While enthusiasts and detractors will continue to empty entire dictionaries attempting to describe or deride it, "authenticity" still remains the word most likely to stir a debate. In fact, this leadin obsession -- to validate or invalidate the reels and tapes -- invariably brings up a collateral and more general concern: whether or not, with the advent of digital technology, image has forsake its once unimpeachable hold on the truth.
For the most part, skeptics call the whole effort a hoax but grudgingly admit The Navidson Record is a hoax of exceptional quality. Unfortunately out of those who accept its validity many tend to swear allegiance to tabloid-UFO sightings. Clearly it is not easy to appear credible when after vouching for the film's verity, the discourse suddenly switches to why Elvis is alive and probably wintering in the Florida Keys. One thing remains certain: any controversy surrounding Billy Meyer's film on flying saucers has been supplanted by the house on Ash Tree Lane.
-- House of Leaves by Mark Z. Danielewski [link to Amazon]
I just finished House of Leaves today after starting it on Friday. And, honestly, I believe that I could have written a review of it on Friday and the only thing would have changed between then and now is how much more I'd fallen in love with it.
So much of House of Leaves is dependent on the conceit that it's difficult to write about the story without getting sidetracked by the mode of story telling. But because analyzing the method is difficult without knowing the material (and I do not have as deft a hand as Zampanò-- or Danielewski for that matter), I'm going to cut it open for you and tell you how it gets there.
The primary source is a film called The Navidson Record created and produced by Pulitzer Prize winning photojournalist Will Navidson. He, his girlfriend, and two children move to Virginia to start a new life for themselves, one that is intended to bring them together as a family in a way that his traveling life style had always prevented. A photographer and artist to the core, he installs cameras and camcorders throughout the house to record how his family adjusts. However, things start to go wrong when a doorway appears in their living room. It leads into a hall that cannot exist. Another doorway appears and measurements of the house begin to yield disturbing results. The house's internal measurements somehow measure 5/16 of an inch more than the external measurements. The Navidson Record tracks their struggles to reconcile this bizarre and increasingly sinister impossibility.
The second layer of analysis is by the blind graphomaniac Zampanò. Adding to a considerable body of academia about the film, Zampanò writes his own comprehensive analysis on The Navidson Record. He cites a huge number of other sources, including but not exclusive to academic essays, literary works, other photojournalists, and popular entertainers of the time. It is only through his writing that we see what happens in The Navidson Record.
The third layer is by the first person protagonist Johnny Truant. Living up to his name, Johnny is something of a rebel: he is a partying, story-spinning, whatever dude who came across Zampanò's writing only because his friend mentioned that, oh hey, a guy totally died and left behind this crazy shit. That guy is Zampanò and that crazy shit is his essay on The Navidson Record. Johnny, the first character that we see first hand, both grounds and confuses what we already know. Through his writing, we learn that, wait, The Navidson Record doesn't actually exist and Zampanò's citations are a mix of real and fake references. Nevertheless, the task of editing Zampanò's paper has fallen into his hands and, by god, edit he will. Johnny, differentiated by text and writing style, both analyzes Zampanò's analysis and the effects Zampanò's analysis has on his life. Through footnotes, he tells stories about what is going on in his life, which begin to take on a life of their own.
The fourth, and arguably least important, layer to this story is the unnamed editors who edit Johnny's own work. They don't surface very often, but they clarify points that Johnny has either missed, muddled, or didn't care about.
The way I've laid it out, while (more or less) accurate, is also deeply wrong. While each facet is interesting on its own, it's Danielewski's ability to weave these stories into each other that makes House of Leaves exceptional. The story is grounded firmly in Zampanò's analysis of The Navidson Record, but Zampanò, Johnny and the editors interact with themselves and each other in the footnotes. Because each level is necessarily dependent on analyzing the previous level and even the person's own reactions, everything is self-aware and self-referential to some degree. In short, this is a book that knows it's a book, and, more than that, will analyze the fact that it is a book and the repercussions that knowing has on its existence.
For some people, the way it's laid out will present a problem. Danielewski is an experimental writer of the best kind. Not only does he play with literary structure through the layering of perspectives, but he'll also play with the physical appearance of the text. Some words are colored ("house" and all its foreign variants, for example, is always printed in blue), some are struck out. As the writing becomes more chaotic, the words on the page appear sideways, upside down, crammed into ever smaller boxes. It's easy to think that it's all pretentious modern stuff, but at the same time, it does precisely what Navidson does in his film. The structure follows the content, reverberating from the primary source to the analysis to the analysis's analysis to the very physical form of the book.
Again, some people will have problems with it. It can be slow going and there are parts where you literally need to decode the writing.
Personally, though, I absolutely fell in love with it. From the first lines of Zampanò's analysis, I knew that this book dropped dead center on my academia kink. It's all the playfulness of academia, pretention and genuine interest couched in the same Times font, a droll and oftentimes sarcastic academic sniping. I suspect that those weird few out there who don't actually read academic papers for kicks may find it more difficult to pick out the absolute hilarity of the sniping, but oh, it is wonderful. It is all the more wonderful for the fact that it's not all bullshit. Or at least, it's accurate bullshit. Had The Navidson Record actually existed, these analyses could easily have existed and the psychological and literary papers could have been written. I could have written one of those analyses and I would have sincerely meant them (and I strongly suspect that Danielewski is making fun of people like me, but I totally own that). There is genuinely good writing on this false premise, and I was drawn into the entire subculture about this nonexistent film.
