Mark Z. Danielewski, 2000 — Chapter XVII
Navidson leaves Reston's apartment for the house. Two theories, and his drunken letter to Karen.
Rilke: “Whoever you are, go out into the evening, leaving your room … your house is the last before the infinite.”
XVII Wer du auch seist: Am abend tritt hinaus aus deiner Stube, drin du alles weift; als letztes vor der Ferne liegt dein Haus: Wer du auch seist.
Behave in a way that invites a danger.
I’ve no desire to court death.
Test prints of photographs.
In the months following his departure from Ash Tree Lane, he stayed at Reston’s apartment, alternately sleeping on the couch and the floor, continuously surrounded by books, proofs, and notebooks packed with sketches, maps, and theories.
A measure of liquor: as deep as three fingers held against the glass.
Reston breaks open a bottle of Jack, pours two three-finger glasses and hands one to his friend.
A famous magazine of exploration and a TV channel of science and nature documentaries. Reston wants to hand the house to them; Navidson says yes, then disappears.
Isn’t it time to contact National Geographic or The Discovery Channel?”
Rainer Maria Rilke (1875–1926) was a German-language poet from Prague. The lines open his poem “Eingang” (Entrance) in The Book of Images.
The Editors give C. F. MacIntyre's translation: whoever you are, leave your room in the evening; your house is the last before the infinite.
MacIntyre. Rilke: Selected Poems (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1940), p.
Stop for the night; go to bed.
When I packed it in, Navy was still awake.
The Kellog-Antwerk Claim, the Bister-Frieden-Josephson Criteria and the Haven-Slocum Theory are invented, with grand invented conference names. Random House is a real publisher; the note says a full edition is not due until fall 2001.
Currently there are three schools of thought: I, The Kellog-Antwerk Claim II.
A small difference in meaning.
The Haven-Slocum Theory Though it would be impossible here to address all their respective nuances, at the very least some consideration needs to be given to their views.358 On July 8, 1994 at The Symposium for the Betterment of International Cultural Advancement held in Reykjavik, Iceland, Jennifer Kellog and …
Their paper says Navidson went back from “the need to possess”: he calls it “my house”. Zampanò shows the flaws: Navidson never bought out Karen or sought publicity.
… their respective nuances, at the very least some consideration needs to be given to their views.358 On July 8, 1994 at The Symposium for the Betterment of International Cultural Advancement held in Reykjavik, Iceland, Jennifer Kellog and Isabelle Antwerk presented their paper on the meaning and authority of title in the 20th and 215t century.
Owner.
Kellog and Antwerk point out how even though Navidson and Karen own the house together (both their names appear on the mortgage), Navidson frequently implies that he is the sole proprietor.
Very hard to believe or understand.
Kellog and Antwerk regard this possessiveness as the main reason for Navidson’s mind-boggling decision 358While bits and pieces of these readings still circulate, they have yet to appear anywhere in their entirety.
A real magazine and an invented response: Navidson was not the possessor but was himself possessed.
A month later Norman Paarlberg wryly offered up the following response to the Reykjavik duo: “The obsession just grew and grew until it was Navidson who was finally possessed by some selfdestructive notion to go back there and yet …
With dry, slightly mocking humour.
A month later Norman Paarlberg wryly offered up the following response to the Reykjavik duo: “The obsession just grew and grew until it was Navidson who was finally possessed by some selfdestructive notion to go back there and yet completely …
Claim and control an area as one's own.
… selfdestructive notion to go back there and yet completely dispossessed of any rational mechanism to override such an incredibly stupid idea.”’359 Kellog and Antwerk argue that the act of returning was an attempt to territorialize and thus preside over that virtually unfathomable space.
Having the title (here, legal title to property).
He refused to lure television programs and other corporate sponsors to his doorstep which would have further enforced his titular position, at least in the eye of the media.
An invented paper read by an unnamed student at an invented conference on mourning. It argues that Navidson went back from guilt and grief, and in the end “to be obliterated”.
… The Conference on the Aesthetics of Mourning held in Nuremberg, Germany on August 18, 1995, an unnamed student read on behalf of his professors a paper which people everywhere almost instantly began hailing as The Bister-Frieden-Josephson Criteria.
A burst of gunfire; a sudden attack in words.
