Mark Z. Danielewski, 2000 — Chapter X
Navidson, Reston and Tom go in to find Holloway’s team; Zampanò discusses space and perception; Johnny stops the drugs.
Dagobert Frey (1883–1962) was an Austrian art historian. The quote comes from his Grundlegung zu einer vergleichenden Kunstwissenschaft (“Foundation of a comparative science of art”, 1949).
Frey says every house is a “path” and a “goal”: the building decides how you move through it. The chapter follows Navidson on a path into the house.
But at the same time, in its relation to the surrounding space, it is a “goal”, and we either advance toward this goal or depart from it. — Dagobert Frey Grundlegung zu einer vergleichenden Kunstwissenschaft Karen may lose herself in resentment and fear, but the Navidson we see seems joyful, even euphoric, as he sets out with Reston and his brother to rescue Holloway …
Extremely happy and excited.
… we either advance toward this goal or depart from it. — Dagobert Frey Grundlegung zu einer vergleichenden Kunstwissenschaft Karen may lose herself in resentment and fear, but the Navidson we see seems joyful, even euphoric, as he sets out with Reston and his brother to rescue Holloway and his team.
Navidson uses three kinds of camera: 16mm motion-picture film, a 35mm still camera, and Hi8, a consumer video-tape format of the late 1980s and 1990s.
Zampanò often says which camera made which shot. On p. 156 he says the stills are much better than the video, which here gives mainly the sound.
Using 16mm motion picture (colour and B/W) and 35mm stills, Navidson for the first time begins to capture the size and sense of that place.
An invented author and book, with a real university press as publisher. Zampanò quotes her long, poetic description of the flares in the Anteroom.
The quote is about how light and the imagination give a shape to a dark place.
Author Denise Lowery writes the following evocative impression of how Navidson photographs the Anteroom: The hot red flame spits out light, catching on Tom, entwining in the spokes of Reston’s wheelchair, casting Shape Changers and Dragons on …
Bringing strong images or feelings to the mind.
Author Denise Lowery writes the following evocative impression of how Navidson photographs the Anteroom: The hot red flame spits out light, catching on Tom, entwining in the spokes of Reston’s wheelchair, casting Shape Changers and Dragons on a nearby wall.
To wind or twist around something.
Author Denise Lowery writes the following evocative impression of how Navidson photographs the Anteroom: The hot red flame spits out light, catching on Tom, entwining in the spokes of Reston’s wheelchair, casting Shape Changers and Dragons on a nearby wall.
The triangle of wall under the two sides of a pointed roof. “Gables of gloom” means dark shapes like a high roof.
Navidson, Tom and Reston continue forward beneath those gables of gloom and walls buttressed with shadow, lighting more flares, penetrating this world with their halogen lamps, until finally what seemed undefinable comes forth out of the shimmering blank, implacable and now nothing less …
Supported by a buttress, a thick wall built against another wall to hold it up.
Navidson, Tom and Reston continue forward beneath those gables of gloom and walls buttressed with shadow, lighting more flares, penetrating this world with their halogen lamps, until finally what seemed undefinable comes forth out of the shimmering blank, implacable and now nothing less than obvious and _ undeniable—as …
A tube that burns with a very bright light, used as a signal or a light source.
Navidson, Tom and Reston continue forward beneath those gables of gloom and walls buttressed with shadow, lighting more flares, penetrating this world with their halogen lamps, until finally what seemed undefinable comes forth out of the shimmering blank, implacable and now nothing less than obvious and _ undeniable—as if there never could have …
That cannot be calmed or stopped; fixed and hard.
… continue forward beneath those gables of gloom and walls buttressed with shadow, lighting more flares, penetrating this world with their halogen lamps, until finally what seemed undefinable comes forth out of the shimmering blank, implacable and now nothing less than obvious and _ undeniable—as if there never could have been a question about the shape, there never could have been a moment when only the imagination succeeded in prodding …
To push or poke with a finger or a stick.
