Week 6 – MZD – American Postmodernism

No unintentional errors, huh?

What about…

Page 119: “Nothing there provides a reason to linger. In part because not one object, let alone fixture or other manner of finish work has ever been discovered there.”

Shouldn’t that say “finished”?

Page 145, Footnote 189: “A sperm twixt another form of similar unity, and look there’s an echo at haand.” There’s no way he meant haand. It’s “at hand.”

Page 146: “when he highlights Barthe’s observation…” His name is Barthes. Possessive would make it “Barthes’.”

Page 162: “It looks like its impossible to leave a lasting trace here” Should be “it’s.”

Page 320: “Regrettably, Tom fails to stop at a sip. A few hours later he has finished off the whole fifth as well as half a bottle of wine. He might have spent all night drinking had exhaustion not caught up with me.” Who is the “me” here? There are no quotes and no footnote to indicate that it’s from an interview. Maybe I missed something though…

Anyway, I’d be interested to see how Danielewski can justify these errors as intentional…

That’s it for now. :) I didn’t actually set out to find these errors; I just marked the pages as I was reading.

I’ll let you know if I find others.

Have a great spring break!

MZD Interview

As much as I enjoyed House of Leaves, paying as close attention as I could to all the details regarding Johnny, Navy, Zampano, Pelafina, etc., as well as paying attention to the dense layers of “reality,” there was one layer of the book that eluded me while reading it that now I realize, after reading the interview with Danielewski, should have been glaringly obvious. I mentioned in a previous post that I didn’t think once of MZD the entire time I read HOL. But now I’m wondering… well, the story of Navidson gives us insight into the character of Zampano, the treatment of and reaction to Zampano’s text gives us insight into Johnny Truant, and by the same logic, this work of fiction (as all works of fiction, do to some extent) should give a lot of insight into who MZD himself is, and that has me wondering if that wasn’t the point all along. I don’t mean who he is as a writer, but who he is a person… his history, his fears, his hopes, and in particular his relationship to his father and how it has shaped him.

I’m almost tempted to reread the book (ha) with this new layer, the ultimately real (or “real” or Real) layer, firmly in my mind. Hearing about MZD’s father, his childhood, finding out that the Pelican Poems are as much MZD’s (insofar as MZD writing them years before when traveling in Europe as a kid) as they are Truant’s (or were these Zampano’s poems? I forget) , made me realize how much of the book is very much about MZD and makes me feel like he was trying to tell me that all along through the story within a story within a story device.

I also found it interesting that Danielewski didn’t expect the readers to read the letters to Truant from his mother until after. In other words, he thought that most readers would wait to read them rather than stop in the middle of the Navidson Record to check out the letters at the end. In the interview, he said that there’s two different entrances to the text based on what you choose.

By the way, I also just added La Strada to my netflix queue, to delve deeper into the character of the mysterious Zampano who may be transplanted from another work of fiction by a different author, which makes the character simultaneously more and less real at the same time.

Having no had no feel for who MZD really is prior to my reading this interview (except that he had a somewhat famous sister), I found the whole thing fascinating. It really read to me as a continuation of HoL itself.

The Check Mark

I was feeling a little ambitious and was trying to finish the book before I wrote this post, but due to my spontaneous napping that this book is inducing, I still have but a few pages to go. I decided to go by Suzanna’s advice and skip straight to the end to read Pelafina’s letters to her son, Johnny, before continuing to read further. These letters shed light on his past and certainly helps me with understanding his character better. Aside from the emotional and psychological baggage that must have come along the broken home and the physical abuse he had to endure as a child, which I don’t feel like delving into, we also learn about his intelligence and talent with words that is reflected in his mother’s reaction to his writing. Yet, reading through the letters did not give me the satisfaction I needed because there is always the question of credibility that we all seem to enjoy pondering upon. We learn about this abuse as a child by his foster parent through his mother’s response when he tells her in one of his letters, as well as in his own narration, but are we expected to necessarily believe what he tells his mother and his reader? The more I read the more it seems like he intentionally wants his reader to be skeptical of his stories, like in page 108 when he tells his story about being hit by a truck and immediately negates it detail by detail. And I know I’m going too far with this, but could the whole pack of letters be another one of the fictional texts in the book that is claimed to exist? Another thing that the letters helped me notice is the check sign at the bottom right of page 97. In the letters we learn that Pelafina tries to communicate in secrecy with Johnny by asking him to sign a check at the bottom right to confirm that he has read her letters, and so its appearance in this page raises some questions about why it’s there. I believe it bares some relation to the quote taken from the OED, which his mother supposedly gave him to encourage his writing (sorry, but everything in this book I am forced to take as a supposition) of the definition of SOS that opens that chapter, which, correspondingly, is another signal used for communication. Is he using this method to manifest communication with someone? Who may that be and why? I could be imagining this but I think someone suggested in the blog that Johnny’s mother could be the ultimate narrator of this book. If we look at it that way then do we take it as an indication of her role as narrator? It is also possible that this check mark carries no significance except that it is used to put off the readers and mess with their heads at 5 in the morning. It could be another one of those red herrings that we’ve been getting a lot of in these postmodern texts.

Thoughts on Zampano and Johnny

I will preface my post this week with the fact that I haven’t quite finished House of Leaves yet. As much as I am enjoying the book, I’m finding it to be a slow read; evidently, navigating through the maze is equally as difficult for me as a reader as it is for Navidson and Holloway to manage the haunted hallways, or Zampano and Johnny Truant to survive The Navidson Record.

