House of Leaves: Non-electronic Hypertext and Intertextualities of Influence Ivy Roberts MATX601 Oct 24, 2013 To consider hypertext

in its most literal connotation is to open a discussion of texts that are over or beyond traditional print texts. Hypertext, in George Landows use of the term, designates a genre of interactive writing in which electronic form facilitates the openness of a work among lexias. The form enables an agency in the reader to choose his or her own path through the work. Does hypertext necessarily indicate only electronic texts? Following Barthes From Work to Text, the work is merely a single iteration of a larger text that flows through the minds of readers and writers. In memory and in the many ways we apply a text, discourse exists in an open universe without beginning or end. Sometimes writers neglect to associate their ideas to a source. Readers often draw connections between what they read in one novel and what they have read, or heard about, in the past. In both these senses, works live intertexually. ! Back in 2003, a classmate recommended Mark Danielewskis House of Leaves because of my interest in the horror film genre. What I found in the novel was both a form that defied remediation and at the same time a narrative that overflowed from its pages begging to be translated into new media forms. After completing the first draft of a screenplay adaptation a few years later, I anxiously rung Pantheon. The secretary rudely disconnected our call after declaring the rights unavailable. The work defies remediation in terms of copyright, too. ! To understand the dilemma of a work that both resists remediation while simultaneously overflowing its pages, the notion of non-electronic hypertext serves as a rich term for analysis. Landow designates two forms of non-electronic hypertext in terms of intertextuality and openness. Defining hypertext in print, Landow channels Barthes in explaining that authors play upon texts in an explicit nature in footnotes (Hypertext 3.0, 55). Implicitly, authors weave texts in fictional works by relying upon historical precedents of form and content. The flow from text to work, in a Barthean sense, relies less upon a verifiable citation than on an inference in terms of criticism; any given author could have been influenced by another.

I believe we are often just as influenced by writers we do not read as we are influenced by those we do (Danielewski, in Critique, 114).
Danielewski, obviously proud of his baby, conveys an almost pretentious guise in interviews when explaining his decade-long gestation of House of Leaves. He mentions a plethora of authorial influences, most of which he admits never to have read firsthand. Most interesting, however, are the levels of authorship within the novel itself. Without directly crediting Nabokov or Wallace, Danielewski credits House of Leaves to Zampano, a fictional character supposed to be the author of the manuscript on The Navidson Record. Danielewski removed himself one step from the role of author (he might in fact be called the editor of the lexias that his characters have

written).1 Enter Truant, the archivist of Zampanos manuscript; he tells his parallel story in the form of footnotes and appendices. The Navidson Record, a documentary film described in Zampanos manuscript, provides the backbone of the novel.

Figure 1: Cover of the book

Figure 2: Title page of the book

The nontraditional graphic design of the novel also has precedents in such works as McLuhans Gutenberg Galaxy and Derridas Glas. It is likely, given Danielewskis admission that he hadnt read Nabokov or Wallace, that he was also only indirectly familiar with 20th century precedents in typesetting.2 Precedents in narrative and typography inarguably influence Danielewskis choices in the making of House of Leaves, revealing a passive flow from earlier works into a larger intertextual docuverse. Anyone with a grasp of the history of narrative can see that House of Leaves is really enjoying the fruits of a long line of earlier literary experimentation. The so-called originality claimed by many commentators must be limited to my decision to use the wonderful techniques developed by Mallarme, Sterne, B.S. Johnson, cummings, Hollander, etc., etc., and of course Hitchcock, Welles, Truffaut, Kubrick, and so on (Danielewski, in Critique, 106). House of Leaves reads like a 500-page review of a film that you havent seen that you cant see. The film needs to be read. For this reason, the author refuses to sell the film rights to the novel. Oddly enough, the novel finds a rich second life in YouTube fan-maker culture. The first few pages of results for a House of Leaves query return numerous book reviews and fan-made trailers. A YouTube query for The Navidson Record returns a handful of attempts to recreate the documentary in live action.

