Main Points
Before our class started discussing House of Leaves, we discussed our new assignment: Twitter. For this assignment, we are looking at how new interactive forms of media (especially highly connective ones like Twitter) can change and alter our relationships with people - in this case, we are analyzing the effect Twitter has on our ENG 389 class. Besides being connected to the internet, our class will also wire Twitter to our Facebooks (via a Facebook application) and also through our cell phones. As our class begins to use Twitter, we are asked to think: how does this specific media change things? Does it alter our relationships? For the better? For the worse? It is an exercise to look closely at how technology has become an intergral part of our world.
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House of Leaves, published in 2000, is Mark Z. Danielewski's first book, and despite being quite experimental, has developed a cult-following and was even a national best-seller.
There are four editions to the text, at least, there are supposedly four editions: full color, 2-color, black and white, and incomplete. The dust-jacket and the copyright page only lend to suspend the reader's belief in the veracity of the author's claims. For example, the dust-jacket excerpt claims that fragments of this book have been circulating the internet for years prior to its publication; however, we as readers are left to wonder if this is true or not. In addition, right off the bat the first page tells us “This is not for you” -- leaving us to wonder whether or not we're even supposed to be reading this book in the first place. Is it a warning? What? House of Leaves is, at the very beginning, calling into question its very origin and purpose.
House of Leaves itself has four 'authors' or sorts. Of course, there is Danielewski – the grand-master overlord who wrote the entirety of the novel, but within the novel's framework there are three other authors: Zampanò (author of House of Leaves), Johnny Truant (the man who compiled it all together; in addition, the text is interlaced with his own unique story-line), and the mysterious editors.
The book designates speakers/authors via the use of text. Zampanò's words are in Times New Roman, whereas Truant's words are in Courier New, and the editors Garamond Something like that. This is an example of the experimental and very modern-esque way in which Danielewski writes.
Despite not being covered in class for this particular day, Danielewski's writing could be categorized under post-modern literature or, perhaps even, post-post modernism.
Passages
“I guess last night.”18
____
18 I got up this morning to take a shower and guess what? No fucking hot water.
These passages reference an alteration made in a line earlier in the book. One of the book's characters and apparently editors Johnny Truant. The shower is cold because the water heater is broken. Almost directly following this passage, Johnny says that he adds the word "water". This addition, although narratively minor, show that characters in the book have the ability to, at the very least, add to text if not alter it.
This passage exemplifies the abstract and experimental nature of Danielewski's work. The story will segment--often because of footnotes like this where Truant will launch into his own stories (often prompted by Zampanò's words. This links back to what Truant said in the introduction: "You might even try scribbling in a journal, on a napkin, maybe even in the margins of this book" (xxiii)). For Truant, Zampanò's House of Leaves has become the beginning of Truant's own story, and in some ways, as this footnote demonstrates, the story is very much one of Truant's making.
"This is not for you" (ix)
One of the first sentences we read in House of Leaves is a warning from Johnny Truant telling us that the book "is not for [us]." This works to solidify the eerie atmosphere of the novel--creating a sense of the foreboding. Why is this not for us? In addition, this sentence directly speaks to the reader--a small 'no-fourth-wall' moment, where the barrier between the fictional creation and the reader on the outside if broken.
Terms
Metafiction - a term given to fictional writing which self-consciously and systematically draws attention to its status as an artifact in order to pose questions about the relationship between fiction and reality. In providing a critique of their own methods of construction, such writings not only examine the fundamental structures of narrative fiction, they also explore the possible fictionality of the world outside the literary fictional text. (Waugh qtd. in "Theories of Metafiction")
Self-reference - Self-reference is a phenomenon in natural or formal languages consisting of a sentence or formula referring to itself directly, or through some intermediate sentence or formula, or by means of some encoding." ("Self-reference," Wikipedia). This is important in the context of House of Leaves because the novel is constantly behaving in a self-referrential manner. Even in the footnotes, Mark Z. Danielewski acrostically codes his name, bringing attention to the fact that he is the author of the work and is deliberately obscuring facts in order to create a puzzle.
Hypertext - Hypertext is the organization of information units into connected associations that a user can choose to make. An instance of such an association is called a link or hypertext link (Halnon 2002). The highlighted blue text in House of Leaves brings to mind links on the World Wide Web; similarily, Danielewski creates several allusions to Jorge Luis Borges' "The Garden of Forking Paths," -- a text akin to a hypertext (like Victory Garden by Stuart Moulthroup).
Links
Exploration Z - a website dedicated to Mark Z. Danielewski. Includes an Idiot's Guide to House of Leaves, but as we were warned -- don't go reading about the novel until you have finished it yourself.
House of Leaves Forum - a forum dedicated to Danielewski's works including House of Leaves. This forum is full of hardcore fans that love House of Leaves and it shows. You can sign up to post on the forum, but it is not mandatory to read the forum.
Interview - here is an interview with Mark Z. Danielewski regarding House of Leaves. I found it to be an interesting article that sheds some light on Danielewski thinking behind the book.
Haunted(Album) (Ctrl +F and enter Poe to find relevant info): album created by Poe, (who is actually Danielewski's sister Ann), supposedly a companion piece to the novel. The album Haunted draws heavily from the novel, featuring tracks called "House of Leaves", "Dear Johnny", "Exploration B" and "5&½ Minute Hallway", and many less obvious references. The video for "Hey Pretty" also features Mark Danielewski reading from House of Leaves (pages 88–89), and in House of Leaves, the band Liberty Bell's lyrics were also songs on Poe's album (Wikipedia). You can sample the tracks for the album at Amazon or go to the link below.
Audio Readings: Just some cool multimedia tidbits on the novel, meaning novel readings and some music by Poe from the album Haunted (specific link from Exploration Z)
Citations
Halnon, Mary. "2002 Digital Dictionary." NETA. August 2002. 8 Dec. 2008. <www.netaonline.org/pd-digitalglossary.rtf>.
"Theories of Metafiction". <http://www.eng.fju.edu.tw/Literary_Criticism/postmodernism/metafiction.htm>
Comments (2)
Kara Z said
at 11:40 pm on Nov 3, 2008
I don't have enough notes from this class... AHHHHH.
jjlim@... said
at 12:12 am on Nov 4, 2008
We barely touched on the book....i should have asked Professor Croxall what we should do about this before.... :(
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