No one has mentioned this...

[Sintina]

That scarp... that damn scrap that is in the collage on both the cover and in the photo gallery... you all must have read it! You must have! It talks about the house as if the house itself is thinking... it talks about ripping Chad in half while Karen screams for him on the porch... it talks about Navidson's hand finding only air as he reaches for Daisy and she "falls to her death".

The freakest part about the little chard of paper that is in TWO photo collages (it's a small scare of typed paper, you can only read part of it on the cover, but you can read every word in the photo in the Apendix)
the freakest part about it is that...

it sounds like the house is THINKING.

Thinking about punishing Navidson and Karen!
images/smiles/icon_eek.gif images/smiles/icon_eek.gif images/smiles/icon_eek.gif

Why has no one mentioned this? Have none of you noticed? It freaks me out. The passage shown in BOTH the collages is NOT to be found anywhere in the book.

IDEAS! WHAT ARE YOUR THOUGHTS?!?!

[sunflake]

i DID notice that, actually .. i thought it was pretty crazy. i always figured, even before i saw that, that the house thought in some way .. it was just too weird to be non-living.

first post, by the way.

[sunflake]

ack, just remembered something else .. it says something like "NOTE CHAPTER XIII" .. that's the chapter called "the minotaur" .. i don't know if that's a connection or anything, but ..

[fragileconciousness]

I seriously meant to mention this shortly after joining, it just kind of slipped my mind. Actually, I read the note before I read anything else in the book, so I wasn't familiar with Navidson, Daisy, etc. and forgot about it for a while. Then shortly before ending the book, I noticed it again and thought I had inadvertently spoiled the ending for myself. So I figure that's just what is intended to do, draw people in the middle of reading the book to think that this is the ending, just to throw them off even more.

[demo]

i agree that perhaps the scrap was to firstly draw readers into the book, but if you look at the context of the note, these collages (if i recall correctly) were collages done by karen that her therapist told her to make (or rather she made as a part of her therapy), so you might even argue it is simply her venting about the possibilities of the house.

(i'm new to the board, and i haven't read all the posts yet, so i will probably come back and either ask questions or point out stuff about the collages, eventually)

[neo]

have any of you read the pieces of paper in one of the appendix's? not the collages, the single pages. one is an acount of the ambulance driver, describing the door banging open and shut seemingly on it's own
the other is an odd snipet of some kind early american folk-lore, the story of the people who wrote the journal that appears in the text (sorry my brains fried, this is no way to go about explaining something, "you know the thing with the stuff?") anywhoo it explaines that they built a house on some stairs they found that led straight into the ground, the house was reportedly burned down in a volcaninc erruption, i wonder if this is a real story or another thing MZD made up to engross us more in the story.

[demo]

i have actually been trying to track down this last story you mention... if i get anywhere i'll let you know.

demo

[shelle]

at first i thought it was a zampano note, too (implying he possibly altered the story, or even that the story is really about him). but then, the scrap is in courier, which is johnny's font.

[Poop Loser]

i don't think the house always thought on its own, i think the person who was inside the hallways influenced what happended and how easy or intricate the hallways would be to navigate.

[FallingQuarters]

infanticide...DNE

[fatwoul]

<BLOCKQUOTE><font size="1" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by Jake_82:
In an appendix there's a photocopied page of the original body of work by Zampono, and it's in courier<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

...However, we are only told it is part of the "great deal of material produced by Zampano" by JT himself, at the beginning of Appendix (I). This comment by JT is also in courier.

I agree that we only associate courier font with Johnny because the editors used it for him, but why did they? Perhaps the photocopies of "Zampano's" work are not the work of Zampano - maybe the mysterious, faceless editors chose to use courier font for Johnny because they know what we can only suspect: that the photocopied bits are by Johnny himself.

[The Surrealist]

Actually, that little scrap of paper on the front color plate was one of the FIRST things I noticed when I picked up the book. I was going to mention it, but I didn't want to get bitched at for putting up a repeat post. I know, I know, i should have just used the "search" function, oh well. Anyway, it is quite a cryptic little message, isn't it? Chilling...

