| >> |
04/01/10(Thu)16:46 No.503573>>503504
PRETENTIOUS BULLSHIT
WARNING
Also, I know nothing about literary criticism and will
most likely commit horrible terminology abuse in this post.
Also
maybe spoilers or something.
So yeah, with that out of the way, I
saw it as a sort of deconstruction of the form of a novel. Generally,
when you read a novel, you're supposed to suspend your disbelief. HoL
subverts this by having a secondary narrator who repeatedly tells you
that the story you're reading isn't true. He even occasionally points
out inconsistencies in the text. Then that narrator tells his own story,
but the way he tells it is confusing and disjointed and it's fairly
clear that it isn't entirely true either. There are footnotes supposedly
intended to clear things up, but then the "editor" tells you that many
of these footnotes refer to books that don't exist. All this forces the
reader to view the book in a different way than a standard novel; you
have to think not just about what your reading but the manner in which
it's being told.
Then there's the weird formatting and stuff.
Usually, the physical book is just a vehicle to get the words to you. In
HoL, it becomes an integral part of the story. Yes, there were places
where it was a bit annoying, but other times it worked really well. My
personal favourite part was when Navidson was crawling through the
tunnel and there was so little text on each page that you had to turn
the pages quickly as you read, artificially increasing the tension you
feel and making it seem suspenseful even though from a narrative
perspective it's kind of bland.
You know the bit where Navidson
has to burn the book, page by page, because that's the only way he can
get light to read by? That's a metaphor for what HoL is: by taking apart
the form of the novel, it allows the reader to truly understand it. |
