Mind Games
For me, HOUSE OF LEAVES, acts as a complex and intriguing set of mind games - a literary work that forces me to question my perceptions of what is real and what is imaginary. Never before have I read a book that tricks me so thoroughly into believing that the characters and events are real, only to have me reminding myself in the next minute that it is all fictitious. It is not so much the descriptions of darkness nor the dangers of nothingness that frighten me the most, but rather the ability of words on a page (words on these pages) to so thoroughly mess with my mind!
Katherine Hayles refers to this phenomena as it relates specifically to the “realness” of the characters. She notes that “the text emphasizes that people within the represented world – Will Navidson and Karen Green on one level, Zampano on another, and Johnny Truant on yet another – exist only because they have been recorded” (116). My relationship to the various characters – i.e. my willingness to believe that they are real – is precisely determined by the unusual nature of what is recorded on paper, who is recording it and how. I believe Will Navidson and Karen Green to be real because some character name Zampano dedicated his life to writing about them and referring to others who wrote about them. I believe Zampano is real because some character named Johnny Truant has found his writing and writes in turn about him. I believe Johnny Truant to be real because some anonymous authors have written about him and his desire to publish his writings as well as Zampano’s. Each of their writings – distinguished by location on the page, typeface and the addition of footnotes – further confirms the apparent validity of what they are writing about.
This cycle is one that transforms the traditional “unreliable narrator” into a “remediated narrator” (116-117). And it is the multiplicity of these remediated narrators that tricks me into believing, almost unconsciously, in the reality of what I am reading. While HOUSE OF LEAVES is definitely not one of my all-time favorites, I do recognize the value of a literary work that remediates reality so completely.
posted by Sheela Jane Menon @ 3:43 PM
2 Comments:
I've asked this before in the context of electronic texts, but what specific features or qualities of narratives contribute to the verismilitude, or even the uncanny sense of "realness" of characters? While I certainly agree with you about the effect of House of Leaves, it seems a little paradoxical to me that the intense "mediation" of these characters should lend such a strong sense of reality to them. From the perspective of Jean Baudrillard, a theorist of postmodern culture, these characters are examples of "simulacra," copies for which there is ultimately no original. They exist in an kind of pure virtuality, yet somehow our knowing that they're fictional makes them appear all the more "there" for us in some strange way.
There's been discussion of the "hyperreal" in a lot of critical work on new media art, much of it drawing on Baudrillard. One of Hayles' points is that experiments in new media texts such as the ones we've been looking at all semester are now influencing the creation of printed works such as House of Leaves. It appears that a "virtual reality" doesn't necessarily depend on advanced hardware and software, but can be realized, to some extent at least, in the traditional format of the print novel. Great comments, here and in class.
If you like the mind games House plays, try reading The Illuminatus! Trilogy by Robert Shea and Robert Anton Wilson. Sex, drugs, conspiracy theory, and, oh, so much more! It weaves so much history, 60s pop culture, urban legend, and fiction (such as H.P. Lovecraft) into the story, you can't tell what's real and what's not. It switches narrators mid-sentence. It'll give an explanation of things in one chapter, then tell you the complete opposite in the next chapter, and both of them seem completely viable.
Anyway, it's sort of a "cult classic" book--not everyone's cup of tea, but "those who like it, like it a lot."
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