danielewski – American Postmodernism

The writer and his subjects

Wow. I had thought House of Leaves took us on a whirlwind tour de force narrative, but I think Plascencia’s People of Paper has Danielewski’s work beat. I have so many questions. I was really hooked by the Prologue and the first couple of chapters, but then found myself juggling so many narratives. Obviously there are connections between the narratives, but these connections are often vague, and I kept waiting to have some grand epiphany as to how all the puzzle pieces really come together.

One of the main puzzle pieces I found myself working to place was the question of Saturn’s identity. Initially, and at many points throughout the novel, it seems that Saturn is a God-figure. He’s all-knowing, always watching the many characters. However, the characters are able to hide from him behind their lead walls and doors and by blocking out some of their thoughts from “view.” However, we also learn that “Saturn’s real name is Salvador Plascencia” (102). Postcards sent to Saturn are addressed to Plascencia, and the two continue to be equated throughout the novel. We learn that Saturn’s great-grandfather is Don Victoriano and his father is Antonio, providing more connections between the characters and suggesting that Saturn is not a God-figure. It also seems that Saturn is, at least at times, an actual neighbor in the town because Smiley watches “the light from Saturn’s bedroom” being turned on and off (151). Saturn’s identity is clearly jumbled, but it seems that Saturn is most likely representative of the author and Plascencia is commenting on writing and the role of the writer.

The town is at war against Saturn, a war which is later referred to as “the war on an omniscient narrator” (218). At several points throughout the novel we learn that Saturn is losing some control over the story. Early in the novel he is said to be “blind to the progression of the story” (105). Later, Sandra shares that “After all these pages, as Saturn faded, it was our voices that directed the story, our collective might pressing Saturn into a corner” (216). At this point in the novel, the voices of the characters dominate the pages. Saturn is called a “tyrant” because he is “commanding the story where he wants it to go” (228). The characters want privacy. They build their safe houses to protect themselves from Saturn’s view. Even when the lead houses must be taken down, the characters are still able to withhold information from Saturn—the author—by withholding thoughts when telling their story. The clearest example of this withholding of information is when Froggy “never revealed what the letters [from Sandra] said” (244). He viewed this withholding of information as “his small way of triumphing over Saturn.” In this sense, the character is withholding information from not only the author, who has not provided full disclosure of the character’s thoughts, actions, and motivations, but also from the reader. Not all questions are answered, and some things have been left open to interpretation. The characters seem to prefer this “privacy” to full disclosure. Little Merced even feels anger “not only toward Saturn, but also against those who stared down at the page, against those who followed sentences into her father’s room and into his bed, watching […] perhaps even laughing” (186). It seems that Plascencia is making a statement about the writer’s role, suggesting that not all questions should be answered but, rather, things should be left open to interpretation, just as they are in life.

In this way, Plascencia also suggests, as Cameroon states, that we are “not of paper” (226). Cameroon says that there is a difference between telling and writing. As both Cameroon and Liz point out, an author cannot capture the whole story when trying to portray a character or a person. Text, then, and the retelling of the stories on it, becomes dangerous, as Ralph and Elisa Landin conclude (219). It is interesting that Plascencia suggests that writers embark on a dangerous task when they write their stories, and yet his novel seems so personal.

Syntax and Semantics

Looking at form, The People of Paper has many characteristics of the House of Leaves. The text does not limit itself to a traditional format or even a single column down the page. It breaks into seemingly concurrent narratives, each column clearly denoted with its own heading. The narratives are amended with blackouts and strikethroughs which emphasize the text’s self-awareness as well as the feeling of being in real time, keeping pace with characters’ thoughts and feeling and the revision of these thoughts and feelings. Incidentally, the typographic revisions also inject emotion. Instead of writing “And for Liz who taught me that we are all of paper,” Saturn writes, “For Liz who fucked everything” (Palscencia 122). This statement, identical to the book’s dedication page, contributes to the metanarrative and informs it in a new way. When we reflect on the dedication page, is there a sense that it will be revised or that it was revised and then returned to its original state? Is there a feeling of tenderness or hostility? Again, this calls to mind the House of Leaves’ dedication page, “This is not for you.” How do we read that? Is it a static warning? Is it written with light-heartedness or hostility? Regardless, the fact that we are considering the dedication page at all is quite postmodern.

