House of Leaves

What makes a good book is how much you put into it. Most good books don't tell you their meaning up front. You have to invest in the book to get something out of it. Mark Danielewski takes a radical approach in challenging the conventions of writing with this postmodern read. The very structure of the book creates visual experiences that convey meaning (even if it's small) in addition to the content of the book. This book explores structure and the style of writing, not just the content. The perfect blend of the two makes it a novel experience in enjoying both the challenging story, narration styles, and structure/form of the story to create a unique experience unlike most other novels you will read. This is not by any means even a moderate read - it is a hard read. But any good book is worth it if you stick with it and really try to understand it. Most people rate it poorly, even if they are avid readers, because it is not an easy read. It takes effort, but so does all good reading. Reading is not always so light and easy. There are books to enjoy that are more towards that end of the spectrum, but this is a highly rewarding text for its complexity. It is highly worth it if you understand that books don't always have immediate sense to it. That is what makes it a postmodern book, a book that challenges everything we know to be true and sensible in a "novel." I have read the entirety once and will do it two times again this next quarter in university and I look forward to it so much. Allow yourself to fall down the rabbit hole and discover a radical challenge to every convention of writing you know. An amazing book if you understand that you have to give yourself to a book in order to be impacted and changed by it. An amazing text if you approach it with an open mind. That is the only thing that is constant in this novel - open to the chaos, madness, and sheer beauty we find in Danielewski's vision of what is possible in a piece of written art. Art does not always make sense. Just as Oscar Wilde writes in his prologue to The Picture of Dorian Gray, "All art is rather useless." If you seek to understand the wicked truth in this novel, you will look into the abyss and the abyss will look back into you. There is beauty in the ugliness, there is peace in the chaos, and logic in the nonsensical rollercoaster of a ride this text is. It is a postmodern text that uses the conventions of the English language/syntax/grammar to break the conventions of English, showing its absurdity. It is truly amazing. So worth it if you allow yourself to be humbled and open to learning from a text as an intellectually honest person. A lot of people who read a lot of books become arrogant and lose their ability to have a growth mindset that can adapt and learn the value (or create value where you can't seem to find it readily) of a text that challenges what they expect or want out of a text. In school, college, university, and throughout life we learn to be skeptical, cynical, and rebellious to all things we encounter. While this can be useful and healthy, most everybody never learns to balance it out with an inquisitive, open, and empathetic side to it which helps you to not just tear down everything you don't understand but helps you to see the value in something novel. I feel bad for the other people who did not have a good experience reading this text and rated it poorly. A lot of them sound like they either gave up because it is a difficult text to read (not a very healthy way to read, which is to challenge and grow yourself while also enjoying the pleasure of prose and verse) or they were unable to see the value of something that seems immediately harmful because it challenges your worldview and assumptions as to what "good" (or what is safe) to read. Not all of them, but some of them are close-minded and do not allow themselves to adapt and change, to learn and grow from this text, even if it challenges everything you know to be true and good. Identify yourself with our amazing ability to change and adapt and to be smart, and you can't go wrong. Even "bad" texts can teach us something. Take the leap if you dare. With the right mindset, there is so much in this text to experience and to learn from. A truly challenging and amazing text to read. TLDR: it is so worth it. Open your mind to it, and let it break down everything you know to be true and good in our Western mindset, and in our limited English sense of grammar. Have the growth mindset and an inquisitive attitude and you will be fundamentally changed by the power of this book to restructure the way you think, freeing you from the captivity of our modern conventions of thinking. Radically changing book.