As I continue to make my way through the The Navidson Record, it is interesting to reflect on the relationship between Zampano’s footnotes and Johnny Truant’s ‘narration’. As stated early by Johnny in The Navidson Record, the book evidently drove Zampano to his grave, and Johnny Truant appears to be following in Zampano’s footsteps through his increasingly self-imposed isolation. But both of their collections of footnotes in The Navidson Record serve very different roles within House of Leaves. Zampano’s ‘scholarly’ notes are ‘informative’ and relevant to the Navidson text (obviously some if not the majority of Zampano’s notes are actually fabricated, but are still written to ‘inform’ the text). Conversely, Johnny Truant’s rants often have little or nothing to do with what is found in The Navidson Record. With this information, what can we say about the two? If we were to conceptualize the two, could Zampano come to represent order, or at least the desire for a kind of structure? On the other hand, Johnny Truant constantly disqualifies Zampano’s references, and narrates these fantastic side-stories. Thus, could Truant’s tangents represents a kind of confirmation of the chaos found in The Navidson Record? Like the explorers of the ever-changing hallways, Zampano tries to make sense out of the senseless, and even when this fails, he fabricates this order; while Johnny seems content in weaving his own labyrinth of chaotic, autobiographical storytelling.

With these basic differences between Zampano and Johnny identified, could we begin to consider these writers in relation to the division between modernism and postmodernism (albeit as very broad generalizations)? Where Zampano would attempt to impose an order/structure on the world/film/haunted house (modern), Johnny Truant participates in this chaotic atmosphere (postmodern)

Again, I haven’t finished House of Leaves, therefore, this blog serves as a kind of brainstorm for my thoughts as I continue my way through the latter part of the book. Even as Danielewski seems to be intentionally limiting avenues for critical inspection, I think this comparison between Zampano and Johnny could be useful.

A Side Note on Danielewski’s Only Revolutions:

If you are thoroughly enjoying House of Leaves (as I am), I’d suggest checking out his following work Only Revolutions. I haven’t read it yet, but I found this interesting discussion with Danielewski on Only Revolutions. I know it doesn’t directly relate to House of Leaves, but it’s interesting to listen to him explain the basic concepts for the structure of Only Revolutions. Clearly with both books, Danielewski is very concerned with the typography, visual landscape, and textual labyrinth both works present. Mark Z. Danielewski on Only Revolutions.

Mark Danielewski can read your mind.

At this point, I really believe that Mark Danielewski is either a mastermind or a maniac. I really don’t remember ever experiencing a book like House of Leaves before. So far, it has been one of the most interactive reading experiences I’ve had! I also finally found the “best” way to read/conquer it (other people may have differing viewpoints): I began reading at the very beginning, and tried really hard not to think about the fact that it is 700 pages long. I followed the pages in sequential order. When I come across a footnote, I read the footnote and then returned to where I left off in the text. When directed to an appendix, I read the appendix (but not always too carefully unless it was really interesting) then returned to where I left off in the text. I found that way of reading it less daunting than, say, if I were to read all the footnotes separately after finishing the novel. Although Danielewski doesn’t instruct the reader to read in this way directly (or any other particular way) , the novel’s recursive structure (the interweaving of the different narrators throughout) forces the reader to get involved with all the different plots simultaneously, and therefore implicitly encourages this reading.

The experience of reading this book really got me interested in the relationship between author and reader in a postmodern work, and how it can be distinguished from that relationship in the context of different literary genres. More than any other genre, postmodern writing encourages the reader to read actively and interact with the text on a continual basis (even in a physical sense—turning the book upside down and using mirrors, for example). Besides the heightened level of interactivity, House of Leaves also often communicates to the reader an introspective thought that the reader may already have about the text. For example, throughout the novel, I often got the feeling that Danielewski purposely and repeatedly gives the reader clues that he can see what is going on in the reader’s mind. Here’s a specific, but subtle example of this:

While looking through the appendixes, I was especially drawn to the little poem on page 563 in section F., inventively titled “Poems.” The poem is untitled “(Untitled Fragment)” and it does not have a credited author as far as I can tell. It is the only poem on page 563:

Little solace comes

to those who grieve

when thoughts keep drifting

as walls keep shifting
and this great blue world of ours
seems a house of leaves

moments before the wind.

I believe this short text somehow encompasses many themes (Is anybody counting?) that can be found within House of Leaves, and anticipates the reader’s reaction to the novel as a whole. The first line “Little solace comes to those who grieve” is probably referring to the reader here, and the initial reaction to the novel’s intimidating navigation. The “thoughts keep drifting” is an obvious reference to the reader’s reaction to the different narratives and narrators which cause thoughts to drift during the novel, and Danielewski is seemingly warning/telling the reader that there is no comfort found even after attempting to decipher the different narratives. “As walls keep shifting” is a reference to the house itself and the physical ambiguity of the house which keeps shifting to expand internally while appearing static externally. The second part of the short poem relates the “great blue world of ours” (where blue is significant to the word house highlighted in that color throughout the novel) to the monstrosity of the novel and its myriad links, footnotes and annotations which cannot be contained in any reader’s mind simultaneously. These connections are like a “house of leaves moments before the wind”: This evokes a powerful image of thousands of flimsy artifacts that are nonsensical even when arranged into the shape of a house, but virtually impossible to interpret after a moment, when the wind (another thought, fact, event, etc) comes in full force and blows away any “arranged” pieces of the imaginary puzzle. So from this little poem, the reader can see/read himself—trying futilely to assemble pieces of the puzzle that is the novel, to no avail.

