Post-Print Fiction

In regards to your email to your son asking about the House of Leaves book: The general consensus about the verity of the Navidson Record was that it is false. But the book is filled with possible truths and many untruths, and nobody (at least in our class) can discern or extricate the real from the unreal. It is certainly a tangled web we weave when we begin to deceive…

I have been told that there are people that lie so much that they can’t tell what is true anymore. Danielewski claims that there are no errors in the book, so I would assume he knows exactly where the fiction lies (no pun intended). Classmates have discussed that the purpose in all the blurred lines is to prove that no text can be trusted or considered “sacred truth” and that may be the point to the whole novel.

Or the point may be that there is no point. Even as we were asked to write to you we are all likely grasping at some understanding in order to communicate it to you, but sadly we are trying to apply our minds to the abyss, which I think is a paraphrase/quote of a line from the book.

Your guess is as good as ours. But as your email was proof of, the book does ignite discussion, questions, and reaching out to others to hear their opinions and explore possibilities. And now we are all writing to you, with all our thoughts. The book births a network by its very existence!

Welcome to the house!

Hi Mrs. Sample,

I’m glad you decided to give HOUSE OF LEAVES a try.  My mom has also started to read the book.  I guess it’s a fun thing to do with your kids!

Near as I can figure, the Navidson Record never existed.  Johnny Truant claims that he can find no evidence about it, and Google searches won’t net you any solid results.  I think it’s fun to imagine it as a real thing, though – it makes the book more spooky!

All in all, House of Leaves is definitely an unusual book.  It sort of pokes holes at the divide between reality and fiction – not that I think these things really happened, but they make you think all the same.  All I can suggest is to just keep an open mind and to never settle on just one single meaning!

Hope your Halloween is full of fun.

Sincerely,

David Kennedy

Dear Judy,

According to all of the sources I have checked, there never existed a documentary named “The Navidson Record.” You bring up an important point – if the Navidson Record does not exist, then the premise of House of Leaves becomes unreliable.  It is fiction, though, so ultimately it is the same with any novel.

I would guess that the author created this novel as more than just an unusual book, though – I think he wants the reader to ask many questions, such as “What is a novel?” and “How do we decide what things mean?”  It gets pretty deep, which is probably why your son has assigned it to our class to study.

I hope you enjoy the book!

First and foremost, kudos to you for reading House of Leaves at your own leisure. It took me being in your son’s Post Print Fiction class for me to tackle this “book”. And even then, I wish I hadn’t!

Like you, I am confused at the authenticity of the Navidson Record and quite honestly, the book. We have spent the last three weeks of class dissecting this book and I have given myself an ulcer (figuratively speaking, of course) trying to coddle all these complexities. After reading this book and an interview with the book’s author, I am at a standstill. Would you be angry with me if I said it could go either way? I say that because Danielewski seems to inject tinges of his personal life in the upside down typography, colorful fonts, and foreign languages. His father died when he was in the midst of writing the beginning (or a segment) of the book. Johnny Truant seemed to navigate through life fatherless as well, seeking some kind of paradigm to follow through the life and work of Zampano.

On the other hand, I don’t doubt this book being an ostentatious trophy of Danielewski — one he notes that he has received high praise from. Talk about a jerk, right? Your son seems to think that there are a lot of errors in this book that are accidental. But knowing Danielewski at this point (I read his interview so we’re practically best friends at this point), I feel that this book was and is a postmodernist satire of the traditional book coda.

So, I guess my verdict is that it is utterly fabricated for the sense of creating a spectacle!

Keep reading,

Lauren Lauzon

Good evening Mrs. Sample,

Unfortunately the Navidson Record was a fictional design created by the author. Interestingly, the author has created several fictional authors and critics within the novel. They will quote each other and interpret each other, yet most of  the characters have never existed.

Though, I think this is a perfect read for Halloween, seeing is how there is a haunted house.  And the “LEAVES” in the title made me think of Fall the whole time I was reading it. The story also reminds me of the real life legends we hear about surrounding haunted houses, AND this story is in Virginia, so that really kind of creeps me out.

Have a Happy Halloween!

Chris

Dear Mrs.  Sample,

I feel you are actually asking two different questions here, because while The Navidson Record may not (and probably is not) be real, I’m not sure that the author’s intention of fabricating the film was to “write an unusual book.” I think all authors want to write something new and unique, but I don’t think that was Danielewski’s only goal in writing House of Leaves.