Here for example is the opening salvo directed specifically at The Kellog-Antwerk Claim and their followers: “Refutation One: We do not accept that filmmaking constitutes an act of naming.
In Genesis 2 God brings the animals to Adam, and Adam names them. Naming as a power of ownership goes back to this story. The BFJ paper says film cannot name; only words can.
Though others may deny it, we believe that to this day the Adamic strengths of the word, and hence language, have never been or ever will be successfully challenged.”
Of Adam, who named the animals in Genesis.
Though others may deny it, we believe that to this day the Adamic strengths of the word, and hence language, have never been or ever will be successfully challenged.”
Most important or noticeable.
By refusing to acknowledge The Navidson Record as such an act, The BFJ Criteria could make the question of personal necessity the salient point for rhetorical negotiation.
In Genesis 4 Cain kills his brother Abel and asks God, “Am I my brother's keeper?” Navidson turns the question into a statement of guilt.
As he repeatedly tells Karen over the phone: “I was my brother’s keeper.
A warning.
Quite cleverly The Criteria first lays the groundwork for its argument by recalling the now famous admonition voiced by Louis Merplat, the renowned speleologist who back in 1899 discovered the Blue Skia Cavern: “Darkness is impossible to remember.
Invented voices on the pull of darkness: a caver of 1899 who found the “Blue Skia Cavern” (skia is Greek for “shadow”), a critic in Film Comment (a real magazine), and Ballard's “apophatic” article; apophatic theology describes God only by what God is not.
Esther Harlan James admits she has seen the film thirty-eight times.
Quite cleverly The Criteria first lays the groundwork for its argument by recalling the now famous admonition voiced by Louis Merplat, the renowned speleologist who back in 1899 discovered the Blue Skia Cavern: “Darkness is impossible to remember.
A scientist who studies caves.
Quite cleverly The Criteria first lays the groundwork for its argument by recalling the now famous admonition voiced by Louis Merplat, the renowned speleologist who back in 1899 discovered the Blue Skia Cavern: “Darkness is impossible to remember.
Say something short and witty.
Ballard who famously quipped: “That house answers many yearnings remembered in sorrow.”362 The point of recounting these observations is simply to show how understandable it was that for Navidson the impenetrable sweep of that place soon acquired greater …
“Uncanny foretastes”: ghostly anticipation.
… these observations is simply to show how understandable it was that for Navidson the impenetrable sweep of that place soon acquired greater meaning simply because, to quote the Criteria directly, “it was full of unheimliche vorklénger?® and thus represented a means to his own personal propitiation.”
Winning back the favour of a god or person by an act of sacrifice.
… for Navidson the impenetrable sweep of that place soon acquired greater meaning simply because, to quote the Criteria directly, “it was full of unheimliche vorklénger?® and thus represented a means to his own personal propitiation.”
Skilfully.
Instead the Criteria quite adroitly acknowledges that when Tom died every “angry, rueful, selfindicting tangle” within Navidson suddenly “lit up,” producing projections powerful and painful enough to “occlude, deny, and cover” the only reason for their success in the …
Full of regret.
Instead the Criteria quite adroitly acknowledges that when Tom died every “angry, rueful, selfindicting tangle” within Navidson suddenly “lit up,” producing projections powerful and painful enough to “occlude, deny, and cover” the only reason for their success in the first place: the blankness of that place, “the …
Block, cover up.
Instead the Criteria quite adroitly acknowledges that when Tom died every “angry, rueful, selfindicting tangle” within Navidson suddenly “lit up,” producing projections powerful and painful enough to “occlude, deny, and cover” the only reason for their success in the first place: the blankness of that place, “the utter and perfect blankness.”
German: “uncanny (ghostly) foretastes”; the Editors translate it “ghostly anticipation”. Thanatos, the Greek god of death, is Freud's name for the death drive, a wish to return to non-being.
It is nevertheless the underlying position of The Bister-FriedenJosephson Criteria that Navidson in fact relied on such projections in order to deny his increasingly more “powerful and motivating Thanatos.”
Death; in Freud, the drive towards death and destruction.
It is nevertheless the underlying position of The Bister-FriedenJosephson Criteria that Navidson in fact relied on such projections in order to deny his increasingly more “powerful and motivating Thanatos.”