[silver474]

Maybe that is Johnny's scrap of paper. He seems to have no problem altering anything else in the story, so why not the ending of the NR as well? By the time he got to that point, he was pretty messed up--and he knew that the NR didn't really exist in his world, so what could be the harm in "altering" something more substantial than just a water heater or pink ribbons? If Johnny is compiling the story of a film that doesn't exist, and he's so mentally confused, it might make sense to him to change the text to fit his situation.

*s

[malakite]

oh man. the color plate in the front is a perfect example of why we are all here. the people on this board could discuss that alone for ever.
as to the scrap: i always interpreted that as being zampano thinking. his own fear of the house.making him consider dumbing the end down into typical horror movie schlock, and thus making it less threatening.
as to the scrap about the stairs in vancouver: if the building was destroyed in the st. helens eruption of 1980, then not only does it mean a building that is connected with the stairs not exist in 1990, it is also in the wrong region. thus i think that when st. helens blew, the stairs moved to another building. that or there are many places that connect to this blackened world

[goddess of...a lot]

<BLOCKQUOTE><font size="1" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by Sintina:
It talks about the house as if the house itself is thinking... it talks about ripping Chad in half while Karen screams for him on the porch... it talks about Navidson's hand finding only air as he reaches for Daisy and she "falls to her death".

...it sounds like the house is THINKING.

<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

I like the idea that the house is thinking. I've been thinking of the house as a body, and the way that it expands and changes are like the way that our thoughts, ideas, and feelings make us able to reach beyond the confines of our bodies.

[Nopex Delusional]

The note, I had always assumed it was Zampano's, after all he composed the whole thing and THERE ARE THE INITIALS M.Z. near the bottom inside the circled "2,147", which I have yet to decipher. Also the first sentence "perhaps I will alter the whole thing" seems to be just kind of a impulse fancy about changeing something he's already written.

(And who's telephone number is that anyway? 0171 499 7071)

[pwhite]

<BLOCKQUOTE><font size="1" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by Nopex Delusional:

(And who's telephone number is that anyway? 0171 499 7071)<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

It's the number of the Connaught hotel in Mayfair, London (it's marked quite clearly on the scrap of card). They changed the 0171 (inner London) dialing code to 020(7) a few years ago. If you want to book a room there today you can call them on +44207 499 7071 (I'm not sure where the -1 extension connects you to, though; it's not 'reservations').

It is quite expensive, though.

[ March 11, 2004: Message edited by: pwhite ]

[fearful_syzygy]

It's the number of the Connaught hotel (http://www.savoygroup.co.uk/connaught/default.asp) in Mayfair, London.

I suppose it's been painfully obvious all along to everyone except me that this refers back to Connaught B.N.S. Cape and his asses on pp. 149-151, right?

There I was scanning the colour collage at the front and desperately trying to adjust the contrast so I could read the number and address, and it was right there on p. 552 all along... :roll:

[the lost pawn]

Are you serious!?! This has really never been covered before? i would have thought so seeing as how terrifying it is. i mean. when i first bought that book and read that, i was intrigued to read when and why it would happen. i'm still shocked this has never been covered. and have you guys noticed how Edgar Allen Poe has two different expressions on his face. The left one looks like he's sure of himself, he even has a little smirk. But on the right, he has this uncomfortable grimace. And being that they are stamps, shouldn't they look the same. Maybe it's just my copy.

[fatwoul]

...Connaught B.N.S. Cape...

Cape can be found in the 19/09/88 letter, too.

[Admiral_Shanks]

at first i thought it was a zampano note,

Thats what I always figured... as if somehow hinting that Z made it all up... but then (Im sure its JUST been said somewhere earlier in this thread) JT though Z wrote everything... maybe he just found it like JT did... maybe somehow Z found all JT's notes... now I know what you're thinking... but is it such a crazy idea?! What with the Book Navidson and the band were reading it doesn't... :)

[fearful_syzygy]

...Connaught B.N.S. Cape...

Cape can be found in the 19/09/88 letter, too.

Yes, you're right. He even has a capital letter.

[fatwoul]

...Yes, you're right. He even has a capital letter.

That's why it stood out to me as more than another random 4 letters.

