House of Leaves (29 page)

[148—See Exhibit One.]

Sebastiano Pérouse de Montcbs, however, has written a sizable examination on the changes within the house; positing that they in fact follow Andrea Palladio’s structural derivations.

By way of a quick summary, Palladian grammar seeks to organize space through a series of strict rules. As Palladio proved, it was possible to use his system to generate a number
of
layouts such as Villa Badoer, Villa Emo, Villa Ragona, Villa Poiana, and of course Villa Zeno. In essence there
a
re only eight steps:

1. Grid definition

2. Exterior-wall definition

3. Room layout

4. Interior-wall realignment

5.
Principal entrances—porticos and

exterior wall inflections

6. Exterior ornamentation—columns

7. Windows and Doors

8. Termination [14
9
—
For an exemplary look at Palladian gra
mmar in action, see William J. M
itchell’s
The Logic of Architecture: Design, Computation, and Cognition
[C
ambri
dge, Massachusetts: The MIT Press,
1994), p. 152-181. As well as An
drea Palladio’s
The Four Books of Architecture
(1570) trans. Isaac Ware
(N
ew York: Dover, 1965).
]

P
érouse de Montclos relies on these steps to delineate
h
ow Navidson’s house was (1.0) first established (2.0) mited (3.0) sub-divided and (4.0) so on. He attempts to
co
nvince the reader that the constant refiguration of
d
oorways and walls represents a kind of geological loop the process of working out all possible forms, most
li
kely
ad infinitum,
but never settling because, as he states i his conclusion, “unoccu
pied space will never cease to ch
ange simply because nothing forbids it to do
so. The co
ntinuous internal alterations only prove that such a
h
ouse is necessarily uninhabited.”
[150—
Sebastiano Pérouse de Montclos’
Palladian Grammar and Metaphysical
Ap
propriations: Navidson’s Villa Malcontenta
(Englewood Cliffs: Prentice
Hall, 1996), p. 2,865.
Also see Aristides Quine’s
Concatenating Corbusier
(New York: American Elsevier, 1996) in which Quine applies Corbusier’s Five Points to the Navidson house thereby proving, in his mind, the limitations and hence irrelevance of Palladian grammar. While these conclusions are somewhat questionable, they are not without merit. In particular, Quine’s treatment of the Villa Savoye and the Domino House deserves special attention. Finally consider Gisele Urbanati Rowan Lell’s far more controversial piece “Polypod Or Polylith?: The Navidson Creation As Mechanistic/ Linguistic Model” in
Abaku Banner Catalogue,
v. 198, January 1996, p.
515-597,
in which she treats the “house-shifts” as evidence of polylithic dynamics and hence structure. For a point of reference see Greenfield and Schneider’s “Building a Tree Structure. The Development of Hierarchical Complexity and Interrupted Strategies in Children’s Construction Activity” in
Developmental Psychology,
13, 1977, p. 299-313.
]

Thus, as well as prompting formal inquiries into the ever elusive internal shape of the house and the rules governing those shifts, Sebastiano Pérouse de Montclos also broaches a much more
commonly discussed matter: the question of occupation. Though few will ever agree on the meaning of the configurations or the absence of style in that place, no
one has yet to disagree that the
labyri
nth is still a house.
[151—Which also happens to maintain a curious set of constants. Consider —

Temperature:
32F ±8.

Light:
absent.

Silence:
complete *

Air Movement
(i.e. breezes, drafts etc.): none

True North:
DNE

* With the exception of the ‘growl’.]

Therefore
the question soon arises
whether or not it is someone’s
house Though if so whose? Whose
was it or even whose
is
it? Thus
giving voice to another suspicion:
could the owner still be there?
Questions which echo the snippet of
gospel Navidson alludes to in his
letter to Karen [152—S
ee Chapter XVII.
] —
St. John, chapter
14—where Jesus says:

In my Father’s house are
many rooms: if
it
were
not
so,
I would have told you.
I go to prepare a place for
you…

Something to be taken l
iterally as well as ironically. [1
53
—
Also not to be forgotten is the terror Jacob feels when he encounters the territories of the divine: “How dreadful is this place! this is none other but the house of God, and this is the gate of heaven.” (Genesis 28:17)
]

It is not surprising then that when Holloway’s earn finally begins the long trek back, they discover the
s
taircase is much farther away than they had anticipated,
LS
if in their absence the distances had stretched. They
a
re forced to camp for a
fourth night thus necessitating
strict rationing of food, water, and
light
(i.e.
batteries). On the morning of the fifth day, they reach the stairs and begin the long climb up. Aside from the fact that the diameter of the Spiral Staircase is now more than seven hundred and fifty feet wide, the ascent moves fairly quickly.

During the walk down, Holloway had prudently decided to leave provisions along the way, thus lightening their load and at the same time allocating needed supplies for their return. Though Holloway had initially estimated they would need no
more than eight hours to reach the first of these caches, it ends up taking
t
hem nearly twelve hours. At last at their destination, hey quickly set up cam
p and collapse in their tents. O
ddly enough, despite their exhaustion, all of them find
i
t very difficult to fall asleep.

