House of Leaves/Moby Dick

I think some books cry out for comparison. I don't know if it's just a personal fascination or if it's the whole postmoderness of the book, but House of Leaves has been begging to be so treated since I finished it a few weeks ago.

The first comparison that came to mind was City of Saints and Madmen. Both seem to borrow every trick imaginable from the postmodern playbook. But that's too obvious to get into.

The second comparison that came to mind was Choke, since Johnny Truant (HoL) and Victor Mancini (Choke) seem to be blood brothers. They both had rough childhoods with absent fathers, crazy mothers, and multiple foster homes. Both are too smart for their own good, but have chosen to drop out of society and pursue meaningless sexual encounters and marginal employment while accompanied by dim-watt best friends. But I've posted about Palahniuk enough for the moment.

But I think the most noteworthy comparison is between House of Leaves and Moby Dick. Sure, Melville's whale is white while the main characteristic of the house's interior is its blackness. And Navidson seems believably sympathetic while Ahab is operatically nutso. Still, both are hunts after an enigma which seems capable of swallowing up everything around it.

And like their main characters, there's an obsessiveness to the narratives as of an attempt to overwhelm or fill up the enigma. Both novels are incredibly digressive, frequently stopping the plot and devoting entire chapters to reviewing all the current scholarship of the subject at hand. It's the kind of thing that can drive a reader nuts, until you just sort of give up and go with it.*

There's a sense that it's not enough to write a novel about a house or a whale; it has to be the novel about houses or whales, exhausting all human knowledge and experience. Which only serves to heighten the sense of the consuming enigma at the center of the narrative and man's vulnerability in the face of a vast reality. Or at least, that's my take on it.

* A personal note: I have a double standard about author digressions, forgiving them in literary works but becoming incredibly irritated when I encounter them in more pulpy material (see Koontz & Stoker for examples). When you can write three dimensional characters or plots that don't show all the gears and wires, I'll sit through your discussion of the history of noh dramas. Until then, get thee to an editor!

Another note, which I should have perhaps included above. I find it interesting that Ahab has to set sail to find Moby Dick whereas Navidson's quest all takes place within his own house. When Melville was writing, it still made sense to talk about "the frontier," about Manifest Destiny, about an America looking outwards to expand. HoL, by contrast, is definitely looking inwards. Not to suggest it's isolationist, but perhaps an emphasis on domesticity or grappling with our interior demons.

That's a very interesting comparison Carlos! I don't think I would have ever thought of it but you do make some good points. It's been a while since I read House of Leaves--though I did read his Only revolutions last year--and quite a while longer since I read Moby Dick. I could almost say of Danielewski's book that it might be a Melville mixed with Beckett then with a touch of Poe. The metaphysical themes seguing into existentialist almost gothic themes. Have you ever heard of Juli Zeh?--she seems to cover almost the same kind of territory in her Eagles and Angels.

Thanks for an interesting comparison, Carlos. Moby Dick is a favorite of mine. I haven't read House of Leaves, though you have piqued my interest.

I really like your note about author digressions. There's a different frame of mind one gets into, reading literary works vs. mainstream or genre fiction. It's not precisely that we read the latter for entertainment and the former for educational broadening, because I've found a lot of literary fiction to be enormously entertaining. But it's entertaining in a different way. With genre fiction, suspense keeps us breathlessly turning pages to find out what happens next, and a digression is death to suspense. With literary fiction, we want to read more slowly, I think, to savor and digest the insights it brings us. A well-written and appropriate "digression" doesn't detract from that, and can even deepen the intensity of our involvement with the novel's theme.

Iriley, I've never heard of Juli Zeh, but I'll have to check her stuff out. I think there's a lot of authors who've covered similar ground, though Danielewski does it in his own unique way. Thomas Ligotti writes postmodern horror which dwells on themes of existentialism, though he's ultimately more of a nihilist. Julio Cortázar also features a mix of gothic and surreal sensibilities along with existentialist themes in his fiction. His Hopscotch, with it's radical structure, is probably a significant predecessor for House of Leaves.

margad, as much as I enjoyed House of Leaves, I feel I should warn you that it is very post-modern (what some might call high post-modern or post-post-modern) and I know that's a turn-off for a lot of people. There's footnotes galore, it's a text about a text about a movie, and the textual layout is sometimes distorted to match the structure of the house. (As when a character crawls through a duct and the text condenses to a 1" square in the center of the page.)

