52 pages • 1 hour read
Mark Z. DanielewskiHouse Of Leaves
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2000A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Exhibits-Appendix IChapter Summaries & Analyses
Summary: “Exhibits”
This section consists of a series of six pieces of instruction that Zampanò leaves for the following “plates” (529). They relate to the types of images, diagrams and references to be included.
What follows is “a selection of journal entries, poems, and even a letter to the editors” which, according to Johnny, gives insight into his work and personality (537).
Summary: “Appendix A. Outlines and Chapter Titles”
This section includes a list of outlines, chapter titles, and release history of the films by Will Navidson.
Summary: “Appendix B. Bits”
This section contains photographs of some of the pages of Zampanò’s manuscript. Some pages are typed, others handwritten. Some pages look charred on the edges.
Summary: “Appendix D. Letter to the Editor“
This section contains a letter to the editor of the Los Angeles Herald from September 17, 1978. Zampanò writes in reaction to an article describing a specific model of WWII trench gun sold by a man named Kuellster. When visiting the shop, Zampanò determines that the guns are produced after WWII and complains to the editor for the misinformation.
The editor sends a retraction and an apology.
Summary: “Appendix E. The Song of Quesada and Molino”
This section only contains the title, “The Song of Quesada and Molino.” No other text is included.
Summary: “Appendix F. Poems”
This section contains eight poems. “That Place” describes children discovering a dragon and never returning after they investigate. “The Panther” describes the titular animal and his relationship with pain, “his lover” (559).“Love at First Sight” is a brief declaration of love to Natasha.
The first Untitled Fragment describes a woman’s wrists and hands. The second Untitled Fragment describes a mad hermit living in a barn of “Wyeth red” (562). The final Untitled Fragment describes drifting thoughts and shifting walls in a “house of leaves” (563).
“La Feuille” (“The Leaf”) is written in French and traces a narrator’s experience in the woods reflecting on his dead wife and children. In “You Shall Be My Roots,” the narrator addresses another person, saying that they will support each other in the way that nature supports trees: “You shall quench my thirst and/I will feed your fruit” (565).
Exhibits-Appendix I Analysis
This back matter further advances the theme of narrative instability in the novel. All of this additional information at once comments on the previous text and exists outside of it; its distance calls into question the way in which it connects back to the main text. Moreover, the material in the Exhibits sometimes contradict or problematize the main text. For example, Appendix A gives a list of chapter titles that are not used in the main text. Appendix C contains a typed notecard, presumably authored by Zampanò, that suggests alterations to the plot of The Navidson Report, saying “Perhaps I will alter the whole thing. Kill both children” (552). Here, it is as if Zampanò is claiming authorship of Will’s film. These notes make it seem even more likely that Zampanò fabricated The Navidson Record and is in fact its creator. These elements also further call into question what is real and who is responsible for telling the “real” story.
These sections also keep with the text’s narrative strategy of mirroring. There are many echoes between the exhibits and the main text. In Exhibit B, Zampanò includes a series of dated journal entries that mirror Johnny’s journal entries in Chapter 21. In one entry, Zampanò says, “Perhaps in the margins of darkness, I could create a son who is not missing […] whose lusts, stupidities, and strengths carry him farther than even he or I can anticipate” (543). These words seem as if they could apply to Johnny, as if Zampanò is reflecting Johnny in his notes before Johnny even exists. These words at the same time give birth to the idea of Johnny and mirror his role in the main text.
This mirroring also extends to the meta-textual level. In Zampanò’s last Untitled Fragment in Exhibit F, he says, “this great blue world of ours/seems a house of leaves” (563). This seems to be an explanation for the title of the novel, which does not occur anywhere else in the book. Here, the novel reflects itself from the inside out.
