https://padlet.com/gregoryschronk/ir7nwrsa9gcwl5lo By Mark Z. Danielewski en-us 2023-09-11 19:36:34 UTC 2023-09-19 14:41:28 UTC hello@padlet.com https://padlet-uploads.storage.googleapis.com/2135454161/88da97a981677fae25520e7fd775e7f6/images__1_.png gregoryschronk https://padlet.com/gregoryschronk/ir7nwrsa9gcwl5lo/wish/2699980209 The album that this song is from was made by Mark Danielewski sister and is intended to be listened to while reading House of Leaves. For example the chorus can be representative of Truant's mental state around the time he's writing the introduction, haunted by those that he's loved and have now left him, regretting even trying to piece together The Navidson Record, and the constant nightmares and terrors that are inside his haunted head. That is, if you take everything Truant says as the truth.]]> 2023-09-12 13:48:18 UTC https://padlet.com/gregoryschronk/ir7nwrsa9gcwl5lo/wish/2699980209 gregoryschronk https://padlet.com/gregoryschronk/ir7nwrsa9gcwl5lo/wish/2699992033 The maze like pattern can be viewed as a floor plan for the depths of the ever shifting maze the house contains, with the grand staircase in the center and a compass on top of it. The compass however lacks any cardinal directions, adding to the maze like appearance. As well as referencing a part of the book where Karen Green discovers that compasses do not work at all inside the house.]]> 2023-09-12 13:54:11 UTC https://padlet.com/gregoryschronk/ir7nwrsa9gcwl5lo/wish/2699992033 gregoryschronk https://padlet.com/gregoryschronk/ir7nwrsa9gcwl5lo/wish/2700426915 The Navidson Record is a manuscript for a movie of the same name written by Zampanò. The movie follows Will Navidson and his family as they move into a new house on Ash Tree Lane in Virginia. The house appears normal on the outside but is much bigger on the inside. In the living room is a door that should lead into the garden but instead reveals a pitch black, long, and cold hallway. Over the course of the book we see how this simple hallway is much bigger then it lead on and how this effects everyone's relationships and sanity.]]> 2023-09-12 17:59:03 UTC https://padlet.com/gregoryschronk/ir7nwrsa9gcwl5lo/wish/2700426915 gregoryschronk https://padlet.com/gregoryschronk/ir7nwrsa9gcwl5lo/wish/2700558403 Zampanò is the author of The Navidson Record. He was an old man who went blind around the 1950s and was approximately 80 years old when he died. He was erratic and capricious in his lifestyle and writing habits, this leads to Truant diagnosing him with graphomania.       ]]> 2023-09-12 19:33:20 UTC https://padlet.com/gregoryschronk/ir7nwrsa9gcwl5lo/wish/2700558403 gregoryschronk https://padlet.com/gregoryschronk/ir7nwrsa9gcwl5lo/wish/2700565289 Johnny Truant is a tattoo artist and the primary editor for The Navidson Record. In the beginning of the book, he comes off as a normal young man who happens upon a trunk full of scraps, notes, and drafts of a manuscript for the documentary The Navidson Record, a movie that doesn't exist. As Truant begins editing the book, he starts to lose his grip on reality. He stops bathing, rarely eats, stops going to work, and pushes everyone in his life away from him. His personal footnotes that he leaves throughout the book detail the deterioration of his life as he starts to having horrific nightmares and schizophrenic episodes that parallel events in the book. By the end of the book, Truant goes missing and is never heard from again.]]> 2023-09-12 19:39:25 UTC https://padlet.com/gregoryschronk/ir7nwrsa9gcwl5lo/wish/2700565289 gregoryschronk https://padlet.com/gregoryschronk/ir7nwrsa9gcwl5lo/wish/2700580471 The main conflict the reader will have while reading the book is deciding on what to believe and what not to believe. It is established very early on that Truant is a very unreliable narrator. As he has a tendency to make up stories about his life as a way to pick up chicks from bars. There is also a four-month period that Truant admits is a straight-up lie on pages 499-508. This leads to the theory that everything in the book was made up by Truant, from Zampanò, to The Navidson Record, to maybe even Truant himself. This is further evidenced by a scrap of paper shown on page 552 in appendix 1-C, that talks about altering the whole escape sequence to have both of Navidsons children die, and it is typed in Courier font. The same font that all of Truants footnotes are typed in. However, in appendix 3, there is proof that the movie existed at some point, these are art pieces, a model, and a frame from the movie. As well as in appendix 1-D there is a newspaper article that proves Zampanò may have existed as well.]]