At some point, I read that Kurt Vonnegut had come up with some rules for writing fiction, #4 of which was something like: Every sentence should either move the plot forward or develop character. I tend to think that's way too strict (I would at least make an allowance for building atmosphere). I think it does reflect a good principle of writing and reading (and perhaps life in general) about avoiding unnecessary effort. I have to admit the long descriptions of whale scholarship do make my mind wander a bit, yet they definitely seem to be part of creating a mythic underpinning for the story. (And he seems to slip some foreshadowing in there as well) I think that mythic aspect of the story deepens what is otherwise just a story of one doomed whaling voyage, and that depth makes it a more engaging experience. Whereas, with a thriller, if the author's not building tension, either directly or indirectly, then what's the point? Not that a thriller can't do other stuff, but it really needs to be woven into the structure of the novel. (I think, for example, The Stepford Wives manages to sneak some social commentary in while still keeping things taught.)

I would add theme to Kurt Vonnegut's rule as well, although in many if not most cases, theme and character are intertwined. Most of what we would consider digressions in novels like Moby Dick support the theme, or should.

I have always felt there were strong comparisons between HoL and Moby-Dick and it was exciting to see someone else make the point. For me, the closest connection between the two is the construction of their central images; the White Whale and the House.

In both instances, the images are robust enough to stand up to nearly all reasonable interpretations. A convincing case can be made for the White Whale being a metaphor (or even allegory) for nearly any idea that can be pursued. This robustness is strengthened by the range of relationships presented between the White Whale and the characters. If we argue, as many have, that Moby-Dick is an allegory for the pursuit of freedom and democracy, than our relationships with those concepts are illuminated through the characters' relationships with the Whale. The ultimate result is that the White Whale also becomes a symbol for symbolism and Moby-Dick and exploration of how we understand and define ourselves through the symbols that define our understanding of the world.

I think the House in HoL succeeds on a similar level. The fact that it is defined by its blackness, as pointed out above, that it responds to exploration, that it is a kind of labyrinth, and that the characters all have different relationships with the House give it the robustness of the White Whale. Anything idea that can be explored without tangible result, could be interpreted through the House, which, like in Moby-Dick, extrapolates to an exploration of how we know.

HoL is a monumental novel and I hope more and more people read it.

I thought I'd drop a note regarding Verne's Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea which I started shortly after finishing Moby Dick. Verne is a little less digressive than Melville, but his digressions are a little less interesting because they're not really working on theme or character the way Melville's do. Leagues is light entertainment, and his non-fiction passages are the equivalent of encylopedic entries, meant mostly to inform a 19th Century reader.

Leagues is one of those books I've meant to read for years, mostly because I was a huge fan of the movie as a kid. (Though I also have a fondness for early sci-fi.) Reading it right after Moby Dick is an interesting experience, since I immediately came to the conclusion that Nemo makes for a fascinating comparison to Ahab. (Although I find the novel's version somewhat dull when compared to James Mason's classic performance.) Like Ahab, Nemo has taken to the seas in a somewhat obsessive quest for revenge, and doing so turned his back on the world. (However, Nemo's choice seems more calculated, less tragic.) In taking to the sea, Nemo has outfitted himself in a craft that poses as an indestructable, inscrutable monster. Nemo, in this way, is like a combination of Ahab and Moby Dick. (Again, I think this may be more true in the Disney version which plays up Nemo's amorality.)

Of course, Verne is a somewhat less powerful writer than Melville, so Leagues doesn't quite have the power of Moby Dick, though it makes for an interesting companion book.

(Incidentally, a google search I did for Melville and Verne turned up Critical Synoptics with an interesting observation: "Where Ahab makes the text a monster, Nemo makes the text a machine that looks like a monster.")

Carlos, your comparison of Twenty Thousand Leagues with Moby Dick made me think of how intensely my husband enjoyed the movie Star Wars. There's a cartoonish/mythic quality to both Star Wars and TTL because the characters are reduced to types rather than to the rounded personalities we find in literary novels. And the symbolism in the stories (Nemo's monstrous submarine, Darth Vader's breathing machine) is fantastical rather than realistic (like the white whale). But it's there, and can be powerful for some readers/viewers nonetheless.