Therefore, I cannot help but reiterate that House of Leaves is typically postmodern, not simply in its form as I discussed last week, but even more so in its function—where the focus shifts from the work of literature itself to the process of its production, and even more strikingly, to the reader’s “process of interpretation.” Danielewski seems to assume a certain reader response to the novel, which at times evokes the feeling that he can actually see what is going on in the reader’s mind.

Expectations and Disintegrations

Many of the posts so far have explored the “So?” question of House of Leaves. The “what’s the point?” question. But I think that a lot of this question is coming from the way that HoL breaks genre conventions. Why don’t we ask “what’s the point?” of any literature we read? Because we’re accustomed to genre conventions, we automatically accept normal genres of literature as fulfilling the functions of education and/or entertainment. I think what HoL is doing is forcing us to reexamine our own genre assumptions and conventions. This process of reexamination forces us to ask the questions: “What is the purpose of literature?” and “How do we determine and construct that purpose?”

By foregrounding the process of the construction of the text, HoL does not allow us to fall back into our normal mode of reading literature along genre conventions. Some of the conventions I mean are: a book has a clear and authoritative narrative voice; there is one overarching story arc; characterization is consistent; there is a demarcated line between fiction and nonfiction; there is one font used throughout; there are chapters; there are page numbers; footnotes are denoted with numbers; text is arranged in a rectangular block and read all in the same direction and orientation; there are paragraphs, and they are indented and spaced; except for dialogue, spelling and punctuation are standard; illustrations are pertinent to the story; the text aims to enlighten or entertain the reader. I’m just spelling out a random few, mostly determined by what conventions HoL has broken. Perhaps it is this last one that is so disturbing. HoL doesn’t seem to care much about the reader. Indeed, the anti-dedication warns us away. Yet for a text that seems to ignore the reader’s desires and frustrate her expectations, it encourages great participation on the part of the reader. The fact that the forum and the album were released along with the book contributes to the view of HoL as encouraging active reading. But to what end? Why bother to shake us up?

By highlighting different aspects of “what makes a book a book”, HoL exposes the fact that any book is merely a house of leaves – the sum of its component parts. The concept of “book” itself is a kind of constructed cultural narrative. Perhaps by becoming aware of the constructed nature of “book” and not taking its existence as a naturally coherent whole, readers will be able to participate more actively in the construction of meaning around them. By viewing critically and strategically the various sites of cultural construction, readers can then learn to influence the reiteration of those constructs toward an iteration more favorable to themselves.

I would have to read more of Danielewski’s interviews on his own motivations (if indeed he reveals them), but this type of awakening agents of political change could be one answer to the “So?” question.

“This is what happens when you hurry through a maze: the faster you go, the worse you are entangled.”

Chapter IX elicited both pleasure and sheer frustration for me as a reader. Appendix A refers to the possible title for Chapter IX as “The Labyrinth.” (Odd that the possible chapter headings are buried in the appendix on page 540. But why not?) The reader sees iterations of the labyrinth in this chapter as the form starts to take various shapes and positions on the page creating a labyrinth of words for the reader to navigate. Pages of text are divided into vertical columns and a curious box with footnoted material outlined in blue (at least in my version) appears in the upper right hand corder of the text. Without warning the blue box of footnoted material appears on both pages. But when the dueling boxes arrive, the text on the left-hand page is printed backwards as if the two pages were stuck together and the text on the right-hand side rubbed off on the left.

It took several minutes of flipping back and forth for me to realize that the footnote continued for pages in these boxes. While it did drive me a little nuts, upon reflection, it seems like an appropriate maze in which to lead the reader. Simultaneously while the reader is navigating the maze of footnotes, Holloway, Jeb, and Wax are descending into the maze of endless rooms and expanding staircases in the Navidson House. “At one point Holloway even succeeds in scratching, stabbing, and ultimately kicking a hole in a wall, only to discover another windowless room with a doorway leading to another hallway spawning yet another endless series of empty rooms and passageways…” (119). The very pages that the reader encounters with columns of text printed upside down and boxes dividing the page appear to echo the walls and passageways the characters encounter. This layering effect seems to develops the infinite regression that Professor Sample mentioned last week.

I have to pause and say that there is also something a little too nice and neat about this chapter. While I could never have dreamt of putting a chapter together in this fashion, isn’t it a bit predictable? The title of the chapter, the form, the mazes for both reader and character to negotiate all seem obvious once the reader discovers Danielewski’s trick. He even spends several footnotes discussing different theories of mazes: Derrida’s ideas about structure and balance, Doob’s (made-up?) ideas about how to walk a labyrinth, M C Escher and then of course the Minotaur myth. All of these self-conscious layers of mazes makes me think that Danielewski is taunting a reader to come up with an interpretation of this chapter that is not already embedded in the text. While Professor Sample mentioned that the whole book appears to do this, I thought this chapter was a particularly good example of this. One of the footnotes in this chapter even calls attention (or rather not) to the layout by saying, “Mr. Truant refused to reveal whether the following bizarre textual layout is Zampano’s or his own.–Ed” (134). Thus slapping the reader in the face for trying to interpret the careful web Danielewski has spun.

Going Back to Hassan

I think that House of Leaves more than any other book we have read so far invites us to consider what Hassan meant by what he called the “Rhetoric of Dismissal.” For Hassan the rhetoric of dismassal was related to the way that the establishment tried to keep down anything new or daring that was going on.

House of Leaves would be most easily dismissed as “The Fad,” which according to Hasssan is not accepted becaused it “implies permanance as absolute value. It also implies the ability to distinguish between fashion and history without benefit of time or creative intuition,” (9). I could easily see people writing this novel off as a fad. Or something cool to do once, but really not anything with any real future. Which would mean future works that are similar to House of Leaves would fall under the “The Safe Version” dismissal, which Hassan says claims “the entrance fee has been paid, once and forever.”

