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| Sketch, Leonardo da Vinci, Arm of Angel Gabriel > The Annunciation 1472-1475 Oil and Tempera on wood, 78 x 219 cm Florence Uffizi (s) < |
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| > http://www.italian-renaissance-art.com/Annunciation.html < |
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| > http://gabrielreads.blogspot.com/2011_10_01_archive.html < | Title: House of Leaves Author: Mark Z. Danielewski Edition: Paperback; 2-Color (house appears in blue) Publisher: Pantheon Books (2000) Pages: 709 Challenges: Read Me Baby, One More Time; GoodReads 2011 Reading Challenge How I Came by This Book: The first time I read House of Leaves, I borrowed my friend Amanda's full-color copy, after both she and one of my exes (neither of whom have ever met the other and who are as different as night and day) recommended it to me. The copy I read this time is my own, which was given to me by a friend who had gotten it from a friend. |
House of Leaves was first being passed around, it was nothing more than a badly bundled heap of paper, parts of which would occasionally surface on the Internet. No one could have anticipated the small but devoted following this terrifying story would soon command. Starting with an old assortment of marginalized youth--musicians, tattoo artists, programmers, strippers, environmentalists, and adrenaline junkies--the book eventually made its way into the hands of the older generations, who not only found themselves in those strangely arranged pages but also discovered a way back into the lives of their estranged children.
No, for the first time, this astonishing novel is made available in book form, complete with the original colored words, vertical footnotes, and newly added second and third appendices.
The story remains unchanged, focusing on a young family that moves into a small home on Ash Tree Lane where they discover something terribly wrong: their house is bigger on the inside than it is on the outside.
Of course, neither Pulitzer Prize-winning photojournalist Will Navidson nor his companion Karen Green was prepared to face the consequences of that impossibility, until the day their two little children wandered off and their voices eerily began to return another story--of creature darkness, of an ever-growing abyss behind a closet door, and of that unholy growl which soon enough would tear through their walls and consume all of their dreams.
Review: People have said a lot of things about House of Leaves, but one descriptor that comes up over and over again is, if you'll pardon my French, "mind-fuck." This book is exactly that. A psychological novel that explores the unknown nature of darkness and the toll that it can take on the human mind, House of Leaves has the distinction of being one of those books that, as clichéd as it sounds, I'd dub "life-altering." Despite the fact that I'm a night owl and that I'm not easily spooked, after reading this book the first time, I looked at closets and dark corners with trepidation for months. In addition to this new-found (but temporary) uneasiness, I found that this book also changed my perceptions of insanity, loneliness, and, yes, the usefulness of footnotes.
The book tells a three-fold story. The main narrative is about Will Navidson, Karen Green, and their new home on Ash Tree Lane. Shortly after moving in they discover that the dimensions of the inside of their house are bigger than those of the outside. The secondary narrative is that of Johnny Truant, a drug-addled young man who finds and assembles the manuscript of a scholarly book written about a non-existent film about the house, titled The Navidson Record, after his friend's neighbor, Zampanó, dies. The tertiary narrative surrounds the late Zampanó and is inextricably linked with both The Navidson Record and Johnny Truant's story. I think it's safe to say that already you can tell that this is a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma. What Danielewski/Zampanó/Johnny Truant do with this riddle is even more impressive.
When people discuss this book, inevitably the novel's structure is one of the first things they talk about. And with good reason. Much like The Invention of Hugo Cabret used images to tell much of the narrative, so House of Leaves uses words to create images. Part of the reason why many people are reluctant to read this novel is because its sheer size is intimidating and because they see images like this:
Part of the chapter in which an expedition is launched inside the house to tackle the large spiral staircase that has grown within the dark and expansive interior, Danielewski uses footnotes in order to give the reader the impression that they too are walking down a never-ending staircase. Yet, for every page like this, there are pages like this:
Sitting on its side it doesn't look like much, but when you flip the book, it becomes a ladder of words, reflecting a ladder which one of the characters climbs in the book. There are even pages that have maybe one or two words on them, which means that for every page it takes you several minutes to read, there are entire sections of the book that you can get through in under a minute. But enough about the book's structure.