… implacable and now nothing less than obvious and _ undeniable—as if there never could have been a question about the shape, there never could have been a moment when only the imagination succeeded in prodding those inky folds, coming up with its own sense, something far more perverse and contorted and heavy with things much stranger and colder than even this brief shadow play performed in the irregular burn …
Strange and wrong, against what is normal or expected.
… could have been a question about the shape, there never could have been a moment when only the imagination succeeded in prodding those inky folds, coming up with its own sense, something far more perverse and contorted and heavy with things much stranger and colder than even this brief shadow play performed in the irregular burn of sulfur—mythic and inhuman, flickering, shifting, and finally dying around the men’s continuous …
Twisted out of the normal shape.
… been a question about the shape, there never could have been a moment when only the imagination succeeded in prodding those inky folds, coming up with its own sense, something far more perverse and contorted and heavy with things much stranger and colder than even this brief shadow play performed in the irregular burn of sulfur—mythic and inhuman, flickering, shifting, and finally dying around the men’s continuous progress.!% 199See …
Total darkness or nothingness; the state of being forgotten.
In one photograph of the Great Hall, we find Reston in the foreground holding a flare, the light barely licking an ashen wall rising above him into inky oblivion, while in the background Tom stands surrounded by flares which just as ineffectually confront the impenetrable wall of nothingness looming around the Spiral Staircase.
Without the result wanted; weakly.
… we find Reston in the foreground holding a flare, the light barely licking an ashen wall rising above him into inky oblivion, while in the background Tom stands surrounded by flares which just as ineffectually confront the impenetrable wall of nothingness looming around the Spiral Staircase.
National Geographic is a real magazine about travel, nature and exploration. The author and the article are almost certainly invented.
Thayil compares the Great Hall to the inside of a ship’s hull built for unknown seas.
As Chris Thayil remarks: “The Great Hall feels like the inside of some preternatural hull designed to travel vast seas never before observed in this world.”200 20Chris Thayil’s “Travel’s Legacy” in National Geographic, v.
Beyond what is natural or normal; strange.
As Chris Thayil remarks: “The Great Hall feels like the inside of some preternatural hull designed to travel vast seas never before observed in this world.”200 20Chris Thayil’s “Travel’s Legacy” in National Geographic, v.
The main body of a ship.
As Chris Thayil remarks: “The Great Hall feels like the inside of some preternatural hull designed to travel vast seas never before observed in this world.”200 20Chris Thayil’s “Travel’s Legacy” in National Geographic, v.
A single photograph, as opposed to moving film.
Luckily for us, however, the beginning of this sequence relies almost entirely on these scarce but breathtaking stills instead of the far more abundant but vastly inferior video tapes, which are used here mainly to provide sound.
In large amounts.
As we can see for ourselves, he is pale, out of breath, and in spite of the cold, sweating profusely.
The rail along the side of a staircase.
Peering over the banister, they discover Navidson with a lightstick in his hand Standing at the bottom—no more than 1O0ft down.
A plastic tube that glows when you bend it; a chemical light.
Peering over the banister, they discover Navidson with a lightstick in his hand Standing at the bottom—no more than 1O0ft down.
To say something short and witty.
“The woman you never want to meet,” quips Reston, always managing to keep his wheelchair a little ahead of Navidson.
The feeling that you are going to vomit.
Soon, however, Reston begins to suffer from nausea, and even vomits.
Reston compares his nausea to a marlin-fishing trip. Mal de mer is French for “sickness of the sea”.
Seasickness comes when the eyes and the balance organ of the inner ear report different movement. Navidson thinks the house itself moves under them.
Navidson speculates Reston’s sea sickness or his “mal de mer,” as he calls it, may have something to do with the changing nature of the house: “Everything here is constantly shifting.
“Sickness of the sea”: seasickness.
Navidson speculates Reston’s sea sickness or his “mal de mer,” as he calls it, may have something to do with the changing nature of the house: “Everything here is constantly shifting.
A musical instrument that you push together and pull apart; used for something that folds up and opens out.
The thing collapsed like an accordion.”
In very serious trouble.
