Document 54

Reading gives a very specific type of pleasure, especially, when the reader is not aware of the
content, that will give them a rush and make them feel like they’re inside the book they’re reading, the
type of content that will make them feel like one of the characters who’s involved in the ongoing drama.
So I, like many other readers, while searching for a genre that would resonate with me on another level,
I stumbled across one that depicts existentialism and more specifically multiple realities. The book I'm
going to talk about today touches that particular subject, the fact that millions of realities could exist
around even a single person. I found one of my favorite books called the “Dark Matter” by Blake Crouch.
Let's talk a little about the author himself. Blake Crouch was born in the nineteen seventies in America.
Given the exciting era that was the 70s, 80s and the 90s, American author was born into the idea of
freedom of thought. I remember him saying in an interview that he struggled with picking the material
that he would write about. Every writer should figure out who they are, before they figure out what they
want to depict. What should they be writing about? What stories should they be telling? What does
writing mean to them? There questions arose.
Blake Crouch revealed that the great source for his inspiration was Michael Crinchton, by studying his
work Crouch realized, that writing books allowed him to explore topics that piqued his interest. “I
thought, Wait,”- He says- “you can just write about stuff that stokes your own curiosity?”
He proceeds to talk about the trilogy he wrote called “Wayward Pines”, which was later adapted into Tv
series. The trilogy let him research and investigate two areas of his interest: suspended animation and
flash mutation.
Blake Talks about his struggles with the identity crisis. He mentions that he always wanted to write a
thriller that played with quantum mechanics. “I’d tried several times to write a version of Dark Matter,
approaching it through three different ideas, but not one of them seemed to be enough to support a
book on its own” he said.
The breakthrough happened two years before writing the book. The author went to Chicago to
see his friend and novelist Marcus Sakey. He talked about the 3 different ideas he had as potentially
separate books, but throughout the brainstorming process, he realized, that these were not 3 separate
books, they were different aspects of the same big novel.
Every person has their own mindset and taste, so I cannot confidently say that if every single
one of you were to read this book, you’d all be satisfied. But for most people who are interested in
existential themes, people who are interested in the subject of being and those who think that every
decision they make, even the simplest ones have a huge impact on their and everyone else's life, then
this magnificent story is probably the one for you.
The plot is not the easiest to follow, but the story it tells is so articulate, that I was fully satisfied.
I don’t want to give too much away about the book, in case anyone is interested in reading it, so I'll just
go over some basic details.
Dark Matter is about a guy named Jason Dessen. Jason is a brilliant physicist living in Chicago
with his wife Daniela and his son Charlie. He’s a true genius, and while there was a point in his late-20s
when his research could have made him a star in his field, he instead chose a family-focused life. One
night, while walking home, he’s abducted and injected with a strange drug. When he awakes, his world
has completely changed. He’s no longer married, doesn’t have a son, and has achieved professional
success beyond his wildest dreams. This sets him on a thrilling, mysterious, and sometimes terrifying
journey to find out what has happened to him — one that, in very scary and concrete ways, forces him
and the reader to reckon with the quantum-mechanics principles that make our universe tick.
So, the main idea is that in the Multiverse Theory there exists a Jason who achieved huge
success, the one who became an alcoholic, the one that died in his 40s, the one that won a Nobel price
or the one that chose a family-focused life.
The books cover is illustrated with geometrical figures, which represent something crashing, in
the center of the cover is Jason himself. There's another cover I really like, its fully red and in the middle
there's a book name in black, bold letters, but the interesting part is that the letters kind of glitch up and
down the cover, giving a reference to a multiple reality storyline.

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Reading gives a very specific type of pleasure, especially, when the reader is not aware of the

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