Anyway, my point is, I think Danielewski is daring us to dismiss his work. He wants us to put it down in disgust, or frustration. Look at how many times the book starts, then stops, then goes back to the beginning again, or just starts a completely new beginning. We start with the Truant letter, the first one which seems to lead us to believe that we will be reading a book about Zampano writing this book. Then we stop, go back, start learning about The Navidson Film, which begins to interest us. Then on page 18, we stop and go back and begin Truant’s story (and it is not like you can ignore it, Danielewski makes it long enough that you would have to skip 3 pages to get back to The Navidson Record, which no reader will do). Then with Chapter 3, we stop and go back and learn Navidson’s history and psychology. Think about how many times we stop and go start new somewhere else: learning the histroy of echoes, Truant’s mother’s letters, Henry Hudson, Magellan, Karen’s short, Lude’s List, Zampano’s poems, the Pelican Poems, Zampano’s Letter to the Editor, etc.. They all just lead to us stopping what we are reading and beginning again.

Danielewski wants us to get angry, he wants us to be mad. He is literarally daring us to come at him. I think he feels he is like Truant with the Gdnask man fight, he is going to let us come at him with all we’ve got. just sreaming “706 PAGES OF THIS? ARE yOU SERIOUS? AND WHAT THE F IS UP WITH THE FOOTNOTES?” then he is going to take our punishment and wait till we turn our backs and hit us in the head with a jack daniels bottle, and possible rape and murder our girlfriends.

Someone brought up that Danielewski may have put in all the Truant sex scenes because he wanted to be cool by proxy. I think there is something to that. Originally I thought it was purposefully absurd to point out the unreliability of Truant, but the nerd porn theory holds up just as well. Especially as I read the end of the book, I got the idea that Danielewski just thinks he is so cool, and it bothered me. But I do not want to give anything away, and I need something to talk about next week.

Oh, I actually liked the book by the way. It may not seem like it by what is above, but I dug it.

Photographic Technology’s Twist on Reality and Credibility

I am going to take a break from my reading to post on what I have read so far, and then get right back into it. I just finished one of the sections where there are very few words on each page, and I must say that I was turning those pages so quickly that my dogs got startled. Really, I was reminded of those little flip-books with pictures that if you flip through quickly enough produce a cartoon. That page-turning effect especially kicked in for me when reading pages 182 to 245, when Navidson’s group meets with Jed and Wax. I even found myself getting outright angry at Truant for having the audacity to interrupt the story.

Speaking of Truant, please don’t give anything away but it seems to me he will have “disappeared” by the end of the book, according to Ashley’s letter on p. 151 (in my black-and-white book). She writes, “I’m sorry to hear he disappeared. Do you know what happened to him?” and I, the reader, am thinking, “No, you jerk. I didn’t even know he was missing!” But now she’s got me wondering: will Truant disappear into this empty, ever-changing space? Does the space represent our consciousness and sanity, and will he “disappear” like his mother did? I am determind to find out. (Perhaps I will know by tomorrow.)

On to another point. Many of us, at some point or another, have considered the credibility of this text. (Somehow, the term “text” seems so much more complex when applied to House of Leaves than when applied to any other book.) I was struck by the following 1990 Andy Grundberg quotation, and I began to consider the implications of film being at the heart of this text: “In the future, readers of newspapers and magazines will probably view news pictures more as illustrations than as reportage, since they will be well aware that they can no longer distinguish between a genuine image and one that has been manipulated” (141). I began wondering whether this was a “real” statement or a Danielewski original, and when I did some research, I found the following 1990 New York Times article: http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9C0CE7DC163CF931A2575BC0A966958260

Grundberg’s article is fascinating, and though Danielewski does not include the following excerpt from the article, I think it is particularly relevant in the conversation of credibility and reality which is essential when considering this text. “In the future, it seems almost certain, photographs will appear less like facts and more like factoids – as a kind of unsettled and unsettling hybrid imagery based not so much on observable reality and actual events as on the imagination. This shift, which to a large extent has already occurred within the rarefied precincts of the art world, will fundamentally alter not only conventional ideas about the nature of photography but also many cherished conceptions about reality itself” (Grundberg). Yes, reality must be questioned, and the presentation of reality, thus the credibility, of this text is just so complex.

I think it is very important that in this particular story the focus most basely comes down to a FILM, or photographed images strung together. Grundberg discusses the “video” specifically in the last section of his article:

“If photographs can no longer be perceived as unalloyed facts peeled from the surface of the real world, what will replace them? The temptation is to say video images, since electronic image making increasingly bears the primary responsibility for supplying society with pictures. But the prospect that video will inherit photography’s former truth-bearing function is limited by its even greater susceptibility to computer manipulation.

Some have speculated that an enterprising computer wizard could, for instance, create a visual data bank of all of former President Ronald Reagan’s speeches and then, using a montage of the recorded images and sounds at his disposal, make the President’s video image speak entirely new sentences – literally put words in his mouth. At a time when governments can deny the reality of unmanipulated television pictures, as China has done in the case of last year’s Tiananmen Square uprising, the notion of a fabricated video reality seems especially frightening” (Grundberg).