I do think Danielewski is trying to get his readers to ask the questions you have posed, though. It definitely seems like he wants to blur the lines of what is real and what isn’t real. For example, there are many fabricated footnotes and quotes in the book, but the people who spoke them are real. Also, the book refers to a Pulitzer-prize winning photograph of a dying Sudanese girl that is in fact a real photograph that won an award.

I also think he wants us to question why he wrote the book the way he did. If, in fact, it was just “to be unusual” or to raise thought-provoking questions (many of them abound the pages of the book), or to call attention to the role film and other newer forms of media have played in interpretation of real life and fiction.

Good luck in finding answers to your questions!

Caitlin McKenzie

I don’t think that The Navidson Record is just something made up to write an unusual book (although it certaintly is!).  However, I wouldn’t say The Navidson Record is real either, because the documentary doesn’t exist.  I think House of Leaves is trying to take the conventions of the novel and manipulate them.  This is a book analysizing a documentary, with Johnny commenting on the analysis. Everytime we read books, there are aspects of books that we don’t pay attention to: genre conventions, footnotes, decisions about font.  Danielewski takes these choices and changes them, to make us aware of how books are structured and what they mean (or could mean).  By paying attention to these details, we can gain more insight about the text and how we read.

Dear Mrs. Sample,

I think you got a very good first impression of the book House of Leave. This is one of the main issues of the story, the author makes a realistic representation of the subject in the narrative to make us wonder whether this is fiction or not.

The truth is that the entire thing is made up and yes the main objective is to create a very unusual work although its uncanny nature is very well disguise. In other words, we don’t really know yet what he is trying to prove with this unusual approach to telling a story. We are working on figuring that out although the author itself tells us not to worry too much trying to find out what is the purpose or meaning of it. Basically he said to just have fun with it.

I can tell you this is the best time to start reading this book because it is very Hallowing friendly so you jumped at it just on time. And that is all I can tell you for now because I don’t want to spoil it for you, just be prepare for some good old scare.

Enjoy your book and be brave,

sl

Dear Mrs. Sample,

I believe that the Navidson Record was made up to create an interesting book, at least as far as the House is concerned; however, I believe that there may be some factual or real information involved in it.  I think that the House reflects the emotions, fears, dreams, and imagination of the author, Danielewski.  It seems that his childhood, without an attentive father, contributed to a lot of the paternalistic focus of the novel; where there really was a lack thereof.  The Navidson children had a somewhat absent father; Truant had an absent father.  And the author, Danielewski also had a poor relationship with his father due to his work, which happened to be similar to Navidson’s (film). The hallway and house was always changing, and I think that pertains to the lives of the characters, moving through foster homes or across the country, as well as to Danielewski, who traveled around the world following his father’s career.

Therefore, although I believe that this growling, ever-changing, destructive house is not real physically, I think it pertains to the minds of the characters and the author (and ourselves).

I definitely recommend finishing the novel, even if this record was ACTUALLY real, which of course is my opinion.  The fact that so much detail could be put into a fake account of a mysterious house should make us strive to find another meaning in it, and maybe look into ourselves.

Dear Mrs. Judy Sample,

 

Thank you for picking up House of Leaves and seeking to make sense of this unusual novel with us. We, in Mr. Sample’s course, agree your question is one of the first a reader should ask about House of Leaves.

I would say I think The Navidson Record is not a real documentary not just to create an unusual novel but to call into question many things we assume to know about any novel.

Things like authorship and truth, revision and narration all seem to be devices the author Mark Z. Danielewski manipulates to show us that we ultimately can not trust them and must at some point let go of our search for “sacred truth” in this novel.

In some ways, The Navidson Record is an anchor to the novel. It ties together the narration of Johnny Truant and Zampano. Being fictitious we must look for other ways to “ground” our understanding.

I hope you enjoy the rest of your reading.

 

Sincerely,

Adam

 

In response to the email your son showed us, I would have to say that the answer to your question “[is] the Navidson Record real or is the whole thing made up just to write an unusual book.” I would have to say “kind of.” Certainly the Navidson Record is an invention of Danielewski, but I’d have to say that he created it for reasons other than writing a weird book, though certainly that played a role in it. One possible reading of House of Leaves is that it is a criticism of media’s ability to portray reality factually or accurately. By making up a crazy video thing he’s contributing to this theme; the fact that the Navidson record is engaging doesn’t lessen the fact that it’s fictional, much like stories that might be invented in the media.

