Holloway Nugent

Three scenes help us understand why Holloway is indeed the crazyhuntin'sex-crazed rocker we all know and love as "The Nuge."

He steps out of the car holding a rifle, ready to kick some ass!

Immediately upon showing up at the House he makes it clear he is the alpha male, the man in charge, the man with the plan, locked and loaded.

He begins to make his move on the only woman in the house right away, paying no attention to Navidson. Karen is his to be won. Go Nuge!

He also likes Neon, guns, shooting guns, shooting guns at his friends, and shooting guns at his friends who are trying to save friends already shot by his guns. Let's be honest - Holloway Nugent is meat-eater and being that they have run out of food he is huntin' his meat - in a totally hetero albeit canablistic way! Get 'em Nuge!

BS

MindAdventureDream House

When a House is Not a House...

1. So the obvious one first - The House as a mind. A blank slate that turns into whatever you are thinking. This idea is put forth many different times and makes a lot of sense. It can be vast, yet seem very small and closing in on itself, the possibilities are endless, you are not resrtricted by conventional science, physics, etc. but how much can you actually use, see, explore? Everyone seems a little afraid of it at first, which is interesting, except maybe the kids...

2. I love the idea that the kids have maybe been playing in the hallway the whole time. Why is everyone so afraid of this hallway? Because its dark and cold? Think as a kid...make a fort, make an igloo, a room that you can't break any of your parents expensive crap or stain the rugs. This is the House as an Adventure. This is the coolest thing that could ever happen to a kid, you could create any adventure in the world in this place and it would still be different every time, kind of like a Choose your own Adventure Novel. Travel the world, go 20,000 leagues under the sea, land on the Moon, have some frickin' fun and stop being such a scaredy cat.

3. The last idea is the House as a dream. This idea kind of combines the previous two - an adventure of the mind. You start in pure dark, blackness and create crazy, otherworldly nonsensical scenarios and every door that opens can change everything. You bring your personal experiences into it and your fears, dreams, hopes shape how your dream unravels. Each time you fall asleep again it starts all over...

BS

VIDEO

Telescopic Evolution

I chose this video because it is one of my favorite conversations from a great movie Waking Life. You must watch this movie if you have not already. The conversation is about the endless possibilities of how we as humans and life in general evolves and what is possible in this universe. I think this movie deals with a similar topic to House of Leaves - What is actually possible in the physical universe we inhabit? Are we actually bound by physics and science, or is our imagination, our minds the only thing that limits us? This is probably my favorite theme of books/movies and the main reason I am enjoying House of Leaves. I do believe in things like timetravel, alternate existences, dreams being the "real" reality, and in general challenging the notion of reality in general. I have also had some crazy dreams since I started reading this book...and waking life is a lot about dreams and lucid dreaming so it all ties in. Here are some more books and movies that deal with this stuff - please help me remember more...

Books : Einstein's Dreams, The Time-traveler's Wife, Life of Pi, The Death of Vishnu

Movies: Waking Life, Eternal Sunshine of The Spotless Mind (compare house deteriorating scene to clothes deteriorating in House of Leaves), Contact, Being John Malkovich, Adaptation

BS

SKIP IT!

Remember This?

After Barry set the all-time skip-it TM record he began reading the novel skipping absolutely nothing, thinking the title of every little fake footnote article was somehow relevant. He quickly stopped reading any footnotes that only referenced another work, growing of tired of a bad joke.

After reading a classmate blog "I'm too stubborn to let any book defeat me" Mr. Sims decided he was no chump either and if he had to read every appendix or dumb list or poem or journal entry to figure this book out he would. Some he found rewarding like the letters from Truant's mother trapped in a Whalestoe, he perhaps would not have understood how Smart Johnny really was otherwise. BS even painstakingly decoded the first letter of every word letter which left him pissed, exhausted, and wondering if the mom really got raped, but at least he felt like he gained something those who skipped it did not.

Other non-skipped portions of the book left Barry wondering if there was a camera installed in the book so that the author could laugh at the idiots who tried to look for clues in the collages or actually read the list of everything that wasn't in the house contained in blue outlined boxes or skipped ahead to an appendix to read "missing". But Sims learned his lesson from the blue boxes and decided even if the meaning of life was in the lists of architectural buildings or film people or whatever - he would not read them, he wouldn't be tricked again. And no he did not read the backwards blue boxes thank you, but the temptation to check if they were the same was there - what a sucker!

