{"id":228,"date":"2009-02-16T21:27:46","date_gmt":"2009-02-17T02:27:46","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/spring2009\/660\/?p=228"},"modified":"2009-02-16T21:34:18","modified_gmt":"2009-02-17T02:34:18","slug":"book-within-a-book-within-a-book-and-an-attempt-at-baudrillard","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/spring2009\/660\/?p=228","title":{"rendered":"Book within a book within a book… and an attempt at Baudrillard"},"content":{"rendered":"

When I’m reading, say, Vonnegut or David Foster Wallace, I’m aware that I’m reading their words throughout the book, often stopping to think how they wrote a certain section or how they might’ve decided on structure or how ideas in the book might go along with the author’s personality or life, like how Vonnegut\u00a0often writes of WWII\u00a0or secular humanism, and how David Foster Wallace typically incorporates technology, morality, etc. However, when reading House of Leaves<\/em>, which I finished this past week while at the conference in Chicago (I skipped a bunch of panels and spent much of the week in my hotel room with the book),\u00a0I didn’t once think of Danielewski. He had managed to hide himself as author of House of Leaves<\/em> within the layers of authorship in the book. Of course, I know that it is Danielewski writing about Truant who is writing about Zampano who is writing about Navidson, but in all of this, as I was reading it, the source–the original author–was lost. I’m wondering if this is what Baudrillard is referring to when he talks about the simulacrum replacing the original. I might be totally off here, since I didn’t\u00a0fully understand Baudrillard’s piece, but it seemed that he was suggesting that the original is lost when the copies become reality, or something to that effect. On top of all the layers of authorship in House of Leaves<\/em>, you also have the editors and the fake critical sources adding up to a sense of reality, since we generally see critical essays as analysis of something real–why, for instance, would someone analyze something not real, unless the entire analysis is a fabrication… does this make sense?<\/p>\n

Whenever Prof. Sample asks if we experienced anything postmodern in our lives the previous week, I never had anything to say, not because I didn’t experience anything “postmodern” but because if I did, I didn’t realize it or didn’t understand it as postmodern. However, when I was in Chicago, I felt for the first time aware of many “postmodern” occurrances. For instance, when my fiance, Lucas,\u00a0and I first got to\u00a0our hotel room, we noticed that we had two double beds (which looked more like two twin beds), which was weird for us because we didn’t know what to do with this extra bed. At first we joked that one would be the “eating” bed and the other the “sleeping” bed, but eventually, we each sort of nonverbally claimed a bed. That first night, he was on “his” bed and I was on mine, and we were watching television. There was this show on and\u00a0in the episode, this couple was forced to sleep on\u00a0separate beds.\u00a0 Lucas, as we were watching this couple in\u00a0their beds on television, said\u00a0something about how weird\u00a0it was\u00a0that we were\u00a0sort of in the same predicament. But, what was weirder, was that the couple on television turned on their television\u00a0and saw an old black-and-white television series with a couple in separate beds (back when couples couldn’t sleep in the same bed on tv). So, essentially, Lucas and I, in our separate beds, watched a couple on television in their separate beds as they in turn watched another television couple in their separate beds. My point to this anecdote is that I immediately thought of this class, but it wasn’t until now, when writing this blog, that I made the connection between that experience and the person writing about person writing about person issue\u00a0(and book within a book within a book) in House of Leaves.<\/em><\/p>\n

Going back to the authorial tone insofar as the editors and critical writers in the book, there were times when I became so engrossed in the Navidson Record that I\u00a0gave serious consideration\u00a0to the footnoted critics and almost forgot that these critics were made up and that the Navidson Record as source material wasn’t real. Again, I’m not sure if this is what Baudrillard is saying when he talks about simulacrum but it seems to make sense, at least in my understanding of the article. Or maybe this could be the simulation, the difference between “imaginary” and “real,” perhaps? But that would be the book itself, too, correct? I think, like the post before me, I seem to have more questions than answers when relating House of Leaves<\/em> to the other readings for this week. Foucault and Baudrillard aside, I have questions just on House of Leaves<\/em>–like, for instance,\u00a0the aforementioned authorship. It had seemed, in the beginning of the book, to be as I stated before–Danielewski writing about Truant who is writing about Zampano who is writing about Navidson–but toward the end this authorship is questioned in\u00a0two specific\u00a0scenes; I won’t mention the details of these scenes\u00a0for those who haven’t finished the book (but for those\u00a0who have: the song that the band plays and what Navidson uses the matches for), but these two scenes\u00a0completely threw me off on what I had presumed to be “real,” to use that term loosely, and I almost, briefly, considered rereading at least the first 100 pages or so of the book again. I don’t believe I’ve ever consumed this much writing in this short of time–I’m interested in what others have to say about it! And hopefully someone can clear up Baudrillard and Foucault for me. Funny how when reading these two articles, knowing that they were assigned with House of Leaves<\/em> and looking for connections, it felt like I was reading the critical writers writing about the Navidson Record.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

When I’m reading, say, Vonnegut or David Foster Wallace, I’m aware that I’m reading their words throughout the book, often stopping to think how they wrote a certain section or how they might’ve decided on structure or how ideas in the book might go along with the author’s personality or life, like how Vonnegut\u00a0often writes … Continue reading Book within a book within a book… and an attempt at Baudrillard<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[31],"tags":[47,33,39,37,32,35,36,13,11,24],"class_list":["post-228","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-week-5-mzd","tag-authorship","tag-baudrillard","tag-danielewski","tag-foucault","tag-house-of-leaves","tag-reality","tag-simulation","tag-technology","tag-television","tag-vonnegut"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/spring2009\/660\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/228"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/spring2009\/660\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/spring2009\/660\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/spring2009\/660\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/spring2009\/660\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=228"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/spring2009\/660\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/228\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":241,"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/spring2009\/660\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/228\/revisions\/241"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/spring2009\/660\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=228"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/spring2009\/660\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=228"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/spring2009\/660\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=228"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}