Mark Z. Danielewski

Mark Z. Danielewski
Born (1966-03-05) March 5, 1966 (age 58)
New York City, U.S.[1]
OccupationNovelist
GenreSatire, horror
Literary movementPostmodern, ergodic literature, signiconic literature
Notable worksHouse of Leaves, Only Revolutions, The Familiar, Volume 1: One Rainy Day in May
ParentsTad Danielewski
Priscilla Decatur Machold
RelativesPoe (sister)
Website
markzdanielewski.com

Mark Z. Danielewski (/ˈdæniəlɛfski/; born March 5, 1966)[2] is an American fiction author. He is most widely known for his debut novel House of Leaves (2000), which won the New York Public Library's Young Lions Fiction Award.[3][4] His second novel, Only Revolutions (2006), was nominated for the National Book Award.[5]

Danielewski began work on a 27-volume series, The Familiar, although he completed only five volumes before halting the project in 2017.

Danielewski's work is characterized by an intricate, multi-layered typographical variation, or page layout, which he refers to as "signiconic". Sometimes known as visual writing,[6] the typographical variation corresponds directly, at any given narratological point in time, to the physical space of the events in the fictional world as well as the physical space of the page and the reader. Early on, critics characterized his writing as being ergodic literature, and Danielewski has described his style as:

Signiconic = sign + icon. Rather than engage those textual faculties of the mind remediating the pictorial or those visual faculties remediating language, the signiconic simultaneously engages both in order to lessen the significance of both and therefore achieve a third perception no longer dependent on sign and image for remediating a world in which the mind plays no part."[7]

  1. ^ Random House, Penguin (2000). "Mark Z. Danielewski's About the Author Page". www.penguinrandomhouse.com. Pantheon. Retrieved April 11, 2016.
  2. ^ "Mark Z. Danielewski PEN Bio". pen.org. PEN America. 2010. Archived from the original on October 3, 2012. Retrieved April 11, 2016.
  3. ^ Salon Staff (May 1, 2001). "The Young Lions". www.salon.com. Retrieved April 13, 2016.
  4. ^ "Mark Z. Danielewski Forum". Mark Z. Danielewski Forums. VEM. February 29, 2000. Retrieved April 11, 2016.
  5. ^ Mukherjee, Lethem, Nova, Plante and Wiggins (2006). "National Book Award". National Book Foundation. Retrieved April 11, 2016.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
  6. ^ Fiction, Fantastic. "Mark Z. Danielewski FF Bio". www.fantasticfiction.com. Retrieved April 11, 2016.
  7. ^ "The Familiar, Volume 1 Reader's Guide". penguinrandomhouse.com. Penguin Random House. Retrieved 17 May 2022.