Mark Z. Danilevsky's "House of Leaves": the Poetics of Simulacra

Abstract

The object of research of this article is a novel by Mark Z. Danilevsky's "House of Leaves" in the context of Postmodernism. The subject of the study is the concept of a simulacrum, which appears in the novel "House of Leaves" as one of the funding components of the poetics of the work. The "House of Leaves" is considered from the position of postmodern sensitivity, in which Danilevsky deliberately blurs the boundaries between habitual space and hyperreality, real and unreal, fact and fiction. A similar effect is achieved through the simulacrum based on the novel – the short film "The Nevidson Film" – which was originally programmed by Danilevsky to expand into reality, to capture reality, that is, to limitless expansion of simulation through both material media (books) and the Internet. As a result of the proliferation of simulation within the work, the poetics of the novel text itself undergoes mutation, where genre mixing occurs, and mutually subordinate relations are established for the participants of author-reader communication due to the features of novel poetics. The text based on the simulacrum is absorbed by the simulation and eventually becomes a simulacrum due to the continuous formation and spread of the simulation. As a result, the language environment turns into a means of control, manipulation, subordination, both of the author and the recipient: the totality of simulation replaces reality and includes the perceiving consciousness in its own boundless becoming.