Introduction: Becoming Familiar with The Familiar, or, The Imaginary Novel and the Imagination

This essay is the introduction to special issue of Orbit: A Journal American Literature on Mark Z. Danielewski's The Familiar. As a starting point for readers, it places five novels in context longer literary history multimodal writing. I argue that this alternative undermines realist monomodal paradigm still persists literature and criticism challenges their normativity has, example, mainly excluded forms such as children's or comics. At same time, identify corresponding narrative bias considerations literature, connect Familiar poetic models meaning-making. also imagination central concern pentalogy, connecting plot elements VEM readerly engagement empathy. Finally, includes summaries all contributions well link bibliography Danielewski criticism.