Salvador Plascencia excels in his use of grammar and tense. Like many other Spanish writers, he does not submit to a singular tense; rather, the narratives interweave the past (e.g. 91), present (e.g. 181), future (e.g. 118), and conditional (e.g. 180) tense, expressing the complex relationship between these spheres. Moreover, Plascencia does not feel clausal shame. His sentences are inundated with modifiers: “In the bathtub, while his toes thawed and Cameroon sat in the next room reading impossible books about capturing birds with peppers and salt, Saturn dialed” (236). By allowing himself the syntactical space, he gains a panoramic lens.

In the tradition of South American writers like Marquez and Borges, he does not fear passive voice. He does not seem to fret over “telling” his story. Consequently, he retains a sense of authorial power in the text-above and beyond the metanarrative. The passive voice evokes a history of story-telling and oral tradition. In doing so, he points to the power of the narrative in everyday life: the stories that we tell ourselves and our responsibility in constructing these stories:

Saturn concentrated on the future, staring at her finger and the way it seemed to hover the longest over the ringed planet, and then looked at her face, wondering what it would be like to touch her Gypsy hair again, to wake in her bed and taste her paper lips and write love letters complete with graphs and charts on her paper skin as she slept, so she would wake and say, ‘You wrote all this for me?’ and Saturn would simply nod. (245)

From a thematic perspective, The People of Paper lands antithetical to the House of Leaves. While Danielewski would have us believe that we have no control over our own narratives, Plascencia emphasizes the pursuit of narrative control rather than end result of that struggle.

Metafiction

We discussed self reflexivity of a text as one of the characteristics of postmodernism on the first day of class. This is, in my opinion, the most self reflexive of any of the texts that we have read so far this semester (although House of Leaves would be a very close second). I give The People of Paper a slight edge because the actual author Salvador Plascencia shows up in the novel, as where Danielewski stayed hidden.

When it become clear that Plascencia is Saturn and a character in the book, the first thing that came to my mind was the movie Adaptation. In the movie, Nic Cage plays Charlie Kaufman, who is the screenwriter of the movie. We watch as he struggles with a script for a movie based on The Orchid Thief, eventually writing himself trying to write the script into the script he is writing, which is the movie we are watching. Kaufman’s personal life effects what is happening in the script and the script is effecting what is happening in his life until the two become inseparable. The book, the script about the movie, and Kaufman’s life are involved in this intertexual relationship that is the movie (the movie itself become part of the layering of the intertextuality as well). For anyone who has seen a Charlie Kaufman movie, this paragraph makes sense, if you have not, it probably does not. Kaufman’s latest movie Synechdoce, New York also deals with a lot of postmodern ideas, but I did not want to discuss it here because I am pretty sure I need to watch it again before I can make any sense of it.

Like Jennifer, I am sometimes annoyed by the authorial intrusions in some postmodern works (John Barth comes to mind for me as well). However, I did not mind Saturn/Plascencia in this novel. Instead of just popping in to remind us that we are reading a fictional work like some metafiction, Saturn’s role shows us how Plascencia is actively shaping the story. The writing of the story and the resistance the author recieves from both inside and outside the fictional world he creates is the novel. Just like in House of Leaves, once we learn something about Truant (namely Pelafina’s letters) it casts a new light on everything else that we have already read. Merced leaving Federico de la Fe, Rita Hayworth snubbing lettuce pickers, the seeming cold-heartedness of Merced Del Papel all seem to take on a new meaning when we consider what happened with Salvadore and Liz.

Anthony wrote about it in his post, but I was wondering what other people thought of the treatment of women in this novel. Is it misogynistic? Is there really a Liz? does it matter?

Authorship/Form in The People of Paper

This is the second book in a row that I won’t be able to finish in time, which is frustrating because this is due to a lack of time rather than a lack of interest. I still wanted to post on what I’ve observed so far, namely on authorship and form. Immediately–maybe three pages in–I was reminded of House of Leaves, per various voices claiming the page. In House of Leaves, Danielewski uses different fonts to distinguish between Zampano and Johnny Truant, and uses the appendix so that Truant’s mother, too, informs the text. We spent a great deal of time in class talking about authorship with that book, as I’m sure we’ll also do with this one, given the nature of authorship in these pages. Per that nature, or rather, structure, Plascencia distinguishes between authors not via font but via capitalized headings, columns, and chapters. Reading through this various authorship was, for me, not necessarily easier or harder than reading through the authorship in House of Leaves, though, to clarify, when engaged in Zampano’s text, I knew right away when the authorship changed to Truant due to the font change, whereas in The People of Paper, I sometimes made the mistake of reading a second column with the assumption that I was following a continuation of the same author from the first column. It was only when the POV in that column contradicted this that I was reminded to scan up to the heading to see who was speaking. As I progressed through the book, I didn’t make this mistake as often, for the form became more familiar.

