{"id":180,"date":"2008-09-21T00:19:05","date_gmt":"2008-09-21T04:19:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/fall2008\/414\/?p=180"},"modified":"2008-09-21T00:19:05","modified_gmt":"2008-09-21T04:19:05","slug":"blog-4-mother-truant-and-echo","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/fall2008\/414\/archives\/180","title":{"rendered":"Blog #4 — Mother Truant and Echo"},"content":{"rendered":"

As it stands I\u2019ve still only done through Thursday\u2019s reading (up to p.106 and Appendix 2-D and E), so my comprehension for this post will be limited compared to some. <\/span>I thought that White Noise<\/em> offered a lot of divergent interpretative possibilities\u2026 obviously House of Leaves<\/em> blows it out of the water and leaves me feeling a little stymied. <\/span><\/p>\n

I found the mother\u2019s letters to be really compelling, they offered an emotional resonance or intimacy that I felt was otherwise lacking due to the psychological stress placed on the characters in the main text. <\/span>But beyond that, there were some disturbing echoes (hm, echoes) of Pelafina\u2019s words in Zampano\u2019s text. <\/span>The most glaring one was briefly mentioned in class: sad news \u201ctore me [Pelafina] to pisces\u201d and Pan \u201ctears [Echo] to pisces\u201d (599 and 41). <\/span>There are a number of interpretative possibilities here. <\/span>Obviously, this brings authorship \/ narrative reliability issues into question in an even stronger way than some previous anomalies (the water heater \/ heater, etc.). <\/span> <\/span>However, I\u2019m more interested in why <\/span>this correlation appears where it does, in the passage about the mythological nymph, Echo. <\/span>Certainly, Truant\u2019s mother is a tragic, isolated figure, appearing only via her voice (ok, letters), and prone to loquaciousness. <\/span>Like Echo and Narcissus , she sees herself as being impossibly separated from Johnny (although we learn that he has visited her several times) . <\/span>She is also clearly knowledgeable about the classics and has other obscure knowledge (ex. Old English). <\/span>At one point she refers to herself as \u201cSibyl of Cumae\u201d (642). <\/span>According to Wikipedia (most professional of sources), sibyl were legendary female oracles or prophetesses, and the Cumaean Sibyl was an especially significant one. <\/span>According to legend she arrived unknown to the last king of Rome providing him with books of prophecy. <\/span>Additionally, in Virgil\u2019s fourth Eclogue<\/em> she gives voice to what people later came to see as a Messianic prophecy for the coming of Christ. <\/span>[ http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Cumaean_Sibyl ] <\/span><\/p>\n

<\/span>My reasoning for mentioning all this is that it shows Pelafina\u2019s willingness to embrace her ego and position herself and her son in the classical pantheon (although this may be purely to appease her poetic sensibilities), and in the role of the prophetess, or prophetic voice. <\/span>This is what makes the inclusion of the offending phrase in Zampano\u2019s text so compelling. <\/span>House of Leaves, <\/em>obsessed with semiotics, asks us how we construct meaning in an unreliable framework of hyper-heteroglossia. <\/span> <\/span>Truant\u2019s mother becomes conflated with the mythological, the timeless, while simultaneously, and by her own admission, being \u201chopelessly unreliable\u201d (636).<\/p>\n

<\/span>I\u2019m not sure what I\u2019ve said but I hope you guys got something interesting out of it, something to think about. <\/span><\/p>\n

By the way, have you guys noticed that the book has an index? Pretty handy.
\n<\/span><\/p>\n

( Is the cutoff for submission exactly 12:01 a.m. Sunday? If so I\u2019m late by about 15-20 minutes. Apologies.) <\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

As it stands I\u2019ve still only done through Thursday\u2019s reading (up to p.106 and Appendix 2-D and E), so my comprehension for this post will be limited compared to some. I thought that White Noise offered a lot of divergent interpretative possibilities\u2026 obviously House of Leaves blows it out of the water and leaves me … Continue reading Blog #4 — Mother Truant and Echo<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[66,38,67,68],"class_list":["post-180","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-week-1","tag-echo","tag-house-of-leaves","tag-truant","tag-zampano"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/fall2008\/414\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/180"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/fall2008\/414\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/fall2008\/414\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/fall2008\/414\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/10"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/fall2008\/414\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=180"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/fall2008\/414\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/180\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":182,"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/fall2008\/414\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/180\/revisions\/182"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/fall2008\/414\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=180"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/fall2008\/414\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=180"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/fall2008\/414\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=180"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}