House on Ash Tree Lane = The Five and A Half Minute Hallway
= The Spiral Staircase, The Anteroom, The Great Hall = The Endless Labyrinth = The Uncanny = Darkness = Requires
Exploration = Leads to Knowledge = Light, Illumination = Recorded in Narrative
of Present (cave drawings, rock art, hieroglyphics, cuneiform, oral stories,
papyrus rolls, ARCHITECTURE) = Reverberation of Knowledge = Emission =
Traverses Time and Space = Echo = Meets Reflective Surface = Perception of
Future = Misunderstanding, Misinterpretation, Distortion = DARKNESS = REQUIRES EXPLORATION = LEADS
TO KNOWLEDGE = LIGHT, ILLUMINATION = RECORDED IN NARRATIVE OF THE PRESENT (clay
tablets, pyramid texts, Linear B script, carvings, sculptors, bone engravings,
ARCHITECTURE) = REVERBERATION OF KNOWLEDGE = EMISSION = TRAVERSES TIME AND
SPACE = ECHO = MEETS REFLECIVE SURFACE = PERCEPTION OF FUTURE =
MISUNDERSTANDING, MISINTERPRETATION, DISTORTION = Darkness = Requires Exploration = Leads
to Knowledge = Light, Illumination = Recorded in Narrative of Present (stone
documents, paper, art, literature, bound books, prayer books, Bibles,
ARCHITECTURE) = Reverberation of Knowledge = Emission = Traverses Time and
Space = Echo = Meets Reflective Surface = Perception of Future =
Misunderstanding, Misinterpretation,
Distortion =
Darkness = Requires Exploration = Leads to Knowledge = Light, Illumination =
Recorded in Narrative of Present (journal entries, art, music, poetry,
novels, history books, ARCHITECTURE) = Reverberation of Knowledge =
Emission = Traverses Time and Space = Echo = Meets Reflective Surface =
Perception of Future = Misunderstanding, Misinterpretation, Distortion = Darkness = Requires Exploration = Leads to Knowledge =
Light, Illumination = Recorded in Narrative of Present (graphic novels,
comic books, diaries, art, photography, ARCHITECTURE) = Reverberation of
Knowledge = Emission = Traverses Time and Space = Echo = Meets Reflective Surface
= Perception of Future = Misunderstanding, Misinterpretation, Distortion =
House of Leaves seems like an
impossibly complex book. Or perhaps, if not complex, then certainly random—a
nonfictional fiction story of the Navidson family left behind in the artifacts
of the deceased Zampano discovered by the sexually-crazed, drug addict, (and
many more psychosocial issues here, but I will leave that for another essay)
Johnny Truant. I became addicted to reading the novel; I needed to reach a
conclusion, have closure, find answers. Unfortunately, the conclusion of the
novel offers none. Mark Z. Danielewski- WHY!?
Google search: the importance
of House of Leaves. Google search:
theme of House of Leaves… top search result: “The Idiot’s Guide to House of
Leaves.” Google may have failed me, but I realized that Danielewski did not. He
offers a direct answer to what is the point!? It is actually one of the first
things the book does and something that is done throughout the novel.
So what is the point? I will analyze
both the title of and the importance of echoes in the novel to conclude that House of Leaves is a commentary on human
personality—in short we have built ourselves a house of leaves—a society built
on the historical traces left behind in literature and a world which will
continue to be guided by the words of present recorders, because in the end,
the leaves we produce long outlive our bodies. Our bodies fail, perish, dissolve,
decompose, die and remain silent, and in death our bodies lose the ability to
reverberate, to echo. But the narratives we leave behind, the words we inscribe
into bleached-white paper, the ideas we weave into our characters can echo
through time (minutes, years, centuries, millenniums, eras) and space. While
the medium in which we leave behind our stories is an ever-changing technology,
each story becomes a part of a larger history, like waves of knowledge passing
through seemingly endless darkness (not just visual darkness but temporal
darkness as well) until it finds itself a surface to reflect on, a reader to
perceive the words and hear the echo. But the ever-changing human perception is
an imperfect receptor. Each time an echo hits a new surface the original
meaning and significance is inevitably and indefinitely distorted. The reader
passes on the echo for another person to perceive, learn, and repeat; each time
the meaning moving farther from the truth until we are lost in a never-ending
labyrinth of darkness that we mistake for enlightenment and knowledge.
