Mark Z. Danielewski, 2000 — Foreword, Introduction and epigraph
The Editors speak first, in a short note.
A short note signed by “The Editors”. It says the first edition was privately passed around and that this second edition adds new parts. The Editors are a third voice in the book, next to Zampanò and Johnny Truant.
FOREWORD The first edition of House of Leaves was privately distributed and did not contain Chapter 21, Appendix II, Appendix III, or the index.
The dedication of the book. It is only one line, and it does not say who “you” is.
This is not for you,
Johnny Truant tells how he found Zampanò’s papers.
Johnny lists sleep aids and drugs he tried against his nightmares. Excedrin PM and melatonin are mild sleep aids; L-tryptophan is an amino acid sold as a sleep supplement. Valium (diazepam) is a sedative, Vicodin is an opioid painkiller, and the “barbital family” are the barbiturates, old sedatives.
Excedrin PMs, Melatonin, L-tryptophan, Valium, Vicodin, quite a few members of the barbital family.
A hard, painful struggle in the middle of doing something (“in the throes of”).
I'd been in the throes of looking for an apartment after a little difficulty with a landlord who woke up one morning convinced he was Charles de Gaulle.
Charles de Gaulle (1890–1970) led Free France in the Second World War and was later President of France. The main Paris airport carries his name, so Johnny jokes that his landlord does not look like an airport. A Boeing 757 is a passenger jet.
I'd been in the throes of looking for an apartment after a little difficulty with a landlord who woke up one morning convinced he was Charles de Gaulle.
To force a tenant to leave a home by law.
I was promptly evicted.
Sleeping on friends’ couches because you have no home.
During the following weeks, while I was couching it from Santa Monica to Silverlake looking for an apartment, Lude told me about this old guy who lived in his building.
Areas of Los Angeles. Johnny sleeps on friends’ couches across the city before he finds a studio in Hollywood.
During the following weeks, while I was couching it from Santa Monica to Silverlake looking for an apartment, Lude told me about this old guy who lived in his building.
Two women in Johnny’s life. Thumper is a stripper’s stage name. It comes from the rabbit in Disney’s Bambi (1942), which is why she has the rabbit tattooed on her body.
I was getting over this woman named Clara English who had told me she wanted to date someone at the top of the food chain.
To tease someone by telling them a false story as if it were true.
I was getting over this woman named Clara English who had told me she wanted to date someone at the top of the food chain.
Never getting tired or weaker.
So I demonstrated my unflagging devotion to her memory by immediately developing a heavy crush on this stripper who had Thumper tattooed right beneath her G-string, barely an inch from her shaved pussy or as she liked to call …
The advertising slogan of Disneyland. Thumper uses it as a crude joke about her own body.
… devotion to her memory by immediately developing a heavy crush on this stripper who had Thumper tattooed right beneath her G-string, barely an inch from her shaved pussy or as she liked to call it—”The Happiest Place On Earth.”
French: a pen name, and a war name. Soldiers of the French Foreign Legion traditionally could take a new name when they joined. Johnny calls the war name his “personal favorite”.
Maybe it’s authentic, maybe made up, maybe borrowed, a nom de plume or—my personal favorite—a nom de guerre.
“Pen name”: a false name that a writer uses.
Maybe it’s authentic, maybe made up, maybe borrowed, a nom de plume or—my personal favorite—a nom de guerre.
“War name”: a false name taken by a soldier or fighter.
Maybe it’s authentic, maybe made up, maybe borrowed, a nom de plume or—my personal favorite—a nom de guerre.
The old man calls himself Zampanò. The name is also the strongman in Federico Fellini’s film La Strada (1954), a brute who travels and performs. Johnny says he never found any ID, so the name may be borrowed.
Flaze is the building manager (invented). Johnny compares his fast draw to Billy the Kid (1859–1881), a famous outlaw gunman of the American West.
She went off to work, Lude went off to bed, but when dusk came and their old neighbor had still not appeared, both Lude and the single mother went to alert Flaze, the resident building manager.
A person who enters a place where he has no right to be.
If the interlopers are carrying, he’1ll show them his own gun collection and he'll draw on them too, faster than Billy The Kid.
