A Parable about Space: Mark Z. Danielewski’s House of Leaves

Year 2019, Issue: 50, 91 - 117, 01.04.2019

Gülşen Aslan Uslu

Abstract

This article examines Mark Z. Danielewski’s debut novel House of Leaves by looking at the ideas of space and spatiality that are presented through the novel’s content, form, and shape. Employing postmodern narrative devices extensively such as metafiction, multiplicity of narratives, intertextuality, and genre-blurring, House of Leaves makes use of the spatial form and extends it with the use of hypertext. The novel’s narrative space also focuses on a spatial construct, the Navidson house, which is a vast labyrinthine space. Danielewski uses the Navidson house as an inspiration for the spatial design of his novel. He does this by incorporating the visual and material devices and reorganizing the page with topographical and typographical experiments. The novel makes use of spatiality on different levels and as a result of the interplay between these spatial practices, it produces a dynamic fictional and material space. House of Leaves reconsiders the novel’s shape and materiality in the late age of print and redefines it as a material art object through the use of postmodernist elements, hypertext, and materiality

Keywords

Mark Z. Danielewski, House of Leaves, spatiality, hypertextuality, materiality

Bir Mekân Hikâyesi: Mark Z. Danielewski’nin Yapraklar Evi Romanı

Abstract

Bu makale, Mark Z. Danielewski’nin ilk romanı olan Yapraklar Evi’ni, romanın içeriği ve biçemi aracılığıyla sunulan mekân ve mekânsallık kavramları çerçevesinde incelemektedir. Yapraklar Evi, üst kurgu, çoklu anlatılar, metinlerarasılık ve türlerin karışımı gibi postmodern anlatı öğelerinden faydalanarak mekânsal biçemi kullanır ve bunu hipermetin sayesinde genişletir. Romanın kurgusal mekânı da yine bir mekânsal ve mimari oluşum olan, Navidson’ların geniş bir labirent şeklindeki evine odaklanır. Danielewski, Navidson’ların bu labirent evini romanın mekânsal tasarımı için de bir ilham kaynağı olarak kullanır. Bunu da metnin görselliğini ve maddeselliğini alışılmışın dışında bir şekilde kullanarak, sayfanın alanını topografik ve tipografik deneysel araçlarla yeniden tasarlayarak yapar. Roman, mekânsallığı, çeşitli biçimlerde öne çıkarır ve bunlar arasındaki karşılıklı ilişki sonucunda hareketli bir kurgusal ve maddesel mekân yaratır. Yapraklar Evi, roman türünün şeklini ve maddeselliğini, yeniden mercek altına alaraktürünü, postmodern özellikler, hipermetin ve maddeselliği kullanarak yeniden tanımlar

Keywords

Mark Z. Danielewski, Yapraklar Evi, mekân, hipermetinsellik, maddesellik

References

• Barthes, Roland. “The Death of the Author.” Image/Music/Text. Trans. by Stephen Heath. Hill and Wang, 1977, pp. 142-147.
• Bilsky, Brianne. “(Im)Possible Spaces: Technology and Narrative in House of Leaves.” Revolutionary Leaves: The Fiction of Mark Z. Danielewski, edited by Sascha Pöhlmann. Cambridge Scholars P, 2012, pp. 137-165.
• Bolter, Jay David. Writing Space: Computers, Hypertext, and the Remediation of Print. Lawrence Erlbaum Associates P, 2001.
• Danielewski, Mark Z. “Haunted House: An Interview with Mark Z. Danielewski.” Interview by Larry McCaffery and Sinda Gregory. Critique, vol. 44, no. 2, Winter 2003, pp. 99-135. Taylor & Francis, doi.org/10.1080/00111610309599940.
• ---. House of Leaves. Pantheon Books, 2000.
• Davidson, Ian. Ideas of Space in Contemporary Poetry. Palgrave Macmillan, 2007.
• Derrida, Jacques. “Architecture Where the Desire May Live.” Rethinking Architecture: A Reader in Cultural Theory, edited by Neil Leach, Routledge, 1997, pp. 319-324.
• Foucault, Michel. “Different Spaces.” Essential Works of Foucault 1954-1984, edited by Paul Rabinow. The New P, 1998. pp. 175- 85.
• Frank, Joseph. “Spatial Form in Modern Literature.” The AvantGarde Tradition in Literature, edited by Richard Kostelanetz, Prometheus Books, 1982. pp. 43-77.
• Graulund, Rune. “Text and Paratext in Mark Z. Danielewski’s House of Leaves.” Word & Image, Journal of Verbal/Visual Enquiry, vol. 22, no. 4, 2006, pp. 379-389. Taylor&Francis, doi: 10.1080/02666286.2006.10435766.
• Hayles, Katherine N. Electronic Literature: New Horizons for the Literary. U of Notre Dame P, 2008.
• ---. “Saving the Subject: Remediation in House of Leaves.” American Literature, vol. 74, 2002, pp. 779–806. Project Muse, muse.jhu. edu/article/38216.
• Huber, Irmtraud. Literature after Postmodernism: Reconstructive Fantasies. Palgrave MacMillan, 2014.
• Klinkowitz, Jerome. “Spatial Form in Contemporary Fiction.” Spatial Form in Narrative, edited by Jeffrey R. Smitten and Ann Daghistany. Cornell UP, 1981.
• Landow, George P. Hypertext 3.0. The John Hopkins UP, 2006.
• Leach, Neil, editor. Rethinking Architecture: A Reader in Cultural Theory. Routledge, 1997.
• Lefebvre, Henri. The Production of Space. Translated by Donald Nicholson-Smith. Blackwell P, 1991.
• Little, William C. “Nothing to Write Home About: Impossible Reception in Mark Z. Danielewski’s House of Leaves.” The Mourning After: Attending the Wake of Postmodernism, edited by Neil Brooks and Josh Todd, Rodopi, 2007, pp. 169-201.
• Lyotard, Jean-François. The Postmodern Condition: A Report on Knowledge. A Postmodern Reader, edited by Joseph Natoli and Linda Hutcheon, State U of New York P, 1993, pp. 71-90.
• Malmgren, Carl Darryl. Fictional Space in the Modernist and Postmodernist American Novel. Associated UP, 1985.
• McHale, Brian. Postmodernist Fiction. Routledge P, 1987.
• Nelson, Theodore Holm. Literary Machines. Mindful P, 1980. 28 October 1998. Ecology Lab, www.ecologylab.cs.tamu.edu.
• Ryan, Marie-Laure. “Impossible Worlds.” Routledge Companion to Experimental Literature, edited by Joe Bray, Alison Gibbons and Brian McHale, Routledge, 2012, pp. 368-379.
• ---. “Space.” 13 Jan. 2012. The Living Handbook of Narratology. www. lhn.uni-hamburg.de/article/space.
• Woods, Tim. Beginning Postmodernism. Manchester UP, 1999. Print. “Yggdrasil: The Tree of Life.” Norse Mythology. norse-mythology.net/ yggdrasil-in-norsemythology/.