In the presentation of the work, Ball eschews page numbers in lieu of what might normally be categorized as line numbers, but in this case function as variable length storytelling units. Each unit, in this context, can consist of dialogue (one or more lines), a single poetic sentence, or a lengthy paragraph. There is something in this unconventional choice that speaks strongly to the power of the book as a printed object. With the page numbers replaced with more elastic place-markers, one's progress through the book becomes less quantifiable and there is a certain magic in being lost without any traditional signposts. Certainly you can look at the book and see how far you've come and how much you have left to read, or you can calculate what "unit" you're reading in the context of the total number within the book, but these are vague, imprecise units of measurement. There's something vaguely subversive in a physical object containing a story of indeterminate length, a paradoxical sort of feeling that would not translate the same if reading on an e-book device like the Kindle.
The value of the printed page plays an important role in the book's narrative as well. The protagonist is a pamphleteer, producing strange, poetic essays and fictions on a large, antique printing press in his apartment. He obsesses over the production of one pamphlet in particular, the evocatively and strangely titled World's Fair 7 June 1978, which captivates a number of the secondary characters and takes on a mystical aura that the story never quite penetrates. Even with all of Ball's literary inventiveness, he could not possibly have produced a vision of the pamphlet itself to rival what is left unseen.
I devoured The Way Through Doors in a single evening, enchanted by the author's prose style and narrative capabilities. While some people may be turned off by the lack of realism and the only faint glimpses of a real human element in the story, the connection I felt with the author as he spun his fictions transcended my need to empathize with the characters within. Like Franz Kafka and Italo Calvino, both obvious influences on the text, Ball is a gifted fabulist and The Way Through Doors is a charming and inventive read.
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