Carrying a gun.
If the interlopers are carrying, he’1ll show them his own gun collection and he'll draw on them too, faster than Billy The Kid.
Talking without deciding, making excuses to delay.
After twenty minutes, Lude was so fed up with this hemming & hawing he offered to handle the whole thing himself.
The sound of something falling heavily; here, a sudden death.
The paramedics said there was nothing unusual, just the way it goes, eighty some years and the inevitable kerplunk, the system goes down, lights blink out and there you have it, another body on the floor surrounded by things that don’t mean much to anyone except to the one who can’t take any …
To stare stupidly at something.
Police coming and going, paramedics attending to the body, for one thing making sure the old man was really dead; neighbors and eventually even Flaze poking their heads in to gawk, wonder or just graze on a scene that might someday resemble their own end.
Lude’s nickname for Johnny. American slang for a big, friendly man, from the character Hoss Cartwright in the TV western Bonanza.
I must have laughed because Lude suddenly turned on me: “Hey Hoss, don’t think young and squirting lots of come guarantees you shit.
Goodwill is an American charity that collects used goods. Franklin Avenue is a street in Hollywood where Zampanò’s building stands.
That was the night Lude made his awful discovery, right before the boys from Goodwill or wherever they came from swept in with their gloves and handtrucks.
Here: playful and a little evil (“a wicked gleam in his eye”).
He was waiting outside the gate with a wicked gleam in his eye.
A room under a church, used as a grave.
The way Lude’s keys rattled like bone-chimes as he opened the main gate; the hinges suddenly shrieking as if we weren’t entering a crowded building but some ancient moss-eaten crypt.
Cold, wet and unpleasant.
Or the way we padded down the dank hallway, buried in shadows, lamps above hung with spangles of light that I swear now must have been the work of gray, primitive spiders.
A small bright spot or shining piece.
Or the way we padded down the dank hallway, buried in shadows, lamps above hung with spangles of light that I swear now must have been the work of gray, primitive spiders.
The tendency of a thing to keep moving the way it moves, or to stay still, until a force changes it.
I feel that way now, watching myself tugged stupidly along by inertia, my own inquisitiveness or whatever else, and it must have been something else, though what exactly I have no clue, maybe nothing, maybe nothing’s all—a pretty meaningless combination of words, “nothing’s all”, but one …
A group of witches; here, a joke about a group of musicians.
“The second peculiar thing, you’ll see for yourself” Lude said, lowering his voice even more, as we slipped past the room of what looked suspiciously like a coven of musicians, all of them listening intently to headphones, passing around a spliff.
A hand-rolled cigarette with cannabis.
… for yourself” Lude said, lowering his voice even more, as we slipped past the room of what looked suspiciously like a coven of musicians, all of them listening intently to headphones, passing around a spliff.
To upset or shock someone.
This will probably really wig you out, I don’t care, but one night I even rented Bambi and got a hard on.
The 1942 Disney film. Johnny rents it because of the stripper named Thumper.
This will probably really wig you out, I don’t care, but one night I even rented Bambi and got a hard on.
A thin layer that forms on a surface with age, for example on old copper.
It was extremely layered, a patina upon progressive patina of odor, the actual source of which had long since evaporated.
Too sweet or too strong, so it makes you feel sick.
Back then it had overwhelmed me, so much of it, cloying, bitter,
A soft material that fills cracks around windows to keep out air and water.
All the windows were nailed shut and sealed with caulking.
Something that flows out from a source, such as a smell.
My best guess now is that he sealed his apartment in an effort to retain the various emanations of his things and himself.
A short metal pin used to join metal plates.
… his things were concerned, they ran the spectrum: tattered furniture, unused candles, ancient shoes (these in particular looking sad & wounded), ceramic bowls as well as glass jars and small wood boxes full of rivets, rubber bands, sea shells, matches, peanut shells, a thousand different kinds of elaborately shaped and colored buttons.
A large beer mug, often made of stone or ceramic.
One ancient beer stein held nothing more than discarded perfume bottles.
Zippo is an American brand of metal lighter, sold since 1933. Early Zippos carried “Pat. Pending” on the bottom, so the one Johnny remembers is probably very old.