While the various authorship reminds me of House of Leaves, the omniscient Saturn brings to mind the film, Stranger Than Fiction, where a character becomes aware that he is indeed a character. Certainly, Federico de la Fe feels aware of this Saturn/Author that follows him and Little Merced, forcing Federico to hide in mechanical tortoise shells, etc. The book falls in line with some of John Barth’s metafiction, notably in his short stories in Lost in the Funhouse wherein the author interrrupts a story to discuss his process in writing the story or to otherwise insert some authorial information into the narrative. I had always disliked the effect this had on the story–that temporary removal of the reader from and subsequent insertion of the reader back into the text, but Plascencia frames his differently so that it is not a matter of interruption but a matter of structural authorship; in other words, the reader knows from the very first page of The People of Paper, just like the reader knows in House of Leaves, that this is indeed the way the narrative is structured, therefore you’re not reading a traditional narrative for twenty pages and come across a sudden, off-putting interjection by the author, as was the case sometimes with Barth. Mary Karr, in her memoir The Liar’s Club, writes a relatively straight narrative but for a sudden shift to second person in one paragraph in the middle of the book where she speaks to a man she had been formerly writing about in third person–a man who, as a child, had molested her. This accusatory paragraph directed at “you” stands out for me in the book because it was unexpected and it departed from the otherwise solid, objective memoir. This seemed, to me, to be the kind of thing that would’ve been weeded out in a workshop and I’m curious as to her defense of that paragraph.

I just wanted to note, lastly, that I was both envious of and in awe of the fact that this is Salvador Plascencia’s first novel, not to mention the fact that he’s a recent graduate of an MFA program and only three years older than me…

Transitioning from Danielewski to Russ

So, I’m relaxing over spring break, recovering from the marathon that was Danielewski’s House of Leaves (thoroughly enjoyed nonetheless), and I start in on Joanna Russ’ The Female Man. After having finished the novel (shall we call it a novel?) a week later, I reflect. At times I thought the book was brilliant; the subversion of the science fiction, manipulating the genre to fit what she was trying to address on the feminist ‘front’, was outstanding. The Faulknerian use of stream of consciousness and first-person narration is also commendable. But then there were parts of the novel that became burdensome for me; in other words, at a certain point, I felt like the book’s entire discussion (the question of a woman’s role/freedom/right [I hesitate to provide a label for fear of a Jael-like counterattack] in the world) became repetitive; and I would guess if you go searching for criticism against The Female Man you might find a similar complaint somewhere…

…but really you don’t have to look any further than the book itself:

Shrill . . . vituperative . . . no concern for the future of society . . . maunderings of antiquated feminism . . . selfish femlib . . . need a good lay . . . this shapeless book . . . of course a calm and objective discussion is beyond . . . twisted, neurotic . . . some truth buried in a largely hysterical . . . [and so on and so forth]. (140-41)

Within the book, Joanna Russ has provided the reader with criticism for the book: The Female Man is its own worst critic. What does this tell us about Joanna Russ and her intentions? Is she mocking these critical voices; drawing attention to the very biases that they reinforce? Is this critical inclusion a form of self-deprecation of her novel? Is it a little bit of both?

Whatever answers we might conclude to these questions, this section of the book got me thinking about Danielewski. Of course, after three weeks of House of Leaves, we are all familiar with Danielewski’s tactics, his self-proclaimed preemptive strike against any form of literary criticism, or any attempt to disassemble the book. I’m not necessarily suggesting that Joanna Russ was trying to actively prevent criticism like Danielewski is, but she is certainly anticipating responses towards the book.

With House of Leaves already in the discussion, I also thought of another interesting comparison between the two authors. With the construction of numerous levels of ‘authorship’ (i.e. Zampano and Johnny Truant), Danielewski effectively ‘distances’ himself from the text. Conversely, Joanna Russ eliminates any separation between her and The Female Man by identifying herself in the book as both character and author, crossing the conventional line between author and text. I wonder what this accomplishes for the book. As the ‘1970s feminist trying to succeed in a man’s world’, what can we say about The Female Man Joanna and the author Joanna? I’m thinking it’s important to remember that she is only one of the four female ‘representations’ in the book.

