Hauntology: 104

In which Carla reenters the…why is it a house of leaves?

Sources and references: The House of Leaves universe:
House of Leaves by Mark Z. Danielewski
The Whalestoe Letters: From House of Leaves
Poe’s album “Haunted”: Apple, Spotify

Starling House, Alix E. Harrow https://bookshop.org/a/6560/9781250799067 House of Windows by John Langan and Adam Levill https://bookshop.org/a/6560/9781682308110 The Silent Land by Graham Joyce https://bookshop.org/a/6560/9780307739827 The Catcher in the Rye by J. D. Salinger https://bookshop.org/a/6560/9780316769488 

Theme song and stinger: “She Comes Through the Fog” by Haunted Me, used with permission.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:18):
The house comes into view all at once, like it
stepped out from behind a black curtain. It's more mysterious
at night. We're alive, maybe just more full stop. There's
a tension in the shape of it against the sky,
as if it has to work hard to remember to
be a house and nothing else. Starling House alex E. Harrow. Hi,

(00:41):
I'm Carla, and welcome back to There might be cupcakes.
As promised, we returned to the series on the House
of Leaves universe, which is comprised of Mark z Daniel
Elski's horror novel House of Leaves and its companion novel
of Whales tow the Whales Toe Letters. Excuse me, I
am fighting off what I think is a chest cold,

(01:02):
so I'm not going to be one hundred percent perhaps
with the prounciations, I'm not going to be on point.
I'm going to try very hard. This entire journey with
these two books is an exercise in reading between the
lines and a fashion. Yes. Well, in these sections, Johnny
addresses this quote too bad, so much of his life
had to slip between the lines of even his own words.

(01:25):
Johnny about Sopano, and of course we could say the
same thing about Johnny and could somebody say the same
thing about us? As we read these books, Soupano's notes
contain an exhortation, or rather a warning cursed b he
makeets the blind wander out of the way Deteronomy twenty
seven eighteen. We last left Johnny, Navinsen and Zupano's intertwine

(01:48):
stories at the end of section seven and the exploration
of Appendix to E with the whales tow letters, bringing
Johnny's mother Pelaphinus Hypergraphia into the mystery. Before we begin,
I want to point out that one reason for the
word house being in the color blue throughout the House
of Leaves may be in reference to the blue of
blueprints and the blue design pencils used on house schematics.

(02:11):
I'll link to these pencils in the website. My favorite
stationary store, Jet Pens, sells them. Yet this idea harkens
back to Poe's lyrics in the song five and a
half Minute Hallway. I live at the end of a
five and a half minute hallway, but as far as
I can see, you are still miles from me in
your doorway. And oh, by the way, when the landlord

(02:33):
came today, he measured everything. I knew he'd get it wrong,
but I just played along because I was hoping that
would fix it all. Section eight again calls back to
Pellaphena's letters to her son Johnny. I'll leave the exact
connection for you to discover. It relates to the check
mark in the bottom right of a page, a message
requested and given. This is a section of warnings. Its

(02:56):
header quote is the Oxford English Dictionary's definition for the
crisis calls Sumper as well. Speaks through time and space
and dimension, perhaps to Johnny and to the reader, perhaps
when she says, if you want my advice, you just
need to get out of the house. A warning signpost
for everyone heeded not. Section nine is headed by the

(03:18):
quotes in Latin. One is Virgil from Aniad. Here is
the toil of that house and the inextricable wandering. The
assentious quote reads the house difficult to exit, and the
Nicholas Truett quote is difficult to enter. Perhaps the warnings
for the last section should have been heated. It's less

(03:38):
a house now than an idea of one, and a
house is meant to shelter some people and keep out
the rest. Starling house Alexey Harrow. These Latin quotes take
us back to the end of section six, to the
lack of whim and not being able to get out quote.
Everything whimsical has left, something else has taken their place,

(04:00):
something I am unable to see, waiting. I am afraid.
It is hungry, it is immortal, worse, it knows nothing
of when, of course, we have not heeded the warnings we,
including Johnny, and Johnny is developing agoraphobia. Agoraphobia is usually

(04:21):
colloquially simplified as the fear of public places of therefore
being trapped in the house. It's much more complicated than that.
Agoraphobia is the fear of open or crowded spaces, any
space in which the person perceives safety is not at hand,
and that escape is not also easily at hand. It
can be triggered by sitting in the middle of a

(04:41):
plane aisle or a movie aisle, for example. Those people
between you and the aisle which leads to safety are
between you and egress. Can you trust them to help
you get out or if something bad happens. Johnny's agoraphobia
is seizing him up in place the basement at the
tach two shop is untenable. Even looking out his own

(05:02):
apartment windows is too frightening, so he covers them like
the old stereotype of newspapers and tinfoil. He's laughing at
his own fear, poking fun at it, but admittedly also
scaring himself. This calls back to Thumper's advice in all
ways he might need to get out of the house
always equals hallways. Post song Dear Johnny, track eleven on