Nineteen years ago, “fabricated video reality” was a far-off, almost imaginary concept; today it is “our reality.” Essentially, reality adjusts based on what technology produces for us at any given time in our human history, and therein (forgive me for sounding like Ray Bradbury, but I am a big fan) lies the “rub.” Obviously, this novel is not real, nor are the characters, the stories, and especially this “film.” But then again, there can be no definite reality, as Grundberg predicted, rightfully so, in 1990. What he calls “computer manipulation” can “literally put words in [people’s] mouth[s]”, and yet, how is that so different from the various methods used to communicate one hundred or two hundred years ago?

Maybe the difference is that we still, unwittingly, believe in technology’s reality. We believe what we see and read online is real, especially when we have pictures to “prove it.” Even the websites which discriminate between urban legends and reality, like www.snopes.com, could be (and probably do sometimes) distort reality.

If, therefore, one of the messages we can take away from House of Leaves is that nothing is “real” and no one is “credible,” then I would argue that, in one sense, PostModernism is a continuation of Modernism. The Modernists were a disillusioned bunch, and my thoughts here point to that same disillusionment, at least at this point in my reading, in Danielewski’s text.

When one does not know what it is, then it is something; but when one knows what it is, then it is nothing.

In the humanities and sciences, the role of the analogy has always been an important one. Integral to religion, mathematics, literature, and the Law, is it any surprise that the good folks at Educational Testing Service (ETS) spend a great deal of time and effort composing the analogy section of the GREs? If anything, most of postbaccalaureate education seems to be the fine act of making and understanding relations/hips. Of course, it has been said by those recently privy to the experience: ETS takes it to a new level. Perhaps they have Mark Z. Danielewski on retainer.

Mark Z. Danielewski relies heavily on analogies to provide meaning and structure within the text. This is neither a new or innovative device in and of itself. What I’m struck by is not how many connections seem to be present in the text (through the benefit of the footnotes, appendices, etc.) but how many of those connections are incredibly complex or just slightly irregular. Though he cites Derrida (111-113), Danielewski seems to move beyond simple binary oppositions. His pairings play with ideas that aren’t quite opposites or synonyms. Sometimes they may be from the genus, but their relationship is distinct and often tenuous. This produces a fun house effect in some places, pause for thought in others, and still others simply fall flat.

Though they may not be central to the text as a whole (but then again it may, wait and see), I keep returning to the appearance of riddles and jokes in the text. Chapter IV discusses the issue at length, even going so far to quote from a fictional source. “Riddles: they either delight or torment… It’s beneficial to consider the origins of ‘riddle.’ The Old English rœdelse means ‘opinion, conjure’ which is related to the Old English rœdon ‘to interpret’ in turn belong to the same etymological history of ‘read.'” (33). Riddles require reasoning and interpreting, and (not unlike the analogy section of the GRE) may be ultimately unknowable. Riddles become the object of tension, jokes the release of that tension. But that is not to say that jokes are diametrically opposed to riddles. Jokes may also delight or torment. In the cold hallways of the house, Tom begins telling joke after joke to alleviate the tension of being alone or potentially alone in the company of a Monster. The punch lines of his jokes rely on making connections between two different things; like riddles, they require reason and deduction to make that jump. Tom may entertain himself with these stories, but what does it signify that he addresses them to “Mr. Monster”? Does it mean anything that there may be a creature present without the ability to reason in the same sense Tom can? In that circumstance, do his jokes become riddles? What does it mean if this Monster can get his jokes?

When one does not know what it is, then it is something; but when one knows what it is, then it is nothing. What is it? [1]

[1] Answer: A Riddle

2 A Monster

Mr Monster demands smut of the highest caliber

Note on the photo…i did an image search for “house of leaves” and eventually came across this photo…which goes to show, in a world of endless space (weather the house or the internet), youre bound to run into george clinton. at least thats what my grandma always told me.

I was going to write about something like instances of form and function in-and out-world (in relation to the text) or how seriously we can take the narration and subsequent notations, but it seems like thats been covered rather extensively. Then I was going to write about sex, but Alyssa did a pretty awesome job on that…still im out of ideas, so sex it is.

I particularly enjoyed her idea of the little death and how each subsequent sexual encounter is a loss of Truant’s self. I actually was talking to my friend in the writing center this morning and was wondering how a strung out jobless tweak with a broken front tooth got so many women in a successive string. We came to a few conclusions — one, the encounters are (intended to be, by danielewski) in someway fabricated or embellished as per the unreliability of said narrator. two , its LA and most of the women were in the kind of bars where jobless dentally-injured men hang out. 3 the author wanted to be cool by proxy. None of these previous ideas are particularly intriguing to me, but the situation just didnt make a whole lot of sense. Though, what does in this house?

..reasons 4 and 5(theyre kind of intertwined i think), however may give hint as to why these events are documented, or at least they may come close . Reason 4 was pretty much Alyssa’s conclusion, that each encounter was a narrative device to show a loss of self, or descent(further) ((i actually had a little bit to say about how both truant and navidson (potentially us as readers and potentially zampano if i learn more of him…im not done the book yet..) begin to model campells monomyth…’hero’s journey’ …in certain ways, from initial refusal to descent, threshold passing, etc (this chart is pretty okay for a refresher), but without finishing the book i cant make that argument stand up much beyond the “initiation” phase, or phase I.

