Contact

You may email me at:

white raven
[at] into the abyss
(dot) net

 

Or you may post a comment below:

28 thoughts on “Contact

  1. ***********************
    ***—If on a winter’s night a traveler,
    ***********************
    Outside the town of Malbork,
    ***********************
    Leaning from the steep slope
    ***********************
    Without fear of wind or vertigo,
    ***********************
    Looks down in the gathering shadow
    ***********************
    In a network of lines that enlace,
    ***********************
    In a network of lines that intersect,
    ***********************
    On the carpet of leaves illuminated by the moon
    ***********************
    Around an empty grave —
    ***********************
    What story down there awaits its end?—
    ***********************
    He asks, anxious to hear the story.—***
    ***********************

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  2. In reference to the license plate, it also says 20th century fox. Marilyn Monroe did not change her name on 8/28/46 , she indeed signed a contract with 20th century fox on that day. She later changed her name to Marilyn Monroe…..

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  3. I’ve just finished a puzzle of ‘Java Dreams’ by Chris Consani and, intrigued by some of the detail, I googled and found your page. Thank you – I’ll now be looking into the MAZE.

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  4. Reconnoiterer White Raven,

    I am a connoisseur of the atrocious. I wish to wax waywardly upon your zenethic achievement. Your exegesis of the odd is an obsequie of a preternatural order, your constant gorgon’s knot being one of a superlative urgency of the constrained pieces which permeate House of Leaves and the constant anguish of the all-seen unknown, the profound, and the hourly immersion of mystical of the all-consuming of the and the catching, cauterized and ambushed echoes of a zephyrdanse, a pure and consumptive phlegm of veritable atrocity.

    My craving for enigmas lies within the riddles of narrative and of the semioticisms of symbolism; however, I have also found a fixation with tangible labyrinths and multicursal courses.

    Your amphigorical compendium is a splendid and a feullimort amicability of the passing influences, the indiginatural revolutions of shattered and of absolute anomalation, and this I cosmically laud and adaxially commend. Your indelible and impeccable omni-brief but lucubrated descriptions weave a symbolic enigskein. If such a potent echo of the manifest destinies of all manifest or predestined Cosmicism reigns here, what a toilous echo of sameness must be a singular degree of lonesome bereavement, of ultimate and unsurpassed apparition and relentless vessel of a tumultuous burning of such unbounded infestation of Bungalow universes- a last Ligottian recursion of ashen halls? These pure and Amoraciac vessels lead one to Tsalal, because you have woven them so by your recursive riddles. A garden of forking paths rests herein. A petroglyph is here found.

    A baleful or a beating telltale heart and a raven of some nepenthian shore have been made herein, and the tale is yet consummately and vokely untold.

    If the broken and the bare eisencourse of the fraught Nethescurial, the frenetic rhythm of the constant train, is ever once a near-brought to the anemic sanctuaries of a rising contrivance of the all-unknown importune- the vicissitudinals of a broken and a futile schematic- and inventions of unknown and unseen vestiges of the grief, and this I find within your various phrontisteries.

    I shall soon pen for you an epistle of the most eschatological nature and of the most farfamed ’Pataphysical abstrusity as of a starfarflung galaxy, a sequel of the nature which has never been a sensible place, a piece of the perfecture not another mere foe- the pure and the preserving of a failed and a desolate course of coarse collision and pugmidecay- a belated coven of a false and a futile heart of the unwritten law, the dearatuateenormite decadence of unspooled and unstrung chordophones.

    You may contact me as is your wont.

    Ambageously,

    A.R. LaBaere

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    • I realise this is not entirely a comment meant for replies, but this garrulous atrocity you have written is too fascinating for me not to ask about. Surely, surely this must be a joke? But why?

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    • We confabulate herein the foremost Trystero missive which we recounted into this Labyrinth, where Night is blind:

      “Reconnoiterer White Raven,

      I am a connoisseur of the atrocious. I wish to wax waywardly upon your zenethic achievement. Your exegesis of the odd is an obsequie of a preternatural order, your constant gorgon’s knot being one of a superlative urgency of the constrained pieces which permeate House of Leaves and the constant anguish of the all-seen unknown, the profound, and the hourly immersion of mystical of the all-consuming of the and the catching, cauterized and ambushed echoes of a zephyrdanse, a pure and consumptive phlegm of veritable atrocity.

      My craving for enigmas lies within the riddles of narrative and of the semioticisms of symbolism; however, I have also found a fixation with tangible labyrinths and multicursal courses.