Barry read the story pretty much page by page going back and forth between Zampano and Truant, skipping ahead a page or two only to finish a footnote. The few things he consistently skipped from the beginning were any footnotes referring to future chapters or pages.

HOUSE

"Chasing down the Howl, Holloway opens a door and is suddenly realizes he is in a woman's shower!"

Yeah, that was in the footnote to the footnote from Appendix 112, diagram 1,202, the funniest part of the book so far...twice as hilarious when you realize he has stepped into the shower from the movie Psycho, man imagine seeing that lunatic with a rifle in your shower...and after the knife incident nonetheless!

Ok, just kidding, she is actually screaming in this picture because THERE IS NO HOT WATER! One of my favorite very short passages of the book so far is Johnny describing the long wait for hot water (p. 15) which is what originally prompts him to tell the Punching Bag Birds of Paradise Story.

"As you probably know, finding out there is no warm water is a particularly unpleasant discovery simply because it's not something you figure out immediately. You have to let the water run awhile and even though it remains icy, part of you refuses to believe it won't change, especially if you wait a little longer or open up the valve a little more. So you wait but no matter how many minutes run by, you still see no steam, you still feel no heat."

I really like this part for two reasons. First - its so effin' true! Second - at the time I was reading it and really still now - it struck me as kind of a metaphor for the reading fo this book and how difficult it was to get into it. Just insert the word "story" for warm water and "appendix" for valve and it seems to work pretty well.

Response. Ability.

I woke up this morning and it was still true!
YESSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS!!!!!!!!!

So the other night we talked about censorship in terms of responsibility of
the author, the video game maker, the director, the songwriter, etc.


It seemed to be a consensus in class that these people really hold no responsibility for their creations - that it is up to the reader, player, watcher, listener to realize this is a piece of art? or just a game/book/song/movie and not a manifesto, call to action, etc. Otherwise censorship will run rampant and who wants the government deciding what media creations will invoke thievery, murder, etc,and which won't - right? Wrong. I don't want any more censorship than we already have, but that doesn't mean artists'/media's responsibilities for their words, actions, creations go out the window. This is a basic concept. You are accountable for your own words and actions - I think most people would agree with this. I mean, you don't walk up to a black person, tell a racist joke about black people - then when they punch you in the face complain that they don't know how to take a joke.

So as an author or director of stories about murdering children or senseless killing, or a video game creator of a game about stealing and killing and fucking, or an artist who sings or paints about sex, drugs and suicide - you still have the fundamental question to ask yourself - What is the result of my creation, how will people be affected? And when your creations are the Pillowman, Natural Born Killers, Grand Theft Auto, or The Dope Show you are probably going to affect at least a few people in a fairly negative way. But there are lots of positive effects as well - so the question becomes which weighs more and what can you live with for the rest of your life as a creator.

Maybe millions of would be murderers and carjackers now disrespect their women through video games rather than real life, which is more important than desensitizing violence, etc., etc. Maybe the genius of literature inspires millions to write and affect millions more positively, or reading about such horrible "copycat" murders instills in readers not to take literature so seriously, which is more important than the three children that might be murdered in real life. Maybe genius cinematography and clever satire on our society positively affects millions, outweighing the 8 people murdered as a result of your movie. Maybe millions of anti-social freaks and addicts that now know they are not alone and don't commit suicide outweighs the hundreds of kids drawn into drugs and suicidal thoughts as a result of your songs. And maybe all the money and fame that results from your creation allows you to support more charities, your family, and political platforms. Or maybe your well-being is simply more important than others and you can live with that. I can buy all these arguments - because they at least take responsibility for what they have created. Be accountable for your words and actions - especially when you unleash them on millions worldwide - artist and media are not exempt, stop giving them a free pass. Not everyone in this world is an intelligent person - we cannot rely on the general public to interpret things properly and always know the difference between fantasy and reality.

Then we inevitably get into the does art imitate life? or does life imitate art? debate. The answer is - yes.

As a random thought I remember being disgusted that Tom Clancy was being interviewed as an "expert" after the 9/11 attacks because he had written a novel a bout planes crashing into buildings as an alternative to bombing.

And now I will step down from my soapbox.

Thanks - and yes I take full responsibility for anything that happens as a result of this blog.


BS