In 2013, Director JJ Abrams dropped a short trailer
for a mysterious new project and set the Internet on fire.
He arrived knowing nothing of himself.
Who is he? Soon they will know.
I'm erased and reborn.
Pretty intense, but what was this new movie?
With only the title of Stranger to go off,
no one was quite sure.
Some speculated that Abrams had secretly been producing a spin off of
his hit TV series Lost or a sequel to his movie Super 8,
Cloverfield, or perhaps a totally separate possibly horror franchise.
The world waited with bated breath,
and a few months later the truth was finally revealedm,
Abrams captivating new creation was a book co written with author Doug Dorst.
It's called S, and it's crazy.
Viewers of this channel will know that I'm a fan of Experimental Fiction.
That is books that play around with format and
structure to present stories in unconventional ways.
The moment I broke the seal on S and removed it from its slip case,
I knew I was in for a treat because the book presents itself
as a 1949 novel called Ship of Theseus,
written by a reclusive revolutionary VM Straka
and author whose real identity has remained
shrouded in mystery and who supposedly died under
mysterious circumstances shortly before the book's publication.
It's designed to look like an old library copy of the title,
which has been routinely checked out from
the year 1957-2000 until it gets stolen by a 15 year old dude named
Eric Hash who became so enamored with the secrecy surrounding the author that he
decided to spend his life in academic research to find the truth behind the book.
One day grown up Eric accidentally leaves this book behind at
a college library where it then gets picked up by a girl named Jen.
Jen writes a note to him on one of the pages and Eric playfully writes back
beginning a pen pal relationship as the two trade the book back and forth,
talking to each other through the margins,
but stubbornly refusing to actually meet.
Before long, the two are knee deep into an investigation of VM Straka
and they discover that the rabbit hole goes
way deeper than they could have possibly imagined.
If you're a fan of aesthetic,
then S will be right up your alley.
Great pains have been taken to make sure that the book honors its premise.
Pages are yellow discussed up,
ink is smudged throughout to immerse readers in the concept,
the only thing really missing is that old books smell.
Reading S is quite the trip.
It's a story built on layers.
At the base level, you have the actual text of VM Straka's Ship of Theseus,
which tells the story of an amnesiac who stumbles
into a mind bending adventure of political upheaval.
It is a sometimes frustrating read full of
seemingly stream of consciousness, poetic symbolism, ambiguity.
It ends with this jarring anti climax that in the eyes of the fictional readership,
left the world with more questions than answers.
But the next layer gives you a bit of insight into why the books translator
F. X Caldeira reveals they were working from an incomplete manuscript.
On the day that Straka was set to finally meet F. X
and handover a draft of the books final chapter,
F. X walked into the rider's hotel room to discover a struggle of
some type had occurred and Straka's body was being whisked away by the police.
The last two chapters manuscript lays scattered on the floor with
many pages being picked up by the breeze and flying out in open window.
In a rush, the translator scrambled to recover
as much of the original manuscript as possible,
but in the end was forced to take creative liberties with the book's ending.
As a result, F. X has filled a Ship of Theseus with
various footnotes to clarify parts of the book that remain ambiguous,
and also to discuss and debate the authors true identity because the thing is,
F. X never actually met VM Straka face to face.
Straka was likely a pseudonym employed by a certain political revolutionary
through the years to aid in the overthrow of various corrupt capitalist enterprises.
Who that revolutionary actually was no one seems quite sure,
but a Trail of Blood seems to follow
VMs Straka and his 19 different novels everywhere he went.
The third layer of the story is the handwritten notes of 15 year old Eric,
who steals Ship of Theseus from
his high school library and becomes obsessed with the books political message,
penciling in his 15 year old commentary on the parts that he finds the most appealing.
Layer number 4 is the handwritten correspondence between Jen and
Eric years later as they not only become deeply involved in each other's personal lives,
but also set about trying to solve the mystery of who VMs Straka actually was.
By the way, their story,
it has its own commentary too because Jen and Eric go
back through the book later on in their relationship to correct,
amend, and develop their own margin notes.
They do this three different times.
On top of all that sandwiched between
the books pages are various supplemental documents like postcards,
newspaper clippings, maps, letters,
and a fancy decoder ring to help you delve into the mystery even further.
S is in a real sense,
a story within a story within a story within a story within a story.
If you miss any of the layers of this onion,
you will likely totally lost.
Depending on the type of reader that you are,
this either sounds like it will be the coolest reading experience ever,
or pointlessly convoluted and frustrating.
I personally enjoyed it as a nice break from convention.
However, I definitely picked up some tips to make
the experience a bit more coherent for first-time readers.
First, do yourself a favor,
split the book up.
When I started reading the first chapter of the book,
I just like barreled into Chapter 1,
reading all of these different layers all at once thinking that I'd be
able to just sort out all of the various story threads mentally.
This was a bad idea.
Much of S is just considering the base text of Ship of Theseus,
but in various different contexts.
The margin notes tell their own stories and they do so at different passes.
If you read the notes from month two of Jen and
Eric's relationship without having first read a month one,
you won't be struggling to make sense of their ongoing conversations.
To be clear, it's still doable,
but I did not find the experience to be particularly enjoyable,
especially because it tends to spoil huge story
reveals lessening the narrative impact when they finally happened.
For a more coherent and chronological experience,
just take it one layer at a time.
Start with the Straka text,
which if you're so inclined,
is also available in audio book form.
Then once you've got that basic story down,
go back and read the story again,
but with the translators footnotes and young Eric's penciling.
This slowly opens you up to the mysteries surrounding
the author and the general universe that the rest of S takes place in.
Then go back again with the margin notes,
this time starting with Jen and Eric's first pass of the book,
then the second, then the third, then the fourth.
Along the way you consider the document inserts as they are mentioned.
If you're reading carefully,
you should be able to figure out in a line or two whether a margin note should be
read on your current pass through or come later on in the story.
Having said that, don't get to torn up.
If you happen to read something out of order,
it is bound to happen.
In a book like this, it's honestly not that big of a deal.
There are also several puzzles along the way,
some of which doesn't even tell you about.
Online communities have worked for years
since this book's released to try and figure them all out.
If you really dive into it,
you might just discover the existence of,
let's just say, additional story materials online.
Be aware that this story has a ton of ambiguity.
As Jen and Eric pencil in their notes,
sometimes they will reference events or
key conversations that take place outside of the books pages and you
have to use the limited hints offered in
their writing to try and piece together what actually happened,
which is ironically what they're trying to do with the Ship of Theseus.
Another helpful hint, don't be afraid to Google things.
Both the ship of Theseus and its margins reference tons of events and
terminology that some modern-day readers might not be all that familiar with.
There's no need to leave yourself and the dark about these subjects.
They might come in to play later or help you better understand a particular situation.
Sometimes movies get referenced.
If you've got time, you should check these movies out or at least read up on them.
It will add another dimension to the story.
If, say a character let slip that they watched a particular movie the night before,
and then you get to go check that movie out for yourself.
It helps put you into their headspace and might help
clarify why they choose to write a particular message.
Finally, don't be afraid to take your time with the book.
Read a chapter, then take a break.
Chew on it for a bit, think about it,
then come back to the story.
There is no need to rush through it.
Enjoy the ride,
as with most of Abrams stories,
remember, it's about the journey,
not the destination because S is at its heart a book about scholarship,
research, and the difficulties of piecing the past back together.
If anything, it is an exercise in the importance of
contextualization and how it affects the stories that we read.
For sure it was not what most of us were expecting from a mysterious spooky Trailer,
but for some, it ended up being even better.