[Quanderous]

If you're referring to the yellow index card? Then at one point, the point in which all of the sample results are missing, JT mentions that he has the footnotes because they were written on yellow index cards and he hadn't incorporated it yet. He also mentions much earlier that Zampano writes notes about the book everywhere. Finally, I too noticed the comment before I read the book, and assumed it was a (very scary) snippet from the end. Then I read through the appendices after I finished the book and realized the end didn't match the snippet. It was obvious to me that this represented the AUTHOR thinking about changing the ENDING to change the impact of the story ending and its meaning.

[fearful_syzygy]

...the AUTHOR...

Who's he then?

[Wakefield]

Johnny addresses the scrap at one point explaining Zampano was constantly changing and tweaking The Navidson Record and only his death stopped him from working on it.

I don't have a page number, I lent my copy out.

[zakalwe]

Just came across this one- the question of the house's degree of consciousness is an interesting one that I've not seen much debate on; it's also not the easiest topic to search for. ("alive"..."animate"...er, "thinking"?) So does anyone (F_S? :wink: ) know of a thread where this is covered in greater detail? It seems interesting in the light of current narratological debates: the house as a terrain where narrative is created, shaped perhaps by some kind of consciousness.

[ebinesos]

what words get color in this book? there is blue for house, red for monitor. unfortunately i don't have a copy of the book within 50 miles of me to easily access, but i know that some words appear in purple. So if house is the house that navidson thiks of (living room, dinning area, kids room, ec.), then wouldn't the monitor be the house's alter ego? who what if all long, the monitor has been the house.... or i might be smoking crack, who knows.

[Ellimist]

blue edition: house in blue.

red edition: Minotaur in red, <strike>struckthrough</strike> words in red, house in grey.

[ebinesos]

so what is purple? (even if there are no known additions that actually are purple)

[Ellimist]

no purple. at all.

sometimes, people like to associate Pelafina with purple... which is mixed blue and red...

[shortestfuse]

To me, the note appears to be from Zampano to himself, regarding editing TNR, thus admitting it as a work of fiction. The reason it appeared to be from Zampano rather than Johnny (despite the use of Courier) was that this passage has red footnotes of its own, referring to the Minotaur chapter.

If the entire novel is to understood as the the interaction between father, mother, and (bastard) son, then this note figures in to the relationship between Zampano and Johnny (due the red footnotes and the explicit reference to the Minotaur/Johnny chapter). Zampano considers changing the ending, killing the children, thus perhaps the equivalent of his son. (Which, while I'm on the topic, raises the question of why TNR has two children instead of one parallel character to Johnny. As mentioned in another thread, perhaps this is Lude's true significance.)

From that perspective, this passage seems to refer more to the Dr. Nowell tangent and the Infantacide = DNE (already mentioned) than anything else. That Zampano kills not the children, but instead Tom (himself), suggests to me that Johnny's theoretical infant death was only a red herring.

[ebinesos]

ok... my question still stands: when would purple appear in the book? I had a first edition red copy, and in the first couple of pages (before the story actually starts) there wsa 4 editions listed: the first and cheapest was no color anywhere, no braile... next was house in blue, no braille... next was monitor and struckthrough in red, no braille, and the fourth is ______ in purple, raised braille... additionally where would braile be in this book, and what would be its purpose? ... who put it there, and what would it say?

[Stencil]

The line in purple is "<strike>what I'm remembering now</strike>." I don't remember it being braille. The braille is the first page on chapter XX.

[mikelisse]

Forgive me for any false statements, my mind is fried right now. Correct me if I am wrong [that is not a demand, just a suggestion].

Well, after reading the note I always thought it was strange that although Chad and Daisy are mentioned, after the departure from the house and the separation of Navidson and Karen, there is no great detail as to the kids emotions. Their involvement in the story ends. So perhaps the note is a metaphoric destruction of the kids. Then again just another theory to add to the hoard.

[Shadow Girl]

I know I'm posting in a dead area...but I don't wanna get flamed...so whatever.

The notecard was definitely the first thing I remember reading after buying my copy of the book and I think that after I finished it the first time I always took it to be a note of Zampano's. That is until I went back and really looked at it and saw that it was in Johnny's font. From that point on, I never really knew what to make of it because I think there's a scrap behind that notecard that quotes one of Johnny's footnotes and is also in his font...