Do the words meta, post-modern, or experimental make you cringe when used to describe books? Then turn back now. I feel the need to say that up front because many people seem to go into this book expecting a horror novel and wind up wasting their money. Just take a look at the genres that goodreads lists this as. Horror, fiction, fantasy, and mystery. With inapt labels like that, it's easy to see how people could get the wrong idea. This is not a horror novel, nor is it a mystery novel or a fantasy novel. This book is, among many other things, a personal story about the author's parents presented as experimental literary fiction that's thinly veiled as a horror novel. Confused? Good, stay that way for now, and don't think too hard about what I just said. I'm not that into horror novels, and I generally like post-modern and experimental stuff, and I knew what I was getting into when I bought this. Know what you're getting into, that's all I'm trying to say. Here's the basic concept as clear and concise as I can tell it. There are essentially three narrators that will be addressing you, the reader. 1) Zampano, an old blind man 2) Johnny Truant, a thirty-something druggie 3) The "editors" Johnny's friend, Lude, knows Zampano because he lives in the same apartment building. The old man, ominously, tells Lude he's going to die soon, and does. After the body is gone, Lude and Johnny sneak into the apartment to take a look around at Zampano's things. They find a crazy manuscript, which Johnny takes home with him. The manuscript is a non-fiction book/dissertation about a documentary called "The Navidson Record." The Navidson Record is about a famous photojournalist named Will Navidson and his family moving into a new house that is bigger on the inside. When I say non-fiction, I mean it. It reads like a textbook. On every page there are footnotes about other articles and other books that reference this documentary that, by all accounts, doesn't exist (I'll get to this in a second). It starts out simple at first. After the family returns home from vacation they notice a hallway on the second floor connecting two bedrooms that wasn't there before. They track down a blueprint of the building and see that there is a space between the walls, although it's not supposed to be a finished hallway with doors. Okay, no big deal, maybe they didn't notice the doors before, it's a new house after all and they had just moved in before going on vacation. Then comes the realization that measuring the house through that hallway results in an extra inch that shouldn't exist, and that can't be explained. Then a new door appears, on the first floor this time, that should lead to an empty back yard but instead leads to a long, dark hallway that extends into an endless labyrinth of cavernous, thousand-foot rooms that leads to god knows where and contains god knows what, and the exploration of this door is the main focus of the documentary. So Johnny finds this manuscript, reads it, edits it, adds his own footnotes relating to research he's done on Zampano's life and the manuscript contents (translations of foreign phrases, for instance), but also personal tangents about his own life and stream of consciousness ramblings. In the prologue where he explains how he found the manuscript, he also says that The Navidson Record doesn't actually exist. Johnny's editors also appear in footnotes and in the first say they have never met Johnny Truant in person, only communicating via letters and rare phone calls. Weird, right? What follows is 528 pages of an interwoven, multi-layered story. On the one hand, you have Zampano's non-fiction book about this fictitious documentary, which simmers as a slow-paced "found-footage" horror novel that can be unsettling, thought-provoking, but is likely to disappoint hardcore horror fans looking for adrenaline-pumping scares. Then you have Johnny's story, told through long footnotes, which is more vague and slow to reveal itself, but the basic idea is that although he knows the manuscript is fiction, the act of reading it causes him to lose his marbles. Whether the manuscript or Johnny's brain chemistry is to blame is up to the reader. Whether Johnny is even telling the truth is up to the reader. And, to be honest, Johnny's parts can sometimes be hard to read because he's just pitiable and depressing and the stream of consciousness prose can wear down your focus. It gets Joyce-esque at times, though only for short stretches, because Danielewski is a nice man who wants you to have a good time, unlike Joyce, who hates you and hates fun. Then the "story" part ends, and you have 130 pages of appendices (which you should read) which include things like: Zampano's writings which are not a part of The Navidson Record The obituary of Johnny's dad Childhood letters from Johnny's crazy, institutionalized, long dead mother Poems So what does it all mean? Well, it means a clever and perhaps over-educated man named Mark Danielewski decided to write a novel that experiments with the format of the novel, that pushes the boundaries of what a novel can be and what it can do. While much of it could quite fairly be called a gimmick, and it won't be redefining how all novels are written going