IVIV rooms, buildings, vehicles bigger inside than outside

[malignd at aol.com]

House of Leaves by Mark Danielewski plays with this idea as well, but 
very differently.


-----Original Message-----
From: dougmillison at comcast.net
To: pynchon-l <pynchon-l at waste.org>
Sent: Sun, Nov 29, 2009 8:28 pm
Subject: IVIV  rooms, buildings, vehicles bigger inside than outside


http://bldgblog.blogspot.com/2009/11/quadraturin.html A Soviet-era, 
Polish-born, Ukrainian-raised writer named Sigizmund Krzhizhanovsky was 
the subject of a short profile and review over at The Nation last week. 
The article focuses on one of Krzhizhanovsky's stories called 
"Quadraturin" (which you can read in full online). The basic gist is 
that a man named Situlin, a "Soviet city dweller" who owns an 
impossibly cramped apartment, is convinced by a stranger who comes to 
his door one day to "take a free sample of an experimental substance 
that is supposed to make rooms bigger." This "substance" is 
Quadraturin. "Sutulin begins to apply the Quadraturin to his walls," 
The Nation explains, "as the instructions on the tube advise, but he 
accidentally spills the entire contents of the tube on his floor." He 
wakes up the next morning in a "faintly familiar, large, but ungainly 
room," where his furniture looks awkward and the angles of the walls 
are uneven. He enjoys the novel pleasure of strolling from one end of 
his room to the other, but he must enjoy it in secret, for like other 
citizens he is legally allotted only ninety-seven square feet of living 
space, and owning more than his share could mean losing his apartment. 
After he stands there for a moment, in awe of his apartment's new, 
slightly bulbous dimensionality, he begins "rearranging the furniture 
to fit the new space," as Krzhizhanovsky himself puts it. "…But nothing 
worked: the abbreviated rug, when moved back beside the bed, exposed 
worn, bare floorboards; the table and the stool, pushed by habit 
against the head of the bed, had disencumbered an empty corner latticed 
with cobwebs and littered with shreds and tatters, once artfully masked 
by the corner's own crowdedness and the shadow of the table. With a 
triumphant, but slightly frightened smile, Sutulin went all round his 
new, practically squared square, scrutinizing every detail. He noted 
with displeasure that the room had grown more in some places than in 
others: an external corner, the angle of which was now obtuse, had made 
the wall askew; Quadraturin, apparently, did not work as well on 
internal corners; carefully as Sutulin had applied the essence, the 
experiment had produced somewhat uneven results.…"Sensing that 
something has gone horribly wrong and that he might soon face the wrath 
of his building superintendent, he "realizes he has to buy curtains to 
hide his apartment from the eyes of passers-by." And "it only gets 
worse from there," The Nation adds: "every time Sutulin leaves the 
room, he returns to find that his apartment has grown still bigger." 
…He realizes that he forgot to apply Quadraturin to the ceiling, so his 
apartment is only growing outward, not upward, the dimensions 
increasingly oppressive even as the room becomes larger. It outgrows 
its electric circuitry and Sutulin is trapped in the darkness. "He knew 
that there, behind his back, the dead, Quadraturinized space with its 
black corners was still spreading."…It's an amazing image—I'm 
particularly struck by the idea of a space outgrowing its electric 
circuitry , like a body grown so monstrous it leaves behind its old ……