On the sixth day, they still make an early start. [‘he knowledge that t
hey are heading back keeps Wax an
d Jed’s spirits elevat
ed. Holloway, however, remains u
ncharacteristically sallow, revealing what critic Melisa fao Janis calls “a sign of [his] deepening, atrabilious
obsession with the unpresent.” [1
54
—
Melisa Tao Janis’ “Hollow Newel Ruminations” in
The Anti-Present
T
runk,
ed. by Philippa Frake (Oxford: Phaidon, 1995), P. 293.
]

Nevertheless, the climb still proceeds smoothly, intil Holloway discovers the remains of one of their foot
l
ong neon markers barel
y clinging to the wall. It has b
een badly mauled, half o
f the fabric torn away by some u
nimaginable claw. Even worse their next cache has been gutted. Only traces of the
plastic water jug remain along w
ith a few scattered pie
ces of PowerBars. Fuel for the campfire
stove has completely disappeared.

“That’s nice,” Wax murmurs.

“Holy shit!” Jed hisses.

Emily O’Shaugnessy points out in
The Chicago ntropy Journal
the importance of this discovery: “Here
Lt
last are the first signs—evidenced ironically enough by he expurgation of a neon sign and the team’s proviions—of the house’s powerful ability to exorcise any Lnd all things from its midst.”
[
F
—
Emily O’Shaugnessy, “Metaphysical Emetic” in
Chicago Entropy Journal,
(M
emphis, Tennessee, v.
182, n. 17, May, 1996.
]

Holloway Roberts is not nearly as analytical. He responds as a hunter and the image that fills the frame is a weapon. Kneeling beside his pack, we watch as he pulls out his Weatherby 300 magnum and carefully inspects both the bolt and the scope mounts before loading five 180 grain Nosier Partition® rounds in the magazine. As he chambers a sixth round, a glimmer of joy flickers
across Holloway’s features, as if
finally something about that place
has begun to make sense.

Fueled by the discovery,
Holloway insists on exploring at
least some of the immediate hallways
branching off the staircase.
Soon enough he is stalking doorways,
leading the dancing moon of
Jed’s flashlight with the barrel of his
rifle, and always listening. Corners,
however, only reveal more corners,
and Jed’s light only targets ashen
wal
ls, though soon enough they all
begin to detect that inimitable
growl, [155—I
n describing the Egyptian labyrinth, Pliny noted how “when the doors open there is a terrifying rumble of thunder within.”
]
^X
like calving glaciers, far off in the distance, which at least in the mind’s eye, inhabits a thin line where rooms and passageways must finally concede to become a horizon.

“The growl almost always comes like the rustle of a high mountain wind on the trees,” Navidson explained later. “You hear it first in the distance, a gentle rumble, slowly growing louder as it descends, until finally it’s all around you, sweeping over you, and then past you, until it’s gone, a mile away, two miles away, impossible to follow.”
[
156
—
The Last Interview
.
]

Esther Newhost in her essay “Music as Place in
The Navidson Record”
provides an interesting interpretation of this sound:
“Goethe once remarked in a letter to Johann Peter Eckermann March 23, 1829]: ‘I call architecture frozen music.”
[
157
—I
ch die Baukunsi elne ersiarrie Musik nenne.
]
The unfreezing of form in the Navidson house releases that music. Unfortunately, since it contains all the harmonies of time and change, only the immortal may savor it. Mortals cannot help but fear those curmurring walls. After all do they not still sing the song of our end?”
[1
58
—
Esther Newhost’s “Music as Place in
The Navidson Record”
in
The Many Wall Fugue,
ed. Eugenio Rosch & Joshua Scholfield (Farnborough: Greg International, 1994), p. 47.
]

For Holloway, it is impossible to merely accept the growl as a quality of that place anymore. Upon seeing the torn marker and their lost water, he seems to transfigure the eerie sound into an utterance made by some definitive creature, thus providing him
w
ith something concrete to pursue. Holloway almost
s
eems drunk as he rushes after the sound, failing to lay own any fishing line or hang neon markers, rarely even topping to rest.

Jed and Wax do n
ot draw the same conclusion as H
olloway. They realize, and quite accurately too, that
even though they are traveling farther and farther away from the staircase, they are not getting any closer to the source of the growl. They insist on turning around. Holloway first promises to investigate just a little while longer, then resorts to goading, calling them anything from “fucking pussies” and “cowards” to “jack- holes” and “come-guzzling shit-eating cunts.” Suffice it to say this last comment does not steel Wax and Jed’s resolve to hunt the great beast.

They both stop.

Enough is enough. They are
tired and more than a little con
c
erned. Their bodies ache
from the constant cold. Their ne
rves have been eviscerated by the constant darkness. ‘hey are low on battery power (i.e. light), neon markers,
and
fishing line. Furthermore, the destroyed cache of
s
upplies could indicate their other caches are in jeopardy. I that proves to be the c
ase, they will not have enough w
ater to even make it back within radio range of Navid
son.