House of Leaves Class Notes

Hey all (this is an aid to our class discussions):



I am really looking forward to talking about our book tonight--although, unlike other classes, I am sort of confused about how to do so. The nature of the book resists a logical format and I think most conversations will be circular and dip into all of these strange weird and convoluted discussions. Bring it on, I say! I'm willing to go where the class wants to go--the only thing I will not allow is for people to stay on the sidelines. Open the door and let's see what's in the darkness (okay, okay, I'll try to refrain from any more metaphoric hallway talk).



In fact, it's fairly easy to describe what this book is about. You all decided that House of Leaves is about:



"A HOUSE IS ONLY A PLACE TO KEEP YOUR THINGS LIKE YOUR FAVORITE VHS TAPES AND YOUR DOLLS' MINIATURE SHOES OR MAYBE A PLACE TO BURY STRANGERS OR MAYBE TO BURY YOURSELF IN A MAZE OF MATERIALISTIC, MULLETHEADED, COKE SNORTIN' WHORES WHO REFUSE TO ACKNOWLEDGE THE TRUTH BECAUSE REALITY FREAKS THEM OUT MORE THAN THEY WOULD ADMIT, NOT TO MENTION THEY CANT"



Okay, why did I do this? While, as Thomas said, it might sound like a drinking game, it was an attempt to show how this book is built upon readers interpretations. 8,000 blog posts have been posted to this "fan" site about HOL (see how cool this book is, it is referred to by its initials) and all of these weird wonderful and ridiculous posts about HOL and the Simpsons ; the amazing 5 1/2 inch margins that is connected to the 5 1/2 feet hallway or the music that you should listen to when reading HOL (btw, did you know that Danielewski's sister is Poe who wrote an album called Haunted meant to accompany the book? And that readers think, like me that you should actually listen to Godspeed You Black Emperor instead? Ah, but I digress).



In other words, this book does not stay inside the leaves of this book but expands with every reading. Well, you counter, doesn't that happen with every book? Yes, but HOL is the first book that I have read where this idea is built into the book so completely. It forces us to think about reader's reactions and you need others in order to fill out the dark spots of your understanding. This is a communal book meant to be shared and disseminated among groups of people. It was first written on the web and this seems wholly appropriate--work is put up and then altered and talked about and commented on and brought into all of these nooks and crannies. I went to a conference talk this past weekend about the future of academic writing when I was in Nashville and, crazy enough, the speaker was talking about the web--instead of the academic book--as being the site where academics will write their scholarly works that will be shared and discussed by others. There will be a lack of an author and instead authors. Go here to see her ideas. But this death of an author that postmodernists like to throw around at cocktail parties actually fits really nice here. Mark Z. Danielewski is the "author" of the book but isn't Johnny Truant, Zampano and The Editors (who, yes, are fictional but don't they take on a life of their own here--look how many people in class thought they were real people). And then how we have added in our posts that could be linked to discussion posts on HOL? It is a text that keeps generating more text (hmmm...sort of like an expandable hallway, huh?)................



Loved It/Hated It

This might be a good place to discuss your reactions to the novel. You didn't hold back in your posts and I want you to talk about here in class...here are just a few:

Loved it/Hated it

Thomas
•"I loved this book. Which is surprising because with an opening sentence like "this is not for you" comes off, in my eyes, as melodramatic and pretentious, everything that follows, from content to format, is just refreshing. In retrospect, such an opening is almost redeemed as the reader moves on. It has been a while since a book has told me to "take a deep breath" and essentially scare the shit out of myself by pretending to be in Johnny's shoes (pg. 26-27). What did it for me was the line, "find those pockets without sound," which echoed a Zen saying I heard and have loved since I was young, "It's the silence between the notes that makes the music." In this case, it was the silence between the train rattling, the baby crying, the iPod blaring next to me, the conductor over the sound speaker, the silence between all of these, that managed to scare me, even if it was a slight bit. You see, because the night following, cold and filled with a new suspicion thanks to the novel, proceeded to make me both laugh and pause to think about the novel. That's an effect that most books don't have on me. Not only am I thinking of a line from a favorite book, but I'm experiencing the mood of the line. Does that make sense? Well, that's how I know I loved this book. "