The plot itself is deep and interesting and the dizzying shifts between Zampanó's original text and Johnny Truant's footnote intrusions brings a uniqueness not found in other books. By making connections between the book and his own life, Truant subtly suggests to readers that there are connections to be made in their own lives. And there are. The characters that fill the pages of The Navidson Record are easy to relate to, which is quite a feat considering that their development is not constructed through a first person narrative like Johnny's but through a third person outside observer who shifts his focus from their troubles to anything from carbon dating to the story of Jacob and Esau.
Some have called House of Leaves a gimmick, but I prefer to see it as a refreshing break from the ordinary novel. Danielewski is a talented writer who uses both fact and fiction to create a terrifying story of family problems and personal struggles. This is not a story of monsters and boogeymen; it is far more chilling than that. House of Leaves is a book about how the extraordinary can either destroy a man or make him stronger. Just as it leaves the characters forever changed, it will leave the reader affected as well.
I'm giving House of Leaves 5 out of 5 Gabriels.
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Abandon All Hope, Ye Who Enter Here: A Review of House of Leaves by Mark Z. Danielewski |
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December 22, 2014 ~~ What, Me Racist?
This from Richard Hofstadter’s 1965 book, The Paranoid Style in American Politics:
Goldwater’s departure from the Republican pattern was compounded by his position on civil rights. One of the oldest, though hardly the most efficacious, of the traditions of many conservatives in the North — and even to a degree in the South as well — has been a certain persistent sympathy with the Negro and a disposition to help him in moderate ways to relieve his distress. This tradition goes back to the Federalist party; it was continued by the Whig gentry; it infused the early Republican party. By adopting “the Southern strategy,” the Goldwater men abandoned this inheritance. They committed themselves not merely to a drive for a core of Southern states in the electoral college but to a strategic counterpart in the North which required the search for racist votes. They thought they saw a good issue in the white backlash, which they could indirectly exploit by talking of violence in the streets, crime, juvenile delinquency, and the dangers faced by our mothers and daughters.I had forgotten that it was Goldwater in 1964 and not Nixon in 1968 who first embraced and named the racist strategy that ever since has been at the heart of Republican electoral strategy. |
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A reality check from Nafeez Ahmed on our national hand-wringing over government torture. Like the poor, official torture is always with us. Read it all and weep, if you have tears left. Media coverage of the Senate report has largely whitewashed the extent to which torture has always been an integral and systematic intelligence practice since the second World War, continuing even today under the careful recalibration of Obama and his senior military intelligence officials. The key function of torture, largely overlooked by the pundits, is its role in manufacturing nebulous threats that legitimize the existence and expansion of the national security apparatus… Yet Obama did not ban torture in 2009, and has not rescinded it now. He instead rehabilitated torture with a carefully crafted Executive Order that has received little scrutiny. He demanded, for instance, that interrogation techniques be made to fit the US Army Field Manual, which complies with the Geneva Convention and has prohibited torture since 1956. But in 2006, revisions were made to the Army Field Manual, in particular through ‘Appendix M’, which contained interrogation techniques that went far beyond the original Geneva-inspired restrictions of the original version of the manual. This includes 19 methods of interrogation and the practice of extraordinary rendition. As pointed out by US psychologist Jeff Kaye who has worked extensively with torture victims, a new UN Committee Against Torture (UNCAT) review of the manual shows that a wide-range of torture techniques continue to be deployed by the US government, including isolation, sensory deprivation, stress positions, chemically-induced psychosis, adjustments of environmental and dietary rules, among others. |
History Doesn’t Just Rhyme…
…it actually does repeat itself. This is from Henry George, Jr.’s The Menace of Privilege, subtitled “A Study of the Dangers to the Republic from the Existence of a Favored Class.” It was published in 1905.There would, perhaps, be little need for the creating of corporations were it not for the granting of privileges. But artificial persons, which have more powers than natural persons and life-everlasting, are far better suited than natural persons to take care of privileges — to fight for their continuation and extension. As a consequence, it has now become almost an invariable rule either to form artificial persons under the general corporation laws to receive from Government the special grants of power; or else such privileges, being granted to natural persons, are at once turned over to corporations or artificial persons. And these artificial persons possessing Government grants, are the most active and most potent of all persons in politics.