      Your amphigorical compendium is a splendid and a feullimort amicability of the passing influences, the indiginatural revolutions of shattered and of absolute anomalation, and this I cosmically laud and adaxially commend. Your indelible and impeccable omni-brief but lucubrated descriptions weave a symbolic enigskein. If such a potent echo of the manifest destinies of all manifest or predestined Cosmicism reigns here, what a toilous echo of sameness must be a singular degree of lonesome bereavement, of ultimate and unsurpassed apparition and relentless vessel of a tumultuous burning of such unbounded infestation of Bungalow universes- a last Ligottian recursion of ashen halls? These pure and Amoraciac vessels lead one to Tsalal, because you have woven them so by your recursive riddles. A garden of forking paths rests herein. A petroglyph is here found.

      A baleful or a beating telltale heart and a raven of some nepenthian shore have been made herein, and the tale is yet consummately and vokely untold.

      If the broken and the bare eisencourse of the fraught Nethescurial, the frenetic rhythm of the constant train, is ever once a near-brought to the anemic sanctuaries of a rising contrivance of the all-unknown importune- the vicissitudinals of a broken and a futile schematic- and inventions of unknown and unseen vestiges of the grief, and this I find within your various phrontisteries.

      I shall soon pen for you an epistle of the most eschatological nature and of the most farfamed ’Pataphysical abstrusity as of a starfarflung galaxy, a sequel of the nature which has never been a sensible place, a piece of the perfecture not another mere foe- the pure and the preserving of a failed and a desolate course of coarse collision and pugmidecay- a belated coven of a false and a futile heart of the unwritten law, the dearatuateenormite decadence of unspooled and unstrung chordophones.

      You may contact me as is your wont.

      Ambageously,

      A.R. LaBaere”

      I include herein a missive, which we sent secretively via the Trystero, to the White Raven:—

      “An Encoded Companionship

      Fellow Sojourner White Raven,

      I was most moved by your collections of ruminations. I recorded therein a reflection for your delectation. I was most moved by your various theories and treatises. You have woven a symbolic crux. I assimilated new vocabulary and avenues from your perplexing trove. I thank you for your editorials.

      As yourself, I am a profoundly intellectually gifted entity. I share your studies of iconography, of semioticism, and of experimental fiction. I lucubrate upon scintillating tomes and tales. I am a collector and disciple of Poe, a declamator of the reprobate and the precepts of the pure and the cwms of the buried, and I sew conundrums. The enormous ambergrist of all strange perfumes, the pertinacious echoes of a feebling and invigorating self, the enormous collections of the unquantified murk and the sore echoes of all the pure and the educed incongruities of the Outside.

      I am a fervid collector of the abstruse and of the more perfected forms of destructive collapse and the all-gnawing discrepancies of the unseen calamity- the risk of a flighting gale- the flown echo of all creations becoming as a pure folly of the fore which has been the toil of the constant and the unrelenting morasses of a vast and a keeping of all soured failed or all ambient urgencies of the untamed vistas of flight, of the pure and unadulterated ambages of Weir. The sooth is ensconced within the purity of the Universal Jest. I occupy myself with linguistic invention.

      My influences include Mark Z. Danielewski, Thomas Ligotti, and H.P. Lovecraft. During my childhood, I devoured the works of Edgar Allan Poe, and I continue to pen his influence. I encapsulate myself within their declivitied fens.

      I am an explorer of ignominious climes and of the purest suppositions of the outcast, ensuing sigils of pressing and of presiding mores and moors of a constant rush of beaming and boring etudes of the more unseen and all-sallying blows of the Outside. I keep a library which includes the honored House of Leaves within a designation of priority. I seek symbolic puzzlements, and I prize The Navidson Record. Each metafictional tale fills me with bewitched awe; I shall soon resume my reading of Brian A. Aldiss’s Report on Probability A, and the continual exhumations of the all-encompassing layers of narrative. The perfect or the perfected eye, the pure and the untouched fathoms of the unformed and the contiguous consiliences of the spiral staircases to unknown nativists, the precipitous and the brink of the all-surpassing foam of the forming, the breaching, the pouring of a feeling which has never so been consummated as has been only inured within the ices of xenomorphic moraines. I must know the Songs of Rasu Yong-Tugen, Baroness de Tristeombre, and I must find the climaxes of these library-livres. Of the forming and the impure am I ever omniscient, perhaps to my devastation.

      The more complex enigmas of unreality of a variety of riddle which should not be solved, for what is genuinely paradoxical is unfathomable. House of Leaves should have no answer because answers are products of reality and of logic.