Then looking over at his friend: “You realize if it expands again, you’re in deep shit.”
An invented critic. He says the dark house gives the senses no data, so a person makes up his own. Footnotes 201 and 204 say “Missing. — Ed.”: the Editors could not find his source.
The name matches the real American philosopher John Haugeland, who wrote about mind and meaning, but the book gives no first name and the quoted work does not exist.
As was already mentioned in Chapter III, some critics believe the house’s mutations reflect the psychology of anyone who enters it. Dr. Haugeland asserts that the extraordinary absence of sensory information forces the individual to manufacture his or her own data.2°!_ Ruby Dahl, in her stupendous study of space, calls the house on Ash Tree Lane “a …
An invented critic. Solipsism is the idea that only one’s own mind is certain to exist. Dahl says the house grows and shrinks with the mind of whoever is inside.
Zampanò’s footnote objects: Dahl does not explain why the house never opens to the outside.
Haugeland asserts that the extraordinary absence of sensory information forces the individual to manufacture his or her own data.2°!_ Ruby Dahl, in her stupendous study of space, calls the house on Ash Tree Lane “a solipsistic heightener,” arguing that “the house, the halls, and the rooms all become the self—collapsing, expanding, tilting, closing, but always …
Relating to solipsism, the belief that only one’s own mind surely exists; very self-centred.
… asserts that the extraordinary absence of sensory information forces the individual to manufacture his or her own data.2°!_ Ruby Dahl, in her stupendous study of space, calls the house on Ash Tree Lane “a solipsistic heightener,” arguing that “the house, the halls, and the rooms all become the self—collapsing, expanding, tilting, closing, but always in perfect relation to the mental state of the individual.”202 201Missing.
Short for ibidem, “in the same place”: the same source as the note before.
The part of philosophy that studies knowledge: how we know what we know.
Haugeland observes: The epistemology of the house remains entirely commensurate with its size.
In correct proportion to something; matching it in size or degree.
Haugeland observes: The epistemology of the house remains entirely commensurate with its size.
Relating to knowledge and how we get it.
In fact it has more to do with epistemological dimensions than with bodily dimensions: knowledge is hot water on wool.
Haugeland promises a later chapter called “Ennui” (French for boredom). It belongs to his invented study. The idea: repetition makes time and space feel longer, while knowledge makes them feel shorter.
I will deal specifically with this problem in a later chapter entitled “Ennui.”293) When Holloway’s team traveled down the stairway, they had no idea if they would find a bottom.
Boredom; a tired feeling that nothing is interesting.
I will deal specifically with this problem in a later chapter entitled “Ennui.”293) When Holloway’s team traveled down the stairway, they had no idea if they would find a bottom.
An invented psychologist and book. Hodge says the endless empty halls bore us, and that boredom is a defence of the mind that hides the horror of the place.
She also cites “Chad; p. 99”, another invented source.
203See also Dr. Helen Hodge's American Psychology: The Ownership Of Self (Lexington: University of Kentucky Press, 1996), p.
Myst (1993) is a famous computer puzzle game. The player walks alone through an empty island and its strange buildings and finds clues everywhere.
Hodge uses it as a contrast: the halls of the house hold no such discoveries.
Endless repetitions, like, for example, Navidson’s corridors and rooms, which are consistently devoid of any Myst-like discoveries [see Chad; p.
Otto Fenichel (1897–1946) was an Austrian psychoanalyst of the second generation after Freud. His real 1934 essay defines boredom as an unpleasant lack of impulse.
See also Otto Fenichel's 1934 essay “The Psychology of Boredom” in which he describes boredom as “an unpleasurable experience of a lack of impulse.”
Kierkegaard (1813–1855) was a Danish philosopher, often called the first existentialist. He wrote about boredom in several books; the quoted line calls boredom “a continuity of nothingness”.
See also Otto Fenichel's 1934 essay “The Psychology of Boredom” in which he describes boredom as “an unpleasurable experience of a lack of impulse.” Kierkegaard goes a little further, remarking that “Boredom, extinction, is precisely a continuity of nothingness.”