Noli me tangere, “Do not touch me”, is what the risen Jesus says to Mary Magdalene (John 20:17). The BFJ paper adds invented lines: do not read me, do not see me. The last Latin line is Exodus 33:20, God to Moses: “for no man shall see me and live.”
Johnny says he has no clue; the Editors quote Maurice Blanchot, French writer: “whoever sees God dies.” Talbot Darden and Ewig-Weibliche (“the eternal feminine”, from Goethe's Faust) are invented.
To emphasize the potential “desire” for self-destruction, The Criteria supplies for this section the following epigraph: Noli me tangere.
“Do not touch me / read me / see me.”
To emphasize the potential “desire” for self-destruction, The Criteria supplies for this section the following epigraph: Noli me tangere.
“For no man shall see me and live” (Exodus 33:20).
Noli me videre.* Noli me —3%4 *Non enim videbit me homo et vivet.>® Thus emphasizing the potentially mortal price for beholding what must lie forever lost in those inky folds.
An entry onto a place without right; here, a journey into the house.
Here The Criteria also points out how Navidson’s previous trespasses, with one exception, were structured around extremely concrete objectives: (1) rescuing the Holloway team; and after sinking down the Staircase (2) returning home.
An exact copy of a document.
… on to treat Navidson’s letter in great detail and since its appearance in the film is limited to only a few seconds of screen time, it seems advisable, before further commentary, to reproduce a facsimile here: 364In “Shout Not, Doubt Not” published in Ewig-Weibliche ed.
A five-page drunken letter, reproduced as a facsimile with typos, a crossed-out “deserve”, blacked-out words and a line struck through in red. Near the end the spelling and punctuation fall apart.
He writes that he believes in God now, and that “our house is God”.
The second half of The Bister-Frieden-Josephson Criteria focuses almost entirely on this question of “desire to live” by analyzing in great detail the contents of Navidson’s letter to Karen written the night before his departure.
The famous answer of the English climber George Mallory (1923) when asked why he wanted to climb Everest. Navidson adds: “and I'm not.”
Why am I doing this? Because it’s there and I’m not.
Navidson lists religions to say his God is none of them. The burning bush is where God spoke to Moses (Exodus 3).
But my God isn’t your Catholic varietal or your Judaic or Mormon or Baptist or Seventh Day Adventist or whatever/ whoever.
The letter finally says who Delial is: the name Navidson gave the dying Sudanese girl in his Pulitzer photograph. He took the picture in 1/60 of a second, chased the vulture away with his tripod, and she died in his hands.
He writes “I was no Tom there”, linking her to Tom saving Daisy.
Mic 2 1 Carl and Resi L 4st and now I can’t get Delial out of my head.
Suffering one accepts to make up for a wrong.
And now I can’t understand anymore why it meant so much to me to keep to keep her a secret—a penance or something.
A red struck-out line of names with military ranks, apparently men from Navidson's time as a soldier. They are among the dead he misses.
Johnny notes that the best love letters are written in a code for one reader, not for many.
… maybe im looking for all of them i miss u i love u there’s no second ive lived you can’t call your own N av yn 37Reminding me here, I mean that line about “a code to decipher”, how the greatest love letters are always encoded for the one and not the many.
Invented interviews. Photojournalists say Navidson hit the wall every war photographer hits: why am I taking pictures instead of helping?
Billy Reston thought she was some mythological pin-up girl: “I didn’t know.
Mysterious, hard to understand.
Quite a few colleagues accused Navidson of being enigmatic on purpose and so out of spite let the subject drop.
In Coleridge's poem The Rime of the Ancient Mariner (1798) a sailor shoots an albatross and is haunted by the deed. The invented critic Dudek compares Navidson and his “shot” of Delial.
Academia soon marched in to interrogate the literary consequences created by the Delial revelation. Tokiko Dudek commented on how “Delial is to Navidson what the albatross is to Coleridge’s mariner.
Granta is a real British literary magazine. In Dante's Divine Comedy, Beatrice, the woman Dante loved, died young and leads him through the afterlife. Fillopino says Delial plays the same role for Navidson.
In both cases, both men shot their mark only to be haunted by the accomplishment, even though Navidson did not actually kill Delial.”372 Caroline Fillopino recognized intrinsic elements of penance in Navidson’s return to the house but she preferred Dante to Coleridge: “Delial serves the same role as Beatrice.
A sign that something is coming.
