Hello Gentle Reader
I recently discovered an artist by the name of Claude Lazar. His paintings depict city landscapes, houses, apartments, views from a window, rooms in a home, back alleys. These paintings are done however in such a clear style. The details of each painting is so superb that they immediately catch the moody atmosphere of each piece of work. The shadows lay like blankets on the floor or on the walls. The light falls in dusky tones. It reflects the dust in a hazy cloud around the window, gently floating in the air like small molecule leaves in autumn. The very surfaces themselves reflect the world itself of the painting. Puddles of the street reflect nearby streets, or the sky above. The world can be clouded and disoriented by mist or stuck in the gloom of the snows of winter. All of which strictly resembles the world of the viewer itself. The titles of the work themselves, come across as snippets of dialogue – spoken by the unseen inhabitant of the room. Titles like “In Praise of the Past,” “Whisper of the Street,” “Head in the Clouds,” “In Search of Memory.” Yet the empty states of the rooms. The absence of the inhabitant or inhabitants can clearly be seen and felt throughout the work. There is no sense if the painting depicts the time before the inhabitants have reached the place, or if they depict the aftermath of the departure. The sofas look soft and inviting. The beds, opened up for one to go lie down and sleep. The windows open to let in the sunlight. A table may sit, in the middle of a room, set for little lunch or a small dinner, but the food might only sit cold. It’s these moody lonely absent and isolated landscapes – be it streets, rooms, apartments, stair cases, balconies or roofs; with all their emptiness and alienation, that gives the pictures more than just a simple paintings of barren landscape in a realist tradition. They are painted yes in a realist tradition, but underneath the simple look of the building or the room of furniture there is a deeper connection that one can feel. There’s that sense of isolation or loneliness that we all feel, deep down. The alienation from our peers. Yet it’s not a frightening or nightmarish landscape. These are simple depictions of the simple solitary life. These incredibly small cosmos shrunken down into small rooms, speak volumes of the solitary man.
“House of Leaves,” by the author Mark Z. Danielewski, is set up much like a house. This format however makes for an interesting if at times indigestible read. However, it’s certainly an achievement. It’s Mark Z. Danielewski’s debut novel, and it’s nothing short of quite an achievement. A stylistic achievement. It is a large postmodern brick of a piece of work. My knowledge of this book however goes back quite a few years, and just this last, Christmas season, a particularly dull Monday evening while working, as I was busy walking through the bookshelves, and straightening up books, and re-shelving, by chance, I had passed by a book that had caught my eye right early on. Reading the spine, it felt difficult, to believe that this book was in the store, and so without wasting another bit of time, I placed it up at the front on hold, and I quickly went back to work, eager, to get home and start reading this book that had received such praise, by so many people, as one of the greatest achievements that a author could do with his debut work. At first for a while reading this book, I wasn’t sure if I had made the most pleasing decision. Yet through persistence, and patience it started to show its true colours. It became more stylistically challenging and difficult to follow. Eventually it was becoming apparent that I was also getting lost in the house of the Navidson’s as well.
The entire book is set up as a book within a book. “The Navidson Record,” “by Zampanò, and all introductions and notes were written by Johnny Truant.” “The Navidson Record,” itself is a fictional film by Will Navidson, who is a Pulitzer Prize winning photojournalist. However despite the award and honour that has been bestowed upon him, his marriage is disintegrating slowly. Which Will Navidson himself is determined to repair. This is what prompts Will Navidson to move himself, and his wife Karen Navidson and their two children out to the Virginia Countryside, away from the city. However, his photojournalist career is far from being left behind in the city.
Will Navidson decides to document the occupancy of the home, and its inhabitants, by mounting cameras up throughout the house, and even carriers one around himself, in his documentary of the family adapting to their new environment. However a weekend away leads, to a starting discovery. The house has a new closet in it, complete with a glass knob. However the interior of the closet, is a black featureless, void is all that remains inside. Thinking that they have just over looked this small detail, Karen and Will Navidson get the blue prints of the house, and they immediately see right away, that there new space anomaly was never written up in the blue prints. Measuring the house inside and outside shows that the house is larger on the inside – by exactly a quarter of an inch. All attempts at proving it as just bad math, soon fail however. Friends, professionals, even Will Navidson’s brother Tom – all only come up with the same unbelievable answer, that the house was just bigger on the inside then it was on outside. But the events have not just stopped there. Navidson wakes up, one night hearing his children’s voice echo; however it’s not an echo capable of echoing through the interior of the house. What Navidson then discovers is “dark doorless hallway which has appeared out of nowhere,” in a wall at one end of the living room, where he discovers his children inside.