Anyway, in addition to reason 4 (alyssa’s theorem, if she were old and greek), reason 5, which i cant decide if its entangled with or the exact opposite of reason 4… is that perhaps Truant has sex for the same reason Tom tells jokes to Mr Monster, and Navidson needs to be a savior, and Holloway shoots rifles, and Karen ignores….its an attempt to hold onto something quintessentially them..a “me-ness” or “them-ness” needed to be kept safe in the face of a place that erases or destroys the things not specifically held onto or enacted — like when, i believe its jed…or maybe wax…notes that the buttons and backpack have all but disintegrated..he says something like (rough rough paraphrase) “in this place, its like if you don’t think about something, it disappears/gets destroyed”…

That is to say that Truant needs something primally and concretely “Truant-y” ..something of his ‘old’ life to lean on so that he doesn’t disappear completely. Why the graphic depictions? perhaps the more in detail he recalls the events, the more real they are, and the more concrete “it” he has to hold on to. If he “doesnt remember/think of ” something, these things, perhaps they will disintegrate into nothing, and take him with them? maybe, theres no room for vagary in the house of leaves. maybe blur gets eaten.

Why so much sex?

It seems like Danielewski has been very deliberate about everything he uses in the text, which makes me wonder about all the sex. I’m thinking back to when Professor Sample discussed an interview with the author. Danielewski said that nobody could think of anything about the text that he hadn’t already thought of. So clearly, he is aware of most of the elements in his text and has used these elements intentionally. This whole mindset seems the opposite of postmodern, but I digress. Back to the point – if everything is so deliberate, then what is Danielewski’s intention with all the vivid sex scenes?

I don’t think that he is doing it just to be vulgar and off-putting, however a case could be made for that. Most of the book, starting from “this is not for you,” seems meant to stop the reader from getting through to the end. With all the lengthy footnotes, references to appendices, and switches in narration, it seems obvious that he has intentionally made this book a difficult read. So I think an argument could be made that the detailed sex scenes are just another way to hinder the reader’s progress. But the harder he makes it, the more I want to get to the end. I wonder if he anticipated this reaction in his readers (I’m sure that he would claim he did), but I digress again.

Anyway, although that argument could be made about the sex scenes, I plan to suggest something slightly different. The French refer to the refractory period after orgasm as “La petite mort,” which means “the little death.” This phrase is meant describe fatigue, spiritual release, melancholy, and other symptoms that result after orgasm. But it gets even weirder. A study published in the European Journal of Neuroscience found that this is actually a fairly accurate term: “To some degree, the present results seem to be in accordance with this notion, because female orgasm is associated with decreased blood flow in the orbitofrontal cortex, a part of the brain that is crucial for behavioural control.”

Keeping this in mind, what can we make of all the sex and, more specifically, after-sex experiences in the text? Well, to start with, I might argue that “the little death” represents a loss of self that happens during sex, which results in meloncholy. Death is the greatest representation of losing one’s self. If we approach the sex scenes in these terms, it becomes easy to see why Johnny gradually becomes more depressed and, well, lost. Just like the labrinth, the vivid sex scenes seem to work as yet another metaphor for losing one’s self.

On authorship and Labyrinths: In Response… (Zampano who did you lose?)

…to some of the previous posts:

Reading some of this week’s posts I see that other people are also questioning authorship in HoL as well as the labyrinth-like structure of the text itself. I can’t say I have definitive answers, but here are some of my thoughts on these matters.

I believe that as far as House of Leaves is concerned, “The greatest trick [Danielewski] pulls is convincing the [reader] he doesn’t exist.” Danielewski does an amazing job of creating a work of fiction that seems to be the work of Zampano (does anyone else have issues accenting the ‘o’ in his name?) and Johnny Truant. I like the idea that the reliability of the narrator “doesn’t really matter” as has been said in class, but while browsing through the pages of the book over the weekend I found something very interesting. This Easter egg is not “within the text” so to speak, but is a part of the novel–found on the page of photos directly after the cover. The stained, ink-marked piece of paper on the center of the page is a partial note about the book (This, I now realize, is also in the appendix in full–but I found the one after the cover first, so I’m going to keep that. Sorry, folks, just started looking over the appendices now). It reads

“Note # [indecipherable text] Chapter XII: Perhaps I will alter the whole thing. Kill both children. Murder is a better word. Chad scrambling to escape, almost making it to the front door where Karen waits, until a corner in the foyer suddenly leaps forward and hews the boy in half. At the same time Navidson, by the kitchen, reaches for daisy…arrive a fraction a second too late, his fingers…’ding air, his eyes scratching after Daisy as she…to her death. Let both parents experience that …’eir narcissism find a new object to wither by…’em in infanticide. Drown them in blood.” A note written in red ink below this type-written passage reads “…top primary sense, to wound, tear, pull to pisces.” Note: The line reads pisces, lowercase, not pieces. (DNE)

This sheds a new light on the authorship. Clearly somebody is creating this tale if they have the power to change the ending. But all the passage–like so many others–really does it create more questions. Is this Danielewski’s note? If so, then Truant could indeed be reliable. The same could be said if it is a Zampano note: Truant could still be reliable, but Zampano’s work would further be established as mostly fiction. Is it Pelafina’s note? As we have seen by reading the appendices, she is deeply troubled. Something in her letters hints that she may have had exposure to this work herself, after all, she appears to be in the state that Johnny himself is heading towards.

I am beginning to believe that the question of authorship is answered in the way Danielewski creates a book where readers constantly question the validity of the text. The text–or the body of materials that constitute the novel–are not concerned with fact or fiction. They cause whoever is in possession of them to devolve into a state of isolation and eventual insanity. Can’t the same be said for us, the readers and critics of this novel? There is nothing for us to do but continue reading as the book deconstructs itself. Does this not lead us to frustration and insanity? As many people have mentioned in their posts, HoL consumes us. We want more time–need more time–to consume the book even as it consumes us. The same thing is happening in the text. Johnny isn’t sure whether he is working with genuine documents–he even says the film doesn’t exist and the footnotes are often fabrications–but he can’t put it down. Neither can we. This is the text messing with us. Hints of this can be found in the fonts used for each character:

Zampano uses Times–he is the reporter who did immense research on the Navidson record and reports it in academic and journalistic style. Truant uses Courier. He is the messenger who brings Zampano’s research to the reader. Pelafina’s font is Dante, which conjurs images of hell, perhaps as a result of coming into contact with the very materials that appear to be sending Johnny on a path towards insanity. The editors–perhaps the only reliable writers in the text–use Bookman because they are literally book men.