…As you can tell, this book has left me with more questions than it has provided answers.

Side-note:

With all the references to the moon, it will be hard not to think of The Female Man whenever I listen to Pink Floyd’s ‘Dark Side of the Moon’. Now, I keep thinking of ‘Us and Them’ in terms of Jael’s version of Earth with warring male and female societies. Try it; it just about fits…

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

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.

Real Echoes

I was intrigued by the passage in The House of Leaves that defined and related the history of echoes. Echo’s voice “has life. It possesses a quality not present in the original, revealing how a nymph can return a different and more meaningful story, in spite of telling the same story” (42). Of course the series of echoes is found in the construction of the text itself, Zampono’s voice filtered through at least two other voices, and Truant even admits to changing Zampono’s “heater” into “water heater,” in order to make Truant’s echo of Zampono’s story more meaningful to Truant. The echo therefore is real and has meaning in its own right, independent from the original sound. This independent meaning of the representation parallels Baudrillard’s phases of the images, where a simulacrum can exist with no relation to reality, and the invented character of Navidson, who would perhaps fit in at number three of the image phases. Of course it’s silly for literature students to debate whether or not fiction/lies/simulacra have meaning, but by inviting the reader to imagine the book as a true story, Danielewski makes the reader more actively involved and invested in the story. Baudrillard suggests that simulation is dangerous because it implies that everything is a simulation. The reader, confronted with such a skillful simulation of a critical discussion about a film, will then somewhat question the existence of the “real” critics and films s/he reads or has read about.

The main episode where echoes play a large role is when Navidson, lost in the passageway, keeps calling out to find his way through space, and his daughter’s response to his calls is a kind of echo that (it would appear) saves his life. Navidson’s adventure in the passageways echoes the imagery Zampano uses to describe (what Truant thinks is) his own experience with echoes: a word “flung down empty hallways long past midnight” (48). The only evidence of the beast in the passageways with Navidson is aural as well, the growling noises reverberating in the silence. Even the beast itself seems to only echo the awareness of it. Lude hasn’t detected anything wrong with reality. Zampono’s foreboding final emphasis on how Daisy’s “Always” echoes “hallways” seems to give great weight to echoes, but to what end? (73) Is the beast the reality that everyone’s simulacra are working to hide? Or is it the truth that there is no reality?

Truant also seems happier with Thumper’s “image feeling permanently fixed within me” than really getting to know the real girl with the tattoo (54). Something strange is going on with his repeated “can’t write the word”s, and also his “Known some call is air am” is a kind of textual echo of the Latin, purposefully leading the reader on an involved quest for its meaning (72).

Quintessentially Postmodern, in Form and Function

The first thing I did when received this book from Amazon is flip through it. I was immediately struck by the drastically diverse layouts—some pages were dense with “typewriter style” text, some pages were extremely sparse with only three or four words, some had music notes, comic book illustrations, poetry, or letters. The text itself also eventually develops into a copy editor’s nightmare as the novel progresses: multiple fonts, strikethroughs, upside down, sideways—it’s one of the most exaggerated examples of spatial disorientation I’ve seen in a text. Something looked consistent, though: the word “house” was always blue. But this is my point: if that’s not a quintessentially postmodern text, what is?! If we’ve been unsure about classifying the previous novels we’ve read for this class as postmodern texts, we cannot be unsure about this one. Though I am unsure about many things regarding the meaning/theme(s) of House of Leaves at this point, I can say with certainty that this text is a postmodern one!

In addition to this, the postmodern concept of “layering,” as has been brought up by many fellow bloggers, is what seems to hold House of Leaves together. Danielewski interweaves multiple narratives within the book dexterously, and each tale is told with a distinctive style and unique purpose. For example, in terms of style, Truant’s text has the rambling intonation similar to Pynchon’s Lot 49, while the Zampano narrative sounds like a profound yet satirical account of academic writing. Finally, Navidson’s account has the style and tone that sounds the most like a traditional story. Intertwined in this way, the novel is relayed to the reader in rambling fragments, separated by footnotes and halting subject shifts. As I read through the pages, I found myself trying hard to resist the urge to follow a linear path, and as I adopted this mentality, the once-intimidating text slowly began to slowly reveal itself, little by little, very much like the ‘character’ of the house in the novel.