However what appears to be some Amityville haunted house horrors story, it is far from it. It’s not some slasher book either, full of gore. It’s pitting the human psyche and the psychology of the characters up against a house. Except this house itself, ends up rearranging itself, from a closet that is a quarter of an inch, to a hallway extending to thousands upon thousands of rooms, to a miles deep staircase. In the meantime, Mark Z. Danielewski also plays with the greatest fears of people. What we can’t see. The terrible feeling that something in that darkness is out there and that though logically we know nothing is there, that sound and the tricks in the mind, makes the skin bubble up with gooseflesh. Even though rationally and logically, one knows that there is nothing there – unless of course it’s a burglar or an ax wielding murder.
Yet throughout it all, Mark Z. Danielewski finds plenty to, does to make his characters, paranoid and cautious. Plenty of times, the psychological reactions of the characters, their emotional responses is a lot scarier, then any monster chasing them down the hallway. The fact that one knows there is nothing after them, and that there is nothing in the darkness, and yet that trepidation, that flows through their veins and the slow perturbation slowly rotting away their minds leaves one with a real sense of uncertainty.
Then there is the storyline of Johnny Truant, a slacker in every sense of the word. He’s working or at least apprenticing at a tattoo parlour. He lusts over a client of the shop “Thumper,” who’s a stripper. He tells outlandish stories, however, most people believe them, not for the content I am sure but by the way that he has told them. His life concerns sex, drugs booze, debilitating nightmares, and hallucinations, which have all been brought on by reading the manuscript that the deceased man Zampanò had written.
It is a challenging read. At first the riddles, and the way that it was written, wasn’t at all that pleasing for me, and I wasn’t entirely sure if I was going to continue, but once I got over it, and started to handle my grasp of the book, I continued on through it. At first where one interesting storyline, was being intersected by another one via a footnote, immediately, I’d grumble to myself, but would pick up the new storyline, begrudgingly and before long was lost in it as well. The sexual escapades of Johnny Truant however, remind me a frat boy having a bunch of wild night fun. Yet his disturbing and debilitating nightmares, and hallucinations are by far the more fun to read – not because its sadistic to read them; but rather that while reading them, one can see a more human side of Johnny Truant. He shows fear, and in that side proves that he is more human. Not just some over sexualized frat boy energizer bunny. He has a long complicated relationship with is institutionalized mother (some sixty pages in a back appendix shows them), and many other problems, continue to show that Johnny is rather human. Though not the most likable character either to be honest.
It is however very interesting how the two narratives work separately and yet together as well. Mark Z. Danielewski, keeps the voices of both the stories, disconnected from each other, and yet moves through them with grace and ease. But his talents as a writer do not stop there. Mark Z. Danielewski also proves himself to be quite a capable architect with his debut work. The entire work itself shows some great typographical talent. Some pages can be completely blank with only a few words at the bottom of the page. These typographical elements, often add another ingredient to the book itself. Making it not only unique, in many ways, but also it adds to the claustrophobic feel of the house itself. Being stuck in a never ending stairwell, or the underlying discord that has seeped into the house between Will Navidson and Karen.
However despite it all, the book can be a bit overwhelming. There is a lot of material: collages, indexes, pictures, letters, poems et cetera, which can be a bit challenging to sift through. However that can also be seen as part of the fun. The book is a gigantic brick of paper, full of details, and at times incomprehensible material. However, to some this can b seen as a great fun. It’s like a puzzle, with some pieces missing, but still they can imagine the pieces still there. However it can become a frustrating read indeed, and may even push one to the point of wondering what the point is. Then again it’s a book that shows the versatility of the book format.
Thank-you For Reading Gentle Reader
Take Care
And As Always
Stay Well Read
*And Remember: Downloading Books Illegally is Thievery and Wrong.*
M.Mary
