In Danielewski’s elaborately framed tale of a house which alters shape according to the actions of its inhabitants we find a large number of pages which are entirely devoted to the iconic representation of space. The quote from Derrida’s Glas, which recurs in my title, is also one of many epigraphs used in Danielewski’s book. It signifies a desire both on the part of the author to represent ordered space within a two-dimensional page in a book, and a parallel desire on the part of the reader to inhabit, understand, order, and eventually escape the claustrophobic and ultimately chaotic space Danielewski constructs for his readers.
This paper provides analyses of the
representation of ordered and chaotic space in Danielewski’s novel,
with a
focus on how words on the printed page come to assume iconic functions,
standing for ceilings, stairways, ropes, corridors and other spatial
objects. The
placement on the pages of these concrete prose icons is discussed and
shown to
be part of a larger aesthetic programme of causing specific emotions in
the
reader. The alternating feelings of vertigo and claustrophobia thus
produced by
the iconic pages contribute greatly to the totality of awe (at the
psychotic,
totalising vision of order) and horror (of the irreducible chaos) the
reader
must confront to read this demanding work.