Wordsworth (1770–1850) was an English Romantic poet. His famous preface complains that cities, news and sensational entertainment make the mind dull, a state he calls “savage torpor”.
The quote is real. Zampanò adds it to the list of writers on boredom.
While William Wordsworth in his preface for Lyrical Ballads (1802) writes: The subject is indeed important!
A state of not being active, of the body or of the mind; dullness.
… to former times, are now acting with a combined force to blunt the discriminating powers of the mind, and unfitting it for all voluntary exertion to reduce it to a state of almost savage torpor.
Here, the old sense: news, information.
… the great national events which are daily taking place, and the increasing accumulation of men in. cities, where the uniformity of their occupations produces a craving for extraordinary incident, which the rapid communication of intelligence hourly gratifies.
Two real books: Sean Desmond Healy, Boredom, Self and Culture (1984), and Boredom: The Literary History of a State of Mind (1995) by the American literary scholar Patricia Meyer Spacks.
To this tendency of life and manners the literature and theatrical exhibitions of the country have conformed themselves, See Sean Healy's Boredom, Self and Culture (Rutherford, N.J.: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 1984); Patricia Meyer Spacks’ Boredom: The Literary History of a State of Mind (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1995); and finally Celine Arlesey’s Perversity …
An invented author, book and publisher (“Blederbiss Press”). It sits last in a list of real books, so it looks just as real as they do.
… See Sean Healy's Boredom, Self and Culture (Rutherford, N.J.: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 1984); Patricia Meyer Spacks’ Boredom: The Literary History of a State of Mind (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1995); and finally Celine Arlesey’s Perversity In Dullness .
Made of different kinds of parts; not uniform.
… perceiving man, and it therefore has an excellent system of directions which changes with the movements of the human body; it is limited and in no sense neutral, in other words it is finite, heterogeneous, subjectively defined and perceived; distances and directions are fixed relative to man.
Günter Nitschke is a German architectural theorist, known for his writing on Japanese space and gardens. The German title means “Anatomy of the lived environment”; Bauen + Wohnen (“Building + Living”) was a Swiss architecture magazine.
Nitschke’s “experienced space” has the perceiving person as its centre. Norberg-Schulz quotes the same passage in his book.
… the human body; it is limited and in no sense neutral, in other words it is finite, heterogeneous, subjectively defined and perceived; distances and directions are fixed relative to man. . .205 205Giinter Nitschke’s “Anatomie der gelebten Umwelt” (Bauen + Wohnen , September 1968),2 Wowhich you are quite right to observe makes no sense at all.
fn 206, p. 169: Johnny says footnote 205 “makes no sense at all”. Zampanò gives only a German title and a date.
“Lived environment”: the world as a person experiences it.
… body; it is limited and in no sense neutral, in other words it is finite, heterogeneous, subjectively defined and perceived; distances and directions are fixed relative to man. . .205 205Giinter Nitschke’s “Anatomie der gelebten Umwelt” (Bauen + Wohnen , September 1968),2 Wowhich you are quite right to observe makes no sense at all.
Norberg-Schulz (1926–2000) was a Norwegian architect and theorist who studied how people experience place. He says architectural space exists even when nobody is there to experience it.
Zampanò agrees for normal buildings, but asks if the house can exist without someone who experiences it.
Christian Norberg-Schulz objects; condemning subjective architectural experiences for the seemingly absurd conclusion it suggests, mainly that “architecture comes into being only when experienced,””207 207Christian Norberg-Schulz, Existence, Space & Architecture, p.
Progressive Architecture was a leading American architecture magazine (1945–1995). Leonard’s article on the “sensation of space” is also cited by Norberg-Schulz.
Leonard says a person finally feels a place as one single “feeling”.
Even Michael Leonard, who had never heard of Navidson’s house, professed a belief in the “psychological dimensions of space.”
Kevin Lynch (1918–1984) was an American urban planner at MIT. In this classic book he asked people to draw maps of their cities from memory.
The quote says our mental picture of a place comes from what we sense now and what we remember.
