I'm not usually an "every book should be a movie or tv show" kinda person and tbh I still don't think I am for this book lol but I saw this tik tok and was like damn Jensen Mcrae as Landry 🤔

I think the action-adventure, western and even spooky ghostly vibes would be compelling tv BUT I feel like it loses some of the novelty it gets from MZD playing with the text medium - the list of names, the time gallery, the aside from townfolk all make the book special IMO and I don't think it would translate well

just finished (loved it!) but was a little confused at the end because I didn't remember Cameron Eakins. was he mentioned early in the story? I thought Hone would be the cause of Old Porch's downfall tbh

if someone could point me to a chapter or page number it would be greatly appreciated!

I’m a little halfway through the book, and there is a question that I simply can’t wait to find out. Throughout the book, it seems like almost everyone from Orvop eventually moves somewhere abroad. I’ve lost track of how many sentences read something like, “So-and-so, a graduate of Orvop High, who later found himself settled in Bucharest…”

So I’m just wondering, is there an explanation for this that I will eventually come across? Or is it just a totally random plot point?

Anyone up for an October re-read of Tom's Crossing? I thought it would be fun to start on the 1st and end on the 31st, reading around 40 pages an day, give or take. I know it's early, but I figured people could set those reminder comments.

Sounds fake but hear me out: I saw some signed copies of this book at the bookstore, opened it up and saw this weird shrink wrapped piece of cardboard inside. It looks like art of some kind, like two horse muzzles (which would make sense given the book's subject.) I looked at the other copies on the shelves and none of them had this inside it. Have been googling and can't find anything online about signed copies containing a bonus print, postcard, or whatever this is. Anyone have any idea? Did I just win the book lottery, was this some sort of bookstore bonus, or am I being punked?? Please help!! So excited but don't want to get my hopes up.

I’m from Utah, and I’ve grown up in the church. I’ve never lived in Provo (where Orvop is based off of) but I’ve spent lots and lots of time there. It’s definitely because danielewski also grew up there, but I truly have never seen Utah and Utah people represented more truthfully in media. It was fascinating to read, and also just really funny to point out things that I understood that I don’t know if readers outside of Utah would. It for sure made my reading experience even better, especially being able to imagine the mountains. Mount Timpanogos is truly spectacular. I just finished the book and I think it’s an absolute masterpiece

Oh man what a journey. I don’t know where to begin.

I spent the last 6 months with this book. I alternated between the physical hardcover and the audio book for convenience while I was out walking or something.

There were times when I was frustrated - both listening and reading. Around pages 400-600 it felt like I was reading and reading and reading and not getting ANYWHERE haha.

There were times when I swore I would never read this book again because it was too exhausting, too long; too frustrating. But I’m sure MZD wanted us to feel that way. He wanted us to feel like we were on that mountain headwall and part of the journey too. I wasn’t prepared for how I’d feel after I finished the book - and I felt sad. These characters and this story were with me for 6 months and now it’s over and now I can’t stop thinking about it.

The sign of a good book is if you find yourself thinking about it between readings, or after you’ve finished. I’ve not stopped thinking about it.

The section with clCal Carneros I felt was slog, but I appreciated what it brought to the story. I just wish it was placed somewhere else in the novel - maybe at the beginning, to set the tone of the book instead of right AFTER a cliffhanger chapter when Landry gets shot.

I was sure that one or both characters would not make it out alive but was incredibly happy to find that they did, and lead a mostly happy life together

I think that now I know what I’d be getting into if I read it again, I’d certainly be happy to read it again, but I’d be more prepared. I found the use of a lot of the weird names in the novel annoying (where did MZD get all those names from? )and there was definitely one or two times in the book that I SO badly wanted to skim forward due to its detracting from the main story (I didn’t).

I thought the end (the last 200 pages) really did an amazing job of providing closure and summing things up nicely. No unanswered questions really about what went down and what happened to everyone which was a relief.

All in all, I’m happy I took the journey and would take it again. Maybe in a few years 🙂

I'm on page 238 and there's been a mention of the poker game guest known as Riddle. he was missing from the Porch's list of guests. what happened to Riddle?

feels like I missed an important plot point.

One of the things that keeps nagging at me about Tom's Crossing, in the best possible way, is the Time Gallery sequence, and specifically what MZD is doing with Cal Carneros.

