After finishing Understanding Comics for like the millionth time, and thinking of House of Leaves at the same time, it was interesting to link McClouds comments on words and pictures merging to the visual setup of House of Leaves. House of Leaves purposesfully sets up its texts to be pictorial (ie the window) and almost forms itself into a comic of its own. The psychosis of the mother glares at the reader in the terrifying way the text is contorted to be visually insane as well as verbally. In McClouds scale it would look like this:

P
/w
0
W /
p

I’m about halfway through Understanding Comics, but I’ve already come across some interesting ideas, one of which I felt had a connection to House of Leaves. In Chapter 3, McCloud discusses closure, which is basically the reader filling in textual gaps, such as imagining what happens in between panels or even seeing something as simple at this :o) as a face. I think that closure also applies to House of Leaves. One part in particular which struck me was the section on Holloway’s tape where most of the words had empty brackets in them where missing letters should be. Without closure, in this case the reader literally filling in those blanks, this section would have been completely unreadable.

BeJeebus.

Writing my proposal and reading this book has blown my mind.

My mind is blown. I don't think this is a good thing.

I think what interests me most about this book is its presentation--different colors, fonts, and even text placement. It is extremely self-reflexive, for as you're reading the book you're continually reminded that YOU ARE READING A BOOK. READ THE BOOK HERE AND HERE AND THIS WAY. The random arrangement of text also seemed (to me) to call attention to the book's authenticity--or lack thereof. Any book that features squares of text has got to be a work of fiction, EVEN if it has footnotes. So although the book claims to be nonfiction in a sense, it is always and strictly and continually fiction.

Starting to read House of Leaves I was real excited because so many people had said it was so fantastic. When I started reading it though, I found that I never really got immersed in the story. Perhaps my attention deficit was a little too disordered by the arrangement of text in this novel. I found it difficult to go back and forth from one narrator to the next, while literally thumbing backwards and forwards through the book. I also found Zampano's story of the Navidson Record to be supremely boring. I have a tough time believing that people actually get scared by this book. When they were measuring the house and finding it to be 5/16ths of an inch bigger on the inside, i was pretty much unaffected. Too much math, not enough blood to be scary.

I have mixed feeling about the multiple narrators in House of Leaves. There are Zampano, Johnny Truant, and the Editors. But then there is also Danielewski, and, although Will Navidson does not narrate, we also follow his story. By far, I think Truant is the most interesting narrator, because we can identify him. One Internet review of the book says, “Truant has more of an semi-autobiographical feel, or at least comes closest to being the kind of guy who might be found reading Danielewski's book on the subway” (http://www.themodernword.com/review_house_of_leaves.html). He writes in a very stream-of-consciousness style and often about things that are only minimally related to the line corresponding to his footnote.

One distinct thing about House of Leaves is that it was distributed in parts over the Internet before being officially published. I think this is an interesting concept to explore. Our professor, Kathleen Fitzpatrick, did the same thing with her book, and, if I remember correctly, she said that the experience was much better than having someone edit the book later. This is because more people can view it, because of its accessibility and the smaller size of the presented chunks (as opposed to the whole book), leading to more and varied feedback.

I find this idea of rough draft Internet postings to be particularly interesting in questions of authorship. Although there is one central author, readers participate in the book’s development, of course depending on how much the primary author takes their advice. I think also, that the author is more thoroughly conscious on what others will think of their writing. Does that detract from originality and encourage catering to others’ desires? And, by the way, what if someone else steals your ideas? I’m not sure. It would be an interesting experiment to publish our theses in that way…

Was going to include this in my last post, but I think it deserves a post on its own...

In thinking about new forms of classic media (such as House of Leaves (I would argue) and the Spore game I just blogged about, Brian Eno as quoted), I've been beginning to see the changes in authorship patterns. Namely, I've noticed a trend in an author's willingness or openness to allow their work to be consumed and interpreted in ways that they can't predict. In House of Leaves, it's up to the reader to choose which footnotes to read, what appendices to pay attention to, how much to invest, providing infinite opportunities to delve into the text. In Spore, Will Wright has set up an environment that, instead of placing or installing a narrative or linear, predictable progression, gives literally all of the control to the consumer.

Or, House of Leaves.

At first, I kind of hated the book. It was too big, and there were too many footnotes. Let me just put it out there that I DESPISE footnotes. I make a point not to read footnotes, out of protest, unless I absolutely have to. That and the prospect of turning my book upside-down and every which way to read it seemed like too much energy for homework.

And then I got past the introduction and discovered that a) I was able to read this book for (literally) hours at a time without realizing it, b) that I was reading and enjoying the footnotes, and c) that I was taking it way too seriously. Remember the part where Johnny asks the reader to imagine that something is behind them? I tried to find it just now but it’s buried in a footnote and I don’t have the time/energy to read back through (I should have marked it the first time around but I don’t like writing in “pretty” [read: non-academic] books). Anyways, it scared the hell out of me. I went into my friend’s room to read.

There are a few things about House of Leaves I'm beginning to notice since beginning the book on Thursday, and most aren't so much the book as my reaction to it.

First, the footnotes are getting SO old. Some were really interesting (I'm thinking in particular about the one that directed the reader to the Whalestoe Letters), others were helpful, but once I got to the pages with the blue squares in the middle of the pages in which the footnotes listed, you know, various forms of housing insulation... I mean, come on. It's hard to work up the gumption to continue reading these weird asides and footnotes when all you're finding in them is a big list of semi-irrelevant things and on top of that, in order to figure out that they are mostly irrelevant, you have to grab a mirror! What gives, Danielewski!

Does anyone remember Poe, that woman who was kind of a hit for 5 minutes in the mid-90's? She sang that "Angry Johnny" song?

Did anyone else notice the little Poe blurb on the back of House of Leaves? It says: "listen to the house. . . "HAUNTED" The new cd from Poe on Atlantic Records". I'd seen this a number of times before I really started thinking about how strange it is for a book like House of Leaves to have a cross-media product blurb on its back cover.

So then I realized that the text on the top of page 89 ("'pinch it', she said, which I did, lightly, until she also said 'pull it' which I also did, gently..."), which I'd thought had been recited in a Jewel song (that would've been even weirder) was actually recited in the beginning of a Poe song (Hey Pretty). Okay, so there's that.