These fonts are ultimately the work of House of Leaves’ ultimate author, Danielewski, who places specific hints in the text for the readers. It is clear that this is a work of fiction, but the text seems to be confused by its own state of existence. Sometimes we question its credibility and other times accept what the book’s authors write as credible. This is a text that deconstructs itself before I can even fully formulate my own deconstructing criticism and the use of fonts and subtle hints lead me to question the authenticity and reliability of the text, seemingly around every corner. This shows that the text is fighting this struggle itself–trying to exist even as all signs say it should not. I believe the point Danielewski is tying to make is that credibility and authenticity are not always that important or especially clear cut. After all, Johnny reads Zampano’s text knowing that it is largely a fabrication but still finds himself becoming consumed by the work. So do we, the readers, consume the text–fully aware of its status as fiction–and find ourselves consumed. Here we can see elements of postmodern fiction blurring the lines of authorship, transcending the boundaries of fiction and reality and leaving us saying only, “who cares.”

Another element I will touch on briefly are the mentions of the labyrinth. I was hoping to spend more time writing about this, but I am already well over 500 words, so a note will suffice. I agree that the book is much like a labyrinth that we must negotiate. But my question is this: While a normal labyrinth has many dead-ends, with blocked passages connected to the one that actually leads somewhere, is every passage in House of Leaves really a dead-end? Is the text like this on purpose? Serving as a maze with no entrance and no exit–one that answers any questions we may want to address before we can address them? One that traps characters and readers alike in a state of fear, locked away with a monster we can’t see but know is there? You guys tell me.

This is a comic by XKCD that is fitting for our reading of house of leaves:

An xkcd cartoon using an IHOP menu and heavy HoL inspiration

It also apparently manifests peanut butter.

I got to finish the book this week, which was great-although I think this is definitely a book I will have to read and reread, and then do it again, to pick up stuff I missed. Reading Johnny Truant’s mother’s letters was really a revelation-I think it makes a lot of sense to put those in the back of the book, because it made me sort of rethink the way I was approaching JT’s character. He’s pretty easy to write off in the first parts of the book, until it become apparent that however much of a screw-up he may be, he’s pretty smart and talented. His mother’s letters make it clear that her character is incredibly intelligent and well-read (despite being batshit insane). Though I have to say I’m getting weary of this trope of sticking every disaffected and underestimated character in a tattoo parlor (what says screw-up but ultimately talented antihero? I know-make him work in a tattoo parlor!). It would make more sense to have made him a hedge-fund manager. Also, I think I found a Thomas Pynchon reference on page 110, “Playwright Taggert Chiclitz.” I think that was the name of a minor character in Lot 49. (Coupled with Charles Huston’s reference to Genghis Cohen-is it a rule that postmodern writers have to include a Pynchon reference somewhere in their book?)

Anyway, I’ve been poking around the forums on the House of Leaves website, and looking at the entries here, the question that keeps popping up seems to be, so what? What is the purpose, and does it matter? Obviously I have no answer, but I think it’s interesting that that seems to be the source of a good deal of underlying frustration with this work.

I found an interesting link (actually, several) on YouTube for a trailer for a nonexistent movie of House of Leaves (sound familiar?). This one in particular is pretty well-done: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gyug0q9eyqw&NR=1

It’s generated some discussion on how people feel about turning the book into a movie. There’s also a bunch of links to interviews or readings by MZD (and even some trailers people made for the book itself-has youtube made genre obsolete?).

I think the most interesting thing about encountering this book for me has been the vast amount of stuff on the Web about it. I normally don’t do much background digging when I read a book, particularly a fiction one, but I started to when I began reading China Mieville’s stuff (there’s so much background knowledge that plays into his work linguistically that I needed a much larger vocabulary) and now with MZD. Particularly with MZD, there’s an incredible amount of interplay between different media forms regarding this book-the YouTube trailers, discussion forums, even a band called House of Leaves (myspace.com/houseofleaves) (I think they kind of suck but whatever) and it has made me really start redefining the concept of reading a book, because this isn’t a book you can really just read, which I think may have been exactly what MZD was going for-maybe that’s the answer to the so what? question.

Oh, and the book generates its own peanut butter-several pages in mine are stuck together with it, and I don’t eat peanut butter.

What to believe in this work of fiction

As I continue to read the book, I continue to be pulled into its labyrinth-nature. I wish I had a full day to finish it because it really is hard to put down!

Both Professor Sample and Sara Flood have commented on how exactly we are meant to approach this novel. I keep asking myself that same question, too. Sara pointed out a great quote from page 114 of the novel. I think this quote, which refers to the labyrinth-like nature of the film and the viewer’s interaction with the film, also applies to us as readers of the novel. As we discover the multiple layers we, too, are continuing to try to piece it together. Sara commented on the remark that someone made in class: “Does it really matter?” I’m reminded of Marquez’s Chronicle of a Death Foretold. I absolutely love the novella and love teaching it. Every year, though, my students get so hung up on the questions that don’t really matter. They become practically obsessed with the identity of the narrator and who really took Angela’s virginity and they miss some of the bigger elements and deeper connections. I am wondering if I’m doing the same thing with Danielewski’s novel. Are we missing something, or, perhaps, are we looking too deep into it? Is Danielewski’s master plan to confuse us in this way? If so, for what purpose?

