Proto-Proposal

The Container in Contemporary Postmodern Metafiction

It has been said by those who know what they're talking about that metafiction is a response to a worry that the world of literary fiction has grown stale—and one might be tempted to point to some of the books of the last decade as evidence that this has occurred. One could further say (if one were so inclined) that if books grow stale as a platform for narratives, then Amazon.com president Jeff Bezos will be happy to see we have become a paperless society; the container does not matter, according to Bezos, provided the narrative survives¹. This is of course completely untrue: the container can (and does) provide crucial interpretive information that can hinge upon the shape of the book itself. In other words, the shape of the book and the shape of the text² can influence the meaning of a text. The shape of the text can be replicated in other forms, but the shape of the book is something else altogether. Using the works of Mark Z Danielewski (House of Leaves, Only Revolutions), the following questions will be addressed: What is the relationship between the structure of a text and its meaning and how does Danielewski address this relationship in his novels (or in other words, why is the container important)? What role has emerging technology played in the experiments seen in contemporary metafictional novels? Finally, why is any of this important?

There are a few ways to tackle these questions, but as metafictional authors are notorious for allowing their texts to tell stories while commenting on the act of storytelling I see no better method than allowing the books to speak for themselves. After laying down a firm critical framework—describing just what sort of literature Danielewski has been writing, for example,³ as well as explaining the sorts of theories that he is working off of in the creation of these novels—the real analysis of the texts can begin. A close reading of the texts will not only reveal the theories of the relationship between structure and meaning, but are themselves examples of that very same relationship. In the case of Only Revolutions, for example, the book's structure not only emphasizes the circular nature of the narrative, but it gives the two protagonists something to struggle against—a structure without which they could not be free in the first place. House of Leaves mimics the labyrinthine nature of the house on Ash Tree Lane through the very way in which the text is presented, a dizzying maze of footnotes that lead to dead ends, contradictory evidence, and voices arguing for dominance. Most importantly, both books allow the reader to approach the text in multiple ways.

Bibliography

Aarseth, Espen, Cybertext: Perspectives on Ergodic Literature, (London: Johns Hopkins University Press) 1997

Benzon, Kiki, 'Revolution 2: An Interview with Mark Z. Danielewski,' Electronic Book Review, (03-20-2007), <http://www.electronicbookreview.com/thread/wuc/regulated> [accessed 03 December 2009]

Brick, Martin, 'Blueprint(s): Rubric for a Deconstructed Age in House of Leaves,' Philament 2 (Jan 2004), <http://www.arts.usyd.edu.au/publications/philament/issue2_Critique_Brick.htm>, [accessed 03 December 2009]

Danielewski, Mark Z, House of Leaves (New York: Pantheon, 2000)

• Only Revolutions (New York: Pantheon, 2006)
  

Derrida, Jaques, Writing and Difference trans. Alan Bass (London: Routledge) 2001

Hamilton, Natalie, 'The A-Mazing House: The Labyrinth as Theme and Form in Mark Z. Danielewski's House of Leaves,' Critique: Studies in Contemporary Fiction, 50:1, (Fall 2008) 3-15

Hanson, Mark, 'The Digital Topography of Mark Z Danielewski's House of Leaves,' Contemporary Literature 45:4 (Winter 2004) 597-636

Hayles, N. Katherine, 'Saving the Subject: Remediation in House of Leaves,' American Literature 74:4 (2002) 779-806

• Writing Machines, (London: MIT Press) 2002
  

McCaffery, Larry and Sinda Gregory, 'Haunted House—An Interview with Mark Z. Danielewski,' Critique 44:2 (Winter 2003) 99-135

Rapatzikou, Tatiani. 'Print Novels and the Mark of the Digital: Mark Z. Danielewski's Only Revolutions (2006) and Media Convergence,' Interdisciplinary.net, <http://www.inter-disciplinary.net/wp-content/uploads/2009/02/rapatzikou-paper.pdf> [accessed 3 December 2009]

Waugh, Patricia, Metafiction, (London: Routledge) 2003

1 'Outbooking the Book: Jeff Bezos, Chairman, President and CEO, Amazon.com' All Things Digital, (28 May 2008), <http://d6.allthingsd.com/20080528/bezos/> [accessed 28 November 2009]

2Font choice and font size

3It has been described as both a work of ergodic fiction and a post-textual novel, two terms which are not, perhaps, mutually exclusive.