, I felt more apprehensive of this 

intrusive protagonist, more removed from his storyline. His 

mother drew me in more with her failing mental health and 

spiralling state of consciousness. I believe this was always 

the author’s intention, to frame Johnny through the 

retrospective lense of his mother’s POV, foreshadowing their 

strained relationship and punctuating it with her letters to 

him right at the end with the appendices. 

[The story still remains one of the most immersive experiences of my life] 

The way Danielewski plays with language over every page is both captivating and 

inspiring as a poet and writer. The novel is deeply layered with all manner of intertextual 

references, subtext and hard-hitting themes of depression, identity, myth and legend. 

I could rave on about this book for hours. I was recently approached in a bar by 

someone who had also been enthralled by this book. We spoke about how this novel is geared 

more toward a male audience: the characters are predominantly male, the subject matter highly 

critical of masculinity and the male psyche and the conclusions on men’s approach to love and 

intimacy are all there. But I think an audience of any gender would be engrossed by this text. 

I’ll let the next person pick it up and find out for themselves the impact of this tome. 

It will gonna grab you, kiss you, cut you, bite you, maybe even swallow you up entirely. 

Maybe it will spit you out like it did to me a few years ago. Maybe you’ll crawl right back down 

the mouth, past the teeth and slip down into the belly for another venture at it. Speaking as a 

reader having been regurgitated for the second time, I can only see myself jumping down the 

throat of this terrible beast again in the near future. 

This book will hurt and haunt you. 

I am not the same person I was yesterday or even three years ago. 

Don’t say I didn’t warn you.

Image courtesy of Pantheon Books