(I am interested in Professor Sample’s suggestion that the real tests and references in the novel could be the lens through which we should be viewing the book.)

I’m also questioning what Danielewski wants us to believe. Yes, we are dealing with a work of fiction, but Danielewski has put such great time and effort into making his novel appear real. The frame narrator, the footnotes, the letters from Truant’s mother….all of these aspects of the work make it seem real to the readers. But then the footnotes and references are a mix of fact and fiction, and it seems we are seeing more and more references of sources that never seemed to have existed. (Of course, none of it really existed to begin with!) For instance, on page 83, Zampano references a book that is “no longer in print”. Similarly, on page 99, he refers to Navidson’s “now lost journal”. And, of course, The Navidson Record isn’t obtainable. With this mix of fact with an overwhelming amount of fiction constructed to appear factual, what are we supposed to believe? How does this mix contribute a greater meaning and greater significance of the book and its layers?

The layering continues to develop as we read. I had not read the mother’s letters for last class, but, now that I have read them, I agree they provide more insight into Truant’s character. I think we can see him as more intellectual than his lifestyle suggests. The stories about his childhood abuse makes us view him (and his times of violent thoughts and actions) differently, too. It is so interesting to read his footnotes! Whenever I come to one of Truant’s long notes, at first I’m a little annoyed that I have to stop reading about The Navidson Record, but then I get into Truant’s thoughts (it’s almost like reading his annotations in Zampano’s work) and I don’t want to shift back to The Navidson Record! I’m really enjoying the style! I was also particularly intrigued by the fact that layers are played out in this style as well. For instance, in Chapter VIII, the text (and space) mimics the film shots which mimicked the “SOS” knocking heard in the house. I found this choice fascinating!

I look forward to finishing the novel and, hopefully, gaining a better understanding of how we are supposed to read the work and what we’re supposed to take from it.

~Jennifer Kathryn Fulton

More on Form and Function

Yes, I keep feeling ridiculous for trying to analyze this book. Last week when we were talking about whether or not Johnny Truant was a reliable narrator, someone asked, why does it matter? I’m starting to feel that way about the whole book. Danielewski leads us around in his little text mazes, getting deeper into the analysis of a movie that doesn’t exist, about a house that doesn’t exist. Truant, for that matter, doesn’t exist either. Neither does Navidson. Or Karen. Or her problems. Danielewski’s writing fiction here.

However, as much as it resists analysis, it kind of cries out for it. Sure, nothing really exists, but really, neither do the dark hallways, so everything at least relates. It reminds me again of the layers in The Crying of Lot 49. Peel away everything only to reveal more layers:

“From the outset of The Navidson Record, we are involved in a labyrinth, meandering from one celluloid cell to the next, trying to peek around the next edit in hopes of finding a solution, a centre, a sense of whole, only to discover another sequence, leading in a completely different direction, a continually devolving discourse, promising the possibility of discovery…” (114).

Even if Danielewski doesn’t want us to interpret it, there’s this need to at least mull over the deeper implications of everything that happens. Especially when he presents so much analysis of everything. I mean, given the interpretation of Minotaur-as-deformed-child, how could people just move on like that isn’t an interesting consideration? At the very least, we can analyze his analyses, right?

I really like the part about the Minotaur, even though it’s hard to read because of the strike-through. I also like how he describes how to read the text sort of the same way he describes how to view the movie. For example, he’s talking about how Navidson mimics the distress code by timing his film clips to the pulse of SOS. At the same time, the text in the book forms a similar pattern. Later he leads us through the maze of text and footnotes, some dead ends, while explaining how to interpret a maze. I suppose this is pretty gimmicky, but I kind of like it because it reminds me in some ways of a comic strip – how you’re visually led from one frame to the next.

If the form of the text is so interwoven with the interpretation of the movie, is it any wonder the book itself gets analyzed? I’m not sure how to read it without constantly applying whatever he says to Truant. I’m also not sure what to do with the Sheehan Disability Scale. I guess it’s like the ultimate form of analyzing the book, right? Put it through psychotherapy?

Also, can I just point out that on page 84, an article titled “The Illusion of Intimacy and Depth” appears in an issue of Ladies’ Home Journal? That’s pretty funny. So was the story about the captain with the red shirt/brown pants.

Reading House of Leaves against itself

The great paradox of House of Leaves is that the house in the book remains “virtually inviolate to interpretation” (60), while the book itself goes to great lengths to anticipate every conceivable interpretation of itself.

Therefore many of my interpretative approaches toward the text tend either to getting entirely outside the novel (e.g. the mapping project) or to reading the book very literally against itself. In the myriad of made-up and real intertextual references, for example, can we find some surprising framework that casts the novel in a new light?

I’m very interested in the recurring presence of anxieties and phobias in the novel. Karen Green, we find out, has a history of claustrophobia, and one footnote even references her “results on the Sheehan Clinician Rated Anxiety Scale as well as Sheehan Phobia Scale” (59, f69). These are, it turns, out, real clinical diagnostic tools. I’m toying with the idea that we could take something like these real-world rubrics and somehow use them as a lenses to look at House of Leaves. Below is a summary of the Sheehan Disability Scale (SDS), which psychologists often have patients use to self-report their social anxieties. Does something like this have any interpretative potential, or is it just a false lead?

[scribd id=12694609 key=key-1efh2rnfipbnh0f8vuuv]