Mark Z Danielewski

by House Of Leaves (pdf)

  2I6As you probably guessed, not only has Ken Burns never made any such comment, he's also never heard of The Navidson Record let alone Zampano.

  Jed crumples, his moment of joy stolen by a pinkie worth of lead, leaving him dead on the floor, a black pool of blood spilling out of him.

  In the next shots—mostly from the Hi 8s—we watch Navidson dragging Wax and Jed out of harm's way while trying at the same time to get Tom on the radio.

  Reston returns fire with an HK .45.

  "Since when did you bring a gun?" Navidson asks, crouching door.

  "Are you kidding me? This place is scary."

  Another shot explodes in the tiny room.

  Reston wheels back to the edge of the doorway and squeezes off three more rounds. This time there is no return fire. He reloads. A few more seconds pass.

  "I can't see a fucking thing," Reston whispers. Which is true: neither one of their flashlights can effectively penetrate that far into the black.

  Navidson grabs his backpack and pulls out his Nikon and the Metz strobe with its parabolic mirror.

  Thanks to this powerful flash, the Hi 8 can now capture a shadow in the distance. The stills, however, are even more clear, revealing that the shadow is really the blur of a man,

  standing dead centre

  with

  a rifle in his hand.

  Then just as the strobe captures him lifting the weapon, presumably now aiming at the blinding flash, we hear a series of sharp cracks. Neither Navidson nor Reston have any idea where these sounds are coming from, though gratefully the stills reveal what is happening:

  all those doors

  behind

  the man

  are slamming shut,

  one

  after

  another

  after

  another,

  which still does not prevent the figure from firing. "Awwwwwwwwwww shit!" Reston shouts. But Navidson keeps his Nikon steady and focused, the motor chewing up a whole roll of film as the flash angrily slashes out at the pre-

  vailing darkness, ultimately capturing

  this dark form

  vanishing

  behind a

  closing

  door,

  even though a hole the size of a fist punches through the muntin,

  the round powerful enough to propel the bullet into the second door,

  though

  powerful

  enough

  to do more

  than

  splinter

  a

  panel,

  before this damage along with even the sound from the blast disappears behind the roar of more slamming doors,

  finally hammering shut, leaving

  the room

  saturated in silence.

  Navidson sprints down the corridor to the first door but can find no way to lock it.

  "He's alive" Reston whispers. "Navy, come here. Jed's breathing." The camera captures Navidson's P.O.V. as he returns to the dying young man.

  "It doesn't matter Rest. He's still dead."

  Whereupon Navidson's eye quickly pans from the thoughtless splatter of grey matter and blood to more pressing things, the groan of the living calling him away from the sigh of the dead.

  Despite his shoulder wound and loss of blood, Wax is still very much alive. As we can see, a fever—probably due to the onset of an infection—has marooned him in a delirium and although his rescuers are now at hand his eyes remain fixed on a horizon that is both empty and meaningless. Navidson's shot of Jed, though brief, is not nearly as short as this shot of Wax.

  In the next segment, taken at least fifteen minutes later at a new location, we see Navidson elevating Wax's legs, cleaning the wound, and gently feeding him half a tablet of a painkiller, probably meperidine.[92]

  Reston, meanwhile, finishes converting their two-man tent into a makeshift stretcher. Having already arranged the tent poles in a way that will provide the most support, he now uses some pack straps to create two handles which will enable Navidson to carry the rear end more easily.

  "What about Jed?" Reston asks, as he begins securing the front end of the stretcher to the back of his wheelchair.

  "We'll leave his pack and mine behind."

  "Some habits die hard, huh?"

  "Or they don't die," replies Navidson.[93]

  A little later, Navidson gets Tom on the radio and tells him to meet them at the bottom of the stairs.

  La poete au cachot, debraille, maladif, Roulant un manuscrit sous son pied convulsif, Mesure d'un regard que la terreur enflamme L'escalier de vertige ou s 'abtme son ame.

  — Charles Baudelaire[94]

  While Karen stayed home and Will Navidson headed for the front line, Tom spent two nights in no man's land. He even brought his bag and papers, though in the long run the effects of the weed would not exacdy comfort him.

  More than likely when Tom first stepped foot in that place, every instinct in his body screamed at him to immediately get out, race back to the living room, daylight, the happy median of his life. Unfortunately it was not an impulse he could obey as he was needed near the Spiral Staircase in order to maintain radio contact.

