1. Tell us a bit about the essay you wrote for JNT.
I believe one of the most useful frameworks for analyzing narrative is by reading a novel through its handling of a fundamental tension between stability and dynamism. In “Between Object and Discourse,” I argue that Mark Z. Danielewski’s House of Leaves dramatizes this tension, by presenting the physical book as an artifact of the story- world, published by its editor Johnny Truant in the form that the reader holds. This stable, anchoring artifact is in opposition to the novel’s unreliable and frequently dishonest character-narrators. The novel’s notorious irony, provocation, and potential alienation are notorious, frequently undercutting anything the reader is led to believe is “true,” even mocking the reader for thinking there might be some truth to be found. Yet while that is the case, by offering the book as an artifact, Danielewski gives the reader something that would seem to stabilize its world against the destabilizing narratives of its characters, encouraging the reader to continue the search, despite the narrative mocking them for it. Rather than simply being internally contradictory or one side winning over the other, I argue that this is an oscillating pattern that continually revitalizes the reader’s investment in the narrative. The narrative tricks sketch out an authorial persona who wants the reader to know he is superior to that reader, the text’s god-author, but because that narrative is anchored to an object, the actual Danielewski gives the reader the basis to resist that authorial presence. While those narrative tricks might lead a reader to feel nothing in the story mattered, instead the reader is empowered and put in a position where they themselves are integrated into the story’s ultimate meaning.
2. What inspired you to research this topic?
That last point is at the foundation of why I set out to craft this argument. I find, both in scholarship and with general readers, that people often dismiss novels with unnatural narrative elements as novels where “nothing matters,” or novels that are more interested in being “clever” than a compelling narrative, something that was entirely contrary to my experience with House of Leaves when I first read it years ago. As a veteran of countless internet debates about why the characters and the “truth” of the story matter (both for House of Leaves and for other similarly unnatural narratives), I felt it was worth a study of how such narratives can provoke, even mock, their readers, without pushing the reader so much that they give up on the narrative, or come away from it feeling cheated.
3. What was the most exciting thing about this project for you?
In the early stages of developing the argument, I realized there was a risk of it stalling out at a well-studied surface-level tension between the competing documents that make up the novel, so to me, the most exciting part was how the pieces continued to fall into place the more I peeled back the layers. A notorious bit in the novel is Danielewski spelling his name across the first letters of a series of footnotes. Initially, I found it hard to incorporate that fact into any serious affirmative reading; either I had to ignore it, or my belief that the story and characters matter was faced with a seemingly a hollow center where he’s laughing at the silly reader. But when I put this moment alongside some of his interviews, where he makes outlandish statements like there being no errors in the novel (demonstrably untrue), and when I read these moments as part of a larger performance of a trickster figure playing at being a god of his narrative, and see the way that the artifact of that narrative allows us to read against even that performance, it felt confirmational. All that aside, it was a process where the more I worked, the more it reinvigorated my enjoyment of that novel. It’s always appreciated when the research process doesn’t kill (or in contrast, outright restores) the pleasure of a novel.
4. Has your research on this topic changed the way you see the world today?
The tension between the cognitive framing effects of narrative, opposed to the stabilizing presence of artifacts, has always been important, but is especially so in the current political climate. This is even more so with social media, where narratives can be so pervasive, and repeated to the point where they become truth and people ignore the seemingly stable evidence available. Adding deepfakes, a potential digital dark age ahead of us, and the offloading of thought to AI, I think it’s more important than ever for us to develop an awareness of the tension between object and discourse.
5. What’s next for you?
Some of my more recent work has been with video game narrative, particularly open-world games, where the interactivity and agency given to the player sometimes risk the ability to compose a meaningful, sequenced narrative experience for that player, and how game designers mediate that challenge. Broadly speaking, my focus there shares a concern with this essay, in the tension between stability and dynamics, or constants and variables, as the key driving force of narrative. While I would consider developing that perspective further, my main priority always is teaching.