Kevin •"I approached this book as a challenge to overcome. As such, I couldn't bring myself to either love it or hate it. It was a reminder of a class I took in my senior year of high school, during which a teacher subject myself and my fellow students to Ulysses. It was scarring, and I received several headaches from reading it. However, I came to have an amount of respect for the author, which later became reverence.However, I cannot see myself falling for this new work like I did with Joyce. There is simply too goddamn much in here. I'd have to agree with Jessica on this point: you could easily devote an entire semester or a lot of time on the Internet to deciphering this book. (Incidentally, a lot of people have chosen the latter.) If I have any complaint at all, it's that we didn't have enough time to give this book the attention it deserves. I still don't hate it; it's too intriguing to hate. Jarhead, on the other hand."

Rich •"This book was absolutely, I don't want to say horrible, but it was extremely tedious and difficult to read. Overall I will have to say that I did not enjoy this book. The read was ridiculous because it was half story and half textbook. There was way too much lecture going on in this book that on two separate occasions I fell asleep reading, yet while reading Truant's part of the book, I did at times find myself interested but then he too would go off and have a five page metaphor on how he was feeling at that point and time. I can't take it anymore. This should have been a movie not a book and I don't want to read the psychoanalyzation of the freaking thing while I'm actually reading and trying to understand some messed up author's head nightmare. I can't even begin to explain what the hell is happening in the book but I can tell you that it is frustrating that we did not have class and could not discuss because I am truly lost and I think that is the largest factor of me not enjoying this thing..."

Matt
•"hate this book, present tense. For a long time now I have known that my reading comprehension leaves much to be desired. This book does its best job to make me feel even worse about my lack of skill in that department. For most of the works we have read this semester I have heard people discuss things or reference something that sounded foreign to me. I was forced to either ask someone or keep quiet about it to avoid feeling dumb. In the case of House of Leaves, I feel like that about a lot of things, maybe too many things. I'll admit that I did not enter this book with an open mind. How could I; it's the size of a textbook. All I can say is, when the supply of paper begins to dwindle along with the rest of the economy, we know who to blame."

Barry
•"The hatred comes during long passages of scientific BS like echoes (even though my favorite line/moment might be the last line of p.73) made even more annoying when Truant then points out after you've read the section how horrible it is and that he didn't want to include it blah, blah, bastard. All the fake article titles were funny the first two times maybe, but the 205th just pisses me off, because I still feel like I'm going to miss something if I don't look at it. Same thing with all the appendix and exhibit references. The "editors" even give you the choice of wanting to know more about Johnny's mom or not in a footnote - of course I feel I have to read it - then 45 minutes later I'm asking myself "Do I really want to decode this letter from his mother with the first letter of every word?" Of course not, its 3am, but what If this jackass author has hidden the whole meaning of this book in there, and he kinda seems like the type of jerkoff that would do something like that. Why the hell did I read those blue boxes - worthless! I definitely did not read more than 10 of the names/buildings. Why does everything have to be in French or Latin first if you are just going to translate it anyway? And could you please stop footnoting your footnoted footnotes that appear 5 pages in the future. I get the point - we are getting lost in this book, just like the hallway, but to be honest if it weren't required reading I would have probably stopped caring somewhere around page 45."



Form of the novel

Another idea that I think we need to discuss is the actual form of the novel. Let's start with the footnotes themselves. What do footnotes imply? Proof. We in academia always need to prove ourselves--our ideas, original as we may think they are, must still be connected to something true and tested. And as we can see in one of your assignments last week, there are plenty of footnotes that are true. But what about the ones that aren't. Do you then discount everything? Is the reverse true as well--you might as well just believe everything? Funny how this connected me to the election and the way that the candidates would say things and the next day there would be all these FACT CHECKS. And I would check sometimes...but why should I believe this website--who is funding the site? Is there word true? See, it keeps going and going......