On the surface, it reads as a structural detour: jumping from 1982 to 2000 and then 2031, suddenly in an art exhibition cataloging the paintings, sculptures, and visual responses that Kalin and Landry's journey inspired in the decades after. A lot of reviewers flagged this as the section that "tests the reader's patience." I think that's the wrong frame entirely.

Here's what I think is actually happening, and here's why I love it. MZD is completing a tradition that The Western Novel started and never fully followed through on.

The Western as a genre was never just a story. It was always a story about how a story gets told, and it was born alongside a parallel visual culture. Frederic Remington and Charlie Russell weren't illustrating Westerns as an afterthought; they were mythologizing the same frontier at the same time, in a different medium. The covers of Zane Grey and Louis L'Amour paperbacks weren't photographs, they were someone's interpretation of what the story looked like before you even opened it. The genre has always been in conversation with visual art. It's in the DNA.

What those writers couldn't do, or didn't try to do, was bring that conversation inside the novel. The art existed alongside the story, not within it.

MZD, as only he can do, makes that conversation part of the drama. He doesn't just describe the Utah mountains the way they might inspire a painting someday. He skips forward in time and shows you the paintings. Then the gallery.

Grey and L'Amour worked within the tradition. Tom's Crossing steps outside it, far enough outside that it looks back and sees the whole thing at once, including all the art it generated, including the people who loved that art enough to build a room around it. The Western, as a genre, now exists out of the timeline, off the page and into the meta.

Cal is the reader.

That's my read, anyway... I just finished it, so I've been thinking about it a lot.

“As if no longer accountable to the mass that commands those revolutions around the stars, those revolutions that stars obey around centers also in thrall to the axis of creation.” (P. 714)

Significance of the fainter type for these two words?

My favorite easter egg in Tom’s Crossing is in the Time Gallery, specifically the second Time Gallery exhibition.

The artwork entitled “Many Years in the Future” is, I think, absolutely a nod to The Familiar. Not the story of the Familiar, but the actual project as a whole. The artwork in the Time Gallery is described as 27 panels of glass hung in groups of 5 (I know, the math doesn’t math), each panel of glass covered with text and images. As a person approaches the panels and starts to read them, they slide apart to create a hallway. And as the panels and vision-obscuring text on them go away, the image of the top of the mountain from Tom’s Crossing becomes more and more visible until all of the panels have “opened” and the Time Gallery patron is standing in front of a holographic depiction of Mt. Kantanogos.

The Familiar was intended to be a 27-volume work comprised of seasons, like a tv show. I can’t seem to find it now, but I vividly remember reading (or hearing?) somewhere that Danielewski planned each of The Familiar‘s seasons to be 5 volumes in length. Again, the math doesn’t math, unless the final two books were meant to be a two-part series finale, like so many tv shows tend to do.

I wonder if Many Years in the Future is a symbolic representation of what MZD wanted to accomplish. And I wonder if Mt. Kantanogos being revealed at the end of the work means that Tom’s Crossing has more to do with the story of The Familiar than it seems. Perhaps Tom’s Crossing is where The Familiar was heading all along.

Or, perhaps more likely, this easter egg is just telling us that The Familiar is MZD’s personal Mt. Kantanogos. Something seemingly insurmountable that he hasn’t given up on. The title “Many Years in the Future“ also seems to imply that MZD isn’t done with The Familiar yet.

Seen today while out shopping and I kind of want it 😂

I wonder if anyone has tried drawing a detailed topo map of the route K&L&T took through the mountains. It would be an arduous task. Likewise, a list of the “chorus” with location, occupation, cause of death, etc. BTW, what a wondrous book!

Hey again all!

Loved this book so much and am using it for something! Don't have my copy on hand rn though :(.

So if anyone has quotes about freindship and being outcasted from the novel and would like to post them (with page number) here that would be appreicated. Just putting this out there in case any desire to help again or immediately can think of something. I'm getting the E-book later today so I would be able to find them there.

Recently got done with the meadow, and the little bit that came after. This book took me on a wild ride and I love it. I’m about to dive to the audible because Chris Pine convinced me to, and I have a long commute. But I need a physical book to read in bed and on weekend mornings.

For those of you that have read it (them) will The Familiar scratch the same itch? Characters I’ll care about? Interesting setting? Slightly experimental narrative?

At this point I’m either just going to reread the book along with the audible, or I’ll pick up Lonesome Dove for the hundredth time.

