Johnny's story 

Johnny Truant 

Johnny Truant serves a dual role, as primary editor of Zampanò's academic study of The Navidson Record and protagonist as revealed through footnotes and appendices.

In the beginning of the book, Truant appears to be a normal, reasonably attractive young man who happens upon a trunk full of notes left behind by the now deceased Zampanò. 

As Truant begins to do the editing, however, he begins to lose the tenuous grip he has on reality, and his life begins to erode around him. He stops bathing, rarely eats, stops going to work, and distances himself from essentially everyone, all in pursuit of organizing the book into a finished work that, he hopes, will finally bring him peace.

Initially intrigued by Zampanò's isolative tendencies and surreal sense of reality, Johnny unknowingly sets himself up as a victim to the daunting task that awaits him. As he begins to organize Zampanò's manuscripts, his personal footnotes detail the deterioration of his own life with analogous references to alienation and insanity: once a trespasser to Zampanò's mad realm, Truant seems to become more comfortable in the environment as the story unfolds. He even has hallucinations that parallel those of Zampanò and members of the house search team when he senses "...something inhuman..." behind him (page 26).

Zampanò 

Zampanò is the blind author of The Navidson Record. 

Approximately eighty years old at the time of his death, he is recognized by his neighbors as "eccentric" and "crazy." 

He was known to employ the services of volunteers (exclusively female) from local community centers to come to his apartment and read books to him. While little information is given explicitly about Zampanò's past, blindness, or personality, Johnny's introduction does state that Zampanò went blind sometime in the 1950s. Zampanò also suffers from graphomania.

Danielewski made Zampanò blind as a reference to blind authors Homer, John Milton and Jorge Luis Borges. 

Pelafina H. Lièvre 

Pelafina, more commonly referred to as simply "P.", is Johnny's institutionalized mother who appears in the appendix to the text. 

Her story is more fully developed in The Whalestoe Letters.

Minor characters in Johnny's story 

Lude: Johnny Truant's best friend, Lude is also the one that informs him of Zampanò's vacant apartment.

 Lude is a minor character, but some of his characteristics and actions are important in understanding Johnny. 

Lude assists Johnny many times in obtaining phone numbers of girls when they visit bars, clubs, and restaurants. Several times, Johnny mentions that he wishes he had not answered Lude's call late at night.

 Every time Johnny and Lude are together they seem to involve themselves in difficult situations. He is killed in a motorcycle accident near the end of the novel.

Thumper: A stripper who is a regular client of the tattoo parlour where Truant works. 

Although Johnny has encounters with many women, he remains fixated on Thumper throughout. Thumper's real name is eventually revealed to Johnny, but never to the reader.