****And what about the fact that the word House is blue all the time? What does this mean. One thing that has been discussed is that this was an original web text and so the house then could link to other things.....but I like Rob's idea better.

****What about the quirky format of the text? The boxes were mentioned by a few people (although right now I can't find the blog posts) and I like how one person mentioned about the actual containing of the text in a box is very strange and limiting (although we don't have this same problem with the "box" of the page itself).

****And of course, what about the blank space on the page? What does that do for us to look? Does it makes us want to fill it in (again making this a text of participation) or leaving it empty is a relief--finally a page that we can turn easily?

****Any thoughts about the font? Does the changing of the front reveal things about the individual characters?



WHAT IS THE HOUSE?



Another question that I asked from you all was for a video or picture of what you thought the house looked like. You did a fabulous job many of you and I want to talk about a few of them in class. Thom, Terrence, Barry, Matt; Jamie; Rich......(some video) Danaya;Terrence; Matt; Shanoa; Jessica; Kevin; Jamie and so many others that we are going to get into........



Questions?

I do at the end of this class want to make sure that we answer some of the larger issues/questions that you have so we can talk it through.....


•If the footnotes, in fact, are falsified, is what we're reading even truth?
•Why didn't anyone take a sledge-hammer and bashed down the wall on the side of the door to make sure that was the only way to get in. (or real for that matter)


•Did anyone else notice the checkmark in the bottom left corner of page 97? Why is that there? Did I miss something?
•Why does the story involving Minotaur have to do with the main story line? In connection to that, what is the main story line?


There are more than several biblical allusions in the text. On page XX of the introduction, Truant states that Zampanó, "knew from the get go that what's real or isn't real doesn't matter"... 1) Does anyone else agree that FAITH plays a major role in the text, i.e. Zampanó's FAITH in his scribes, Navidson's FAITH in his friends who are summoned to the house to investigate, Karen's alleged unFAITHFULNESS, our FAITH in the author and the veracity of this work?




Why does Karen choose to stay in a life that she seems to be unhappy with? Is it for the kids? For companionship? Or does she really just not see how unhappy she really is?

WHO ARE THESE PEOPLE?
I would like to do a character sketch of ecah one of these characters as I already asked you to do on your blogs. Who is Navidson, Johnny Truant, Zampano, Tom, Karen, Halloway, etc, etc.......

JUMPING IN
During the course of this class period, I would like us to go through this text randomly and just look at pages and try to figure out this novel non-linear. It worked for Burroughs, why not for us?




ODDS AND ENDS


Is this the picture of Delial here?



Listening to House of Leaves

http://markzdanielewski.info/media/5point5.HTML



The Idiot's Guide to The House of Leaves



Reading from HOL (Click on audio)






EXTRA CREDIT


Somehow, and I am not sure how, the semester has contracted and we no longer have many weeks. We have tonight and we have the week after Thanksgiving. That's all. And since our next class, I would like to spend the time having presentations about your semester long blogs, I want to give to you the opportunity to get extra credit for reading the rest of this novel. What you need to do for this extra credit (and the result will be that I will bump up your grade by a half or a whole--so if you were getting a c you would now get a C+ or a B-; if you were getting a B, you now get a B+ or an A-, etc, etc) is to a)Read the rest of the novel and B) write a long blog essay in which you talk about the transformation of a character. Here are the rules:

You need to talk about the character in the different stages of this book (If you were going to write about Johnny Truant then you need talk about him in the beginning, the middle and the end of the book. How has he changed? What has caused him to do the things that he has done? What are specific instances that he went through that are significant and why? But be imaginative--is the House a character?). You then need to have at least ten (10) relevant links that helps the reader understand the different stages that the character has gone through.

In order to do this well, I would think you would need to write the equivalent of 3-5 solid pages of strong text. This is due by December 8.