In his book The Image of the City, Kevin Lynch suggested emotional cognition of all environment was rooted in history, or at least personal history: {Environmental image, a generalized mental picture of the exterior physical world] is the product both of immediate sensation and …
Piaget (1896–1980) was a Swiss psychologist who studied how children learn to think. Inhelder was his long-time co-author.
The quote says a child builds the sense of space step by step; it is not there from birth.
Or as Jean Piaget insisted: “It is quite obvious that the perception of space involves a gradual construction and certainly does not exist ready-made at the outset of mental development.”?!° Like Leonard’s attention to sensation and Piaget’s emphasis …
The Rorschach test shows ink blots and asks a person what he sees; the answers are meant to reveal the mind. Zampanò imagines the house as such a test.
The inner ear holds the organ of balance, whose medical name is the labyrinth. Zampanò plays on the word: the ear’s labyrinth or the mind’s labyrinth.
But even if the shifts turn out to be some kind of absurd interactive Rorschach test resulting from some peculiar and as yet undiscovered law of physics, Reston’s nausea still reflects how the often disturbing disorientation experienced within that place, whether acting directly upon the inner ear or the inner …
Of the body and how it works.
… yet undiscovered law of physics, Reston’s nausea still reflects how the often disturbing disorientation experienced within that place, whether acting directly upon the inner ear or the inner labyrinth of the psyche, can have physiological consequences.?!!
A rough, harsh sound (of the voice).
I wonder if the morning rasp in my voice is just from sleep or rather some inarticulate attempt to name my horror.
Not able to be said clearly in words.
I wonder if the morning rasp in my voice is just from sleep or rather some inarticulate attempt to name my horror.
To move up (or down) step by step, like a ratchet wheel that turns only one way.
But night finally does come and even though my fear ratchets towards the more severe, I fear those pills even more.
To make stronger or more intense.
I just don’t know how to find it, though staring over at those awful tablets only amps my resolve to do something, anything.
Braille is the writing system of raised dots that blind people read with their fingers. Johnny thinks his line of pills looks like a Braille message about his death.
Funny as it sounds-especially considering the amounts of drugs I've been proud to consume—those pills, like dots, raised & particular, look more and more like some kind of secret Braille spelling out the end of my life.
In health insurance, the sum you must pay yourself before the insurance starts to pay.
Perhaps if I had insurance; if one hundred and seventy-five dollars meant I was twenty-five over my deductible, I’d think differently.
Johnny sees a doctor about his panic attacks, gets a sedative, and cannot pay for more care. Dr. Ogelmeyer is a character in Johnny’s story.
Johnny sells his CD player and his CDs for money and quiet. Aaron’s Records on Highland Avenue was a real used-record shop in Hollywood.
In California, “5150” is the legal code for holding a person in a psychiatric hospital against his will for 72 hours. Johnny writes the digits as “5051”.
He fears being locked up, and he fears just as much the poverty of having no care at all.
Incarcerated forever within the corridors of some awful facility. 5051. Protective custody.
Deep poverty.
Left to wander alone the equally ferocious and infernal corridors of indigence.
MDMA, street names Ecstasy, E and X, is a party drug. “White Angels”, “Mitsubishis” and the other names are brands pressed onto street pills.
Johnny mentions a month-long drug party before Thanksgiving, and says it is “a different story altogether”.
The consumption of MDMA, aka Ecstasy, aka E, aka X, has been known to bring on epilepsy especially when taken in large quantities.
To bite again and again; here, to trouble someone all the time.
Perhaps I‘1ll be lucky and discover this awful dread that gnaws on me day and night is nothing more than the shock wave caused by too many crude chemicals rioting in my skull for too long.
A part that sticks out. Johnny means a tail humans do not have.
… the perimeter, past the tall grass, the brush, that stand of trees, cloaked in shadow and rot, but with enough presence to resurrect within me a whole set of ancient reflexes, ordering a non-existent protrusion at the base of my spine to twitch, my pupils already dilating, adrenaline flowing, even as instinct commands me to run.