I’m left with only a few scattered mental snapshots: a battered Zippo lighter with Patent Pending printed on the bottom; the twining metal ridge, looking a little like some tiny spiral staircase, winding down into the bulbless interior of a light socket; and for some odd reason—what …
The old pseudo-science of turning lead into gold; here, a magical change of value.
To my eye, it was all just junk, time having performed no economic alchemy there, which hardly mattered, as Lude hadn’t called me over to root around in these particular and—to use one of those big words I would eventually learn in the ensuing months—deracinated details of Zampano’s …
Pulled up by the roots; taken away from its home and context.
… performed no economic alchemy there, which hardly mattered, as Lude hadn’t called me over to root around in these particular and—to use one of those big words I would eventually learn in the ensuing months—deracinated details of Zampano’s life.
That you cannot calm or change; hard and unmoving.
He was pointing at something else which hardly impressed me when I first glanced at its implacable shape.
A ream is 500 sheets of paper; “reams” means a very large amount of writing.
As I discovered, there were reams and reams of it.
Clear and easy to understand.
… the back of a postage stamp; everything and anything but empty; each fragment completely covered with the creep of years and years of ink pronouncements; layered, crossed out, amended; handwritten, typed; legible, illegible; impenetrable, lucid; torn, stained, scotch taped; some bits crisp and clean, others faded, burnt or folded and refolded so many times the creases have obliterated whole passages of god knows what—sense?
To destroy completely, so no trace is left.
… ink pronouncements; layered, crossed out, amended; handwritten, typed; legible, illegible; impenetrable, lucid; torn, stained, scotch taped; some bits crisp and clean, others faded, burnt or folded and refolded so many times the creases have obliterated whole passages of god knows what—sense?
Bars, restaurants and a music club in Hollywood in the 1990s. La poubelle is French for “the dustbin”. They show Johnny’s night life before the papers took over his time.
Back then—well it’s way back then by now—you could have found me downing shots of whiskey at La Poubelle, annihilating my inner ear at Bar Deluxe or dining at Jones with some busty redhead I’d met at House of Blues, our conversation traversing wildly from clubs we knew well to clubs we’d like …
When you look back at the past.
All those signs I just now finished telling you about quickly vanished in the light of subsequent days or had never been there to begin with, existing only in retrospect.
“Curiosity killed the cat, but satisfaction brought it back” is an old proverb. The radio man “telling me more and more about some useless information” is a line from the Rolling Stones song “(I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction” (1965), which connects to “satisfaction” in the proverb.
Of course curiosity killed the cat, and even if satisfaction supposedly brought it back, there’s still that little problem with the man on the radio telling me more and more about some useless information.
A cross, especially the cross of Christ (old word).
They looked suspiciously like lost metal roods or, from a different angle, the fragile ribs of some alien ship.
Not broken, not touched, kept safe.
I wanted a closed, inviolate and most of all immutable space.
That cannot change.
I wanted a closed, inviolate and most of all immutable space.
A small, vague idea or suspicion.
At least I should have had some fucking inkling what I was getting into when I read this note, written just one day before he died: January 5, 1997 Whoever finds and publishes this work shall be entitled to all proceeds.
A short note that gives the work to whoever finds and publishes it. The phrase about wine and a wedding night echoes Ecclesiastes 9:7: “eat thy bread with joy, and drink thy wine with a merry heart”.
At least I should have had some fucking inkling what I was getting into when I read this note, written just one day before he died: January 5, 1997 Whoever finds and publishes this work shall be entitled to all proceeds.
Johnny says this book does not exist. It is his first example of the invented sources in Zampanò’s footnotes.
For instance, Gavin Young’s Shots In The Dark doesn’t exist nor does The Work £ bert Ho Bancro Vo - On the other hand virtually any dimwit can go to a library and find W.
A stupid person.
For instance, Gavin Young’s Shots In The Dark doesn’t exist nor does The Work £ bert Ho Bancro Vo - On the other hand virtually any dimwit can go to a library and find W.
A real 1921 book by the classical scholars W. M. Lindsay and H. J. Thomson, on Latin word lists of the Middle Ages. Johnny names it as a source that does exist.