372§ee Tokiko Dudek’s “Harbingers of Hell and/or Hope” in Authentes Journal, September, 1995.
Burrows (1926–1971) was a British photographer famous for his Vietnam War pictures in Life; he died when his helicopter was shot down over Laos. The quote on whether he has a right to profit from others' grief is his own words.
Also consider Larry Burrows who in the 1969 BBC film Beautiful Beautiful remarked: “.
Mocking in a bitter way.
safety in loss.”373 However unlike Dante, Navidson never encountered his Beatrice again.374 In the most sardonic tones, Sandy Beale of The New Criticism once considered how contemporary cinema would have treated the subject of Navidson’s guilt: If The Navidson Record had been a Hollywood creation, Delial would have appeared at …
New Criticism is a real school of close reading; the journal and critic are invented. Lost Horizon (1937) is Frank Capra's film of Shangri-La, a hidden paradise; the Elysian Fields are the Greek paradise of heroes; a Shirley Temple is a child's non-alcoholic cocktail.
Beale mocks the happy ending Hollywood would give. Footnote 375 sends the reader to Appendix F.
safety in loss.”373 However unlike Dante, Navidson never encountered his Beatrice again.374 In the most sardonic tones, Sandy Beale of The New Criticism once considered how contemporary cinema would have treated the subject of Navidson’s guilt: If The Navidson Record had been a Hollywood creation, Delial would have appeared at the heart of …
In Greek myth, the paradise of heroes after death.
Like something out of Lost Horizon, dark fields would have given way to Elysian fields, the perfect setting for a musical number with a brightly costumed Delial front and center, drinking Shirley Temples, swinging on the arms of Tom and Jed, backed by a chorus line which would have …
Without feeling or sympathy.
To this day the treatment of Delial by The Bister-Frieden-Josephson Criteria is still considered harsh and particularly insensate toward international tragedy.
Put forward as a basic idea.
The BFJ Criteria posits that Delial’s prominence in Navidson’s last letter is a repressive mechanism enabling him to at least on a symbolic level deal with his nearly inexpressible loss.
A letter.
A more permanent end to his relationship with Karen seems to be implied when he writes “I’m leaving tomorrow” and describes his missive as a “will.”
In John 11 Jesus raises his friend Lazarus from the dead. Zampanò quotes Navidson muttering this line inside the house, to show he had no hope of finding Delial.
While staring into those infernal halls, we can hear him mutter: “Lazarus is dead again.”
In Genesis, Jacob and Esau are twin brothers and rivals. Zampanò compares Navidson losing his twin. The invented book adds a joke: God was an only child, so what did He know of brothers?
The Haven-Slocum Theory™ — 1 377Here then Jacob loses Esau and finds he is nothing without him.
A husband-and-wife team measure how the house affected everyone, and read Navidson's dreams. Johnny tells his own dream.
Very painful and upsetting.
It is a harrowing admission full of sorrow and defeat—‘I was no Tom there’—seeing his brother as the life-saving (and line-saving) hero he himself was not.”377 Thus The Bister-Frieden-Josephson Criteria staunchly refutes The Kellog-Antwerk Claim by reiterating its …
Firmly and loyally.
It is a harrowing admission full of sorrow and defeat—‘I was no Tom there’—seeing his brother as the life-saving (and line-saving) hero he himself was not.”377 Thus The Bister-Frieden-Josephson Criteria staunchly refutes The Kellog-Antwerk Claim by reiterating its argument that Navidson’s return to the house was not at all motivated by the need to possess it but rather “to be obliterated by it.”
The invented couple present their theory at an invented APA meeting in Washington. The APA is the real professional body of American psychiatrists.
Then on January 6, 1997 at The Assemblage of Cultural Diagnosticians Sponsored By The American Psychiatric Association held in Washington, D.C., a husband and wife team brought before an audience of 1,200 The Haven-Slocum Theory which in the eyes of many successfully deflated the prominence of both The Kellog-Antwerk Claim and …
A clever, elaborate idea or figure of speech.
Ducking the semantic conceits of prior hypotheses, The HavenSlocum Theory proposed to first focus primarily on “the house itself and its generation of physiological effects.”
Outline in a general way.
Relying on an array of personal interviews, closely inspected secondary sources, and their own observations, the married couple began to carefully adumbrate their findings in what has since become known as The Haven-Slocum Anxiety Scale or more simply as PEER.