Echoes
and Reverberations in Humanity and in House
of Leaves
An echo, in the most simplistic
terms, is a repetition. The scientific definition of an echo is the reflection
of an emission by a reflective medium.
1.
A
“sender” produces a wave.
2.
The
wave travels through a medium.
3.
The
wave hits a surface.
4.
The
wave bounces off the surface, is distorted and a reflected wave is produced.
5.
The
reflected wave travels through a medium.
6.
The
reflected wave is perceived by a receiver.
A simple mathematical substitution leads
from the physical explanation of an echo to a theoretical explanation of human
society and personality:
Sender= recorder (author,
photographer, painter, notetaker, historian…)
Wave= Narrative (Noun…any account
of events, experiences, or the like, whether true or fictitious2…literature,
artwork, journals, novels, photographs…)
Medium= time and space
Surface= Detector
Wave Reflecting and Distorting=
contemporary and individual interpretation and manipulation (intentional or
unintentional)
Reflected Wave= New Narrative,
new understanding
Receiver= Perceiver (Noun…one who
perceives…reader, observer, listener, student…)
Sometimes echoes become
reverberations. Reverberations are “the persistence
of a sound
after its source
has stopped, caused
by multiple reflection
of the sound
within a closed
space1.”
1.
“Sender”
stops producing wave
2.
Wave
continues to travel through a medium as long as the wave is contained in a
closed space
3.
Wave
bounces back and forth between reflected surfaces.
Sender stop producing wave= original
recorder dies
Closed space= humanity (accounting for
the fact that some waves, some recordings, are occasionally lost)
Multiple reflected surfaces= multiple
perceivers, multiple perceptions, perceptions are individual and unique.
House
of Leaves reduces this large-scale idea to a few characters. The novel is
therefore not only a commentary on how this is all working, but it is innately
doing this itself. However, and this is the reason why the novel is complex,
each narrative level is doing this!! I will explain the widest scale in which
this is happening as it affects the reader of the novel.
Sender= Zampano
Wave= Navidson story (which in itself
contains an important message about the eternal search for knowledge as a
result of the fallibility of the humanity)
Medium= time
Surface= Johnny Truant
Reflecting and Distorting= lost
material, damaged material, foreign language, braille (and let’s be honest
Johnny Truant is probably not the most mentally-capable person of receiving
this knowledge, but that’s the point, right? Senders blindly send their
knowledge into the world not knowing or controlling who receives it or where or
when it is received)
Reflected Wave= Johnny Truant’s
publication titled House of Leaves and Johnny Truant’s telling of the Navidson
story to Lude/Thumper/girls he hooks up with/random people/anyone who will
listen…eventually the reflected wave is published in Johnny’s Truant’s House of Leaves
Receiver= readers of his book
Reverberation= Danielewski’s House of
Leaves perceived by readers
Further Reverberation: this essay, your
perception of this essay…it is a never ending cycle…
Therefore,
and in the words of Danielewski himself as to prevent further distortion… “It
is impossible to appreciate the importance of space in The Navidson Record
without taking into account the significance of echoes.”3
However, this is only the
most general overview of why literature is a medium of historical echoes. One
question that arises is what does the Navidson story have to do with this
theory? Why does Zampano write about a fictitious (?) family and a fictitious
house (?) with a fictitious and unexplainable hallway?
Relying on Echoes: The Heart of
Human Fallibility and the Eternal Search for Knowledge
While
the repetitive theme of echoes offers a commentary on human society, the
Navidson narrative offers a critique on human society’s reliance on distorted
echoes= flawed historical information as a source of foundation and progress.