      The pure amalgamations of a vengeful and an overwhelm of intruding and unnatural antics of every impossible convolution must pour forth from those such as we.

      I seek to solemnize and conjure the creations of those who have come before me. I am the author of Rene Descartes Does Not Exist, and of The Abyss Laughs. These works comprise the The Abyss Laughs series. I seek to evolve Cosmicism. I train myself without relent.

      I practice cognitive exercises, and I maintain my own puzzling palace of Loci. I have constructed this place of the most ardent ligature and the most ardent toils of a precipitous climax- this being the consummation of my goals- and I craft noetic obstacles within my visualization. I seek to learn to study, and I am an avid follower of mathematical topology. I hunt the pinnacle of intellectual capabilities.

      I am compelled by our similarities. It is my fervent hope that we shall initiate a confederacy, and I devoutly wish that we should share our propensities. I wish to share with you my descryings.

      The moment is arrived.

      I leave you with the following intrigue, and I am certain that you are likely to find within it the pinnacle of the pure mystique, the pure and the apropos and the unpenetrated regions of the unfathomable Cosmicisms which lurk by each possible symphony of terrible uncommoding.

      Fervently And Conjuringly,

      Destructor A.R. LaBaere”

      Any party who may be party to a prerogative to partake of parlay and persiflage may peer herein:

      a.r.labaere@gmail.com

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  5. One of the few things I remember from my childhood is seeing and buying a copy of The Maze from a local bookshop in the mid 80s when I was about 11. The book had just been published but I was never destined to enter the competition, it was just too hard… but that was never important. I still recall the endless attempts to map and decode this book; made only slightly easier when I found the hidden door.
    Over the years I still went back to immerse myself in it’s mysteries and try to draw a satisfactory map and when a winter heating disaster destroyed several dozen of my books and video tapes 10 years ago – this book was the only one I mourned. Within a couple of months I had tracked down an original 1980′s UK paperback copy just like my original; but still I feel a loss of that childhood copy.
    Now I am buying a new copy for my 6 year old son – he loves maths and reading far more than computer games… so the world where this book can captivate the minds of children (and children like me that just got older) is not yet lost to room 24.
    I would loved to one day take my son to our local bookshop so he can buy the sequel… and my copy will be on pre-order the day it’s announced!

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  6. I think I may have finally figured it out. Not quite in its entirety, but pretty darn close, I would imagine. Something to do with Josef Mengele a.k.a. “The Angel of Death” and his ghastly experiments for “educational purposes”, of course. Along with the dwarfs, giants, hunchbacks, and the Roma (gypsies) . Confiscated belongings (pictures, childrens toys, electrical appliances, of victims from the holocaust strewn throughout. Similarity between “The Magic Kingdom” and this “Tragic Kingdom”. The extraction of teeth without anesthesia. The relation between the “key” title page and the tattoos of the 1st SS Panzer Division “Leibstandarte SS Adolf Hitler”. The use of Zyklon B (my crown, my pain (dental extractions) the fire in my eyes (eye irritant from the gas) gas pellets in a metal grate) . Gouging of eyeballs from twins in reference to page 24 ( 10 pairs of twins / can’t see doors if you have no eyes to see them with) . 190 double doors on each side of a box car on the train that led to them to Z gate. Auschwitz. 2 double doors = 4 single doors / 190 double doors = 40 box cars. The mention of victims shot in the head (bullseye) and of mushrooms, which thrive from fertilizer (from which the dead were often turned into). I’ll likely come back with some more additives, but please if you could, give me your opinion of my “Trained Investigation”. Thanks.

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    • This is the page for discussion of White Raven’s email address. I don’t think there is a page here for Holocaust free association.

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  7. My friend had maze when i was a kid even though i never really understood what the clues meant i loved the idea and the artwork. For some reason I’d recently been thinking about it. I finally googled it a few days ago (originally thinking i would never remember the title) and even though i haven’t bought a copy yet I’ve become a littlt obsessed. I’ve been using the digital pages on this site and one thing that came to me that i haven’t seen mentioned is that the text says there are 4 entrances and exits. If you figure the doors are exits and the trap doors are all entrances with devils coming out of them, the forth entrance would be at the back of the theater and the guide would be a forth devil. Also, he mentions the visitors “intentions” as in,”the road to hell is paved with good intentions .”
    Also, i feel that the sun represents god and there are clues when he says ignore that foolish face” in regards to the sun and how the sun”glared at him through the window.
    Oh, the last thing was if the devils have there mouth open symbolizing that they are making noise to distract isn’t that what the guide is also doing when he says things to mislead you?