I often feel impatient with Sci-Fi/Fantasy novels because of stereotyped characters and symbolism that I find heavy-handed. On the other hand, I've always loved the Grimm's Fairy Tales, Celtic legends, Greek and Roman myths, etc. I have to admit, there's a similarity between those and novels like TTL.

I think the white whale is pretty fantastic also, though perhaps less so than the Nautilus. (Or at least for its time.) But the whale is more of a multivalent symbol, containing multitudes--so to speak. The Nautilus, on the other hand, is outwardly monstrous (or in geek-speak, cool) but inwardly simple, so it's ultimately less interesting. (I also think there's something weird--in a good way--about older myths and stories, as if the symbols don't quite make sense, that's fascinating.)

I was a huge fan of the movie of TTL as a kid. When everyone else wanted to be Luke Skywalker, I wanted to be Captain Nemo. (Well, and Zorro.) I actually rewatched the movie recently and thought it stood up fairly well, and if it were a little darker might actually match the whole idea of Nemo being Ahab + Moby Dick. (Which I find fascinating in some nebulous, perhaps Lovecraftian or Nietzchian way.) Although the book sort of points at that possibility, it never really lives up to it. (And the most overtly Ahab-like individual is Cpt. Farragut who begins the search for "The Monster" which turns out to be the Nautilus.)

I think you're exactly right about the whale being a more complex symbol than the Nautilus and therefore more interesting - at least it is to me. I've seen the movie of TTL (one of my husband's favorites) and enjoyed it, but haven't read the novel. What you say about the movie actually having a bit more depth than the book reminds me of a comparison between Tom Clancy's novel The Hunt for Red October and the movie made from it. I've always felt the movie worked much better than the novel, because it maintains suspense over the Russian submarine captain's motivations until very late in the story, whereas in the novel his motivations are clear from, I believe, the first page - or very nearly.

Actually the white whale's behavior in the book is not fantastic - though the motivations Ahab assigns to it may be. Melville's inspiration for the novel was an actual case in which a whale attacked and destroyed a ship. I don't think Melville dealt with the most horrific aspect of that attack - some survivors stayed afloat in one of the lifeboats and were eventually rescued, but not before they resorted to cannibalism to stay alive.

For another comparison, Sena Jeter Naslund's fairly recent novel Ahab's Wife, tells the story of the whale attack. She fictionalizes it - telling the story as if it happened to Ahab - but I believe she stays pretty close to the record of the real case. Whales are pretty smart, so it's not surprising to find one attacking a whaling ship during the period of intense whale hunting.

Here is some info about the incident to which Margad refers above.

The book came with an intro which talked about the historical case, so I had read up on that. I guess the whale isn't technically fantastical, but the way the book its structured causes it to take on a larger-than-life aspect. The stories about people dying or losing limbs while hunting the whale especially seem to reinforce Ahab's potentially deluded view. Perhaps it's just the ambiguity of the book (or at least that was my perception) that makes the whale seem so fantastic. Perhaps I misread, but I don't think the book ever completely settles the question, "Is the whale evil or is Ahab just a loony?" On some level, yes, Ahab is just a nut who would have been better retiring once he had a debilitating accident, but I don't find it a completely satisfactory answer. And I guess to me that makes it sort of fantastic.

On the other hand, the submarine is just a submarine, and we can build those now using current technology, some of which would have been considered fantastic in Verne's era.

And I think the use of fantastic elements doesn't necessarily make for boring symbolism. TTL and Star Wars are intended as entertainment, so they're not going to be particularly deep either in fantastic or realistic elements. But the House in House of Leaves, while completely fantastic, isn't just "a haunted house."

Moby Dick, on the surface, is about how our obsessions can kill us, and often do. It points out as well how our obsessions are harmful to others. One other of Melville's novels, Pierre, works over this same ground, but in a more conventional mid-nineteenth century Victorian manner.

I doubt Melville used the Essex as anything more than the frame upon which to hang a tale of destructive obsession. As to whether the whale is evil or not, it represents the focus of Ahab's obsession, the whale is not evil, just pissed. Any evil imputed to the whale arises out of Ahab's previous encounter with it. Evil springs from the hearts of men.

Thanks for the link to the information on the Essex incident, Gene. I couldn't recall whether it had been a whaling ship, but indeed it was.