In a different direction,  by inventing the Navidson Record, he is raising questions of authorship. Even though it is credited to “Zampano” we know it is really authored by Danielewski. Who do we trust as the real author? And if there is no way to discern who is more trustworthy than the other, what does that say about the credibility of the text? I’m less sure about this reading/inturpretation but what-eves yo.

Anyway that’s what I have to say about that. Enjoy the book!

Saw your e-mail, and to answer your question…the Navidson Record is fictionalized, but I can’t tell you who made it up or why. I think you’ll find more questions than answers in this text. But after reading House of Leaves, I’m tempted to say that even though The Navidson Record doesn’t exist as a documentary or an academic essay, the novel House of Leaves brings it alive and makes it very real to the readers. Is writing about something enough to make it real? By the time I finished reading House of Leaves, I didn’t care whether the Navidson Record was real or not. It existed in some capacity. I don’t think it exists in as a piece of “non-fiction” but what is non-fiction anyway? It’s a bit of a misnomer, if you ask me.

Anyway, like I said…questions. You’ll have a lot of them. But keep reading. The questions are important. More important than the answers, I think.

An unusual book indeed.

            In chapter fourteen of Mao II, Karen returns to Bill’s home to find Scott cleaning dishes. He says there is a chance that Bill won’t come back (222). Karen in her last appearance believes that they should have the house because they took care of Bill (223). This is typical Karen behavior. She is the forever-faithful believer in hope that everything is supposed to happen as it should. She evokes this sense naivety just as she does when Scott first tells her that Bill is missing. Karen initially thinks that Bill will contact them again (118). In actuality, the feeling that readers get from this final scene is that Scott and Karen’s real conflicts are only just beginning. Scott, the realist of the couple, says “The night of the lawyers is approaching” (223). True to DeLillo form, the author leaves the readers hanging. We do not know what is going to happen to Karen and Scott just like we do not know what happens to Jean-Claude.

            In class, we talked about how DeLillo does not give his readers a tightly encased story with a beginning and a climatic ending that wraps everything up. And some readers find Delillo’s stories unsettling. The endings conflict with the conventions of an ending that we have come to know. Like the readers, Karen has certain beliefs, standards, or rules about how things are supposed to end:

 “They can own the house,” Karen said. “But they should let us live here. And we keep the manuscript and we keep the pictures.” (223)

 The truth is Karen and Scott will probably lose the house, the pictures, and the manuscript to either the family or Charles. The class also talked about how in the real world, stories are usually left unresolved. But if they end, they do not end the way we had predicted.  It seems that Karen is in conflict with Don Delillo’s conventional form writing. He has created worlds, similar to our own, where problems are left unsettled. Yet, there are some traditional conventions of the more familiar novels within in this chapter. Initially, this scene has that moment when two characters, who have not seen each other in a long time, embrace passionately with tears of either regret or happiness (220). And, DeLillo seems to be evoking this literal sense of hope by the end of the chapter. But I think the deeper feeling is that Karen and Scott are in trouble. In reality, and in Delillo’s worlds, things do not end the way people can conventionally expect.

In Bill’s final scene, there are three different actions that I found to be evocative: the first action is Bill’s willing approach to the three vets drinking wine and his admission of being a writer, the second is his decision to go to a club with the vets, and the third is his voyage to Junieh.

Bill has been running from his book as well as his loved ones for all of this time, and he has done everything in his power to be forgotten. The extreme measures Bill takes to get away from all that he once held as familiar suggests that he’d rather be alone then be recognized as a writer, yet, when Bill approaches the vets and introduces himself as a writer. Though  he refuses to say just what kind of writer he is, he has behaved in a manner that is inconsistent with his previous paranoia. I wanted, at first, to say that it was just the alcohol and pain that drove him to make that admission and engage the three vets, and that could be the case, but what threw me off was that little passage about Bill’s love of doctors.

He had a big chesty laugh that Bill liked. Bill’s first wife despised him for liking doctors because she thought he was contriving to outlive her (207).