Independence Day, the national holiday of the United States, with fireworks. Johnny first hears the fireworks as gunfire. He then sees that he forgot his own birthday.
It’s July 4th.
“Not give a flying fuck” means not care at all. Johnny also plays on the literal words.
How about that, I can remember the beginnings of a nation that doesn't give a flying fuck about me, would possibly even strangle me if given half the chance, but I can't remember my own beginnings—and I’m probably the only one alive willing to at least attempt on my behalf that …
A line of French forts built in the 1930s against Germany. In 1940 the German army went around it, so the name now means a defence that gives false safety.
Johnny calls irony a Maginot Line for people who are already lost.
Which might be worth some sort of smile, if I hadn’t already come to realize that irony is a Maginot Line drawn by the already condemned—which oddly enough still does make me smile.
A defence that gives false safety (see References).
Which might be worth some sort of smile, if I hadn’t already come to realize that irony is a Maginot Line drawn by the already condemned—which oddly enough still does make me smile.
Navidson and Reston find Jed and Wax behind a locked door; the text breaks into single words across the pages.
Covered with irregular dark marks.
Navidson takes the first shift, spending his time removing the dark blotched gauze around his toes—clearly a painful process—before reapplying ointment and a fresh dressing.
Thin, loose cloth used to cover wounds.
Navidson takes the first shift, spending his time removing the dark blotched gauze around his toes—clearly a painful process—before reapplying ointment and a fresh dressing.
A soft oily cream put on the skin to heal it.
Navidson takes the first shift, spending his time removing the dark blotched gauze around his toes—clearly a painful process—before reapplying ointment and a fresh dressing.
A bandage or cover put on a wound.
Navidson takes the first shift, spending his time removing the dark blotched gauze around his toes—clearly a painful process—before reapplying ointment and a fresh dressing.
Arri (Arnold & Richter) of Munich makes professional film cameras called Arriflex. Reston fixes the 16mm Arriflex to his wheelchair, so many shots come from his chair.
Reston spends his time tinkering with his chair and the mount on the Arriflex.
A long line of dangers or tests that a person must pass through.
Slowly they make their way through a gauntlet of what must be close to fifty doors (it is impossible to calculate the exact number due to the jump cuts), until Navidson discovers for the first and only time a door without a …
A cut in a film that jumps forward in time within the same shot, so part of the action is missing.
Slowly they make their way through a gauntlet of what must be close to fifty doors (it is impossible to calculate the exact number due to the jump cuts), until Navidson discovers for the first and only time a door without a door knob.
The state of not being able to believe something.
Reston’s expression communicates nothing but incredulity.?!2 212See Gaston Bachelard’s La Poétique de L’Espace (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1978), p.
Bachelard (1884–1962) was a French philosopher. The Poetics of Space (1958) studies houses, rooms, drawers and corners as images of the mind. Zampanò quotes it in French; the Editors add Maria Jolas’s real English translation in footnote 213.
The passage is about the door-knob. Bachelard says a knob means “people go in, they live here”, and that a knob opens more often than it closes. Navidson here meets the only door without a knob, and it is locked.
Reston’s expression communicates nothing but incredulity.?!2 212See Gaston Bachelard’s La Poétique de L’Espace (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1978), p.
Françoise Minkowska (1882–1950) was a Polish-born French psychiatrist. In 1949 she showed drawings by children who hid from the Nazi occupation. A child who hid in a closet kept drawing narrow, closed, “motionless” houses.
The exhibition catalogue was “De Van Gogh et Seurat aux dessins d’enfants” (From Van Gogh and Seurat to children’s drawings). Anne Balif wrote about it. The theme: a frightened mind draws a house that does not open.
78, where he observes: Francoise Minkowska a exposé une collection particuligrement émouvante de dessins d’enfants polonais ou juifs qui ont subi les sévices de l’occupation allemande pendant la derniére guerre.
Door-knob or handle.
Dans la maison dessinée par un enfant de huit ans, Frangoise Minkowska note qu’a la porte, il y a “une poignée; on y entre, on y habite.”
