Before I get into my fragmented points about signifiers, space, and “reality” (vs. simulation) in House of Leaves, I wanted to add to Sara’s point about absence in the book. I noticed that the “narrator,” if we can call him that, is named “Truant” which can be used (in the noun form) to mean “one who is absent without permission” or “one who shirks off responsibility” (www.dictionary.com). Obviously, both definitions incite conversation (given Truant’s sometimes less-than-responsible behavior), but in terms of a conversation on absence, Truant serves as both the signifier and the signified: he conveys the message, and he himself is the message. Truant tells Zampano’s story (which has Zampano telling Navidson’s story), so he serves as one signifer for another signifier. Then, his name reflects the absence in the story he is telling; the message of absence is, ironically, present in the narrator’s name.
Along with several other posts, I was fascinated by the layering of this story; not only is the narrator telling Zampano’s story who’s telling Navidson’s story, but also, the story is a fragmented novel about a fragmented story about a fragmented film. The layering of media, or signifiers, really strikes me as Postmodern. Foucault explains in “Of Other Spaces” that a train “is something through which one goes,.. something by means of which one can go from one point to another, and then it is also something that goes by” (24). In the same sense, House of Leaves presents, what Foucault calls “the curious property of being in relation with all the other sites, but in such a way to suspect, neutralize, or invert the set of relations that they happen to designate, mirror, or reflect” (24). The multi-layered signifiers demonstrate the relationship between each story, but interweave to create a fragmentary and, at the same time, mirrored experience. Truant becomes so engrossed in Zampano’s story (at least by p. 79, we know something of this) that he, too, becomes somewhat agoraphobic and paranoid; Zampano’s reality becomes Truant’s reality. (We can speak of “reality” next, in relation to Baudrillard’s article.) Even before the transference between the living Truant and the dead Zampano, we have reason to believe that Zampano has experienced some of the same obsession with space and reality that Navidson had. As far as I am in the book, I feel ill-equipped to go further with the analysis of transference and multi-layered signifiers, but let me try to assess Baudrillard’s argument on “simulation” and “reality.”
Baudrillard writes, “Illusion is no longer possible, because the real is no longer possible” and this: “Simulation is infinitely more dangerous [than transgression and violence] since it always suggests, over and above its object, that law and order themselves might really be nothing than a simulation” (177). When I read that, I immediately considered what we know of the suddenly-appearing hallway in Navidson’s film. (I say “film” because I think we must always consider that “reality” is mediated by a signifier, and thus may not be reality at all.) I wondered whether, at page 79, whether we are right to question the reality of the story. Don’t get me wrong, I’ve already been terrified a few times by Danielewski’s story (let’s do give him a little credit since, really, it is his story, and not Navidson’s or Zampano’s or Truant’s), but it could be that we are really reading a “simulation” of reality. This is, after all, someone’s film; dare we remember the “true” story that was The Blair Witch Project. In any case, I think Baudrillard is relevant in reminding us, at this early stage of our reading, that there is no clear demarcation between what is real and what is imagined; in fact, there may be nothing that is “real” anymore. Law and order have been lost in 1/4 of an inch, or whatever the measurement turns out to be.
And yet, the imagined space is terrifying. We do not believe the “always” as little Daisy calls them could possibly open up and envelop Navidson as they do, and the “growl,” what is that? A monster? Come on now, Danielewski. And yet, and yet, I am shakin’ in my boots. The imagined has taken the place of the real, it has effectively inhabited multiple spaces through multiple signifiers, and it has done so in a positively disturbing way.