(05:24):
the novel's companion's soundtrack, Haunted, is only fifty seconds long.
I think it's lyrics in full speak to those paroxysms
of fear quote Johnny, Dear, don't be afraid. I will
keep your secret safe. Bring me to the blind man
who lost you in his house of blue. There are
notoriously no accidents in house of leaves. So when Johnny

(05:46):
makes a specific point of mentioning that he says hello
to someone, I noted it that dances around the edges
of murder bulletin board thinking break out the red yarn,
but bear with me. I think it has a musical
callback to post song Hello on her first album See
What You Think quote I can't see your face, but
you left a trace on a data back road that

(06:08):
I almost erased. Not even God takes this long to
get back, So get back. Because I had a fork
in the road, I lost my way home, cut off
from the main line, like a disconnected modem. Hello, tap
in the code, I'll reach you below. No one should
brave the underworld alone where it has it on the
wire that you don't know who you are. Well, if

(06:30):
you could jack into my brain, you'd know exactly what
you mean here. Mothers are trails on stars in the night.
Fathers are black holes that suck up the light. If
you listen to it, you'll hear an audible refrain that
repeats on the Haunted album back to Johnny and the
Jack reference. In that song, there is a pun on
Jack again in the House of Leaves, which repeats again

(06:55):
with Jack and coke as a joke. On page one
O eight. I wondered if it could be a reference
to pose song trigger Happy Jack from her first album,
which is self titled. It sounds sly enough to me
to be a reference. I won't quote the whole song,
but there's a relevant mention of Roadkill, which relates to
a horrific scene between Johnny and a woman he picks up.

(07:15):
This is the verse that really struck me. I see
Zepano in it. Quote, but he underestimates my mind. I
know he's messing with my head. My only weakness is
I can't believe the guy could be entirely dead. Of course,
I have to mention that there is another song on
this album called Angry Johnny. Make up all this what
you will. I'm just the geeky messenger who has always

(07:37):
told you everything is connected, always equals hallways. Right, we
are given a quote by Jacques Derada through Zumpato's work.
Before I read the work, I want to briefly explore
who Dorata was. He was a philosopher who had an
enormous influence across the board in the humanities and social sciences.
A podcast episode in Himself What I Should Do, including

(08:00):
the knowledge of being, ontology and the knowledge of knowledge
in its limits, epistemology drilling down. He was greatly influential
in architecture and music. The architecture and musical subtypes of
the stories before us. The type of architecture he influenced
and basically breathed and being is postmodern deconstructivism. Whoever wrote

(08:22):
the Wikipedia description is highly fluent in the subject, and
I bow to their words. I could not do better. Quote.
Besides fragmentation, decconstructivism often manipulates the structure's surface skin and
deploys non rectilinear shapes which appear to distort and dislocate
established elements of architecture. The finished visual appearance is characterized

(08:45):
by unpredictability and controlled chaos. Ash tree Lane music is
liquid architecture. Architecture is frozen music. Johann Wolfgang von Girta
Believe it or not. The subgenre of music that came
to life thanks to the influence of Dorada's philosophy of

(09:05):
the same name is called hauntology. Everything is connected. Poe's
music belongs to this subgenre, for example, for her sampling
of old recordings of her father's voice and older sounds,
the far off sound of vintage music recordings and agent cassettes,
the crackling of vinyl. Hantology is evocative of the past

(09:27):
and cultural memory as opposed to personal memory, through musical
styles used and through sampling. Dorada's hantology comes from his
books Specters of Marx, The State of the Debt, The
work of Mourning and the New International a link to
it on the website and in the show notes. The
title of the book refers to the beginning of Mark
and Marx and Ingles Blo La Marx and Ingles Communist Manifesto,

(09:53):
where they state that a specter is haunting Europe. The
Jacques Dorada quote in Zimpano's papers is even today, the
notion of a structure lacking any center represents the unthinkable itself.
I imagine the house at Ashtree Lane lacking a retaining wall,
steady studs in the walls. We know it doesn't have

(10:15):
proper right angles. All this talk of deconstruction and lack
of centering centers leads me to think of William butler
yates poem The Second Coming, written after World War One
and the beginning of the Irish War of Independence in
nineteen fourteen. Think about this context as I read the
shock and devastation World War One, especially delivered to Europe,

(10:36):
and think about a house slowly at first, then more
quickly growing, growing and swallowing, and the growling, the growling,
turning and turning in the widening gyre. The falcon cannot
hear the falconer things fall apart, the center cannot hold mere.
Anarchy is loosed upon the world. The blood dim tide

(10:59):
is loosed, and everywhere the ceremony of innocence is drowned.
The best like all conviction, while the worst are full
of passionate intensity. Surely some revelation is at hand. Surely
the second Coming is at hand, the second Coming. Hardly
are those words out? When a vast image, out of
spirit is Monday troubles my sight. Somewhere in sands of