  By his own admission, Tom is nothing like his brother. He has neither the fierce ambition nor the compulsion for risk taking. If both brothers paid the same price for their parents' narcissism, Will relied on aggression to anchor the world while Tom passively accepted whatever the world would give or take away. Consequently Tom won no awards, achieved no fame, held no job for more than a year or two, remained in no relationship for longer than a few months, could not settle down in a city for longer than a few years, and ultimately had no place or direction to call his own. He drifted, bending to daily pressures, never protesting when he was deprived of what he should have rightfully claimed as his own. And in this sad trip downstream, Tom dulled the pain with alcohol and a few joints a day—what he called his "friendly haze."

  Ironically though, Tom is better liked than Will. Physically as well as emotionally, Tom has far fewer edges than his famous brother. He is soft, easy-going and exudes a kind of peacefulness typically reserved for Buddhist monks.

  Anne Kligman's essay on Tom is nearly poetic in its brevity. In only one and a half pages, she condenses fifty-three interviews with Tom's friends, all of whom speak warmly and generously of a man they admittedly did not know all that well but nonetheless valued and in some cases appeared to genuinely love. Will Navidson, on the other hand, is respected by thousands but "has never commanded the kind of gut- level affection felt for his twin brother."[95]

  A great deal of exegesis exists on the unique relationship between these two brothers. Though not the first to make the comparison, Eta Ruccalla's treatment of Will Tom as contemporary Esau Jacob has become the academic standard. Ruccalla finds the biblical tale of twins wrestling over birthright and paternal blessing the ideal mirror in which to view Will Tom, "who like Jacob and Esau sadly come to share the same conclusion— yip- paredu,[96] "[97]

  Incredible as it may seem, Ruccalla's nine hundred page book is not one page too long. As she says herself, "To adequately analyze the history of Esau and Jacob is to painstakingly exfoliate, layer by layer, the most delicate mille-feuille."225

  Of course it is also an act that could in the end deprive the reader of all taste for the subject. Ruccalla accepts this risk, recognizing that an investment in such a complex, and without exception, time consuming

  Note: Regardless of your take on who's Navidson and who's Tom, here's a quick summary for those unfamiliar with this biblical story about twins. Esau's a hairy, dim- witted hunter. Jacob's a smooth-skinned, cunning intellectual. Daddy Isaac dotes on Esau because the kid always brings him venison. When the time finally comes for the paternal blessing, Isaac promises to give it to Esau as soon as he brings him some meat. Well while Esau's off hunting, Jacob, with help from his mother, covers his hands with goat hair so they resemble Esau's and then approaches his blind father wi
th a bowl full of stew. The ruse works and Isaac thinking the son before him is Esau blesses Jacob instead. When Esau returns, Isaac figures out what's happened but tells Esau he has no second blessing for him. Esau bawls like a baby and vows to kill Jacob. Jacob runs off and meets god. Years later the brothers meet up again, make up, but don't hang together for long. It's actually pretty sad. See Genesis, chapters 25-33. 225Eta Ruccalla's Not True, Man: Mi Ata Beni? p. 3.

  array of ideas will in the end yield a taste far superior to anything experienced casually.

  In the chapter entitled "Va-yachol, Va-yesht, Va- yakom, Va-yelech, Va-yivaz" Ruccalla reevaluates the meaning of birthright by treating its significance as nothing more than[98]

  anyway, right? Or not-alive, however you want to look at it.' I told him I didn't understand. So he just said it was 'too personal' 'an unrealized theme' 'poorly executed' 'a complete mess.'

  "He did grunt something about there never having been a blessing to begin with, which I thought was pretty interesting. No birthright, all of it a misleading ploy, both brothers fools, and as for the comparison to the Navilson [sic] twins he suddenly claimed it was justifiable only if you could compare any pair of siblings to Israel and his brother.

  "Zampano was clearly upset, so I tried fixing him something to eat. He eventually came around and we read some books on meteors.

  "I figured that was that, except when I went to the bathroom I found the pages. Or I should say I found what was left of them. He had torn them to shreds. They were in the wastebasket, some strewn on the floor, no doubt a fair share lost down the toilet.

  "As I started to pick them up, I also discovered that most of the pieces were stained with blood. I never learned what seizure caused him to rip it all apart but for whatever reason I was overcome by my own impulse to save what was left, not for me really, but for him.

  "I stuffed all the crumpled bits into my pockets and later transferred them to a manila envelope which I placed at the bottom of that chest. I guess I hoped he'd find it one day and realize his mistake."

  Unfortunately Zampano never did. Though for what it's worth I did. Bits of bloodstained paper, just like Denise Neiman said, all suggesting the

  rzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz

  but the Lord Yahweh—that too oft accused literalist — instructs Rebekah in the subtler ways of language by using irony:

  And the Lord said unto her, Two nations are in thy womb, and two manner of people shall be separated from thy bowels; and the one people shall be stronger than the other people; and the elder shall serve the younger.