The very significant aspect of the Presidential contest of 1904 was the charge by the opponents against the managers of each of the two great parties of receiving campaign contributions from the large privilege-possessing corporations. More significant still was the common belief that the charge was true, the partisan view being that, while the opposing candidate would of necessity be contaminated by such money, their own candidate was too upright and too strong to be swerved in the least from principle, affected in the least for evil. Yet Presidents are but men, subject to men’s strengths and weaknesses. And just as Mr. Buchanan was most complacent in the face of the growing aggressiveness of the slave power which seated him and supported him in the Presidency, so monopoly powers might reasonably expect at least protection from a Chief Executive which their money and their efforts materially contributed toward seating in the White House…
In April, 1904, Mr. William Bourke Cockran of New York, on the floor of the House of Representatives, repeated in an insinuating way a newspaper story that the election of 1896 — the campaign that was won for “honest money” — was bought. Mr. Cockran named $16,000,000 as the sum which was said to be paid…
If it should mean protection and profit, what would $16,000,000 mean to a syndicate such as, under Mr. Morgan’s guidance, cleared $100,000,000 within the space of a few months in underwriting and manipulating steel stock? The sum of $16,000,000 would be only one item in the expense account of railroad combinations whose annual gross revenue is $2,000,000,000. Have not the tariff-engendered monopolies first and last put many times $16,000,000 into Presidential, Senatorial and Congressional elections, to the end of shutting out competition and thereby conducting a systematic robbery of the people at large?
Waterboarding is in the grand old High WASP tradition, it seems. My
son Mike came across this excerpt from George Biddle’s autobiography in a
1939 edition of Harper’s Magazine. The Reverend Endicott Peabody founded Groton School in 1884, with the object of shaping the moral character of rich kids.
For Peabody, the primary method of instilling a “manly, Christian character” was through athletics, primarily football. Sports taught cooperation, teamwork, along with a respect for following rules and sportsmanship. Everyone had to play. A letter from 1909 conveys the importance that Peabody placed on football. “In my work at Groton I am convinced that football is of profound importance for the moral even more than the physical development of the boys. In these days of exceeding comfort, the boys need an opportunity to endure hardness, and, it may be, suffering.” Discipline was administered in a hierarchical manner by the faculty and older boys. George Biddle, who went on to become a well known artist, recounts going to a secluded basement bathroom and watching a dozen third form boys punishing a new boy, “little Teddy Roosevelt”, then 14 and the son of Theodore Roosevelt, who had violated some unspoken rule.
One boy held a stopwatch as the others held the offender under a faucet where the water “came from the open spigot with tremendous force and the stream could be concentrated in violence by thumb and forefinger. Besides the culprit was winded and frightened and held upside down during the pumping. He was being forcibly drowned for eight or ten seconds…” He recounts how they water boarded “little Teddy Roosevelt”, not for a specific transgression, but to send a message to the whole second form whose “tone … we disapproved of.” Amazingly, Teddy “was very plucky and began answering back. Shouts arose: ‘Shut up! Under again. Shut him up!” So they waterboarded him twice.
Posted by Jerome Doolittle at 02:45 PM
>Roosevelt Island's Vanishing History as a Hospital Haven<
Roosevelt Island has a nearly two-century-old history as a convalescent center, though many of its medical facilities have long been shut down. One of the most famous — the Renwick Smallpox Hospital at the southern end of the island — was closed in the 1950s and is now the only ruin in New York City that's designated as a historic landmark. ... Near the northern end, the former New York Insane Asylum is currently an apartment complex called the Octagon. (These days, only the rents are insane!)
I recently learned that our own apartment building sits on the site of a syphilis-treatment center from the post-World War II years. But New York's most famous quarantined patient, Typhoid Mary, wasn't held on Roosevelt Island — contrary to some people's recollections. She lived out her days on North Brother Island, which is now a bird sanctuary.
Another chapter in Roosevelt Island's history ended over the weekend, when patients were transferred from the Goldwater Hospital, a 74-year-old facility in the shadow of the Queensboro Bridge. The hospital will be demolished to make way for the Cornell NYC Tech campus, which begins construction next year.
The facility served the chronically ill, and many of its residents were wheelchair-bound. The patients are moving to a gleaming, new facility in Harlem. Still, they will probably miss wheeling around Roosevelt Island and taking in the views.
I'm not sure the building itself will be missed — though if a movie-location scout were seeking a generic "dreary hospital," it would be perfect.
I always liked the attempt to enliven its drab facade by putting a heart in the hospital logo. (That oughta do it!)