A 0–10 scale of how badly the house affected each person, with a ™ sign as if it were a product. Symptoms include echolalia (Daisy), tangentiality (Chad) and mutism (Navidson). See the glossary.
… personal interviews, closely inspected secondary sources, and their own observations, the married couple began to carefully adumbrate their findings in what has since become known as The Haven-Slocum Anxiety Scale or more simply as PEER.
Repeating words that others say, without meaning.
5-6: Daisy: excitement; intermittent fever; scratches; echolalia.
A state of near-unconsciousness or dullness.
6-7: Kirby “Wax” Hook: stupor; enduring impotence.** 7-8: Chad: tangentiality; rising aggression; persistent wandering.
Drifting off the subject in speech and never coming back to it.
6-7: Kirby “Wax” Hook: stupor; enduring impotence.** 7-8: Chad: tangentiality; rising aggression; persistent wandering.
Deep depression.
9: Karen Green: prolonged insomnia; frequent unmotivated panic attacks; deep melancholia; persistent cough.tt* 10: Will Navidson: obsessive behavior; weight loss; night terrors; vivid dreaming accompanied by increased mutism.
Episodes of panic and screaming during deep sleep.
9: Karen Green: prolonged insomnia; frequent unmotivated panic attacks; deep melancholia; persistent cough.tt* 10: Will Navidson: obsessive behavior; weight loss; night terrors; vivid dreaming accompanied by increased mutism.
Not speaking.
9: Karen Green: prolonged insomnia; frequent unmotivated panic attacks; deep melancholia; persistent cough.tt* 10: Will Navidson: obsessive behavior; weight loss; night terrors; vivid dreaming accompanied by increased mutism.
Annoying.
The labor she put into both film shorts resulted in more moderate mood swings, an increase in sleep, and an end to that nettlesome cough.”
Deprived of something; left without it.
How tragic to find Navidson so bereft of energy, his usual snap and alacrity of thought replaced by such unyielding torpor.
Quick and eager readiness.
How tragic to find Navidson so bereft of energy, his usual snap and alacrity of thought replaced by such unyielding torpor.
A state of dull inactivity.
How tragic to find Navidson so bereft of energy, his usual snap and alacrity of thought replaced by such unyielding torpor.
Not saying much; keeping one's thoughts private.
Then at the beginning of March, “while tests on the wall samples progressed,” as The Haven-Slocum Theory observes, Navidson begins to eat again, work out, and though his general reticence continues, Reston still sees Navidson’s new behavior as a change for the better: “I was blind to his intentions.
The central stone of an arch; the central part of an argument.
What everyone knows now as Exploration #5.”378 Where The Bister-Frieden-Josephson Criteria made Navidson’s letter to Karen the keystone of its analysis, The Haven-Slocum Theory does away with the document in a footnote, describing it as “drunken babble chock-full of expected expressions of grief, re-identification with a lost object, and plenty of transference, …
In psychoanalysis, transference means moving feelings for one person (often a parent) onto another. Haven and Slocum say Navidson's letter is really about his absent mother.
Navidson watches the tape of Wax kissing Karen with no reaction, which they read as a sign of how numb the house has made him.
… keystone of its analysis, The Haven-Slocum Theory does away with the document in a footnote, describing it as “drunken babble chock-full of expected expressions of grief, re-identification with a lost object, and plenty of transference, having less to do with Navidson’s lost brother and more to do with the maternal absence he endured throughout his life.
Moving feelings from one person (often a parent) onto another.
… keystone of its analysis, The Haven-Slocum Theory does away with the document in a footnote, describing it as “drunken babble chock-full of expected expressions of grief, re-identification with a lost object, and plenty of transference, having less to do with Navidson’s lost brother and more to do with the maternal absence he endured throughout his life.
A list of invented studies. Ernest Hartmann was a real sleep researcher whose book The Nightmare: The Psychology and Biology of Terrible Dreams (1984) the invented title parodies. Oona Fanihdjarte's book on Carl Jung and Susan Beck's article are invented.
Again quoting directly from the Theory: “Far better than words influenced by the depressive effects of alcohol, these intimate glimpses of Navidson’s psyche reveal more about why he decided to go back and what may account for the profound physiological consequences that followed once he was inside.”
