Paula’s Comments (group member since Jun 18, 2025)

Paula’s comments from the Reading the Chunksters group.

Not really sure how to sign up, but I voted for this book and plan to participate. I just downloaded it to my Kindle.

So sorry everyone! I'm the president of our condo association and we've been battling the extreme temperatures for the last week. Lots of emergencies and 8 inches of snow on top of it. I've been up until the wee hours every night. I hope to catch up soon :-(.

Linda wrote: "Chapter V

I will try and decipher the few notes that I took from what popped out at me.

First, I liked the discussion regarding the technical aspects of echos (up to a point, though, as it seem..."

Did anyone think it was peculiar that Pan is called here the god of civility and restraint, when in actuality he is the opposite?

I'll be back this weekend once I've read more carefully...

I thought I would get a head start on the reading assignment and ended up gulping the whole thing down like cold lemonade on a hot day. I couldn't stop reading until it was done. It wasn't my fault! This book grabbed me and sucked me into it. I was helpless to resist :-).

I'm looking forward to the discussions.

Favorite Quote from the reading:

"It seemed to me very wrong to treat such an array of fine linen and such a display of watch-chains and seals with so little respect: "Mamma, you shouldn't be so impolite.""

I did enjoy Johnnie's story about the cow. I grew up in the country and a lot of my friends lived on farms. One friend lived on a dairy farm. She said cows were very strange creatures. They would could suddenly become quite aggressive and she said you should never make eye contact because they seemed to set them off.

So Johnnie's memory triggered one of my own :).

Amanda wrote: "I too thought Bleak House but I haven't read DC yet. Johnnie is a great unreliable narrator and just to add to the confusion you have the cook telling him stories that may or may not be true. I thi..."

All I could think about was Bleak House as I was reading these chapters. It concerns me a bit because there's a difference between writing, for example, a "neo-victorian" novel versus producing something very derivative. He is really flirting with that dividing line, using, for example, POWER, EQUITY, LAW, etc. to sometimes represent characters by their roles as opposed to their human aspects. I'm concerned if it keeps up. I don't want to keep tripping over characters that seem to have been extracted from Dickens' novels.

Unreliable Narrator: Very thought-provoking question. Johnnie is doubly unreliable as a narrator because he is now an adult and is recalling events, reasonings and conversations he had years ago as a child. Memory is a tricky thing. Lots of studies have been done to show that the mind will automatically fill in memory gaps with false memories, memories that "make sense" to that person, in order to have a linear, logical flow. That's why eye witnesses can often report vastly different accountings of the same particular series of events.

It's challenging enough when an adult attempts to relate perfectly some memory of an event he/she had as an adult. But when you are an adult trying to recall and relate childhood events, you overlay your adult brain on top of those memories. You interpret those events as an adult, you fill in the gaps of memory with adult artificial memories and you resort to the use of adult language/vocabulary to articulate the events. Also, you are further along in your "story" so your past is going to be colored by your present. Our memories are never as objective as we like to think they are.

So, when we enter Johnnie's childhood world, we have to remember that it is the adult Johnnie that has granted us the entry to that world and is guiding the story.

Sure, that's fine with me :-)

Sarah wrote: "I did end up finishing if we want to stay earlier that would be fine."

I'm ok with starting earlier too. Actually, I've already read Chapter 5 :).

I think I'll start reading tonight :).

The 13th works for me. My book arrived a few days ago.

Linda wrote: "Chapters III and IV

Paula wrote: "When I read "preadamite", I just assumed (correctly) that it meant before Adam. Which initially meant to me, really old house :). However, I decided to google the..."

Linda I love what you say about just reading or being exposed to the manuscript may be opening a portal. I agree, this makes so much sense. At first I thought maybe the manuscript itself had driven Zampano, and now Truant, crazy, but the portal idea to...whatever it is...resonates more with me. That's a good one! Also the hair reference, that was a great connection.

Here's another random idea I had. I wonder if MZD had another motive with all the footnotes - some real and some not, making us track them down, drawing us in more deeply. I wonder if he was trying to make us, his readers, develop an obsession with HoL, just as Truant and Z became obsessed with TNR. Hopefully not quite as nutty although if I hear any of you talking about putting tape measures up in your rooms, I'm going to be concerned :-).

@39 Ami:

Regarding preadamite...the frequent quotes from Dante and Milton are gaining more relevance. Sounds like Zampano certainly believed the House was evil. Maybe even a gateway to Hell.

Chapter IV

Chapter IV is where we read about the House starting to reshape itself on the inside, with no change to the facade. There's a new space, resembling a walk-in closet. Then a 1/4" grows to a foot by the end. I can't even imagine the creepiness of coming home from a trip and discovering a new room, complete with white door and glass knob. I wouldn't even pack. I'd be out of there faster than a New York heartbeat.

Karen is completely spooked (smart girl) and Navidson is - unsurprisingly - intrigued more than anything else. The rest of the chapter describes the elaborate internal measurements that take place to find that 1/4" discrepancy until that gets blown out of the picture by the extra foot of space that appears next to the new bookcase.

