A Parable about Space: Mark Z. Danielewski’s House of Leaves
Keywords:
Mark Z. Danielewski, House of Leaves, spatiality, hypertextuality, materialityAbstract
This article examines Mark Z. Danielewski’s debut novel House of Leaves by looking at the ideas of space and spatiality that are presented through the novel’s content, form, and shape. Employing postmodern narrative devices extensively such as metafiction, multiplicity of narratives, intertextuality, and genre-blurring, House of Leaves makes use of the spatial form and extends it with the use of hypertext. The novel’s narrative space also focuses on a spatial construct, the Navidson house, which is a vast labyrinthine space. Danielewski uses the Navidson house as an inspiration for the spatial design of his novel. He does this by incorporating the visual and material devices and reorganizing the page with topographical and typographical experiments. The novel makes use of spatiality on different levels and as a result of the interplay between these spatial practices, it produces a dynamic fictional and material space. House of Leaves reconsiders the novel’s shape and materiality in the late age of print and redefines it as a material art object through the use of postmodernist elements, hypertext, and materiality.
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