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  8. WHITE – RAVEN – EARTH – GLOBE – WORLD – scrambling these letters produces the words – TERRIBLE – HEAVEN – WRATH – GOD – OLO which I’m guessing stands for Only Live Once, but then again, who really knows.

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  9. I found this book in a children’s gift book. Unaware of what I was opening up (hahahaha), I challenged my family to some friendly competition for Christmas. Little did I know, this family frenzy will go on for years! I placed the order for 10 more copies for members of my family!

    Let the games begin!

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    • 3h,

      I suspect this is just a coincidence but from your email I gather that your last name is Holt and your first name starts with an H. I mention this because the publisher of MAZE is Henry Holt Publishers. Any relation?

      Welcome to The Abyss!

      White Raven

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  10. I have had a lot of fun here. I realize I made quite a few mistakes. A lesson that we learn more from mistakes than from our correct guesses. I earnestly studied the text yesterday for the first time. It took about two hours to find the code and I have traced the second half of it. I am well-versed on writing code, so for me, I could not rest until I found it. The best codes are simple ones. I would love to write a book myself someday. Thanks for this site. If I can find Chris, I hope to send him my maze.

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    • I’ve tried to find if someone else has posted about room 22 that one can add H plus OO using their respective number places in the alphabet to get 38. Is this already well known? Also the missing astrological earth sign could be derived from woman’s jewelry. Made of gold, silver, platinum, diamonds, other precious stones – everything is from the earth.

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    • Kathrine,

      I am posting your comment on the Room 22 page.

      Welcome to the Abyss! You have been approved and may now post freely.

      I don’t think we are meant to do alphanumeric substitution here but it is an amazing observation, well done!

      White Raven

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  11. To WhiteRaven: Got it. Are you the only one here who feels secure in getting it all, except one page? I am dying to find out what page you haven’t gotten. I will make a bet I can solve it within 24 hours. If you agree, I will send a real email.

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  12. Fascinating. I got side-tracked from a project today when I stumbled upon the amazing book Maze. I have invented certain games where the point is to give as many clues as you can without making the answer too easy to find. I found three is the virtual limit, as four clues start too much of a pattern. I will try all of these puzzles. Thank you for this site. I’ll be back.

    I wonder if anyone has tried iviq(dot)ultimaiq(dot)net

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  13. For books like MAZE, you may want to check out The Egyptian Jukebox. It’s more straightforward- less magical, more easily solved.
    House of Leaves is the first thing to come to mind when I picked up this book. The connections become frightening as I become aware that hours have passed and I am still engaged in MAZE.

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    • Whoops! I meant to reply to White Raven’s reply to I want to be the guy.

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  14. Thank you for posting back so quickly. I had no idea that Christopher Manson had did other books. I think I might have to check out some of the books you mentioned

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    • I wanna be the guy,

      Welcome to the Abyss! I have searched and searched for books like MAZE, I’m afraid it is utterly unique. That said, there are some books and games that in different ways capture the sense of MAZE…

      If you are seeking puzzles like MAZE the only other options are Christopher Manson’s other two books The Rails I Tote and The Practical Alchemist. Neither of these are mazes but both are incredibly imaginative and elaborate puzzle books somewhat similar to MAZE which have the bonus of helping a person solve MAZE by giving a glimpse into the author’s mind.

      The video game MYST was said by the authors to be inspired by Jules Verne’s book Mysterious Island, the same book which inspired Mr. Manson. Many suspect, myself included, that MAZE was a source of inspiration for MYST as well. MYST is the closest parallel to MAZE that I know of.

      The video game Tomb Raider Anniversary has a bonus level Croft Manor that contains immersive visual puzzles similar to MAZE.

      In fiction the closest parallel is House of Leaves. A disturbing and very adult book about a House with a living maze inside it. I suspect MAZE was a source of inspiration for the book’s author.

      The writing style of MAZE is rather similar to C. S. Lewis’ The Screwtape Letters in its tone and sense of disquiet.

      In terms of visual imagery the closest parallel is Edward Gorey’s West Wing – a picture book of an odd and unsettling house.

      In regards to the surreal sense of wonder turn to The Museum of Lost Wonder – a strange and beautiful book.

      Or if you are just looking to have a illustrated book on your shelf that is wondrously original you can’t beat The Mysteries of Harris Burdick.

      You can find out more about these books and more under the Ephemera tab of this site.

      White Raven

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