Anyone else read House of Leaves , Danielewski? edited

[alice malice]

http://www.uh.edu/engines/epi2967.htm



On Saturday, October 4, 2014, Joseph Tracy <brook7 at sover.net> wrote:

> Here is an edited version
> I'm just finishing House of Leaves, Mark Daniellewski. A dark provocative,
> skillfully written and structurally intriguing work of literary fiction,
> simulated literary and film criticism, poetry, and myth.
>
> What I come back to as the theme that captures my own interest is the
> question of what is journalism or scientific research and what establishes
> the credibility of a valid record. It is harder than we admit. Does film
> prove that what a camera records is real? Couching the quest for reliable
> stories or even reliable data as science can be as problematic as
> submitting the difficulties to religious or political or scholastic
> authority. Again and again, pre-existing prejudices, and imbibed mythic
> models built over a life or career, along with personal baggage serve both
> to enlighten and prejudice one's understanding of an event. Social
> pressures are potent enough that you can easily end up confirming something
> you don't seriously believe rather than live with your questions and
> perhaps lose security. People line up as skeptics concerning anything
> suggesting a spiritual mystery and mount their outraged scientific
> arguments, but often their seeming confidence in scientism is eroded by the
> ambiguities of actual science, by uncooperative data, and the unanticipated
> consequences of logical scientific solutions. Inquisitors want to test but
> not be tested. But In fact horrors approach as much from modern physics and
> chemistry as religious and political invocations of evil or heroism.
>
> This is not to say that there is not a large appetite for alternate
> explanations of just about everything, from wall street scandals to extra
> terrestrials or the shroud of Turin. Where this appetite comes from is its
> own worthwhile question. There are certainly gullables and con men galore,
> but is it so very unthinkable to suggest that many people and scientists
> and researchers have experiences that defy psychological interpretation,
> that make them curious and open minded? And isn't it possible that there
> are very sincere and properly skeptical  and careful investigators of odd
> phenomena who also stir this pot of human inquiry.
>
> Most people seem to acquire a limiting sense of what can be real  and draw
> sharp lines of defense around that sense. But darkness eats at every
> limit,  as nothingness is the negative ground that allows every substance.
> Mr Danielewski follows the nothingness and disintegration palpably and  in
> layers of experience and of interpretations of those experiences and
> interpretations of the photographic and filmed records of the experience.
> To read House of Leaves was for me to  continue to renew a long abandoned
> interest in horror as an artful cauldron.  Sadness and danger, terror,
> fear, violence, loss and death seem the most real commonality of our time.
> Again and again the airwaves bend toward anger or war though for seemingly
> opposite reasons, but mistrust and fear abounds, death multiplies. It
> cannot help but touch us all.  Ordinary pleasures are tainted by distant
> but constant violence and disaster.
>
> Danielewski invokes these and more personal existential  fears as a house
> which inhabits and invades a seemingly normal house, doors open, hallways
> lengthen, closets lead to endless  stone passageways of cavernous darkness
> and bone chilling cold..  The photo journalist who has bought the house as
> a refuge from a marriage-fraying career sets about with all his acumen to
> document these experiences. The filmed documentary ( the Navidson Records)
> is interpreted by critics and writers from many disciplines, some real
> contemporary writers. But not only is the movie fiction to us the readers,
> it is fiction to the fictional narrator and discoverer of a  messy
> disconnected manuscript that summarizes the reviews and offers its own POV.
> Johnnie Truant, who recovers the manuscript from a blind writer when he
> dies,  then adds his own biographic and autobiographic notes as he
> assembles the bits and pieces of the House of Leaves. This despite his
> discovery that there is no  Navidson Records and no reviews. Truant's
> creation by Danielewski is a work of sublime intensity, his voice
> note-perfect from the streets of urban America.
>
> There is something about multidimensional fiction that overlaps with real
> people, events and ideas that few writers beside  Thomas Pynchon do really
> well. This is one.
>
> On Oct 4, 2014, at 8:42 PM, Joseph Tracy wrote:
>
> > I'm just finishing House of Leaves. A dark provocative and structurally
> intriguing work of literary fiction, simulated literary and film criticism,
> poetry, and myth.
> >
> > What I come back to as the theme that captures my own interest is the
> question of what is journalism or scientific research and what establishes
> the credibility of a valid record. It is harder than we admit. Couching the
> quest for reliable stories or even reliable data as science can be as
> problematic as submitting the difficulties to religious or political or
> scholastic authority. Again and again, pre-existing prejudices, and imbibed
> mythic models built over a life or career serve both to enlighten and
> prejudice our understanding of an event. We can easily end up confirming
> something we don't seriously believe rather than live with our questions
> and perhaps lose security. People line up as skeptics concerning anything
> suggesting and mount their outraged scientific arguments, but their seeming
> confidence in scientism is eroded by the ambiguities of actual science, by
> uncooperative data, and the unanticipated consequences of logical
> scientific solutions.  In fact horrors approach as much from modern physics
> and chemistry as religious and political invocations of evil or heroism.
> >
> > Most people seem to acquire a limiting sense of what can be real  and
> draw sharp lines of defense. But darkness eats at every limit,  as
> nothingness is the negative ground that allows every substance . Mr
> Danielewski follows the nothingness and disintegration palpably and  in
> layers of experience and of interpretations of those experiences and
> interpretations of the photographic records of the experience. To read
> House of Leaves was for me to  continue to renew a long abandoned interest
> in horror as an artful cauldron.  Sadness and danger, terror, fear,
> violence, loss and death seem the most real commonality of our time. Again
> and again the airwaves bend toward anger or war though for seemingly
> opposite reasons, but mistrust and fear abounds, death multiplies. It
> cannot help but touch us all.  Ordinary pleasures are tainted by distant
> but constant violence and disaster.
> >
> > Danielewski invokes these and more personal existential  fears as a
> house which inhabits and invades a seemingly normal house, doors open,
> hallways lengthen, closets lead to endless passageways.  The photo
> journalist who has bought the house as a refuge from a marriage-fraying
> career tries to document these experiences. The filmed documentary ( the
> Navidson Records)is interpreted by critics and writers from many
> disciplines, some real contemporary writers. But not only is the movie
> fiction to us the readers, it is fiction to the discoverer of a
> disconnected manuscript that summarizes the reviews and offers its own POV.
> Johnnie Truant, who recovers the manuscript from a blind writer when he
> dies,  then adds his own biographic and autobiographic notes as he
> assembles the bits and pieces of the House of Leaves.
> >
> > There is something about multidimensional fiction that overlaps with
> real people, events and ideas that few writers beside Pynchon do really
> well. This is one.
> >
> >
> >
> >
>
> -
> Pynchon-l / http://www.waste.org/mail/?listpynchon-l
>
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