here follows an email book review I just received from my friend David Mahaffey who is moving to Boston in a couple of days (I'm not going anywhere soon)--

Why do good writers rely on gimmicks? Why do readers fall for them? I've just
finished _House of Leaves_, and my assessment is not positive. At first I thought I'd
found a promising novelist who'd read a little too much Calvino and Borges...which is
probably still true. The problem with HoL is that there's nothing holding it
together. There is no viable center, no fulcrum against which the writer can lift the
reader. It's all a stupid game, hidden at first by some beautiful writing, hinting
even at a sound structure. Yet in the end, the structure dissolves, leaving the
characters, the narrative, the plot, and myself blinking at one another in the dark.

At least it wasn't tedious to read, until near the end. The novel's non-traditional
typesetting (designed at various points in the novel to mirror stairsteps, a spiral,
a window, a maze, etc.) is used to surprising effect. A Google search for this novel
reveals some of the most interesting reviews I've ever read--it has a true cult
following, it seems. So does that mean I'm missing a very large point, or that said
critics praise to the heavens that which is a little strange, that which might lift
the curtain and reveal their critical cluelessness?

Regardless, one blurb on the back of the book is great. If I ever have a book
published, I want this review:

"This demonically brilliant book is impossible to ignore, put down, or persuasively
conclude reading. In fact, when you purchase your copy you may reach a certain page
and find me there, reduced in size like Vincent Price in The Fly, still trapped in
the web of its malicious, beautiful pages." -Jonathan Lethem in a review of Mark
Danielewski's House of Leaves

I am mostly packed. Today I am having lunch with X, Z's wife and a delight in her own right. We've worked together at MXMXMX on several projects. Tomorrow is lunch with the boss and a few others, and dinner with the family in Statesville. These farewell dinings make me uncomfortable. I'll be glad when it's all over and I'm sitting, alone in my Boston apartment, staring out the window with my cat in my lap, wondering how on earth I'm going to afford to eat.

David