A “lived-in house”, as opposed to a maison-construction, a house that is only a building.
Ce n’est pas simplement une maisonconstruction, “c’est une maison-habitation.”
Relating to the sense of movement of the body.
This is the kinesthetic sign, so frequently forgotten in the drawings of ‘tense’ children.
Very pale, grey like ash, from fear or illness.
Reston keeps the chair mounted Arriflex trained on Navidson and while the focus is slightly soft, as the door breaks loose, the frame gracefully accepts Jed’s ashen features as he faces what he has come to believe is his final moment.
Informal: in bad condition; poor.
This whole sequence amounts to a pretty ratty collection of cuts alternating between Jed’s Hi 8 and an equally poor view from the 16mm camera and Navidson and Reston’s Hi 8s.
A process that changes one thing into another as if by magic (from the old attempt to turn metal into gold).
Nevertheless what matters most here is adequately captured: the alchemy of social contact as Jed’s rasp of terror almost instantly transforms itself into laughter and sobs of relief.
Vineland is a real town in southern New Jersey. “Seattle coffee” means the espresso-bar culture of the 1990s. Lyle Lovett is a real American country singer.
Zampanò gives these small facts so that Jed becomes a real person to the reader.
In a scattering of seconds, a thirty-three year old man from Vineland, New Jersey, who loves to drink Seattle coffee and listen to Lyle Lovett with his fiancée, learns his sentence has been remitted.
To cancel a punishment or debt. “His sentence has been remitted”: he will not die after all.
In a scattering of seconds, a thirty-three year old man from Vineland, New Jersey, who loves to drink Seattle coffee and listen to Lyle Lovett with his fiancée, learns his sentence has been remitted.
Abraham Zapruder filmed the killing of President John F. Kennedy in Dallas in 1963 with a home-movie camera. People have studied the film frame by frame for decades.
Zampanò compares the frame-by-frame study of Jed’s shot to it. The frame numbers he gives (192–205) match the page numbers.
As diligent as any close analysis of the Zapruder film, similar frame by frame examination carried out countless times by too many critics to name here?!* reveals how a fraction of a second later one bullet pierced his upper lip, blasted through the maxillary …
The upper jaw bone.
… film, similar frame by frame examination carried out countless times by too many critics to name here?!* reveals how a fraction of a second later one bullet pierced his upper lip, blasted through the maxillary bone, dislodging even fragmenting the central teeth, (Reel 10; Frame 192) and then in the following frame (Reel 10; Frame 193) obliterated the back side of his head, chunks of occipital lobe and parietal bone …
The back part of the brain, which handles sight.
… blasted through the maxillary bone, dislodging even fragmenting the central teeth, (Reel 10; Frame 192) and then in the following frame (Reel 10; Frame 193) obliterated the back side of his head, chunks of occipital lobe and parietal bone spewn out in an instantly senseless pattern uselessly preserved in celluloid light (Reel 10; Frames 194, 195, 196, 197, 198, 199, 200, 201, 202, 203, 204, & 205).
One of the two bones at the top and sides of the skull.
… maxillary bone, dislodging even fragmenting the central teeth, (Reel 10; Frame 192) and then in the following frame (Reel 10; Frame 193) obliterated the back side of his head, chunks of occipital lobe and parietal bone spewn out in an instantly senseless pattern uselessly preserved in celluloid light (Reel 10; Frames 194, 195, 196, 197, 198, 199, 200, 201, 202, 203, 204, & 205).
Thrown out in a stream (a nonstandard form of “spewed”).
… dislodging even fragmenting the central teeth, (Reel 10; Frame 192) and then in the following frame (Reel 10; Frame 193) obliterated the back side of his head, chunks of occipital lobe and parietal bone spewn out in an instantly senseless pattern uselessly preserved in celluloid light (Reel 10; Frames 194, 195, 196, 197, 198, 199, 200, 201, 202, 203, 204, & 205).
The plastic of old film stock; film or cinema in general.