By mentioning that Bill had a special fondness for doctors, I thought his approach was one of necessity, not only for his health, but for his spirit. Despite the fact that he is running away from people he loves, and is trying to be forgotten, he still seeks out companionship of other people. It’s not that he doesn’t want to be with other people, it’s just that he wants to be stripped of his former identity. He doesn’t want to be “that kind of writer” (205). Being around people who do not know who he truly is seems to alleviate some of the stress he feels as a famous author. Scott, Karen, Brita, and even Charlie put pressure on Bill that he just cannot handle. He sees his perpetually unfinished work as a failure and that failure is reflected by those he sees around him because they are the ones who know him the best and know what his work should be. They are constant reminders of what he has created and what he is trying to escape. The vets are a neutral party, a new beginning. I think this is why Bill decides to go into a crowded place where there are tons of unfamiliar faces that he hopes to meld into. It’s a way to distance himself from what he once was: an isolated celebrity.

After finding out his diagnosis, Bill knows that he has two choices: to live or to die. He could go to a doctor or he can continue on in pain and die. Bill chooses to suffer and die, but I am not so sure I understand why he makes this decision. One possible explanation could be that he really wants to take this voyage to Beirut and that he is so driven by this idea that he suppresses his own wellbeing. Going to a doctor could expose his true identity or make his trip impossible. Another possibility is that he thinks he can survive the trip.

Inevitably, Bill chooses to go on his voyage and die. It is significant that any form of identification is literally stripped from his body (217). He dies anonymously and he dies because of his work.

It was writing that caused his life to disappear (215).

Writing, it seems, is this act of terrorism for Bill. It literally terrorizes him, makes him paranoid, and drives him to his death. I think that is most explicitly shown in his final scene.

Through Karen, DeLillo exposes the reader to the suffering of the masses. Karen seems to be the only character interested in others apart from herself. Yet, she remains incapable of following through. Her explorations and attempts to make a connection with the masses and crowds, which allure her so grandly, lead her to nowhere.  Chapter 12 could be considered the last significant appearance of Karen’s character in the novel and we learn a lot about her cares and how “She was trying out the voices in her head” (176).

In chapter 12, Karen tries to absorb the world, or the part of the world that interests her while staying in NYC. During her stay at Brita’s loft, she chooses to follow some characters in the streets of New York that allows us to see the complexities that torment her and an almost climatic moment occurs at the end of this chapter that suggests Karen has made a decision or transformed from a passive observer into a believer all over again, or a crazy for that matter. Then, of course, DeLillo must come in and kill it all with the anti-climatic Karen of chapter 14, the real final scene of her character.

I chose to speak of both chapters as her last appearance because it seems to me that DeLillo didn’t follow the rule of privilege, her appearance in chapter 14 diminishes her. Her last appearance is better analyzed in the light of her previous performance in other chapters especially in opposition with her chapter 12 development.

Karen is attracted to the ordinary, non-celebrity, untalented, anonymous masses. She seeks that “discharge” spoken by Canetti in the essay Crows and Power. She seeks unity under one guidance. To achieve it, she first denies herself and becomes one in a mass through her religion, then, when forcefully removed from it, she drifts into living a life without a purpose, barely there, seeking communion with the only two figures around her. In seek of that unity; she becomes the lover of two men who just allow her to hang around there. But she remains allured by the news in the way that allows her to envision a larger crow; it captures humanity as a mass of suffering.

In her stay in NYC, she is fascinated by those who have lost their identity and became an anonymous representation of human decay, those without a voice, like her, just hanging out through the day. A question comes to mind: how are all these unfit characters in the novel related to one another?  Is Delillo trying to compare the main characters in the novel with those lost souls in the streets?  Karen seems to be only character not overly impressed by Bill Gray’s celebrity status. She seems to be interested in something deeper although not sure what or not firm enough to pursue it. While the last scene of chapter 12 presents a Karen who might have found a purpose, a powerful and determined Karen, “Karen came down from the stage and looked for someone who might listen. She had master’s total voice in her head”  (194). Chapter 14 presents a defeated Karen. She went back to Scott’s arms. How did that happen? DeLillo makes a great display of non-transitions all the way through this novel but this is one of the most troubling.  In her last scene, she is submissive to Scott, who is perfectly aware of their mismatch. Karen’s attitude is that of a resigned and she cares only about whether they will be able to remain in Bill’s house, not even about Bill’s well being. She who is so caring about people won’t even care about one of her lovers. While I say that DeLillo might have ignored the rule of privilege, the significance of Karen’s last appearance is interrelated to her movement through the story. She contradicts herself by remaining in the same state she has been for the past five years.