Article Critique of:
“Explorative Exposure: media in and of Mark Z. Danielewski’s House of Leaves”
by Juha-Pekka Kilpio
Juha-Pekka Kilpio is a doctoral student of literature at the University of Jyvoskyla in Finland. He reads the novel as a cybertext and focuses on its engagement with cinema. Kilpio begins by drawing a distinct line between media as interface and media as subject matter, arguing that research done in this field falls only into one of these two categories. However, Kilpio believes that certain works (namely House of Leaves) call for a joint approach (57). Kilpio’s work highlights aspects of this novel in which form and content merge to produce a new type of work that is made possible in the genre of the cybertext. The first part of this article offers a formal analysis of how Mark Z Danielewski created a text that engages with new medial approaches to storytelling. The second part, “emphasizes the particular sensorial and semiotic challenge that cinema sets to a printed text”(65). In doing so, Kilpio suggests that traditional forms of intermediality--namely ekphrasis--fall short of meeting the challenges of describing the temporal and moving image and suggests the new term, kinekphrasis (65).
The first half of Kilpio’s critique uses Espen Aarseth’s study of Cybertext, to provide a formal analysis of House of Leaves as a cybertext, Kilpio lists seven variables which are found within a cybertext (60). His analysis mainly focuses on variable 7, user functions, which refers to a user’s options for interacting with a cybertext, including interpretive function, explorative function, and the configurative function. Kilpio argues that this novel’s ergodic nature is more complex than others, which is made apparent by its unique treatment of this user function. Where as other texts within the same ‘media position,’ such as Julio Cortazar’s Rayuela, provide the reader with different paths to take through chapters, House of Leaves effectively uses footnotes to create an alternate version of this forking path explorative function. By using an example from chapter 9 where superscript 135 leads to an external destination followed by internal destination-footnote 129 located 3 pages back-Kilpio argues that the feedback loop created by this text’s treatment of the explorative function, separates this work from other works of ergodic literature. Kilpio argues that the increasing intensity put on the user to find the link associated with the footnote effectively foregrounds the search for a destination as an inherent part of any codex. In this way the random access function (which is associated with the 5th variable of the cybertext) is made increasingly meaningful (62).
Unfortunately the examples Kilipio draws from the text in order to make his argument do not fully represent the novel as a whole. The majority of his paper draws only from chapters 9 and 10 and in doing so fails to show how this argument relates to the work as a whole. Although his work illuminates an interesting and engaging reading of these chapters, it doesn’t show how his ideas carry themselves from the beginning to the end of the novel. Kilpio subtly suggests that his reading will focus on only the cinematic qualities of House of Leaves, but his claims and arguments at times bleed into grand elements of the story. This would not be an issue if Kilpio had more explicitly stated and defined the cinematic elements of The Navidson Record as being paramount to every other engagement with the text.
Furthermore, Kilpio’s argument for this novel’s use of kinekphrasis exclusively relies on examples provided by Zampano. There is no mention of Johnny Truant. This is unfortunately a missed opportunity because Kilpio’s argument misses everything Johnny Truant is doing on top of Zampano’s work. The layered narrative element of this book is absolutely integral to the meaning contained within its pages. It would be interesting and more comprehensive for this article to include how Johnny deals with Zampano’s kinekphrastic response to The Navidson Record. Does this make Johnny’s reading of Zampano’s reading kinekphrastic in nature as well? Perhaps some of these problems could be overlooked if this piece of criticism had been written closer to when the book was first published; however, this article was published in 2018. Therefore, it is inexcusable that this critique doesn’t take into account the novel as a whole, or at the very least each narrator contained in the text.
On a positive note, the term “kinekphrasis” provides an interesting way to categorize how novels can
signify a different type of media within a text. I find Kilpio’s use of this term to be the strongest element of his critique.
This term is especially useful when discussing a text such as this which constantly challenges our understanding of intertextuality.