… and then in the following frame (Reel 10; Frame 193) obliterated the back side of his head, chunks of occipital lobe and parietal bone spewn out in an instantly senseless pattern uselessly preserved in celluloid light (Reel 10; Frames 194, 195, 196, 197, 198, 199, 200, 201, 202, 203, 204, & 205).
An invented author and book (Hackett is a real publisher of philosophy). Zampanò says too many critics studied these frames to name them all, and names only this one.
Here then— *!4Though still see Danton Blake’s Violent Verses: Cinema's Treatment of Death (Indianapolis: Hackett, 1996).
fn 215, p. 205: “Typo.” Johnny corrects the capital “T” in “To”, which ends the sentence that began on p. 193.
The time and results after a bad event. The book splits the word across pages.
Ken Burns is a real American maker of documentary films, for example The Civil War (1990). Zampanò quotes him praising the rawness of Navidson’s film.
Johnny’s footnote says Burns never said this and never heard of the film or Zampanò. So Zampanò invented a quote and gave it to a real person.
Ken Burns has used this particular moment to illustrate why The Navidson Record is so beyond Hollywood: “Not only is it gritty and dirty and raw, but look how the zoom claws after the fleeting fact.
Rough and realistic, showing unpleasant things plainly.
Ken Burns has used this particular moment to illustrate why The Navidson Record is so beyond Hollywood: “Not only is it gritty and dirty and raw, but look how the zoom claws after the fleeting fact.
The smallest finger. “A pinkie worth of lead” means a bullet the size of a small finger.
Jed crumples, his moment of joy stolen by a pinkie worth of lead, leaving him dead on the floor, a black pool of blood spilling out of him.
Heckler & Koch is a German arms maker; its USP pistol comes in .45 calibre. Reston says he brought the gun because the place is scary.
Nikon is a Japanese camera maker. Metz was a German maker of powerful flash units (strobes). With the flash, the stills show what the torches cannot.
Navidson grabs his backpack and pulls out his Nikon and the Metz strobe with its parabolic mirror.
A flash unit that gives very short, bright bursts of light.
Navidson grabs his backpack and pulls out his Nikon and the Metz strobe with its parabolic mirror.
A curved mirror that sends light in one strong, straight beam.
Navidson grabs his backpack and pulls out his Nikon and the Metz strobe with its parabolic mirror.
A strip of wood between the glass panes or panels of a door or window.
even though a hole the size of a fist punches through the muntin, 231
To break wood into thin, sharp pieces.
though enough than 233 not powerful to do more splinter panel,
Completely full of something, so that no more can go in.
saturated in silence.
To leave someone alone on an island with no way out; here, to trap.
As we can see, a fever—probably due to the onset of an infection—has marooned him in a delirium and although his rescuers are now at hand his eyes remain fixed on a horizon that is both empty and meaningless.
A state of confused mind, often from fever.
As we can see, a fever—probably due to the onset of an infection—has marooned him in a delirium and although his rescuers are now at hand his eyes remain fixed on a horizon that is both empty and meaningless.
Meperidine, also called pethidine and sold as Demerol, is a strong opioid painkiller. The footnote gives the brand name.
In the next segment, taken at least fifteen minutes later at a new location, we see Navidson elevating Wax’s legs, cleaning the wound, and gently feeding him half a tablet of a painkiller, probably meperidine.?!7 2l7i e.
A strong painkilling drug; Demerol.
In the next segment, taken at least fifteen minutes later at a new location, we see Navidson elevating Wax’s legs, cleaning the wound, and gently feeding him half a tablet of a painkiller, probably meperidine.?!7 2l7i e.
Made quickly from what is at hand, for temporary use.
Reston, meanwhile, finishes converting their two-man tent into a makeshift stretcher.
“Old habits die hard” is an English saying: habits are difficult to stop. Navidson changes the saying. Footnote 218 says the line makes sense only with Navidson’s history, and footnote 219 points to pp. 332–333, far ahead in the book.
“We'll leave his pack and mine behind.” “Some habits die hard, huh?”
A saying: habits are difficult to stop.
“Some habits die hard, huh?”