So I think the question that bugs me is: If that is, in fact, one of Johnny's footnotes...how did it make it into a collage of Zampano's stuff?

[Ellimist]

Why do you assume it is a collage of Zampano's stuff?

One of the collages has a Pink Dot label in it, which we know is from Johnny ordering food.

Page 323 or thereabouts: "One glance at my room and he knew junk was not the problem. All those books, sketches, collages, reams and reams of paper, measuring tapes nailed from corner to floor, and of course that big black trunk..."

From Johnny.

[hello?]

Why do you assume it is a collage of Zampano's stuff?

One of the collages has a Pink Dot label in it, which we know is from Johnny ordering food.

But maybe Zampano ordered food from Pink Dot too! Come on, do you expect a blind man to go out to the supermarket by himself?!

Though of course I agree that it's a collage of Johnny's stuff.

[fearful_syzygy]

Quite apart from anything else, the fonts are assigned to the different characters by the Editors 'in an effort to limit confusion' (Ha!).

Besides which, Johnny is not the only person to own a typewriter. Some of Zampan&#242;'s "Bits" are typewritten too, no? Are you suggesting that Johnny wrote those [leaving aside the possibility that he tampered with them for the time being]?

[beanmarine101]

On the tangent of two children in TNR, I believe Daisy is representative of a sister to Johnny. Now this is a really crusty, uninvestigated theory, not to mention it adds another fucked up portion to the book, but I think that Johnny may have had a sister. Having said that, this means he more than likely screwed his sister at some point. My only suspect for that is:

Ashley-He doesn't know where he met her, and she lies about where they met (she says they met in Texas).

However, it's just as likely, if not more likely, that Lude is actually his brother.

[fearful_syzygy]

Ashley-He doesn't know where he met her, and she lies about where they met (she says they met in Texas).
No, he met her at Tex's, not in Texas. (p. 300 or thereabouts, no book at the moment &mdash; end of the Atrocity footnote at any rate).

Edit:

. . . when I remembered her in the garden where she wandered away from all those ugly ends in the Indian Ocean, far from my arctic one, and found flowers and a fountain, perfume and a breeze, a warm breeze . . . Not Texas but Tex's, Tex's tea, where I met Ashley—Ashley, Ashley, Ashley . . . the sun could make you sneeze—only back then her hair was dyed neon green, matching her Doc boots, a match made in heaven, both of us together, talking and talking, at first timidly and then responding more avidly to the obvious attraction both of us could feel until she gave me her number and I wrote down my number, my first name and my last name, which was how, years later, she finally found the right number to call and she kissed me and I kissed her and we kissed for a while more until she invited me home and I said no. I had fallen in love with her, flash of gold and sunlight and Rome, and I wanted to wait, in three days call her, court her, marry her, impregnate her and fill our house with five blonde daughters, until . . . oh no, where have I gone now? horror but not horror but another kind of -orro-? or both, or I'm not sure, suddenly flooding through me, what back then had only been weeks away, in fact right around the corner from there, a legacy of leaving, fast approaching: excrement—let go . . . —urine—let go . . . —and burst conjunctiva—letting go streaks of red tears. All I could hold but in the end not save. Of course I lost everything. I lost her number, I lost her, and then in a fugue of erasure, I lost the memory of her, so that by the time she called she was gone along with the kisses and the promise and all that hope. Even after our strange reunion in the hammock suspended over strewn & decomposing leaves from a banana tree, later followed by an even stranger goodbye, she was still long, long gone. I know I am too late. I'm lost inside and no longer convinced there's a way out. Bye-bye Ashley and goodbye to the one you knew before I found him and had to let him go.

Edit edit: still by far my favourite passage from HoL, that entire footnote. Absolutely amazing.

[beanmarine101]

Good call. I have to give it to you and the rest of the people on this board, you're really good at weeding out theories (or, my theories blow).

[Yalson.]

The note, I had always assumed it was Zampano's, after all he composed the whole thing and THERE ARE THE INITIALS M.Z. near the bottom inside the circled "2,147", which I have yet to decipher. Also the first sentence "perhaps I will alter the whole thing" seems to be just kind of a impulse fancy about changeing something he's already written.