Moreover, a connection to Roosevelt Island's history will be lost. This windswept isle used to be the place that New York put its outcasts (the criminals, the sick people, the crazies).
It's like that Sean Connery quote about Alcatraz, after he discovers that it's no longer the most fearsome prison in the federal-penitentiary system: "The Rock has become a tourist attraction?"
What has Roosevelt Island become? >http://buboblog.blogspot.com/2013_11_01_archive.html<
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| >Alaska, Arizona, California, Hawaii, Idaho, Montana, Nevada, Oregon, and Washington< |
[SIDEBAR:
There is this land where a number of people live, the place is called the North American Continent.
Tragedy operates a system of mass sorrow for the majority. A system of COURTS was supposed to be a CHECKS AND BALANCES. IT is that alright. Checking into a system that has become the number one planetary industry: TERRRR TERRRR TERRRR ~ TerrorISM, TORTURE, MURDEROUS KILLING INDISCRIMINATELY turns certain people really on, and the higher the terror onto the planet in volumes and then so many historical volumes and mass volumes occupying space ..
... where are we?! ,,,
And, what are we doing here and indeed, are we really going anywhere!
Are we STUCK ON STUPID OR INSIDE A MOBILE WITH THE BLUES ETERNAL?
Inside a house that isn't what we thought about life?
Inside space-mass, we have co-created in our imaginations, and OH MY GOD, look at our "reality/ies"!
CONDITIONING VIA THOSE THAT DECIDE. And we know the Deciders because THEY-THEM-THOSE are the THATS' that DECIDE to be (A)/the President of the United States POTUS, of America. The problem? Obvious.
MIND CONTROL. Those that have chosen to be TECHNOBOTS for the TECHNOCRATS that are TECHNOLOGICAL MACHINES OF ?
Drugs in the USA are the chemistry of what would have been higher thought, should the experiment have not been a TOTALITARIAN success.
When the KING POTUS is David Rockefeller Et Al, and the TECHNOCRATS are Heinz Kissinger and Dick Cheney AND THEN THE TECHNOBOTS, IE FEDERAL BENCH?
We do not have a Constitutional Republic. The history that is taught in the United States of America is not only lacking in honesty, the artificiality is even not worth the history other than, a very bad ending, and that is the agenda via those that RULE.
City of Portland, and the State of Oregon, as well as the State of Washington, and of course CALIFORNIA, the "West Coast" that also embraces: Alaska, Arizona, California, Hawaii, Idaho, Montana, Nevada, Oregon, and Washington, TO DEMONSTRATE.
The WEST COAST, or call the DIVISION THE NINTH CIRCUIT COURT (APPEALS) is the ruling class. Those that enter this APARTHEID DECIDE. The deciders are now deciding GENOCIDE to all that get to be chosen via the chosen.
OUR IMAGINATION IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA NEEDS TO REBOOT THE COMPUTER AND GET THE BRAIN CLEAN-WHOLE-FIRM.
Begin with water and then add the other necessity, food. These DIVINE BLESSINGS from NATURE have been contaminated and the CONTRACT therefore, VITIATED.
The criminally insane of the Homo Sapiens' species are in control. The totalitarian control hasn't been lost via THEM, yet. When the actual control slips we shall all know 'em via the NUKE. Prepare and on our knees praying to Gabriel and every other ANGEL or ARCHANGEL or DIVINE ENERGY/IES that can be available for the coming ENLIGHTENMENT.
PRISON FOR PROFIT. Of course then there has to be so many jobs to manage such an operation of farming and harvesting humans, and therefore,
WALL STREET stands as that same place that also wiped out the Indians of the North American Continent. Whatever can the imagination do when the vile evil becomes an addiction and then, there is never the imbalance of such critical mass vacuous imbalance in nature FOREVER is only an illusion?
Or can eternity not be the/a reality? How to measure the earth time when Shakespeare said already,
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| >>http://wtfarthistory.com/post/23609179473/bouguereaus-hell | << |
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| HELL IS EMPTY AND THE DEVILS ARE ALL HERE |
>http://intimatevolution.hubpages.com/hub/Demonic-Angel-Faces<
Rufino Tamayo, go to an image search engine ~
~~to be continued ...]
GABRIEL PRAYER ROPE W/O CEASING
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