  And when her days to be delivered were fulfilled, behold, there were twins in her womb.

  same theme but somehow never quite fitting back together.

  On more than a few occasions I even considered excluding all this. In the end though, I opted to transcribe the pieces which I figured had enough on them to have some meaning even if that meant not meaning much to me.

  One thing's for sure: it did disturb me. There's just something so creepy about all the violence and blood. I mean over what? This? Arcane, obtuse and way over-the-top wanna-be scholarship? Is that what got to him? Or was it something else?

  Maybe it really was too personal. Maybe he had a brother. A son. Maybe he had two sons. Who knows. But here it is. All that's left. Incoherent scrap.

  Too bad so much of his life had to slip between the lines of even his own words.

  (Genesis 25: 23-24)

  [Chalmer's underline]

  On one hand Yahweh announces a hierarchy of age and on the other hand claims the children are the same age.[99]

  rzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz

  Esau comes from the root ash meaning "to hurry" while Ya'akov comes from the root akav which means "to delay" or "to restrain."[100](i.e. Esau entered the world first; Jacob last.) But Esau is also connected to asah meaning "to cover" while Jacob derives from aqab meaning "heel" (i.e. Esau was covered in hair; Jacob born clutching Esau's heel, restraining him.[101])

  At least Freed Kashon convincingly objects to Ruccalla's comparison when he points out how really Holloway, not Tom, is the hairy one: "His beard, surly appearance, and even his profession as a hunter make Holloway the perfect Esau. The tension between Navidson and Holloway is also more on par with the tension between Jacob and his brother."[102]

  rzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz

  The degree of Esau and Jacob's struggle is emphasized by the word va- yitrozzu which comes from the root rzz meaning " to tear apart, to shatter." The comparison falters, however, when one realizes Will and Tom never indulged in such a violent struggle.

  rzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz

  During their childhood, Tom and Will were seldom apart. They gave each other support, encouragement, and the strength to persevere in the face of parental indifference.[103] Of course their intertwining adolescent years eventually unraveled as they reached adulthood, Will pursuing photography and fame in an attempt to fill the emotional void, Tom drifting into an unremarkable and for the most part internal existence.

  rzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz

  Tom, however, never hid behind the adjunct meaning of a career. He never acquired the rhetoric of achievement. In fact his life never moved much beyond the here and now.

  Nevertheless, in spite of a brutal struggle with alcoholism, Tom did manage to preserve his sense of humor, and in his twelve-step program, inspired many admirers who to this day speak highly of him.

  23'Terry Borowska interview.

  Of the hard times that came his way, he experienced the greatest grief during those eight years when he was estranged from his brother or in his words "when the old rug was pulled out from under old Tom." It is hardly a coincidence that during this period he succumbed to chemical dependencies, went on unemployment, and prematurely ended a budding relationship with a young schoolteacher. The Navid- son Record never explains what came between Tom and Will, though it implies Tom envied Navy's success and was increasingly dissatisfied with his own accomplishments.[104]

  rzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz

  In his article "Brothers In Arms No More" published in The Village Voice, Carlos Brillant observes that Tom and Will's estrangement began with the birth of Chad: "While it's complete speculation on my part, I wonder if the large amount of energy required to raise a family pulled Will's attention away from his brother. Suddenly Tom discovered his brother—his only supporter and sympathizer —was devoting more and more time to his son. Tom may have felt abandoned."[105]

  Annabelle Whitten echoes these sentiments when she points out how Tom occasionally referred to himself as "orphaned at the

  age of forty."234 The year Tom (and Will for that matter) turned forty was the year Chad was born.

  rzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz

  Ironically enough, Tom's presence in the house on Ash Tree Lane only served to help Will and Karen get along. As Whitten states: "Tom's desire to reacquire his lost parental figures transmuted Navidson into father and Karen into mother, thus offering one explanation why Tom frequently sought to reduce tension between both."235

  Of course as Nam Eurtton argued, "Why? Because Tom's a nice

  gUy."236

  rzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz

  Esau's blessing was stolen with a mask. Tom wears no mask, Will wears a camera. But as Nietzsche wrote, "Every profound spirit needs a mask."237

  rzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz

  And yet, despite the triumph of Jacob's ruse, he should have heeded this admonition: "Cursed be he that maketh the blind to wander out of the way" (Deuteronomy 27:18). And Jacob was indeed cursed,

  234LOSt.

  235Ibid„ 112.

  236Nam Eurtton's "All Accurate" p. 176. 2370f some note is the strange typo which appears in the Aaron Stern text: "But the blind Isaac repeated his question, 'Are you really my son Esau?' to which the chosen one replied 'Annie' meaning 'I am.'"

  Aaron Stern's All God's Children: Genesis (New York: Hesed Press, 1964), p. 62.