M. Lindsay and H.
Skylab was the first American space station. In December 1973 the tired crew of the last mission, Skylab 4, took an unplanned day off and cut radio contact with Mission Control for part of a day. The press called it a “strike” or “mutiny”.
There really was a “rebellion” on the 1973 Skylab mission but La Belle Nicoise et Le Beau Chien is made up as is, I assume, the bloody story of Quesada and Molino.
French: “The Beautiful Woman from Nice and The Handsome Dog”. Johnny says this work is made up, and he assumes the story of Quesada and Molino is made up too. The reader has not met these yet.
There really was a “rebellion” on the 1973 Skylab mission but La Belle Nicoise et Le Beau Chien is made up as is, I assume, the bloody story of Quesada and Molino.
The Ivy League is a group of eight old, famous American universities. The Library of Alexandria in ancient Egypt was the largest library of the ancient world. “World Net” is Johnny’s word for the Internet.
In retrospect, I also realize there are probably numerous people who would have been better qualified to handle this work, scholars with PhDs from Ivy League schools and minds greater than any Alexandrian Library or World Net.
The Whitley is the name of Zampanò’s building. Whitley Heights is a real historic district of Hollywood, near Franklin Avenue.
Problem is those people were still in their universities, still on their net and nowhere near Whitley when an old man without friends or family finally died.
Dry and slightly bitter in humor.
But his humor was that wry, desiccated kind soldiers whisper, all their jokes subsurface, their laughter amounting to little more than a tic in the corner of the mouth, told as they wait together in their outpost, slowly realizing that …
Completely dried out.
But his humor was that wry, desiccated kind soldiers whisper, all their jokes subsurface, their laughter amounting to little more than a tic in the corner of the mouth, told as they wait together in their outpost, slowly realizing that help’s …
A small movement of a muscle that you cannot control.
But his humor was that wry, desiccated kind soldiers whisper, all their jokes subsurface, their laughter amounting to little more than a tic in the corner of the mouth, told as they wait together in their outpost, slowly realizing that help’s not going to reach them in time and come nightfall, no matter what they've done or …
Johnny compares Zampanò’s humor to that of soldiers in an outpost who know help will not come before night. The image of soldiers, an outpost and slaughter at nightfall returns in the seven names on page xxii.
… together in their outpost, slowly realizing that help’s not going to reach them in time and come nightfall, no matter what they've done or what they try to say, slaughter will overrun them all. Carrion dawn for vultures.
The dead, rotting flesh of an animal. Vultures eat carrion.
… together in their outpost, slowly realizing that help’s not going to reach them in time and come nightfall, no matter what they've done or what they try to say, slaughter will overrun them all. Carrion dawn for vultures.
The very beginning (“from the get go”).
Zampano knew from the get go that what’s real or isn’t real doesn’t matter here.
A long line of French forts built in the 1930s on the German border. In 1940 the German army went around it through Belgium, so it became a symbol of a defense that fails. Zampanò uses it as an image of irony.
Irony can never be more than our own personal Maginot Line; the drawing of it, for the most part, purely arbitrary.”
Chosen by chance or by will, not by a reason or rule.
Irony can never be more than our own personal Maginot Line; the drawing of it, for the most part, purely arbitrary.”
Johnny says this book does not exist, but he is wrong. Hubert Howe Bancroft (1832–1918) published a real 39-volume history of western North America under this title. So Johnny, too, makes mistakes.
Itchy & Scratchy is the very violent cat-and-mouse cartoon inside The Simpsons. Calvin and Hobbes is a gentle comic strip by Bill Watterson (1985–1995) about a boy and his toy tiger.
At first I figured Zampand was just a bleak old dude, the kind who makes Itchy and Scratchy look like Calvin and Hobbes.
An American photographer (born 1939) known for dark staged photos with corpses, body parts and people with deformities. Johnny says Zampanò’s flat was nothing like that.
His apartment, however, didn’t come close to anything envisioned by Joel-Peter Witkin or what's routinely revealed on the news.
Made of many different kinds of things.
Sure his place was eclectic but hardly grotesque or even that far out of the ordinary, until of course you took a more careful look and realized—hey why are all these candles unused?
Strange and ugly in a frightening or disgusting way.
