This morning, I received the copy of Demon Theory
According to the dust jacket:
On Halloween night, following an unnerving phone call from his diabetic mother, Hale and six of his med-school classmates return to the house where his sister disappeared years ago. While there is no sign of his mother, something is waiting for them there, and has been waiting for a long time. Written as a literary film treatment littered with footnotes and experimental nuance, Demon Theory is even parts camp and terror, combining glib dialogue, fascinating pop culture references and an intricate subtext as it pursues the events of a haunting movie trilogy that is all too real.
It sounds a lot like Scary Movie meets House of Leaves
In flipping quickly through the book, I couldn't not notice the footnotes (and footnotes to the footnotes) appearing on nearly every page. I absolutely loved House of Leaves, which uses footnotes and appendices as integral literary devices guiding the reader through its labyrinthine eponymous character. It wouldn't have been the same book without them. Over at the LBC, much of their Demon Theory discussion focused on the footnote issue, and the consensus was that they distracted rather than moved the story forward. I'm looking forward to reading it and drawing my own conclusions.
But (You knew there was a "but" coming, right?) seeing Demon Theory's page layout reminded me of a semi-unpleasant cereal I recently tasted. Last time I went grocery shopping, I bought a box of Kashi Go Lean because I had a coupon and I'm one of those intestinally-challenged people who needs a lot of fiber. Although I'm no stranger to eating sawdust, I like my sawdust to be appealing. The front of the box describes Go Lean Cereal as "crunchy fiber twigs, soy protein grahams and honey puffs." Despite wondering why Kashi couldn't come up with a more appetizing word than "twigs," I figured the "honey puffs" would be okay. They're not. They look deceptively like Kellogg's Honey Smacks, but taste every bit as twiggy as the "twigs."
On the surface, Demon Theory looks kind of like House of Leaves. I hope there's some honey in it and not a whole bunch of twigs.