Navidson is dead in a stone chamber; the only way out is down a well, where a blue light saves some and others fall forever. Haven's analysis title plays on “a penny for your thoughts”.
Jean-Paul Sartre's play Huis Clos (No Exit, 1944) shows Hell as a closed room with no exit.
Mia Haven entitles her analysis of Dream #1: “Wishing Well: A Penny For Your Thoughts ...
A loose robe worn by citizens of ancient Rome.
Everywhere people wander aimlessly around, dressed in soiled togas.
An opening or hole.
As Navidson approaches this aperture, he realizes two things: 1) he has died and this is some kind of half-way station, and 2) the only way out is down through the well.
Thick and sticky, flowing slowly.
Navidson presumes it is water though he senses it is somewhat more viscous.
Super-Kamiokande is a real neutrino detector in Japan: a giant tank of ultrapure water deep underground, where passing particles make faint blue Cherenkov light. The footnote even gives its real web address.
The science matches the first dream: a clear liquid and a violent blue light.
Totsuka’s Ultrapure Water, the SuperKamiokande Detector and Cherenkov Light (W.H.
Lines from Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet (Act 1, Scene 4), where Mercutio gives his speech about Queen Mab, the fairy who brings dreams. The invented essay appears in “Mab Weekly”.
Freeman and Company, 1997); also see www-sk.icrr .u-tokyo.ac.jp/doc/sk/; and of course Tom Curie’s essay “Thou Talk’st of nothing. True, I talk of dreams” (Mab Weekly, Celtic Publications, September 1993).
Light, delicate, heavenly.
2) If he has lived a good life, a blue light will carry him to some ethereal and gentle place.
A lively, playful passage or activity.
She even digresses for a playful romp through Sartre’s Huis Clos, hinting how that formidable work helped shape Navidson’s imagination.
A town feasts on a giant snail, then walks up inside its shell with candles; Navidson climbs on alone. The title puns on “at a snail's pace”.
In Hugh Lofting's The Voyages of Doctor Dolittle (1922) the doctor travels inside the shell of a giant sea snail.
For Dream #2, Lance Slocum provides the widely revered analysis entitled “At A Snail’s Place.”
A turn or twist (rhymes with “find”), as in a spiral.
As they enter the enormous wind (as in “to wind something up”), their candlelight illuminates walls that are white as pearl and as opalescent as sea shells.
Showing changing milky colours, like an opal.
As they enter the enormous wind (as in “to wind something up”), their candlelight illuminates walls that are white as pearl and as opalescent as sea shells.
An extinct sea creature with a coiled shell.
Slocum begins with an amusing reference to Doctor Dolittle before turning to consider the homes which ancient ammonites38!
Ammonites were ancient sea creatures with spiral shells; many shells grow in a logarithmic spiral. Edouard Monod-Herzen's book on form (1927) is real; Bachelard cites it. The people of Kitava in Papua New Guinea value the chambered nautilus shell.
Slocum begins with an amusing reference to Doctor Dolittle before turning to consider the homes which ancient ammonites38! constructed around an almost logarithmic axis, a legacy they would eons later bestow 381See Edouard Monod-Herzen’s Principes de morphologie générale, vol.
Slocum quotes Bachelard's chapter on shells (Maria Jolas's translation, Beacon Press): how does a snail grow inside its stone prison? The Abbé de Vallemont was a French priest who wrote Curiosités de la nature et de l'art (1709). Footnote 383 gives the French.
Primarily Slocum concentrates on chapter 5 of Bachelard’s The Poetics of Space as translated by Maria Jolas (Boston: Beacon Press, 1994), choosing to allow Navidson’s dream the same consideration literature of its kind receives.
Humble or shame someone deeply.
At every step, there is something that humiliates and mortifies proud minds.”
Vermeij (born 1946) is an American biologist, blind since childhood, who studies shells by touch. His real 1993 book calls shells houses and notes that “economics” and “ecology” both come from Greek oikos, house.
For a more modern treatment of shell growth see Geerat J. Vermeij’s A Natural History of Shells (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1993).
Hardening by deposits of calcium, as in shell growth.
Chapter 3 “The Economics of Construction and Maintenance” deals directly with matters of calcification and the problems of dissolution, while chapter | “Shells and the Questions of Biology” considers the sense of the shell in a way that differs slightly from Vallemont’s: “We can think of shells as …
House, household.
