Blog 9

House of leaves was a very interesting book. Form the content to the layout everything carried some sort of meaning and moved not only the story along but the reading. From the very first page I was sucked into Truant’s struggle with the ominous book that he had stumbled across. I was curious to find out what it the book Zampano had written but I was also very cautious and a little frightened by Johnny’s tail of getting lost in the book.
The layout of the pages was very interesting to me. On page 425 the writing on the page begins to take on the form of the endless hallways of Navidon’s house. The boxes of text get smaller and smaller mirroring Navidon’s journey through a tight passage. When he reaches a large room Danielewski uses just one word on a page to illustrate Navidon’s smallness in the immense maze that he is caught up in. this use of text as illustration appeals to me because I see thing in a more visual way.
Similarly on pages 468-483 small bursts of text appear almost randomly on the page. This shows Navidon’s aloneness as well as the darkness that he has encountered.
The illustration, broken text, footnotes, and the scattered appendices are all-similar to styles used in hypertexts on story space and others. This added reading to the normal book all goes to make a more emissive experience when reading. I also found myself looking things up online. Mostly the references to see if some were real. And to try and make some sense out of why they were used. Most of them weren’t real. Although in some books this would create something unreal but the way that Danielewski used them constantly referencing back and in between made up author created a reality all its own.
Truant’s story followed Navidon’s very well and although he was in the real world he was just as lost and obsessed as Navision in his search for answers revolving around Zampano’s book. Both of these main characters were haunted by their obsession with the house/text. And in the end they could not escape from their obsession.

blog 7

From the current reading it is very apparent that materiality is something that is very important to Hayles. She discusses the importance of materiality in pretty much every chapter of her book Writing Machines. All this talk of how important this concept is culminates in chapters five through seven where Hayles discusses Artist Books. Artist books use the medium of the book and in most cases the materiality of the book.
I was very interested in these chapters I have had several opportunities to explore and even create artist books in a few classes that I have taken. I have also seen many artist books at the artist book collection on the fourth floor of the library. This was a topic that I found I could relate to and understand much more than previous chapters of the book. Artist books rely heavily on the materiality of the book. From the examples that Hayles wrote about and the books that I have seen many of them can be sculptural in there making and rely on the way the book is made and put together. from the covers to the pages and layout of the letters everything has meaning and creates a message. Using this idea with hypertext makes the reader think about not only what he is reading but how what he is reading was made and why. Also you have to think about what you are reading from whether you are reading on a laptop or a desktop or a projected screen all these can change the way a hypertext is read and interacted with.
I think that materiality is very important for reading or interacting with any literature. All the different ways a book can be put together using different fonts and different sentence structures can all be very important to the themes and meaning of the literature. If the book is old and worn it can carry meaning to a certain person who may have fond memories about the book. The old sayings don’t judge a book by its cover comes to mind. Maybe it is time to judge a book or any literature by its cover rather than just the words inside it.