I'm going to have to wing this, as I have no book in front of me, (I bought one, but now my Mum's reading it!) but surely the initials 'MZ' imply MZD himself? Since there appears to be some debate as to who all the snippets belong to, why not add the top man (sic) himself? Why should he be left out of the melange? What makes his supposed reality proof against becoming entangled in the myriad of interwoven and unconnected threads that make up HoL? If his status as author is to be trusted, surely he would be the one who had the last word on what happened at the end of the book.

Or is he just another layer in the enormous cast of contributing authors? Somewhere between Johnny and The Editors? Between The Edtors and us? Or just another figment of someone's twisted, fractal imagination?

Just another little grenade for you. No evidence for it at all...

[fearful_syzygy]

...surely the initials 'MZ' imply MZD himself? Since there appears to be some debate as to who all the snippets belong to, why not add the top man (sic) himself? Why should he be left out of the melange?
Why indeed? After all, it's not as if it would be the first (http://www.houseofleaves.com/forum/showthread.php?p=51375#post51375) time (http://www.houseofleaves.com/forum/showthread.php?p=39112#post39112) he made an appearance in the book.

[Yalson.]

I'll read those threads in a minute, FS.

Another link on the MZ initials, though.

The only other MZ I can think of stands for Motorradwerk Zschopau. They are a motorcycle manufacturer who were based in the former East Germany and who for many years turned out horribly dirty and inefficient bikes which could be bought in the West for very little. They were, in effect, the motorcycling equivalent of the Lada, Skoda or Trabant. Cheap, utilitarian, low-tech and regarded with sniggering contempt by virtually everyone who didn't actually own one.

So far, so completely irrelevent.

Thing is, though, MZ weren't always thought of as being the lowest common denominator in terms of technology. In the late 1950s and early 1960s, MZ machines became rapidly competitive after a former colleague of Werner von Braun named Walter Kaaden took over their miniscule competition department. He applied his expertise to the tuning of two stroke engines and was one race away from achieving the extraordinary feat of allowing the shoestring MZ team to beat the Western teams and claim the 1961 125cc world championship. Unfortunately for him, Ernst Degner, MZ's leading rider, defected and joined Suzuki at the Swedish round of the championship, allegedly by escaping from the circuit in the boot of a car.

Now this is all very interesting cloak-and-dagger stuff, but it is all still a bit irrelevent. What gives the story of MZ a vague connection to HoL is the nature of Kaaden's technological tuning breakthrough. He perfected what is known as the two-stroke expansion chamber. This is a device that utilises the pulses of sound energy that the engine produces in the combustion process to increase the efficiency of the engine. How it does this is very complicated and I'm not going to go into it here*, but in layman's terms, the expansion chamber shapes and reflects the soundwaves from the exhaust of the engine and uses them to help draw the mixture and exhaust through the cylinder.

So you could say that an two stroke with an expansion chamber runs on echoes.




Thank you, thank you. I'm here all week.

It's amazing what extraordinarily tortuous links you can pull out of this book. I'm pretty sure that this one is so tortuous that it must just be random, information-free feedback, but you never know.


* Mainly because I don't entire understand it myself. If you're really interested, though, try here:

http://www.motorcycle.com/how-to/how-twostroke-expansion-chambers-work-and-why-you-should-care-3423.html

For more on the rather clandestine story of MZ, Walter Kaaden and the defection of Ernst Degner, there are some good old cold war shenanigans here:

http://www.superbikeplanet.com/2006/Jul/060712z.htm

[beanmarine101]

That motorcycle find is pretty interesting. Very very nice!

However, I doubt the MZ actually stands for "Mark Z." Why would someone write down only their first and middle initials, other than it being a nickname (such as T.J.)? The lack of context, not to mention the lack of reference to MZD as "MZ," seems to work contrary to your theory.

[fearful_syzygy]

2147 is a simple substitution code for BADG, which, I know what you're thinking, might be short for M-to-tha-izzizz Bad "Gangsta" G, Poe's erstwhile producer (notably on the unreleased "No Trace in the Crowd") but in fact I believe it to be none other than Marcus Zimborowski Badger, famed inventor of the reverse-flux thruster pedal and sometime copy editor and wine critic.