I don't think you misread, Carlos - there was indeed an aura of myth about the white whale in Moby Dick, even if he wasn't literally a creature of fantasy. You make a good point about the repeated, futile efforts to kill the white whale, which suggest it was a sort of super-whale who, perhaps, can't be killed. And yet Melville never crosses the boundary that would make the stories about the whale genuinely unbelievable - each specific incident is completely realistic; it's the cumulative effect of them, and the overlay of Ahab's monomania that create an impression of the mythic. Perhaps that's part of what Melville was trying to tell readers - that we create the fantastic by the way we interpret events.

Ahab certainly considered the whale to be evil. The interesting thing is that one can turn the perspectives around - whalers were in the process of systematically hunting whales to near-extinction (the carnage might be compared to the hunting of the buffalo for their pelts during the same century), so from the whale's perspective, it was Ahab and his ilk who could be considered evil.

My problem with the concept of evil is that it implies a Manichaean world-view in which those who act in destructive and hurtful ways are seen as irredeemably and totally bad. The comparison with Ahab's Wife becomes relevant at this point, because Naslund's novel depicts the early days of Ahab's marriage, showing him as a loving and loved husband. So he wasn't irredeemably and totally bad. In a sense, he and the whale were mirror images of each other, perpetuating a cycle of destruction. The whale struck back for revenge against the whaling ships that had tried to kill him; then Ahab sought revenge against the whale that had tried to kill him.

>15 margad: Hi margad. I come to this group and topic from EF's Ulysses group, noting that your last post was on James Joyce's birthday. Also from christiguc"s MonthyAuthorReads/Will Cather/Death Comes for the Archbishop reviews/emily_morine/Books Compared. And mostly--Moby Dick.

I don't have a book comparison at hand, but in that spirit I have 2 books on my TBR stack. Sea Wolf and Arthur Gordon Pym. There are some who believe there is a literary thread from P-M-S. I'll have to see for myself.

But back to MD. You don't have to look past MD to see that Ahab is not irredeemable and totally bad. Before we even meet him, Captain Peleg says: "stricken, blasted, if he be, Ahab has his humanities!" Just before we meet Moby Dick, Ahab has a one-on-one with Starbuck: "stand close to me, Starbuck; let me look into a human eye; . . . this is the magic glass, man; I see my wife and my child in thine eye."

Moby-Dick is many layers deep, so that it can be read as a graphic novel (which is what they call comics these days, I guess) or as a subject of erudite literary criticism (i.e., Norton Edition). So I wouldn't disparage anyone's thoughts on M-D.

My take on Ahab is that he is unerringly driven to the white whale. Starbuck cannot convince him to give up the chase, to return to wife and child. The force driving him is to answer the question, why? or why me? Ahab was at the top of his form, invincible in his domain, when he was struck down by a bolt of lightning. Then struck again with a blow from the jaw of the white whale. He was shown his mortality, and the answer lay behind the "white shadow" of Moby Dick.

My take on Moby Dick is that he is a curmudgeon of a whale. He is attacked by the boats of the Pequod for two days running and gives minimal response. He can't be bothered. On the third day he has had quite enough, thank you, and finishes off the ship, ignoring Ahab. Nothing personal. Ahab remains convinced his destiny is entwined with the whale, throws a last harpoon, and is caught up in a loop of the whale line, garroted before he can drown.

My take on the book, Moby-Dick, is that it is all about Ishmael. He appears on the first page and is there at the last. But I have already gone on too long and have covered this patch of sea elsewhere.

I am intrigued by House of Leaves and am adding it to my TBR.

Thank you for that quote from Moby Dick, Wilf. It's an important point to me, because I fear that portrayals of human beings as evil (or even, in fiction, elves, wizards, angels, robots, whales, etc., because they nevertheless imply the human), make it too easy for us to justify our own destructive impulses. Who's to decide when a person has slipped over the line and become "evil" and therefore undeserving of being treated as a human being? And when we begin treating human beings as if they were not human, do we not become "evil" ourselves?

It reminds me of an interesting article I read recently somewhere about Gregory Maguire, who said that before he began writing Wicked (a novel that enthralled me - and I'm not a big fan of fantasy novels), he really wanted to write about Hitler, but the task seemed too daunting, so he wrote about the Wicked Witch of the West instead, giving her side of the story.