The words “economics” and “ecology” are especially apt in this context, for both are derived from the Greek oikos, meaning house.
In Greek myth the Sphinx asked: what walks on four legs in the morning, two at noon and three in the evening? Oedipus answered: a human being, through the stages of life. Slocum links it to growing up.
… is held by Bachelard’s parentethical384 reference to his own childhood and presumably the rite of growing up: “How extraordinary to find in those ever expandable brackets such a telling correlation between the answer to the Sphinx’s riddle and Navidson’s crisis.”
Jean-Baptiste Robinet (1735–1820) was a French naturalist-philosopher. Bachelard quotes his idea that a snail builds its shell as a spiral staircase, one step with each turn. Slocum calls the dream an inversion of the house's Spiral Staircase.
Indeed, by continuing to build on Bachelard, Slocum treats the snail in Navidson’s dream as a “remarkable inversion” of the house’s Spiral Staircase: “Robinet believed that it was by rolling over and over that the snail built its ‘staircase.’
Johnny leaves Zampanò's typo because he sees a slip about parents in it: “parent-ethical”.
… 3847 haven't corrected this typo because it seems to me less like an error of transcription and more like a revealing slip on Zampand’s part, where a “parenthetical” mention of youth suddenly becomes a “parentethical” question about how to relate to youth.
A real passage from Derrida's 1972 essay about the ear as a labyrinth: the tympanum (eardrum), Ariadne's thread, a city wound like a snail. Translator Alan Bass notes that French limaçon means snail, spiral staircase and the spiral canal of the inner ear (cochlea).
And of course who can forget Derrida’s remarks on this subject in footnote 5 in “Tympan” in Marges de la philosophie (Paris: Les Editions de Minuit, 1972), Pp.
Limaçon: snail, spiral staircase, the spiral of the inner ear. Conque: conch shell, and the hollow of the outer ear.
Pleine et vide de son eau, l’anamnése de la conque résonne seule sur une plage.
The eardrum; also a drum.
38“Tympanum, Dionysianism, labyrinth, Ariadne’s thread.
Recollection; remembering.
Full and empty of its water, the anamnesis of the choncha resonates alone on the beach.”
A French poet whom Bachelard quotes. The poem shows a giant snail coming down the mountain, so old it has one horn left, like a church tower. The Editors translate it.
It contorts itself in order to advance and grow” (Page 122; The Poetics of Space).385 Still more remarkable than even this marvelous coincidence is the poem Bachelard chooses to quote by René Rouquier: 3847 haven't corrected this typo because it seems to me less like an error of transcription and more like a revealing slip on Zampand’s part, where a “parenthetical” mention of youth suddenly becomes a …
Rouquier: “It is an enormous snail coming down from the mountain…”
C’est un escargot énorme Qui descend de la montagne Et le ruisseau l’accompagne De sa bave blanche Trés vieux, il n’a plus qu’une corne C’est son court clocher carré.387 Navidson is not the first to envision a snail …
Something that soothes or heals.
They create harmonies and out of harmonies comes a balm for the soul.
Setting free.
… up his analysis to the notion that both dreams, “The Wishing Well” and “The Snail,” suggested to Navidson the possibility that he could locate either within himself or “‘ within that vast missing” some emancipatory sense to put to rest his confusions and troubles, even put to rest the confusions and troubles of others, a curative symmetry to last the ages.
Work at steadily; travel over a route.
For the more troubling and by far most terrifying Dream #3, Mia Haven and Lance Slocum team up together to ply the curvatures of that strange stretch of imaginings.
The analysis of the third, most terrifying dream is missing; footnote 389 is only blank lines.
For the more troubling and by far most terrifying Dream #3, Mia Haven and Lance Slocum team up together to ply the curvatures of that strange stretch of imaginings.
Urinate.
Only later after I find some candles, stomp around my room, splash water on the old face, micturate, light a sterno can and put the kettle on, only then can I respond to my cold head and my general physical misery, which I do, relishing every bit of it in fact.
The raphe nuclei are groups of brainstem cells that make serotonin and help control sleep; Johnny says the dream came out of them. Sterno is canned jelly fuel used to heat food.
Only later after I find some candles, stomp around my room, splash water on the old face, micturate, light a sterno can and put the kettle on, only then can I respond to my cold head and my general physical misery, which I do, relishing every bit of it in fact.