Pulling a little bit away from the academics of it, I also loved the themes. This is a dark book. It is messed up and brutal and it doesn't always make sense (bringing the number of levels up to five. We are not spoonfed; the readers are forced into actively engage in reading and I don't think it's possible to read this book without doing so). It echoes Borges and Calvino, explores labyrinths in the dark, in the heart, in words. I'm clearly so in love with it that I've lost all powers of detail and can resort only to trite, embarrassing effusiveness. I'll spare you any more and move on.
Overall, I think that, more than most books, you'll love it or hate it. There's a strong possibility that somewhere between the beginning and the end you'll get lost, never to quite finish, but even so, you'll either intend to finish it some day or you'll give up and say that it was a goddamn waste of money and time, overrated, didn't get it. But that's okay. This isn't light reading and it isn't exactly the most kid-friend book ever written. Not everyone likes to think about semantics and semiotics and the way we derive meaning from things. Not everyone cares. So, it goes to follow that not everyone is going to like it. But for those who do, it's just as much about learning what happens as it is how we learn what happens.
House of Leaves is a book about trying to get at an impossible truth. As with every other piece of writing out there, the characters have all said precisely what they are able to say, and no amount of frustration or intrigue can change what is on the page. It's the maddening curse of literature, and, as per the book's multiple meta-awareness, House of Leaves knows exactly what it's doing. If you don't mind struggling a little, exploring a world where even the reliability of the earth below your feet is in question, then House of Leaves is for you. And even if you do, why not try it? A book like this is an experience not to be missed.
Monday, December 17, 2007
[LINKS] Winter break begins...
LINKS because I've already written people too many emails.
+ U.S. reversal under pressure leads to climate deal. This article is a surprisingly poignant look at the politics behind the Bali Action Plan. I was originally going to link the New York Times version of the article because there was one sentence that I had found particularly heart wrenching, but when I looked at the article again, the paragraph was gone. A few hours later, I looked for the article and couldn't find the one I was looking for in particular. In either case, I had written down the quote and found the IHT article:
And when I was reading it for the first time that first sentence struck me, because it's just such a hopeless line. "The last-minute standoff that inspired such emotions would look trivial to an outside observer." There is a world of frustration and underappreciation and a battle against apathy there. It is that one outside perspective that made me realize how sad this whole thing is. The world is being fought over and we would think it's silly.
+ Another line from the NYT that caught my eye, for a slightly different reason:
From Who invited the dog?: Ari Henry Barnes, who works in a New York law firm, is so devoted to his cat, Romeo, that he wipes the animal's behind every time he does "a stinky boom boom."
+ TED.com. Technology. Entertainment. Design. Inspired talks by the world's greatest thinkers and doers. -- I was just introduced to this website last week and finally had time to sit down and immerse myself for the first time. It is wonderful. There are speakers from all walks of life on every topic imaginable (this may be an exaggeration, but only slightly). In just over an hour, I watched Murray Gell-Mann talk about the elegance of physics, Mattieu Ricard about happiness, V Ramachandran about intriguing (if often poked at) psychology, and the Pilobius dance duet, and had to stop only because I couldn't choose what to watch next. If you have any soul at all, go forth and learn. You get so few chances to hear people talk about their area of expertise with such passion.
+ U.S. reversal under pressure leads to climate deal. This article is a surprisingly poignant look at the politics behind the Bali Action Plan. I was originally going to link the New York Times version of the article because there was one sentence that I had found particularly heart wrenching, but when I looked at the article again, the paragraph was gone. A few hours later, I looked for the article and couldn't find the one I was looking for in particular. In either case, I had written down the quote and found the IHT article:
As so often happens in such complex worldwide negotiations, the last-minute standoff that inspired such emotions would look trivial to an outside observer. The dispute centered on the placement of three words: "measurable, reportable and verifiable." It was significant because it focused on the role developing countries should have in combating climate change.
And when I was reading it for the first time that first sentence struck me, because it's just such a hopeless line. "The last-minute standoff that inspired such emotions would look trivial to an outside observer." There is a world of frustration and underappreciation and a battle against apathy there. It is that one outside perspective that made me realize how sad this whole thing is. The world is being fought over and we would think it's silly.
+ Another line from the NYT that caught my eye, for a slightly different reason:
From Who invited the dog?: Ari Henry Barnes, who works in a New York law firm, is so devoted to his cat, Romeo, that he wipes the animal's behind every time he does "a stinky boom boom."
+ TED.com. Technology. Entertainment. Design. Inspired talks by the world's greatest thinkers and doers. -- I was just introduced to this website last week and finally had time to sit down and immerse myself for the first time. It is wonderful. There are speakers from all walks of life on every topic imaginable (this may be an exaggeration, but only slightly). In just over an hour, I watched Murray Gell-Mann talk about the elegance of physics, Mattieu Ricard about happiness, V Ramachandran about intriguing (if often poked at) psychology, and the Pilobius dance duet, and had to stop only because I couldn't choose what to watch next. If you have any soul at all, go forth and learn. You get so few chances to hear people talk about their area of expertise with such passion.
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