The “system” is a house of leaves—fragile and frail and likely to burst into
uncontrollable flames. This “system” we have created for ourselves (and will
continue to use) is at the heart of human fallibility, because it causes and
requires an eternal need to search for knowledge. The Navidson narrative
illustrates the eternal search for knowledge and the consequences an eternal
search for knowledge induces. The
Navidson narrative heeds warning to the pursuit of knowledge while also
revealing the impossibility of such a warning. Both of these ideas are tied
together with a simple clichéd truism: history repeats itself—Johnny Truant
fails to learn from Zampano’s obsession and follows his footsteps to crazy. And
clearly the reader of Danielewski’s novel learns nothing from Johnny Truant,
because we continue to read despite Danielewski’s warning on the inside flap of
the cover (a pause symbol) and then the very first page of the novel which
reads, “This is not for you.” (Why don’t we stop reading there?) Nor do we stop
when we read Johnny Truant’s letter to the reader where he lays out the
fundamental flaw of our “house of leaves”—“This much I’m certain of: it doesn’t
happen immediately. You’ll finish and that will be that, until a moment will
come, maybe in a month, maybe a year, maybe even several years. You’ll be sick
or feeling troubled or deeply in love or quietly uncertain or even content for
the first time in your life. It won’t matter. Out of the blue, beyond any cause
you can trace, you’ll suddenly realize things are not how you perceived them to
be at all. For some reason, you will no longer be the person you believed you
once were. You’ll detect slow and subtle shifts going on all around you, more
importantly shifts in you….you’ll watch yourself dismantle every assurance you
ever lived by…And then for better or worse you’ll turn, unable to resist,
though try to resist you still will, fighting with dread, what is now, what
will be, what has always come before, the creature you truly are, the creature
we all are, buried in the nameless black of a name. And then the nightmares
will begin.”
The human race is either plagued by
an extreme case of stubbornness which prevents us from internalizing and
applying this warning, or the human race is so entranced by the unknown that we
cannot resist stepping into the darkness.
“Both arguments are probably best
attributed to the persistent presence of schizophrenia plaguing the human
race…language of objectivity can never adequately address the reality of that
place on Ash Tree Lane.”
The
hallway is, of course, the symbol for the unknown, for darkness, for that which
humans crave and blindly seek, but “You will never find a mark there. No trace
survives. The walls obliterate everything. They are permanently absolved of all
record. Oblique, forever obscure and unwritten. Behold the perfect pantheon of
absence.” (423) Radiometric dating of the samples Will and the explorers
collect from the hallway reveal that the hallway is an “exact chronological
map.” It is hard to overlook the symbolic “historical significance” of the
hallway. (374) It is also hard to overlook the “typo” in this footnote, which
reads, “Scientists estimate the universe unfolded from its state of infinite
destiny—a moment commonly referred to as ‘the big bang’…Typo: “destiny should
read density.” (Or should it?) The hallway by all means represents darkness,
but more importantly it represents the world in which humans inhabit—a
constantly shifting, unsure, and unknown
world that we have the ability to control just as the explorers realize the
shifting of the hallway reflects their psychological state of mind.
Will Navidson (as well as the other
explorers, but primarily Will because he returns to the house even after Tom
dies and everybody else nearly dies) is representative of human society and
human susceptibly to be lured in by the unknown. Will’s occupation as a photojournalist
is the starting point for analysis. As a photojournalist, Will is not only
compelled to explore and discover, but he has to record and capture his
discovery. Early in Will’s life, humans seem like the ultimate mystery…“And yet
out of the thousands of pictures Navidson took, there does not exist a single
frame without a person in it.” (367) It is ironic that humans are so complex
and “advanced” yet there are aspects of the human body that we cannot even comprehend
(such as the brain).
Will’s
need to discover and explore is carried home with him; it is significant that
the hallway appears in his home and not at his place of work or in the home of
another character. (“It does not matter that the house existed in Virginia,
only that it existed in one place: ‘One place, one (eventual) meaning.’’’) The
Five and a Half Minute Hallway is a more enticing source of the unknown, “It
contorts itself to advance and grow…its curves still hold out the promise of
even greater illumination…Navidson the possibility that he could locate either
within himself or ‘within the vast missing’ some emancipatory sense to put to
rest his confusions and troubles, even put to rest the confusions and troubles
of others, a curative symmetry to last the ages” (401)
Will pursues the knowledge, and we
all know it doesn’t go very well. Will’s search for an explanation is not
impeded by injury or fatigue or lack of food. The hallway changes to parallel
the thoughts and state of mind of its intruders. Therefore Will has the ability
to get out of the hallway anytime. But he does not. He realizes that his
pursuit of knowledge, that any pursuit of knowledge will only succumb to
failure…
He becomes, “a creature instirred by
history, no longer moved by the present, just hungry, blind and at long last
full of mindless wrath.” (497) “He knows his voice will never heat this world.