“Explorative Exposure: media in and of Mark Z. Danielewski’s House of Leaves”
by Juha-Pekka Kilpio
Juha-Pekka Kilpio is a doctoral student of literature at the University of Jyvoskyla in Finland. He reads the novel as a cybertext and focuses on its engagement with cinema. Kilpio begins by drawing a distinct line between media as interface and media as subject matter, arguing that research done in this field falls only into one of these two categories. However, Kilpio believes that certain works (namely House of Leaves) call for a joint approach (57). Kilpio’s work highlights aspects of this novel in which form and content merge to produce a new type of work that is made possible in the genre of the cybertext. The first part of this article offers a formal analysis of how Mark Z Danielewski created a text that engages with new medial approaches to storytelling. The second part, “emphasizes the particular sensorial and semiotic challenge that cinema sets to a printed text”(65). In doing so, Kilpio suggests that traditional forms of intermediality--namely ekphrasis--fall short of meeting the challenges of describing the temporal and moving image and suggests the new term, kinekphrasis (65).
The first half of Kilpio’s critique uses Espen Aarseth’s study of Cybertext, to provide a formal analysis of House of Leaves as a cybertext, Kilpio lists seven variables which are found within a cybertext (60). His analysis mainly focuses on variable 7, user functions, which refers to a user’s options for interacting with a cybertext, including interpretive function, explorative function, and the configurative function. Kilpio argues that this novel’s ergodic nature is more complex than others, which is made apparent by its unique treatment of this user function. Where as other texts within the same ‘media position,’ such as Julio Cortazar’s Rayuela, provide the reader with different paths to take through chapters, House of Leaves effectively uses footnotes to create an alternate version of this forking path explorative function. By using an example from chapter 9 where superscript 135 leads to an external destination followed by internal destination-footnote 129 located 3 pages back-Kilpio argues that the feedback loop created by this text’s treatment of the explorative function, separates this work from other works of ergodic literature. Kilpio argues that the increasing intensity put on the user to find the link associated with the footnote effectively foregrounds the search for a destination as an inherent part of any codex. In this way the random access function (which is associated with the 5th variable of the cybertext) is made increasingly meaningful (62).
Unfortunately the examples Kilipio draws from the text in order to make his argument do not fully represent the novel as a whole. The majority of his paper draws only from chapters 9 and 10 and in doing so fails to show how this argument relates to the work as a whole. Although his work illuminates an interesting and engaging reading of these chapters, it doesn’t show how his ideas carry themselves from the beginning to the end of the novel. Kilpio subtly suggests that his reading will focus on only the cinematic qualities of House of Leaves, but his claims and arguments at times bleed into grand elements of the story. This would not be an issue if Kilpio had more explicitly stated and defined the cinematic elements of The Navidson Record as being paramount to every other engagement with the text.
Furthermore, Kilpio’s argument for this novel’s use of kinekphrasis exclusively relies on examples provided by Zampano. There is no mention of Johnny Truant. This is unfortunately a missed opportunity because Kilpio’s argument misses everything Johnny Truant is doing on top of Zampano’s work. The layered narrative element of this book is absolutely integral to the meaning contained within its pages. It would be interesting and more comprehensive for this article to include how Johnny deals with Zampano’s kinekphrastic response to The Navidson Record. Does this make Johnny’s reading of Zampano’s reading kinekphrastic in nature as well? Perhaps some of these problems could be overlooked if this piece of criticism had been written closer to when the book was first published; however, this article was published in 2018. Therefore, it is inexcusable that this critique doesn’t take into account the novel as a whole, or at the very least each narrator contained in the text.
On a positive note, the term “kinekphrasis” provides an interesting way to categorize how novels can
signify a different type of media within a text. I find Kilpio’s use of this term to be the strongest element of his critique.
This term is especially useful when discussing a text such as this which constantly challenges our understanding of intertextuality.
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