There is a quote that struck me in The Sun chapter at the end of the story, "The City of the Sun": "...words are not merely ciphers for the thoughts they represent; they have a power of their own; they are analogs of a divinized cosmos, evocative, charmed, incantational."
It got me thinking about how words, and by extension, media such as films and television, shape our culture and influence our lives. This book is about how life influenced literature and how literature influenced life. It is as if the words on the page have the power to create the world, just as the world creates the story.
The premise of the House of Rumour: "At the centre of the world where everything can be seen is a tower of sounding bronze that hums and echoes, repeating all it hears, mixing truth with fiction," reminds me of Jean Baudrillard's book Simulacra and Simulation, in which Baudrillard argues that today there is no such thing as reality.
It also reminded me that history is written by the victors and there is no real truth, just what I would call "spin".