> 2023-09-12 19:54:01 UTC https://padlet.com/gregoryschronk/ir7nwrsa9gcwl5lo/wish/2700580471 gregoryschronk https://padlet.com/gregoryschronk/ir7nwrsa9gcwl5lo/wish/2701949463 In the beginning Truant is just a somewhat attractive young man who has quite a few scars and scrapes covering him, with his arms being severely burnt due to his mother spilling boiling corn oil over them when he was four.]]> 2023-09-13 11:56:10 UTC https://padlet.com/gregoryschronk/ir7nwrsa9gcwl5lo/wish/2701949463 gregoryschronk https://padlet.com/gregoryschronk/ir7nwrsa9gcwl5lo/wish/2702045219 2023-09-13 12:58:24 UTC https://padlet.com/gregoryschronk/ir7nwrsa9gcwl5lo/wish/2702045219 gregoryschronk https://padlet.com/gregoryschronk/ir7nwrsa9gcwl5lo/wish/2702369196 The book's format is the most important part of the novel and is what makes House of Leaves what it is. The text starts out just like any other book, but soon it starts shifting and sliding all over the page. Rotating, expanding and shrinking. One moment you'll be reading 5 pages in 15 minutes, then before you know it you've already read 100 in the same time frame. In a way, the book is the house. An ever shifting labyrinth that has you flipping back and forth between pages and rotating the book on it's side, upside down, at 90 degrees, then 45, getting wider than narrower, running off the page on to the next, and going one word per page and suddenly a full page from top to bottom. The book will also use its format as a way to tell the story visually. For example, on pages 443-460 the book describes a sequence where Navidson walks into a small corridor that slowly gets closer and closer to the ground, getting to a point where he has to crawl on his stomach in order to make it to the other side.]]> 2023-09-13 15:52:46 UTC https://padlet.com/gregoryschronk/ir7nwrsa9gcwl5lo/wish/2702369196 gregoryschronk https://padlet.com/gregoryschronk/ir7nwrsa9gcwl5lo/wish/2704126668 House of Leaves is about grief, trauma, and being able to move on from them. Everyone who enters the house, both physically and metaphorically, come in with some grief, and those who come out with their trauma set aside to give focus to others in their life, come out relatively unscathed, such as Navidsons children, Chad and Daisy, who's only real grievances are that they have to make new friends and not get to listen to the bustling streets of the city anymore. But others like Holloway Roberts, who never gets past his own superiority complex, never escapes his own personal labyrinth nor the physical one his final moments are spent in, ultimately taking his own life and letting his body become fully whole with the labyrinth.]]> 2023-09-14 12:40:53 UTC https://padlet.com/gregoryschronk/ir7nwrsa9gcwl5lo/wish/2704126668 gregoryschronk https://padlet.com/gregoryschronk/ir7nwrsa9gcwl5lo/wish/2704250152 This quote is memorable to me because of how many interpretations it has for what it means. For example, before Truant finds the trunk, the only person who knew about The Navidson Record was Zampano, so you could interpret the quote to mean that the book was only for Zampano. However, it's written in Courier font, the same font Truant writes in, and with how obsessed he is with the book by the time he's writing the intro, he has become fully obsessed with the book, and editing the book becomes a destructive passion project for him, meaning that this book will be more important to him than anyone else who reads it, just for him. It can also be interpreted that this book is dedicated to his late mother, evidence for this lies in appendix 2-E, The Three Attic Whalestoe Institute Letters. These letters are ones sent to Truant by his institutionalized mother, and on page 609 she says, “For now all you need to do is place in your next letter a check mark in the lower right hand corner. That way I'll know you received this letter.” And on page 97 the fateful checkmark is there, in the bottom right hand corner. This could then mean that “this is not for you” means that the book is meant for Truants mother, even if she never lived to see it finished.]]> 2023-09-14 13:50:24 UTC https://padlet.com/gregoryschronk/ir7nwrsa9gcwl5lo/wish/2704250152 gregoryschronk https://padlet.com/gregoryschronk/ir7nwrsa9gcwl5lo/wish/2704299189 2023-09-14 14:17:44 UTC https://padlet.com/gregoryschronk/ir7nwrsa9gcwl5lo/wish/2704299189 gregoryschronk https://padlet.com/gregoryschronk/ir7nwrsa9gcwl5lo/wish/2704311493 2023-09-14 14:24:39 UTC https://padlet.com/gregoryschronk/ir7nwrsa9gcwl5lo/wish/2704311493 gregoryschronk https://padlet.com/gregoryschronk/ir7nwrsa9gcwl5lo/wish/2704559736 2023-09-14 16:57:54 UTC https://padlet.com/gregoryschronk/ir7nwrsa9gcwl5lo/wish/2704559736 gregoryschronk https://padlet.com/gregoryschronk/ir7nwrsa9gcwl5lo/wish/2704560142 2023-09-14 16:58:14 UTC https://padlet.com/gregoryschronk/ir7nwrsa9gcwl5lo/wish/2704560142 gregoryschronk https://padlet.com/gregoryschronk/ir7nwrsa9gcwl5lo/wish/2704560435 2023-09-14 16:58:30 UTC https://padlet.com/gregoryschronk/ir7nwrsa9gcwl5lo/wish/2704560435