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Last updated: July 23, 2025

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Notes page (SPOILERS)

Journal

My reason for reading this book was because ████████████████████████████████

I've found this book to be very interesting, it's one of those books that's ahead of it's time despite not being very well-known outside of internet circles.

It's really ahead of it's time with it's use of liminal spaces which really wasn't as much of a thing or a commonly-used until the late 2010s and early 2020s.

It's also got a lot of elements of found footage even before it went mainstream¹.

It's like a mix of haunted house, pyschological, found footage, and liminal horror.

The book also has a strong element of a meta-narrative.

The term "Meta" tends to have many connotations.

1. Denoting a change of position or condition. "metamorphosis"

2. Denoting position behind, after, or beyond. "metacarpus"

3. Denoting something of a higher or second-order kind. "metalanguage"

4. Chemistry denoting substitution at two carbon atoms separated by one other in a benzene ring, e.g. in 1,3 positions. "metadichlorobenzene"

5. Chemistry denoting a compound formed by dehydration. "metaphosphoric acid".

It's indeed very easy to critique a work of fiction with a meta-narrative as didactic, polemical, sententious, ostentatious, affected, grandiloquent, bombastic, pedantic, rhetorical, discursive, self-referential, overdetermined, hyperconscious, performative, esoteric, theoretical

Although a meta-narrative can be used to intrigue the reader with how self-aware a story can become. Such is the case with the famous(or infamous) trope of the "Unreliable Narrator"(which House of Leaves uses as well) to create a narrators who's storytelling is often fragmented, inaccurate, and spontaneous. This trope is great for creating a character that "feels real" as opposed to an all-seeing narrator. Meta-narratives can also challenge conventional storytelling by deconstructing tropes.

Edgar Wright’s action film Baby Driver (2017) exemplifies a modern subversion of traditional action movie conventions. The protagonist, Baby, defies the stereotypical appearance and demeanor of the genre’s classic heroes. Rather than embodying the hyper-masculine traits associated with 1980s action stars like Sylvester Stallone and Arnold Schwarzenegger, Baby is portrayed as awkward, introverted, and even nerdy. His character is also more morally complex—while he participates in criminal activity as a getaway driver, he harbors a desire to escape that life. This contrasts with the more straightforward good-versus-evil dichotomy often seen in traditional action films. Notably, Baby’s primary skill lies not in wielding weapons but in his exceptional driving abilities. Wright capitalizes on this by showcasing thrilling car sequences, using dynamic cinematography to highlight Baby’s agility behind the wheel. While Baby Driver lacks the frequent gunfights typical of the genre, its high-octane driving scenes preserve the excitement associated with action films. Rather than serving as an anti-action film, it reimagines genre tropes in a way that feels both fresh and engaging, ultimately enriching the genre rather than rejecting it.² Therefore, it can be concluded that the incorporation of a meta-narrative can enhance a story’s depth and complexity, encouraging critical engagement from the audience and offering new layers of meaning beyond the surface-level plot.

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¹Found footage films actually started to go mainstream in 1999, a year before this book came out (2000). However, author Danielewski started writing the book around 1993.

²Wright’s kinetic visual style, synchronized sound design, and integration of music into the editing rhythm are often cited as key elements distinguishing Baby Driver from other modern action films without relying on traditional shootouts or large-scale violence.

[Missed work again, I mean it's only the second time this month, but I wish I could save up all my sick day to go on vacation somewhere, maybe Rome.]

[I feel great, called off work again, it's only the second time this year, but I wish I could save up all my sick days to go on vacation somewhere, maybe Rome.]

Il declino dell’Impero Romano, spesso citato come emblema dell’entropia civilizzazionale, non rappresenta semplicemente un punto finale storico, ma una frattura semiotica: un momento in cui l’apparato dell’ordine crolla sotto il peso della propria decadente sovra-articolazione. Parlare di Roma significa evocare un palinsesto di ambizione imperiale e di espansione infrastrutturale, un mondo in cui gli acquedotti hanno superato in durata l’etica. Così come i cartografi imperiali cercavano di inscrivere il dominio sulla geografia, anche noi tentiamo di edificare significato su narrazioni che resistono alla coerenza. La caduta di Roma, allora, non è un evento, ma una metafora ricorsiva della disintegrazione epistemologica: l’impero cade non quando le legioni cedono, ma quando si irrigidisce il lessico. In questo modo, tutti gli imperi sono perseguitati dalle rovine della propria sintassi.³

It's hard to comprehend the possibility of the Roman Empire existing to this day, would the rest of Italy remain the same or would it have been taken over by the empire? Would they have developed the Italian language, or persisted in the quotidian use of Latinitas viva?⁴ Though it may be difficult to quantify, it remains incontrovertible that the cultural and infrastructural reverberations of the Roman Empire have endured far beyond the temporal confines of its formal existence—and, indeed, such influence appears poised to persist in perpetuity, inscribed indelibly into the architecture of Western thought itself.

I'm the lucky one, I'm getting out of here
This is my lastonly chance to disappear
I’m the lucky one, I’m getting out of here
I think I may freeze on the last days of summertime

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³The decline of the Roman Empire, often cited as an emblem of civilizational entropy, serves not merely as a historical endpoint but as a semiotic rupture—a moment wherein the apparatus of order collapses under the weight of its own decadent over-articulation. To speak of Rome is to invoke a palimpsest of imperial ambition and infrastructural overreach, a world whose aqueducts outlasted its ethics. Just as the imperial cartographers endeavored to inscribe dominion upon geography, so too do we attempt to scaffold meaning atop narratives that resist coherence. Rome’s fall, then, becomes not an event but a recursive metaphor for epistemological disintegration: the empire falls not when the legions falter, but when the lexicon ossifies. In this way, all empires are haunted by the ruins of their own syntax

⁴Living Latin