Naturally he would have known Zampan&#242;, as they were fraternal twins, separated at birth.

As a matter of fact, the Cream song "Badge" (off Goodbye Cream) was directly inspired by a soir&#233;e Jack Bruce attended at MZB's mansion in the Hollywood Hills one evening. The lyrics are quite enlightening w/r/t/ HoL. The first verse ("thinking about the time you drove in my car") is about Kyrie, MZB's daughter; the second ("I told you not to wander round in the dark") clearly deals with MZB's brother's blindness; and the final verse ("Talking bout a girl who looks quite like you") finally establishes the connexion between Pelafina and Karen.

So there you have it.


True story.

[beanmarine101]

There you have it. Case closed.

[Yalson.]

What the hell are you talking about? Why is everyone on drugs all of a sudden?

[Yalson.]

Why would someone write down only their first and middle initials, other than it being a nickname (such as T.J.)? The lack of context, not to mention the lack of reference to MZD as "MZ," seems to work contrary to your theory.

I think the more important question is why not. HoL thrives on half-details and random connections like this. The big, illuminated letter that he uses on the first page of this website is the Z, after all, so it obviously means something to him and/or the people who designed it. And if you look at the contents of most of the threads on this site, people are making very interesting cases for the most extraordinary things on much slighter evidence. MZD is, after all, a trickster and a puzzle master. HoL is made up almost entirely of puzzles, threads that don't tie up, (or tie up in bizarre and unexpected places,) and areas that can only be made sense of through guesswork and supposition. Why should he make it easy for us by putting his third initial on there and deny us the fun of having this argument? Why would he change the method he has been using for the whole book for this one tiny detail? And if he had used his first and last initials, what would stop you from suggesting that I wrote the whole book, as MD are my initials, too?

Makes sense to me, anyway.

[Shadow Girl]

Why do you assume it is a collage of Zampano's stuff?

One of the collages has a Pink Dot label in it, which we know is from Johnny ordering food.

Page 323 or thereabouts: "One glance at my room and he knew junk was not the problem. All those books, sketches, collages, reams and reams of paper, measuring tapes nailed from corner to floor, and of course that big black trunk..."

From Johnny.

I assumed it was Zampano's stuff because I thought that I remembered Johnny saying something about collages of Zampano's things sometime before the quote you posted. I can't find it however, and am now assuming that I imagined it or mis-remembered.

I guess the assumption was also helped by the fact that I had at first figured that the notecard was Zampano's.

I did, however, remember also having thoughts that it was Johnny's stuff because of the sleeping pills on the inside cover...

Guess my old geometry teacher's maxim still remains to be true: "Do not assume, because when you assume you make an ASS out of U and never ME"

[Ellimist]

The colleges are more likely to be a collection of both Zampano's and Johnny's belongings, but obviously, the pictures were taken after Johnny got ahold of Zampano's stuff. So, there is some ambiguity with some items on who they belong to.

[beanmarine101]

I still don't see why either of them would have a shopping list with suntan lotion, unless Johnny needed it for his trips and such. Because Zampano most definitely did not need suntan lotion for his 6 A.M. walks.

[fearful_syzygy]

http://www.loreal.ca/_fr/_ca/img_dyn/.vsdisco/7e74901a-805e-4f51-98ff-3f7196bddf56

[Ellimist]

You mean the "*tan oil"?

What about "shower cap"?

Haha, f_s. Nice.

[Shadow Girl]

I still don't see why either of them would have a shopping list with suntan lotion, unless Johnny needed it for his trips and such. Because Zampano most definitely did not need suntan lotion for his 6 A.M. walks.

Johnny mentions somewhere in the intro that Zampano "braved the L.A. transportation system" on occasion to go to the beach.

[Ellimist]

Page # or it didn't happen!

[CpVb006]

It's on page xvi.

"As I've already pointed out, he walked around his courtyard and supposedly was even fearless enough to brave the LA public transportation system to the beach (an adventure even I'm afraid to make)."

[Ellimist]

Haha, cool.

[fearful_syzygy]

Haha, cool.
Dude, when was the last time you took a look at this book?

