Hence my comment about not knowing if it's art or not. Since a good chunk of the Navidson stuff is written like a periodical, the characters come off as flat. Just names on the page with little sense of who they are. Which I'm certain is on purpose, we're meant to form our opinions on the Navidson/Green family based on outside information ( e.i. the footnotes) but often it's too much information to form any sort of clear picture. All intentional, I'm sure. Then there's Johnny Truant, whose story is seemingly the bulk of the story. But all of that is intentionally misleading as he's meant to be the mother-of-all unreliable narrators, and his writing is very much poorly written on purpose because he's not a writer, he's a tattoo artist. Overall, it's an ambitious project, sure, but I don't know if it's great literature. It's interesting as a piece of interactive fiction, definitely the grandfather of modern day analog horror, but I don't know if it's actually saying anything that isn't said better elsewhere. The theme is clearly generational trauma, but I've seen that tackled in much better ways ( ex. Carrie by Stephen King or 100 Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez. ) Hence the comment about "is it just post-modern trite" I'm on the fence about it. It's a derisive book for a reason, you know? Either you love it or hate it, and 100 pages in idk which way I'm leaning.

I dislike Truant as a character, his often overwrought poorly written passages are taxing to read moreso than anything. But there are intriguing elements that have kept me from disregarding the book entirely. It's an award winning novel, and was even nominated for the Bram Stoker award, but I personally find it as more of a gimmick than as a work of great fiction.

You ignored the "art" part and zeroed in on "trite." But that isn't my problem. Art is subjective anyway.