(11:22):
the desert, a shape with lion body, in the head
of a man, a gaze blank and pitiless, as the
sun is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
real shadows of the indignant desert birds. The darkness drops again.
But now I know that twenty centuries of stony sleep
were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle. And what

(11:44):
rough beast its hour come round at last slouches towards
Bethlehem to be born. Think how desperate must a person
be to be jealous of a cursed house, starling house,
Alexey Harrow. As we are slouching into and through the
most errogotic part of the novel, yet Karen is indeed

(12:05):
resentful of Navidson's strange enjoyment in what is Happening, and
the shape of the print continues to communicate the growth
and strangeness below enjoyment turns to tedium. The horror of
tedium and disciplining sameness reminds me of the horror movie Vivarium,
which I highly recommend. It's but a different type of demented. Domicile,

(12:26):
as you know, is my term for houses that just
aren't right. Accompanying this exploration is another tale from Johnny
in which he describes the different types of the drug MDMA.
He took quote preceding Thanksgiving, and these names are fascinating.
Remember no accidents. Canaries the bird used to check the

(12:46):
safety of coal mines. They would send a canary into
the darkness before they sent a man down. Stickman. I checked.
The Blair Witch Project came out in nineteen eighty nine,
House of Leaves in two thousand, so this may be
very well be a reference to this movie, the ultimate
modern depiction of getting impossibly lost snowballs. Johnny worked in Alaska.

(13:08):
See Pellaphina's letters. One is called hallways. All these equals halways.
If this was his ecstasy. What was Johnny's Thanksgiving section
eleven is evocative, as we have told by Zuppano's research
of the biblical story about the brothers Jacob and Esau
told in Genesis twenty five through thirty three. The basics

(13:31):
are that the two brothers fought for their birthright quote
Genesis twenty five twenty two. They struggled together within Rebecca's womb,
fighting from the very beginning. Interesting quote unquote typo in
the footnotes of this exploration of the Bible, Annie, which
is Poe's actual first name. Of course, there are no
typos in House of Leafs. In page of page two

(13:55):
fifty two, the Pano, Johnny, and the mysterious editor argued
about a particular Genesis citation, each quoting a different verse.
No accidents, as I said, so I thought it was
worth it to look up all three. Zupano says, it's
Genesis twenty seven twenty four. He said, are you really
my son, Esau? He answered, I am. Johnny says it's

(14:20):
twenty seven Genesis twenty seven twenty nine. Let people serve you,
and nations bow down to you. Be lord over your brothers,
and may your mother's sons bow down to you. Curse
it be everyone who curses you, and blessed be everyone
who blesses you. The editor corrects it to Genesis twenty
five twenty seven, when the boys grew up. Esau was

(14:42):
a skillful hunter, a man of the field, while Jacob
was a quiet man living in tents. Let me know
your thoughts on this. I'd be interested to hear them.
I do see Navidson and Tom in the editor's verse,
exploring photographer in the dark versus Tom and his tent
waiting in his own darkness. The actual analysis of this
Genesis story continues saying that passing through quote destruction and

(15:05):
negation is necessary to heal. The Messiah will not come
until Esau's novies tears are finished. Everything you can see,
in touch, or hear or smell has a story attached
to it. A story I can tell you. If you
say bacon, I can tell you a story about bacon.
If you say snow, I can tell you a dozen
different stories. This is what we are, a collection of

(15:29):
stories that we share in common. This is what we
are to each other. Graham Joyce the silent land. That
quote transitions me from the house to my new habit
I was inspired by advice given by speculative fiction and
horror author Ray Browberry to develop a new habit. Every day,
probably usually at the end of the day, I'm going
to read one short story, one essay. I started with

(15:50):
an old favorite, A real banger to set the tone.
A Rose for Emily by William Faulkner. I'll be keeping
at track of my favorite quotes in any thoughts, I'll
share them. Most likely is a weekly compilation on the
website Slash Newsletter. One of my favorites from Emily is
she looked back at him, erect her face like a
strained flag. A strained flag. Well, to paraphrase Holden Cawfield,

(16:14):
that just knocked me out. This episode, unfortunately, is a
really short one because the next one delves into the
poetry appendix in the Minotaur, and they both deserve the
time and space and dimension. It's coming right up. It'll
begin with Section thirteen starting on page three thirteen, and
Appendix B the Pelican Poems starting on page five seventy three.

(16:38):
We will returned then to this quote, physics of Tuggawar
and playing in the halls of Hell's those dolorous mentions
of isolation fear and doubt. For want of a better term,
I have been wired into the house as if it
were a giant spider web, whose every vibration carried itself
to me. In less time than it takes to describe.

(17:00):
That web has been stretched distances too far to know
the end of House of Windows, House of Windows, John
Langan and Adam Level