Sure his place was eclectic but hardly grotesque or even that far out of the ordinary, until of course you took a more careful look and realized—hey why are all these candles unused?
Braille is the system of raised dots that blind people read by touch. The Braille Institute is a Los Angeles charity for the blind. USC, UCLA and Santa Monica College are schools in Los Angeles where Zampanò’s volunteer readers came from.
Almost half the books he owned were in Braille, Lude and Flaze both confirmed that over the years the old guy had had numerous readers visiting him during the day.
Very simple and strict, with no comforts.
He really lived a very austere life.
These seven women’s names are also the names of the French strongpoints (hill positions) at the Battle of Dien Bien Phu in Vietnam, 13 March to 7 May 1954. The Viet Minh defeated the French army there, and the French Foreign Legion lost many men. A popular legend says the posts carried the names of the French commander’s mistresses.
As I eventually found out, Zampano had seven names he would occasionally mention: Béatrice, Gabrielle, Anne-Marie, Dominique, Eliane, Isabelle and Claudine.
Very sad; not able to be comforted.
He apparently only brought them up when he was disconsolate and for whatever reason dragged back into some dark tangled time.
Helen of Troy, the most beautiful woman in Greek myth. Her abduction started the Trojan War. Johnny says seven lovers are more realistic than one mythical Helen.
At least there’s something more realistic about seven lovers than one mythological Helen.
A person with a compulsion to write all the time.
Zampano was in essence—to use another big word—a graphomaniac.
Openly and without shame.
He scribbled until he died and while he came close a few times, he never finished anything, especially the work he would unabashedly describe as either his masterpiece or his precious darling.
Moving from subject to subject; long and wandering.
Even the day before he failed to appear in that dusty courtyard, he was dictating long discursive passages, amending previously written pages and restructuring an entire chapter.
Hard to understand; also slow to understand.
With a little luck, you’ll dismiss this labor, react as Zampano had hoped, call it needlessly complicated, pointlessly obtuse, prolix—your word—, ridiculously conceived, and you’ll believe all you’ve said, and then you’1l put it aside—though even here, just that one word, “aside”, makes me shudder, for what is ever really just put aside?—and …
Too long; using too many words.
With a little luck, you’ll dismiss this labor, react as Zampano had hoped, call it needlessly complicated, pointlessly obtuse, prolix—your word—, ridiculously conceived, and you’ll believe all you’ve said, and then you’1l put it aside—though even here, just that one word, “aside”, makes me shudder, for what is ever really just put aside?—and you’1ll …
A phrase from the Bible (Ecclesiastes 8:15 and Luke 12:19): enjoy life while you can.
… and you’ll believe all you’ve said, and then you’1l put it aside—though even here, just that one word, “aside”, makes me shudder, for what is ever really just put aside?—and you’1ll carry on, eat, drink, be merry and most of all you’ll sleep well, Then again there’s a good chance you won't.
Johnny asks you to add your own layer of notes. The book already has three layers: Zampanò’s text, Johnny’s footnotes, and the Editors’ notes. Each layer has its own typeface: Zampanò in Times, Johnny in Courier, the Editors in Bookman.
You might try scribbling in a journal, on a napkin, maybe even in the margins of this book.
Showing many changing colors, like a soap bubble.
Even with all that iridescent magic up there, your eye will no longer linger on the light, it will no longer trace constellations.
A guard who watches.
You'll care only about the darkness and you’1ll watch it for hours, for days, maybe even for years, trying in vain to believe you’re some kind of indispensable, universe-appointed sentinel, as if just by looking you could actually keep it all at bay.
The date Johnny signs his Introduction: Halloween.
And then the nightmares will begin. — Johnny Truant October 31, 1998 Hollywood, CA Xxiii
One question in German on an empty page.
German: “Must it be?” Beethoven wrote “Muss es sein? Es muss sein!” (“Must it be? It must be!”) over the last movement of his String Quartet No. 16, Op. 135 (1826), and called the movement “The difficult decision”. Milan Kundera uses the same phrase in The Unbearable Lightness of Being (1984). The epigraph gives only the question, not the answer.
Muss es sein?
“Must it be?”
Muss es sein?