[Ellimist]

The red edition... 2004/5?

[my dear maxwell]

i share the idea with a few people that that scrap of paper may have been johnny's, considering that the shape of the house itself and the danger to those in it (so it seems to me) depended on the mindset of those in it (an example being the 'beast' that holloway was hunting and maybe appears in his video) , and therefore probably didnt think for itself. (though the attack that does occur may contradict that idea...)but...something i hadnt seen mentioned about that little scrap...its a little hard to make out...but at the top of it in red there is the word 'ghost' (again,what holloway thought he saw maybe???) and some notes about the roots of the word, all (it seems) related to that first sentence, or the word 'thing' by an arrow...any thoughts???

[noevilstar]

2147 could equal to 147...a refrence... pg. 147 discusses a movie of a murdered little girl sold as fiction, a snuff film sold as a special effect, though the murder was actually a filming of the the little girl's murder...

[noevilstar]

Nopex Delusional]The note, I had always assumed it was Zampano's, after all he composed the whole thing and THERE ARE THE INITIALS M.Z. near the bottom inside the circled "2,147", which I have yet to decipher. Also the first sentence "perhaps I will alter the whole thing" seems to be just kind of a impulse fancy about changeing something he's already written.


srry

[blackfeetboy70]

I always thought that was MDZ throwing around story ideas.

[fearful_syzygy]

Who's he then?

[modiFIed]

MDZ Maritime Defense Zone
MDZ Mendoza, Mendoza, Argentina - El Plumerillo (Airport Code)
MDZ Missile Danger Zone
MDZ Moskauer Deutsche Zeitung (Moscow German newspaper)
MDZ Musik Der Zukunft (music label & community)

[blackfeetboy70]

Quite apart from anything else, the fonts are assigned to the different characters by the Editors 'in an effort to limit confusion' (Ha!).

Besides which, Johnny is not the only person to own a typewriter. Some of Zampan&#242;'s "Bits" are typewritten too, no? Are you suggesting that Johnny wrote those [leaving aside the possibility that he tampered with them for the time being]?
It's possible, after all, JT is an unreliable narrator.

[Mr.Smith]

The writing is most definately not Johnny's. We must take under consideration that Johnny isn't a good enough writer to have multiple completely different writing styles, and the way the note is written is definately in Zampano's style.

[LJonesy]

no purple. at all.

sometimes, people like to associate Pelafina with purple... which is mixed blue and red...

actually, look at page 518:

"Except this story, <s>what I'm remembering now</s>..."

It's a Plum colour, not exactly purple but of the purple shades. I'd laugh though if everyone elses book had a different colour than mine with plum.

[heartbreak]

actually, look at page 518:

"Except this story, <s>what I'm remembering now</s>..."

It's a Plum colour, not exactly purple but of the purple shades. I'd laugh though if everyone elses book had a different colour than mine with plum.


Ell's post was made before the full color edition came out.

[LJonesy]

Ell's post was made before the full color edition came out.

Didn't know that, my bad!

[Johnny Manic]

Personally, I'm of the opinion that the scrap of paper is Johnny's. We already know that he is an unreliable narrator, not above messing with the reader's head. (His stay with his friend "Doc", anyone?) I believe the scrap to be something he wrote while trying to find a way to end his book-TNR. Johnny Truant is Zampano. In one of his mother's letters(it wouldn't be any fun if I told you which one)there is the coded message, "My dear Zampano, who did you lose?" Perhaps Zampano was Pelafina's pet name for her son.

[daemon]

i really hope you don't think you're the first one to catch that. i mean i caught that, and i don't post in the regular forum because i know i don't have anything (other than personal opinions) to add that the brains haven't already come up with years ago. can't post a link, but check out the thread 'Johnny is Zampano?'.

[Short_Fuse]

This was pure bordom, and found something... strange

2147 (http://maps.google.com/maps?hl=en&q=2147+newhall+street+santa+clara&um=1&ie=UTF-8&sa=X&oi=geocode_result&resnum=1&ct=image)

Isn't Johnny suppose to go to Californian, and look at the street name, the address, 95050 is somewhere in the book i believe, but can't find, i'll look for it more