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.