"If you want to see this movie, read the book."3

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On page 4 of the novel, The Editors interject: Mr. Truants footnotes will appear in Courier font while Zampanos will appear in Times. We also wish to note here that we have never met Mr. Truant. If can attribute the intra-diegetic persona of The Editors to Danielewski, then Truant and Zampano rise in status from merely fictional projections to the extra-diegetic status as co-authors. Indeed, a strong theme in the novel is the fluidity of realities contained in and flowing out of the diegesis. "!I havent read these books either.! 3 From an interview with Mark Z. Danielewski conducted for Random House by Sophie Cottrell

A pair of NYU grad students adapt Exploration #4, a segment of the documentary described in the novel, into an awkwardly staged drama.4 The experience of reading the descriptive sections of the documentary in the novel conveys an intense feeling in the reader that the film should exist. While Truant and Zampano insist that the documentary is alternatively unfindable, lost, or nonexistent, readers persist in the reality of the film within the pages of the novel.5 It calls for adaptation while at the same time resisting fixed images, as if the multiple authors are each telling the reader in different ways that the film cannot and should not exist. What we have to rely upon and accept is the expression of an image in language. Youtube maker culture resists textual fixity with a vengeance. Their motto could just as well be: the book isnt finished until its been adapted into a movie. What seems to be the case more so today is that the work isnt complete until its been made into a movie, a sequel, a Broadway play, a prequel, and a novelization.6 Only upon the completion of such a process does the text outlive its cultural utility. The pseudo-documentarian style of Blayde and Scott is the least appropriate form for House of Leaves. "Exploration #4" shows that the novel resists remediation because the images are too literal in live action. In the novel, within the materiality of print typography and the narration of multiple subjectivities, The Navidson Record appreciates its most profound form. What one can express in a text varies considerably from what can be expressed in a comparable film; the description of the film is not the same as the film. In the case of The Navidson Record, the film lives entirely in its context within the three intermingling narratives of Truant, Zampano, and Zampanos description of Navidsons journey. The film is subjective through their eyes. A cinematic, live action version of such a film would be unwatchable, devoid of commentary, locked into its own ambient being, fixed in images that mean nothing by themselves. It took a while for me to come to terms with the fact that I would never be able to bring The Navidson Record to the screen. I had spent so much time translating the passages from the novel into screenplay format. More than that, the images in the novel had manifested with such vitality in my mind that I didnt want to let them go. As a filmmaker, it was crippling to confront the image-as-text that defied remediation back into image. But I think I realized something along the way something that seems to have been lost on the makers of the YouTube versions of The Navidson Record. The remediation of such a work, in this case a book that exists most naturally in its literary form, only results in newness for its own sake. ! The most expressive remediations of House of Leaves value form above content. Of all the strategies attempted by YouTube makers to express Danielewskis novel in time-based form, !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
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Ariadne Blayde and Trevor Scott, Exploration #4 < http://youtu.be/GYkr1bDwfXs> See Is the Navidson Record Real? on This is not for us web forum <http://thisisnotfor.us/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=133> and The Navidson Record on the MarkZDanielewski.com forum < http://forums.markzdanielewski.com/showthread.php?3939-The-Navidson-Record> 6 Hairspray, Spiderman, ABBA (Mama Mia), Footloose, not to mention The Wizard of Oz.

James Gielis kinetic typography video rises above the rest.7 A class project in Adobe After Effects, Gielis chose lexias from House of Leaves that emphasize the novels experimental typesetting. Animating the passages, words that had only previously been fixed in print, raises the work to a higher level. While the graphic representation in the novel serves many metaphorical uses, such as the window within the page (figure 3), the kinetic typography plays upon the images related in the text and expresses them in animation, furthering the connections made in the novel through juxtaposition and materially expressed across pages (figure 4). Gielis animation brings something to the book that the book itself was unable to express in its fullest. Such are the qualities of the most successful and expressive remediations. In effect, the text comes alive in a way that Danielewski could never have imagined.

