meatcringe.hell

finished HOL and doing a second read, taking more detailed notes, etc etc you know how it is, i'm stuck in this gd house. not to mention the extended reading list i'm currently compiling (which includes moby dick, don quixote, and basically all the Borges i can get my grubby little hands on). basically i'm DIY-ing my own fucking lit class. this is what i do for fun.

Though now that I think about it, maybe none of that happened at all. It was a weird time.

So this was actually my first time reading the book, and I just rewatched the movie for the first time in YEARS recently, so all the differences were pretty fresh in my mind. The most apparent changes definitely revolve around the romance; there certainly is love there, but the movie added some things that were nonexistent in the novel and smoothed out the rough edges of some others.

I don’t begrudge the changes, though, if I’m honest—I love complex, difficult relationships and deeply flawed and messy characters, but I really do love the film so… I’ll allow it.

The differences between Book Frobisher and Movie Frobisher, for example, is pretty stark; in the movie he’s down on his luck but kind of a victim of circumstances, morally grey but just trying to make a name for himself. In the book he’s pretty blatantly manipulative and self-obsessed.

A lot of the cuts to Sonmi’s story I understand were necessary for the sake of time, but cutting the [SPOILER] fact that Union was scripting the whole thing to manipulate her into being their martyr, and furthermore that Union is fake and a propaganda tool for the corpocracy… I guess they thought it would be too much of a downer. My girl was judased from the fucking start.

I think by far the thing that baffles me most is the Sloosha’s Crossing story, and the wild divergence they took with the ending (plus some particulars about the Prescients)… But I guess there is a certain amount of wonder in the alteration. I don’t hate it, not at all. I always blubber like a fucking baby when they show the birthmark on the back of Zachry’s head.

Anyway, this isn’t really meant to be a comparison between the book and the movie, although I probably could go on and on about that for ages, lol. I meant to drum up a more coherent, complete analysis of the actual themes—namely the ever-shifting nature of oppression depicted through each movement, the way each player works against the forces of human cruelty, and—and what a salient theme given everything going on in the world right now—the way human selfishness leads inexorably toward our own destruction, and the importance of hope and belief in a better world. And then, of course, the way each movement informs the next, each little life rippling to create waves in some subsequent, unwitting future.

Re: House of Leaves, I guess I should 'fess up now and say that as I'm rereading, I'm looking at the text from the angle of it being written by Pelafina (and I know, I know, coming at a text with preconceived notions is not a wise way to engage with interpretation; but like I said, I have read it before. And I'm not opposed to shifting tack to Johnny being the author, should the text support that angle more... But that's beside the point).

So, just finished chapter 5, and aside from some notes on the nature and significance of echoes as they relate to the multiple narratives as well as Echo as a symbol, and some thoughts on color (I need to actually go back and find some backup for this, but throughout the story I've noticed that whenever blue is used as a descriptor, it seems to be referring to things that are notably inhuman--which would add some really delicious symbology for "house" appearing in blue... I'm digressing again, but ASIDE from those things, I'm really locked in on footnote 77 (pages 69-72). This is the footnote where Johnny describes a hallucinatory run-in with a monster in the back room of the tattoo shop, and a subsequent fall down the stairs. He recalls, in phonetic syllables, the Latin phrase "Non sum qualis eram"--or, "I am not what I used to be," a phrase used by Pelafina in her March 7, 1985 letter (page 602). He also describes himself "vanishing," and then reconstituting as he is covered in black and purple ink (purple is P's color, and this could represent her recreating him within the narrative). IIRC, when J has another run-in with the monster later on (and I'll either confirm this when I get to it in the book, or be impatient and look it up later tonight, lol) he describes it as black threaded with purple veins--seeing himself, from this moment, as he is transformed. As he said: "I am not what I used to be."

Now, the question is, what exactly has prompted this transformation? Given my previous knowledge of the book, I know this is part of a progressive sequence of events in which he discovers that he is himself "the Minotaur," but what is it, specifically, about this moment? Was it remembering P's words? Seeing his own reflection? The "dissolution of the self?" Notably, at this point within The Navidson Record, there hasn't been a mention of a beast within the labyrinth, or the Minotaur as a figure yet; this is all going off his own paranoia of "creature darkness," prompted by the claw marks found by Z's body... So is this a sort of free association on his part, or a genuine beginning of a metamorphosis? Or, assuming P is the author, her outside of the narrative beginning to realize that J is her personal Minotaur, the personification of guilt at the center of her own mental labyrinth? Much to think about.

He also mentions his "inevitable asphyxiation" which, in context, refers to the wind being knocked out of him after his fall but could also be in reference to P's suicide by hanging. Again, assuming P is the author, and the Johnny that we are reading is one of her creation, is this a sort of backwards "echo" through time, through (meta) narrative, of P's death? P haunting her own story? The stories layering over one another in a way that defies chronology?