A member of a US college fraternity, often seen as a loud party drinker.
I am either glad, startled or terrified, but before I can figure out which I complete two quick turns and there he is, this drunken frat boy wearing a plum-colored Topha Beta sweatshirt, carrying the lid of a garbage can in his right hand and a large fireman’s ax in his left.
At 3:19 AM on a new year Johnny remembers a dream. He wanders the maze-like hull of a ship; he is deformed, hairy, with a hard bulge on his forehead, put there by an old man who called him son. The picture recalls the Minotaur in its labyrinth.
A drunken frat boy with an ax turns into a woman who looks at him with love, and she strikes him.
But as I take a step forward, everything changes. The frat boy I realize is not the frat boy anymore but someone else.
Split with a heavy blow.
His plan I see is not too complicated: he intends to drive that heavy blade into my skull, across the bridge of my nose, cleave the roof of my mouth, the core of my brain, split apart the very vertebrae in my neck, and he won’t stop there either.
Having a row of sharp, saw-like points.
… and my fingers and he’ll even pop my eyes with the butt of the handle and then with the heal of the blade attempt to crush my teeth, despite the fact that they’re long, serrated and unusually strong.
Chop or cut with an ax.
Where my internal organs are concerned, these too he’ll treat with the same respect, hewing, smashing and slicing until he’s too tired and too covered with blood to finish, even though of course he really finished awhile ago, and then he’1l slouch exhausted, panting like some stupid dog, drunk …
In a long parenthesis Johnny meets Kyrie in a supermarket. She has the BMW logo and its real slogan “The Ultimate Driving Machine” tattooed on her back, and will marry Gdansk Man and live up on Mulholland Drive, the road along the Hollywood Hills.
She translates the German phrase from Chapter XIV as “utter dismemberment”. The Editors point back to footnote 310.
… he’1l slouch exhausted, panting like some stupid dog, drunk on his beer, this killing, this victory, while I lie strewn about that bleak place, der absoluten Zerrissenheit (as it turned out I ran into Kyrie at the supermarket this last November.
Spiteful, especially in speech.
Apparently a stripper had gotten a little catty with her.
Anger.
Kyrie didn't mention any ire on his part or history on our part, so I just nodded my approval and then right there in the canned food aisle, asked her for the translation of that German phrase which I …
Strong annoyance.
I asked her, trying, but probably failing, to conceal my exasperation.
A tendon; strength.
I just stand there, every sinew and nerve easing me into a world of relief, my breath slowing, arms dangling at my sides, my jaw slack, legs melting me into ancient waters, until suddenly my eyes on their own accord, …
One of the two upper chambers of the heart.
… and she needs more time than I thought, to get ready, to swing again, while I’m bleeding and dying, which now doesn’t compare at all to the feeling inside, also so familiar, as the atriums of my heart on their own accord suddenly rupture, like my father’s ruptured.
After the author's death.
As they start to sum up The Haven-Slocum Theory, the couple quotes from Johanne Scefing’s posthumously published journal: At this late hour I’m unable to put aside thoughts of God’s great sleeper whose history filled my imagination and dreams when I was a boy.
In the Book of Jonah, the prophet flees from God by ship. A storm rises, and the sailors throw Jonah into the sea; then “the sea ceased from her raging.” A great fish swallows him.
Haven and Slocum ask if Navidson, like Jonah, entered the house to calm it.
… house alone I turn to my Bible and find among those thin pages these lines: So they took up Jonah, and cast him forth into the sea: and the sea ceased from her raging. (Jonah 1: 15)392 It seems a somewhat bizarre reference, until Haven and Slocum produce a second PEER table documenting what happened once Navidson entered the house on Ash Tree Lane: POST-EXPOSURE EFFECTS RATING 0: Alicia Rosenbaum: …
After Navidson goes in, everyone's symptoms ease, and the house shrinks back: the closet space is gone and the hallway is a shallow white closet.
The Haven-Slocum Theory™ —2 Even more peculiar, the house became a house again.
Level with, making one flat surface.
Karen’s bookshelves were once again flush with the walls.
An invented self-help book from a real medical publisher (Williams & Wilkins). It says that writing about a subject until it “branches off into the self” heals. The Theory also counts three suicides among obsessed readers.
3930f course as Patricia B. Nesselroade, M.D.