Figure 3: Still frame from House of Leaves Kinetic Typography

In the various forms of House of Leaves (the novel, the documentary adaptation, the kinetic typography, etc.), we find multiple remediations of content and form that play upon the intertextuality of the novel as non-electronic hypertext. The only thing missing from these examples is the interactivity inherent in electronic hypertext. The print novel, for example, allows the reader to jump around in the pages in material form only. It would be a sublime experience to read House of Leaves in an electronic hypertext format. The many attempts at digitizing the book, however, have proven that the printed form is the most appropriate to its graphic design (primarily due to the relationship between the typography and the readers experience). A discussion thread in the Kindle users forum lay out the points clearly; the pages need to be tactile and visible in material juxtaposition.8 Such interplay between pages doesnt !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
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House of Leaves Kinetic Typography <http://youtu.be/6IXGvkE0pvk> House of Leaves as an eBook? Kindle Users Forum. <http://www.kuforum.co.uk/kindleusersforum/thread11561.html>!

exist in digital format. For example, in the picture (figure 4) we see the visual juxtaposition of frames and the manipulation of pages space conveyed across lexias. Trimburs investigation of the page as a unit of discourse provides a useful framework to argue against the digitization of a book such as House of Leaves: [A]s readers we are supposedly not looking at the visual design of writing but following the writers throughts. Typography, on the other hand, calls attention to how the look of the page communicates meaning by treating text as a visual element (198). Creative uses of typography support the agency of the reader in making choices of which lexia to read in which order. Text as graphic design becomes less a matter of what is written than what is visualized on the page, highlighting the juxtaposition of visual elements as well as the interrelation of texual elements in typesetting.
Figure 4

The reader of House of Leaves experiences a high level of agency in terms of navigating the text in material form, a facilitated behavior that may help to account for the many remediations of the text. The novel is open in many senses, including but not limited to Danielewskis indirect appropriation of 20th century experimental fiction, complex issues of authorship, and ambivalence toward remediation. Each factor plays into the novels rich life beyond its pages, namely in the minds of readers as well as in their efforts to remediate House of Leaves in digital forms. While Danielewski resists the generic reappropriation of his work, Youtube maker culture flies in the face of definitive authorship. In vast networks of cultural creativity we find both appropriate and inappropriate remediations of House of Leaves. While the novel, in its authors mind, may have found its most profound form in the non-electronic hypertext, other voices can be heard in dispute of the work as a hermetic articulation of a single vision. If Truant and Zampano are still around today, it is not in House of Leaves but rather inside fan culture. ! !

Bibliography Barthes, Roland. From Work to Text. Image, Music, Text. Trans. Stephen Heath. NY: Hill and Wang, 1977. Blayde, Ariadne and Trevor Scott. Exploration #4. YouTube. 5 May 2009. Web. 12 Oct 2013. <http://youtu.be/GYkr1bDwfXs> Cottrell, Sophie. A Conversation with Mark Danielewki. Random House: Bold Type. n.d. Web. <http://www.randomhouse.com/boldtype/0400/danielewski/interview.html> Danielewski, Mark Z. House of Leaves. New York: Pantheon, 2000. Gielis, James. House of Leaves Kinetic Typography. YouTube. 11 Aug 2009. Web. 12 Oct. 2013. <http://youtu.be/6IXGvkE0pvk> Landow, George. Hypertext 3.0. Baltimore: #$%&'!($)*+&'!,&+-./'+01!2/.''3!"4456 McCaffery, Larry and Sinda Gregory. Haunted House An Interview with Mark Z. Danielewski. Critique. 44:2 (2003): 99-135. Trimbur, John. Delivering the Message: Typography and the Materiality of Writing. Rhetoric and Composition as Intellectual Word (2002): 188-202.