Information on the Labyrinth Chapter
Key reference: The note / summary of Palladian Grammar on pg 120, with the accompanying footnote that leads you to Andrea Palladio's The Four Books of Architecture and Mitchell's The Logic of Grammar, both of which currently reside at our library. Further investigation shows that Palladian Architectural Grammar is a standardized system of drawing floorplans that are highly varied and easily variable. Of particular importance is the idea that with a set of mathematical rules, a bi-symmetrical image can be produced that is nearly limitless is possibility and range. Some notes follow.
1. Like with the epigraphs to the Labyrinth chapter, everything Zampano writes about Palladian Grammar can be found in Mitchell's book, indicating that he might not have read the source text, only the summary of it in a secondary source - this fact is obscured.
2. I'd be willing to bet that if you hold up the floor plans for the Villas mentioned on pg 120, all actual buildings Palladio designed and built for Italian nobility during his lifetime and which he dedicates a fair amount of time to in the first of the four books, there might be some indication of where Danielewski's text is headed in terms of it's typographical and structural development.
3. The 8 rules that Mitchell offers as a summation of Palladian Grammar actually read as a design grammar to understand the text itself, both structurally and thematically. Think of it this way: Take the book as an object. Lay it out flat. Pick a point in the dead center (along the spine) to call point A. From there, following a precise set of rules (that architects can apparently understand and the meaning of which completely eludes me) one can begin to draw a grid that eventually reaches a 5X3 format, that is 5 spaces across and 3 spaces down.
From there, the exterior of the object can be circumscribed. We now have a book. Within that book, the rooms are layed out, the interior walls RE-aligned (something we'll return to later), the doors, openings, etc are constructed, shifting when necessary, and finally, the plans are terminated.
Termination in Palladian terms refers to the act of going back over the floorplan and erasing guide lines and reference marks to produce a plan free of lines and guide posts that get in the way of understanding what is being looked at.
So if we begin at the beginning of chapter 9, we can begin to see the grid emerge (the exterior walls of the book itself), increasing in complexity as the rooms are designed and redesigned, sometimes following the precepts of Palladian grammar, sometimes not (remember, the whole thing is, after all, supposed to be UNCANNY, UNHOMELY, UNHEIMLICH), and eventually reaching a point where doors, entryways, go in many different directions. After the grid reaches it's most complex point, the lines begin to disappear, the rooms begin to appear and disappear as they may, without the aid of page marks (termination), the text literally eating itself.
This element of chaos introduced into an otherwise rigid structure echoes what is going on in the text, with these different stories, that have up to this point, been kept at least somewhat distinct, begin the spin around one another, Johnny's stories, Zampano's endless notes, and the Exploration team spiraling out of control, the guidelines for each group of characters breaking down until Halloway finally loses it, breaks from the plot, and heads off into the darkness. This can be seen as the understandable reaction for a certain personality type when faced with this kind of situation.
But what kind of a situation does Danielewski suggest this is? A highly structred process of architectural rules that is so big, so immense, so convoluted that it can only be understood in it's entirety. But since we can't see it's entirety, then we are forced to confront it piece by piece, something not everyone can handle.
4. The role the lists play in the story. Zampano provides, moreso here than anywhere else in the book, incredibly detailed (and incredibly boring) lists of people and objects. The square box in the middle of the page contains dozens of physical objects one needs in order to construct a house. The joke, of course, is that this

uses absolutely none of those things, and in fact, any of those objects that are introduced to the environment of the house immediately begin to disappear. This is a most un-housely house. The list of people and archetectural designs, schools, and examples that line each side of the page serve as a catalogue of aesthetics that this house stands in complete defiance of. Think of when we were told to learn all the rules first, and then begin to break them. Works the same way - we have a list of things this house flies in the face of.
From an academic standpoint, this also works in terms of the content of the book. A normal academic text incorporates many of the same elements we find in the labyrinth chapter (except maybe Johnny), but not the way we find those elements - all twisted around an confusing, reading forward, backwards, upside down, in mirror image, and so on.
5. Reference on page 113 to the axis mundi, the "centre of the world... concretized as a tree" - a direct reference to (among other things) the figure of Yggdrasil, the world tree in Norse Mythology. Some important notes about this particular image:
A) Yggdrasil appears by name on page 709.
B) Throughout much of Europe, but especially in Scandanavian legend, the most important tree, the world tree itself, is an ash tree. See the following links for: information on Yggdrasil as an ash tree
& , as well as this interesting (if confusing) article on the role of the Ash Tree in IndoEuropean Culture. Of course, it is very important to note that the whole damn story takes place on Ash Tree Lane. More on that in a moment)
C) The story of Yggdrasil itself might have some other resonances. According to legend, the tree has 3 roots, going through Asgard, the realm of the gods, one through Midgard, the realm of mortals, and the third through Hel, the underworld. The root in Midgard ends in the Spring of Mimir, said to be the spring of knowledge. The legend goes on to say that Odin, desiring the knowledge of the spring, sacrificed one eye (concept of blindness) and eventually, his body, piercing it with his spear and hanging himself from the branches of the Ash Tree for 9 days and nights, believing that through the mortification of the flesh (since his sacrifice could not be to a "higher power" - he was the higher power - the sublimity of knowledge would come to him.
So what we have here is the quest for knowledge, the trope of blindness, and the image of the sacrificed king of the gods "pierced and hanging from the storm tree" (A. A. Attanasio, epilogue to J. O'Barr's The Crow).
6. Johnny makes a reference to his half-moon scars on page 129 - an important meditation on his scars and defensiveness regarding the source of those scars, as well as a discussion about the fact that he has no tattoos, despite his current profession. Important lines: "Scars are the paler pain of survival, received unwillingly and displayed in the language of injury.