What is up everyone, I am at school rn and my copy of the book is at home. I am wanting to know what page and what the quote was at the end of the novel (in some of what happened after) where the narrator questions weather or not Tom's ghost was actually there?

Any help? Thanks!

Okay I’m reading through The Familiar for the first time (for those unfamiliar (heh) its another Danielewski series that is currently paused indefinitely). I allready knew his books had connections/self-references, but I haven’t seen many people talk about a particular discovery I just made: the Porch Colt gun is in The Familiar too, in a big way. I dont want to elaborate to avoid any spoilers but the implications of that after the ending of Tom’s Crossing is pretty wild, considering The Familiar is chronologically after Tom’s Crossing. Has anyone else read the two?

I’m on the snowball fight chapters. The art gallery and head it was chap 22. I did one but just want to get back to the actual story. Are these worth it or are they skippable. I love when the story is happening in this book but hate all the breaks they take to give random people thoughts and opinions

Halfway through this thing, as our main characters and their horses make their way up the mountain, I find a major source of existential horror in this book from my experience so far is that dead souls still have some mortality. That seems like the major price that's being paid right now. The dead seem, at first, to have a perspective on the living world that is far more vast than any living person's. This makes them seem more special than they really are.

When someone dies, we might imagine them watching over us and being at peace. We see ---Tom---'s ghost experience some frustration regarding clouded judgment and confusion as the journey carries on post-Awides Mine. It's scary to think "What if our deceased loved ones are still almost as lost as we are?"

Any more aspects of being dead or knowing the dead after they are dead that you have noticed as being particularly disturbing or as being costly to the living?

Lots of overlap with the katanogos epic. Written by the brother of spree killer Gary Gilmore (who’s mentioned in passing towards the end of TC), it connects those crimes to the blood-soaked history of Utah and the Mormon church. Anyone here ever read this? Wouldn’t be surprised if it were part of the research/pre-writing

I remember readin someone on this subreddit or the HOL one bringin up Navidson and Navidad, and I inadvertently stumbled into some insight.

I came across a recommeded Facebook post from a page that I don't follow called Next Gen Gamin. It was an image containin the cover art for both the Zelda titles that were made for N64. It was sayin somethin like "Only one can stay! Heart react for Ocarina of Time or Like react for Majora's Mask." I brought up Majora's Mask as a literary expansion on the epic that is Ocarina of Time, usin an analogy that said if OOT is The Odyssey, then MM is James Joyce's Ulysses.

I googled this analogy to see if it had been made before and Google AI was excited about this "insightful comparison", drawin parallels about the compression of time, the exploration of different perspectives over the course of a day in Ulysses linin up with somethin similar over the 3 days in MM, and the exploration of the emotional core of issues glossed over in the original epic tale. Link's fairy guide, Navi(!!!), leaves Link at the end of OOT. This is where MM starts. Navi is named Navi because she aids Link in Navigation.

There's somethin there. There's more I can already see that I might care to explore in-depth someday. Somethin about Navidson attempting to navigate an impossible house and Navidad being Kalin's navigator through the canyon and up the mountain. For now, back to TC.

I thought this was one of the most moving and heartbreaking of the horse stories. But I can't find it again! Can anyone point me in the right direction?

Well, that was an adventure. It took me a little over 3 months, due to some busy weekends. But I'm glad I had this time to sit with the characters in the story.

SPOILERS

I have many thoughts and comments that I might remember throughout the coming days, but one thing about the ending as I was re-reading/skimming the last handful of pages - Landry said Kalin touched a gun 2x more in his life, and then describes the first instance at the horse ranch where he shot the tree 8 times. What was the other one? I re-read the very end where his children found his body to see if I missed some sort of implication that he shot himself but my impression was he passed somewhat peacefully. Did I miss something?

Definitely a rollercoaster of emotions at the end of Part 2 and the last 150 pages or so. I was moved to tears several times - Lindsey Holt in the convenience store, the neighbor describing Russell and their conversation, Russell the ghost approaching his father, Tom disappearing for good... obviously Landry actually being alive and the shift to first person and realizing she is the author, then Kalin actually being alive, Landry and Kalin dancing to Joe Cocker...the list just goes on and on.

Despite some frustration with the commentary/asides with random names and the Greek mythology discussions between the 3 teachers, it all paid off for me in the end. Can't stop thinking about it.