Perhaps no voice will. Memories cease to surface. Sorrows threatens to no
longer matter. Navidson is forgetting. Navidson is dying.” (483) He desperately
clings to the last bits of hope…“If only it could be perceived.” (491)“As if it
to say not only can this book not be destroyed, it also cannot be blamed.”
(493) But he ultimately discovers that … “As soon as I write I’ve already
forgotten. I must remember. I must read. I must read. I must read.”
(498)“What’s the difference, especially in differance, what’s read what’s left
in what’s left out what’s invented what’s remembered what’s forgotten what’s
written what’s found what’s lost what’s done? What’s not done? What’s the
difference?” (515) (Here Will or Zampano or Johnny or Danielewski is explicitly
point out that even reading to learn is clouded with darkness…“This darkness symbolizes one of the
novel’s central themes: knowledge. Knowledge — what the reader and the novel’s
characters do or do not know and how that knowledge or lack thereof affects the
reader and characters — is a major and perhaps the core concern of the book.”5)
What’s the difference if we record
or don’t record? History is bound to repeat itself regardless, because we do
not learn from what is recorded, because humans have no way of learning
something and passing it on to the future. We face the great barrier of time
and space. Echoes are the only way we can pass on our knowledge; the distortion
of every single thing we pass on requires humans to redo, repeat, research,
rethink, reexplore, repeat, repeat, repeat. We never really progress, we just
recycle. In fact, that quote I used—“history is bound to repeat itself” is
taken from a longer quote by Rufus Historie who in 1533 said, “History follows a pattern of events that recur in
different eras.” But even before Historie said that Soloman wrote in the book
of Ecclesiastes, “The thing that has been, it is that which shall be; and that which
is done is that which shall be done: and there is no new thing under the sun.” But then again I read this in a history book, and we now
know how accurate those things are, and regardless the popular saying now is
“history will repeat itself.” I wonder how they will say that phrase in the
future…it’s ironic isn’t it? That we have a truism for the ultimate flaw of
humanity yet we don’t or can’t (?) change…
…we believe we are an enlightened
species, one capable of great knowledge and innovation. But the roots of our
society are drenched in the distorted, impure echoes of history, history that
is carried through and by literature. We are stuck in a never-ending labyrinth
of darkness that we cannot bring ourselves to leave. It begins as a five and a
half minute endeavor—simple, easy, attainable, possible. We explore and
question and become obsessed. We become so entrenched is seeking the knowledge
that just barely eludes us—one more step and we can find it, one more mile and
we will find the end. The house of leaves becomes a spiral staircase, an
endless corridor of dead-ends and doors and windows. We keep exploring, pushing
forward…
…“We mustn’t forget the most obvious
reason Navidson went back to the house: he wanted to get a better picture”
(418)….
We pursue knowledge, answers,
truth…until it is if we are “moving along a surface that always tilts downward
no matter which direction [we] face.” (425) Until “All that remains is the
ashblack slab upon which he is standing, now apparently supported by nothing:
darkness below, above, and of course darkness beyond.”
We are stuck in
boundless, eternal darkness; we mistake our house of leaves for tokens of
knowledge, we think we live in light only because our eyes have adjusted to the
dark.
Sources Cited:
1.
"Reverberation."
Dictionary.com Unabridged. Random House, Inc. 23 Apr. 2014.
<Dictionary.com http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/Reverberation>.
2.
"narrative."
Collins English Dictionary - Complete & Unabridged 10th Edition. HarperCollins
Publishers. 23 Apr. 2014. <Dictionary.com http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/narrative>.
3.
Danielewski,
Mark. House of Leaves. 2nd Edition. New York: Pantheon Books. Print.
4.
Bemong,
Nele. “Exploration #6: The Uncanny in Mark Z. Danielewski’s ‘House of Leaves.’”
Image and Narrative. January 2003.
Web.
5.
Marks,
Aaron. “Readings of House of Leaves.” Web.
Sources
Consulted:
1.
Dawson.
Michael. “‘The horror! The Horror! Traumatic Repetition in Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness and Mark Z.
Danielewski’s House of Leaves.” Web.
2.
“Echoes
vs Reverberations.” The Physics Classroom.
2014. Web.
3. Halliday,
Resnick, Walker. Fundamentals of Physics
Extended Ninth Edition. Hoboken: John Wiley & Sons, Inc. 2012. Print.
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