The book is formatted by academic publishing conventions, including exhibits, appendices, and an index, as well as numerous footnotes. This framing device results in multiple narrative voices, including the book's supposed author, compiler, and editors, as well as the documentary's cast, whose relationships to each other give rise to inconsistencies and mysteries. A bestseller, it has been translated into a number of languages, and is followed by a companion piece, The Whalestoe Letters.Ī work of pseudepigrapha, House of Leaves purports to be a monograph critiquing a documentary film, while simultaneously narrating the events of the film, in which a family discovers a seemingly endless labyrinth in their house. Danielewski, published in March 2000 by Pantheon Books. House of Leaves is the debut novel by American author Mark Z.
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He began his political career as Whig, but rejected their association with the dissenters. He was an advocate for Anglicanism, which had to resist the forces of Roman Catholicism and Protestant Dissenters. Swift believed it was his duty to help maintain stability between political and religious forces in Ireland (as well as England). He desired to gain religious and political power in England. Swift left Ireland in 1689 amidst the Glorious Revolution. while being chastised, censored, and fined for causing trouble. There he attended Trinity College in Dublin. Swift’s family moved to England after his birth, but at age 3, Swift returned to Ireland to live with his uncle. He writes in a journal about Ireland:Īnd then stand by to see fair play.” (King) He was actually quite dismayed with Ireland and its people because of the way it allowed England to overtake and control it. Swift read full text hereĪlthough Jonathan Swift was born in Ireland, he did not consider himself very Irish. “ A Modest Proposal for preventing the children of poor people in Ireland from being a burden on their parents or country, and for making them beneficial to the public” -J. Historical Context and Contemporary Reactions "I am not what you think I am," I said, and let her into my house, with her wet brown eyes and hands she kept clasped in front of her. "Are the stories true? Do you keep the fish from the bay so that the people starve? Do you dance in the moonlight? Did you sell your soul?" "They call you a witch," she said, smiling, moving facial muscles into toothy grin, like a silent growl. Sometimes it was a small, silver fish that flopped helplessly until it reached the water-or did not, lying, rotting, in the sunshine. Sometimes a walrus, growing until the human body burst apart, revealing tusk and tooth. A wave made them crumple, skin sagging and bloated, until their flesh fell apart, obliterated by the blue, leaving a clean, new creature beneath: sometimes a seal, wet coat slick, brown eyes still human. If they touched the water, if they slipped or tripped or dared, the spray made them scream, mouths wide, tongues distended. He wouldn't let them, and they obeyed him. "That's what he named you?" I asked, arms folded before me. "Nor," she said, sticking out her hand as if she expected me to shake it. I knew, and I said nothing, because we were all, in our own way, monsters. When she came up the path, feet quiet, deliberate, I knew it from the way she moved, the webbing between her bare toes, how she faltered when she reached the lighthouse landing, like she had never seen things like stairs before. |