Ok, I've only just finished my first reading of the book, but I've got kind of a weird idea about what's going on near the end, after the voyage of the Orpheus begins. It's a little convaluted, so I ask that you bear with me as I lay this out... Not sure if someone else has had a similar idea, so I apologize if I'm repeating something... :)

The opening of the Orpheus section is marked with a quote by Italo Calvino:

"The word connects the visible trace with the invisible thing, the absent thing, the thing that is desired or feared, like a frail emergency bridge flung over an abyss."

Calvino's best known novel, If on a Winter's Night a Traveler, concerns a direct interaction between the reader and the events of the novel. The 'Reader' is in fact the central character of the novel... Calvino describes you, the 'reader' interacting with other characters, your reactions to what you are reading, and splices in chapters which are actually the beginnings of other novels that 'you' are reading, and shows how those readings affect 'your' 'interactions' with the other 'characters' in the novel (sorry about the excessive use of 'quotes'). Anyway, Calvino essentially attempts to blur or break down the barrier between the reader and the text being read, directly involving the reader in the events of the story.

In The Raw Shark Texts (RST), we are told that the Ludovician Shark exists in the lattice created by human communication and conceptual understanding. This is the 'water' through which it swims, and the 'space' in which it exists. It tracks Eric through this space that he creates through his thought patterns and communication with others.

One of the things Eric has to do in order to begin the voyage is to write out his story in the air with the ancient stylus. He begins just as the novel we are reading begins: 'I was unconscious. I'd stopped breathing.'

So, here's where my theory starts... He is writing in the air the novel we are reading. He is communicating directly with us, the reader. In doing so, he begins to create a communicative link with us, thus creating the 'lattice space' through which the shark moves and with which it tracks Eric. After Eric crosses over into the alternate 'reality' of the Orpheus, the boat prints out the text of the story that he wrote and feeds it into the water, creating the 'chum' with which they lure the Ludovician to the boat. Then, when they succeed, look what happens in the text. The narrative freezes and breaks down, and we have the flip-book image of the shark approaching. At that moment, it is not going for Eric... it is coming after US, the readers. Why else would we have the narrative fractured, then the first-person view of the shark? Just a neat trick? Given everything else the book asks of us, I can't imagine that it's simply a cool gimmick.

In any case, following the first-person 'attack' that we the narrative clawing its way back into the story, but now the link between the reader and the story has been broken. We're no longer reading the story that Eric has layed out for us with his 'air narrative,' but he is completely locked in his own universe. From that point on he is locked within his own mind, and the story mirrors that of his pop-culture image memory: the exact ending of Jaws, the 'Matrix' representation of the Mycroft Ward network, etc. The story ends with his dream-reality paradise, swiming off towards his island with Scout having entirely embodied Clio.

Anyway, it's a little un-formulated, but I'd welcome comments. :)

Nice theory!! And If on a winter's night a traveler is an awesome book as well...

House of Leaves is indeed an excellent book. Quite a few of our members here hail from MZD's forums as well.