This is an aside: Did anyone else notice this right before page xi of the “Introduction”? –> “This is not for you.” It made me laugh.. :-)

But seriously, it brings up a whole slew of interesting questions: Why is this not for me? For whom is this written? If it’s not for me, why does Mark Danielewski dedicate an entire page at the start of his novel to reveal this to me and to everyone else who picks up his novel? Who is the “you”/”me” in this statement, anyway? Whatever it means, it definitely does the job of capturing the reader’s attention, and by working in the same way “reverse psychology” does, each reader immediately starts to believe that this work is significant for him/her (which is probably the effect that Danielewski had hoped it would have). I think the reader’s relationship with this text is meant to be dramatized, and Danielewski does this effectively by increasing the reader’s level of interaction with the text. What is the result of this increased level of interaction? Well, as opposed to any other genres of fiction, where you as the reader choose to escape into the story, the opposite happens with the postmodern genre: the text “escapes” into you, and changes the way you think about yourself—just as Johnny Truant assures the reader will happen: “For some reason, you will no longer be the person you believed you once were. You’ll detect slow and subtle shifts going on all around you, more importantly shifts in you. Worse, you’ll realize it’s always been shifting, like a shimmer of sorts, a vast shimmer, only dark like a room. But you won’t understand why or how.” Sounds creepy. And also very postmodern.

Confusion of Authorship and the Gothic Novel

I know that as a literature grad student I am supposed to be able to step back and recognize fiction for what it is: made up stories about made up people ( I know that this definition is overly-simplistic, but whatever). That being said, what I have read in House of Leaves so far seriously creeps me out. I’ve only managed to read the first 80 pages that were assigned, but I am hooked, and may not get any sleep tonight because I want to know what happens next. The last time a book freaked me out this much was when I misguidedly read Stepehn King’s It in middle school, alone, at night, and constantly worrying that a killer clown was going to come out from under my bed and do terrible things to me. A coincidence I noticed was that Bret Easton Ellis offered a blurb praising this book saying that both Thomas Pynchon and Stephen King would want to bow down to Danielewski after reading this book. It is a coincidence because the three books that pop into my head when I read House of Leaves are It by Stephen King, The Crying of Lot 49 by Pynchon, and Ellis’ Lunar Park.

Lunar Park is probably the book I most think of when I read this because it explores many of the same themes as House of Leaves (although admittedly many years later). The main two of these themes being the hiding/layering of authorship and the physical house itself as the sourc of terror. Lunar Park is a book written by Bret Easton Ellis, author of such works as Less than Zero, The Rules of Attraction, and American Psycho, whose protaganist is Bret Easton Ellis, author of such works as Less Than Zero, The Rules of Attraction, and American Psycho. The first sentence of Lunar Park is “You do an awfully good impression of yourself.” With this sentence, and throughout the novel Ellis attempts to hide/layer the actual authorship of the book by writing about the fictional Bret Easton Ellis writing this book. The blur between the fictional Ellis’ and the real Ellis’ life are purposefully blurred to the point that his fictional actress wife, Jayne Dennis (I think, I have not read it in awhile), has her own website ( on which she is reported to have formally dated Keanu Reeves……Whoa!). The novel includes enough actual facts about Ellis’ life that it is hard for the reader to know where the fiction starts and real life begins. Like many of my classmates, I am so completely caught up in Zampano’s/Truant’s story that I forget that it is all just coming from Danielewski. I keep feeling like if I stop reading and get on Netflix, I can put the Navidson Record on my queue, and I REALLY want to watch it. As where Ellis creates the fictional Ellis to hide/confuse authorship, Danielewski manages to completely mask himself and the reader forgets he even exists.

The other thing I noticed was that there seems to be something gothic about this novel’s treatment of the home. In gothic novels danger/otherness/creepiness shifted from coming from outside the house to coming from within or from the actuall house itself. This most likely had something to do with Victorian mores about sex according to some scholars, but that is neither here nor there, the house, home or living space generated the otherness/spookiness. I just thought this was interesting as we have discussed how postmodernism has been a reaction to other modes of literature. We have mainly discussed how it relates/ contrasts to modernism, but House of Leaves seems to be a postmodern take on the more traditional gothic novel.

Oh, and if anyone else out there is an Ellis fan, how awesome does the trailer for The Informers look? Spoiler: the answer, pretty awesome.