In Truant's footnotes, we find out more about how he has been faring (not well at all). He also meets a pretty girl, Amber, who used to read to Zampano. There were some interesting tidbits in the footnotes that I'm puzzling over:

o Zampano had a shotgun under his bed, with the initials RLB? I wonder who RLB is?

o Then Truant writes: "Zampano himself probably would of insisted on corrections and edits, he was his own harshest critic...". Now, how does Truant know that Zampano was his own harshest critic? He never even met him. It makes me suspicious of Truant. I feel as if we're only seeing a thin slice of something.

o Amber says that she had asked Zampano if he had any children. "He said he didn't have any children any more.". What a peculiar statement! Even if your children have passed away, you never say I used to have children but I don't anymore. To a parent, you always have children.

Truant also morphs from his reminiscence about Amber to memories about a jack-knifed trailer. That transition was very confusing to me until I realized that Truant's memories have now floated to another memory in his past. Sounds as if he's talking about his father and how he died. I found that very poignant. And also containing another mystery: Truant was then taken by "officials responsible for the custody of parentless children". Where was his mother? He was only 10.

And one last thing. I was hunting for something in the Introduction last night and I came across a comment Zampano made about his project. He called it his masterpiece or his "precious darling".

He called it his Precious! Like Golem called the Ring of Power in LoTR. Because of LoTR, I think of a "Precious" as being the focus of an all-consuming obsession. I thought this was a cool thing for Danielewski to evoke with Zampano and his manuscript.

Oops one more thing in the Introduction. Truant says Zampano scribbled until he died. I wonder why since he was blind?

Zampano and Truant puzzle me a lot.

Chapter III

This is a very short chapter, still basically setting the scene for what's ahead of us. Usually too much of this gets on my nerves, but not with HoL. I suppose it's because there is so much interesting stuff packed into even such a small chapter.

Here is something I highlighted and when I looked it up, it really started giving me that shivery feeling of suspense I want in a book like this.

"Why Davidson? Considering the practically preadamite history of the house, it was inevitable someone like Navidson would eventually enter those rooms."

When I read "preadamite", I just assumed (correctly) that it meant before Adam. Which initially meant to me, really old house :). However, I decided to google the term and there's a lot more to it than that. It's a term used to describe a race of beings that inhabited the earth prior to the creation of Adam. There are a number of speculative theories on the subject, but one of them I thought might appeal to MZD is this one: from Genesis, we learn that the Earth was void, dark, formless, but yet had water (God moved his face over the waters). So, if it had water, then it really couldn't be formless, right?

Anyway, if we go with Genesis, where the Earth existed in some form prior to the beginning of the creation story, then it existed in total darkness (prior to God saying "let there be light"). So, if there was a race of beings that existed on the Earth before the beginning of the 7 days of creation, then these beings lived in total darkness.

From this speculation is one theory that ties to the Satan story. That Lucifer was cast out of heaven into darkness. So, some pre-Adamite theorists speculate that this outer darkness was really the Earth and therefore became occupied by evil: Lucifer and his followers.

So, if we take that package of theories and wed it to the House ("practically preadmamite"), it goes to follow that the House is ancient beyond our very imagining, containing a darkness we cannot fathom...and filled with beings that are completely alien to what we know and can understand.

Anything that existed in that alien, formless time before God gave structure and light to the Earth...well, it wouldn't be hard for such a structure to bend time, light, sound, etc. because it is outside the laws of our physics.

And one step further. Perhaps the House isn't really a house. Perhaps it is really one of those dark beings? Or maybe it is a structure that gives some kind of form to those beings?

I can see this appealing to MZD very, very much. I mean, why else would he have phrased it as he did?

And it makes for spooky times ahead for us :). Ancient, malevolent and dark.

Linda wrote: "First Impressions

Ami wrote: "I'm enjoying the excitement and intrigue created so far, but I'm also a little taken aback by the strong similarities in technique and content to Infinite Jest."

I j..."

Karen Green - I didn't make that connection at all, thank you so much for pointing it out. I wonder how DFW responded to HoL. I mean, I would assume he read it, although I'd have to see if it was on the list of his archived books in Texas.

I'm good with Chapters 5-8. It gives us time to really delve into the details.

Yay!!

Introduction

Just some final thoughts on the introduction. I went back and read about the tape measures...how Johnny was trying to keep his room unchanging...and the tape measures allowed him to check to make sure that reality wasn't shifting. Of course Zampano couldn't use standard measures to make sure reality wasn't shifting, he had to rely on smell. Pretty darn effective and quite creative. But interesting that both of them had to cling with white knuckles to reality, hold on for dear life.

The other thing I did...on the page where Johnny talks about the sources that aren't real? He specifically mentions Bancroft Volume XXVIII? Well, that is an actual volume. I wonder why he says it's not?

Chapter II

I read This chapter today. I was actually pretty entertained by Johnny's story about his made up story. Which kind of mirrors HoL in that HoL is a book about a book that was written about a film. Stories within stories...like nesting dolls. Anyway, I was jolted by his admission that he inserted the word "water" in front of what Zampano wrote about Karen's comment about the heater. But you don't find out that Johnny has altered Zampano's text until he gets to the end of his story. So already, so early in his compilation of Zampano's text, he's making stuff up to make what he thinks is a better story. Which is what he did when he spun his elaborate story (all of which was a lie) to those two girls from the bar.

Even Lude, who knew the entire story was a fabrication, was hanging on every word. Which again, mirrors the whole Navidson Record, and whether any of it was true and if the question of its being based in fact really was beside the point.

This book is so reminiscent of I.J. The footnotes, a mysterious film, surreal environment, copious footnotes, references to popular culture. It also reminds me of Lost.

I agree