House of Leaves: The End of Postmodernism

Mark Z. Danielewski’s debut 2000 novel House of Leaves is written in part as an essay titled The Navidson Record by Zampanò. Within this essay, Zampanò includes footnotes and citations to many works both real and fictional. Through investigating some of his footnotes and allusions in The Navidson Record, certain connections to the postmodern movement may be drawn. By interpreting Zampanò’s allusions to Freud, Derrida, and Einstein, elements from Fredric Jameson’s Postmodernism: Or, the Cultural Logic of Late-Capitalism change the reception of Danielewski’s novel. Thorough investigation of a few allusions within the novel House of Leaves reveal many foundations for the dual-narratives of Zampanò and Johnny Truant; deconstructing these allusions may prove that without these allusions and the large group of texts they inform, there may be nothing left to the novel itself, as if the novel itself is completely deconstructed. Danielewski reacts to authors like Jameson and Lyotard in his novel House of Leaves, and instead of embracing postmodernism, he abandons it