forward, it's a gimmick that works, that is unique, that is stimulating, that is discussion-worthy, that makes the world more interesting by existing, and isn't that what good art is supposed to do? It is an unmitigated success at being singular, and because it is singular it will inspire intense love and intense hatred from different people. It means that while there are answers, you will have to work for them. I mean this both figuratively and literally. On the literal side, there is a letter in the appendices that is written in a simple code, which you will have to translate into a coherent message with pen and paper. And that's a code that is plainly said to be a code. There are other codes that are truly hidden. Many sections have weird, cluttered layouts that make the act of reading them hard, and make tracking down the right footnote a scavenger hunt. You'll be presented with footnotes that make no sense until you realize the text is broken up over several pages and presented backwards. There are a lot of elements to the story, little throwaway lines and facts that you need to remember, or write down. How did Johnny's dad die. How did Navidson's dad die. Stuff like that. While it's not absolutely necessary, I'd recommend having a notebook handy starting on page one. I have an amazing memory, took notes here and there, and still wish I'd taken more. Like I said, this book is work. It's fun work though, depending on your tastes and personality. I'm an INTP and I loved it. Your mileage may vary. On the figurative side, the book still won't hold your hand and spell out what it all means in flashing neon. That's up to you to figure out by gathering all the evidence together and deconstructing the book on several different levels by asking yourself what's true and what isn't, what matters and what doesn't, what's literal and what's figurative, what's the metanarrative, what's the subtext. Ultimately it's up to you to decide when you're satisfied with your answer. While this is nowhere near as open to interpretation as most books you'd label as post-modern or modernist, it is still open to interpretation compared to a typical novel, which isn't open to interpretation at all. There are no easy answers, no definitive answers, but there are satisfying answers that I firmly believe are more or less what the author intended, if you're willing to put in the effort to discover them and have a flexible mind that delights in abstract concepts. Alternatively there are, of course, existing breakdowns of it on the internet that you can turn to for some help, although none I've read have gone far enough into speculation. They present facts and evidence, point out what's true or not, but none of them have drawn the kind of final conclusion that I've drawn. That's how it should be. You should decide for yourself. If none of this sounds like fun to you, I recommend giving this one a pass

I've never been much of a reader. For most of my life, I've had a relatively short attention span and it's consistently given me difficulties when focusing on the words of a page. This book changed all of that. Danielewski's unique style of writing and formatting make this book both compelling and engaging in a way that very few books can even come close to comparing. This book asks, no, *demands* far more from you than just your attention as it outright requires your deliberate participation when it comes to navigating the narrative. Structured like an academic piece of non-fiction², your curiosity is more often than not rewarded when following the breadcrumbs left by the frequent citations and footnotes.³ Though like all novels, this book is not without it's ups and downs, in some cases quite literally.⁴ Featuring a narrative that shifts between multiple character perspectives, you follow the story of a man who finds a manuscript about a movie about a house that is ever so *slightly* bigger on the inside than it is on the outside. This novel is at its best when it focuses on the titular house, while at its worst, you're forced to sit in the passenger seat of many drug and alcohol fueled sexcapades that initially do very little to aid the storytelling. That said, these scenes are all a necessary evil to the novel's meta narrative and after finishing the story in it's entirety, I wouldn't change anything about it. House of Leaves is a master class example of liminal horror⁵ that will keep you engaged from beginning to end as you get lost within the halls of the house on Ash Tree Lane. Danielewski has crafted a very specific type of experience within the pages of this book, nearly all 730 pages are memorable in their own way. But don't let the high page count intimidate you, this book goes by a lot faster than you'd think and should be taken slowly in chunks. I personally recommend reading a few chapters every couple of days, really chew and savor the experience, it will be much more memorable this way. And remember, there is no wrong way to read House of Leaves. ¹The joys of reading and their discoverability are difficult to quantify; this phrase should be taken as a figure of speech. ²Despite the very fictitious nature of Mark Z. Danielewski's House of Leaves, the story's formatting and structure lends itself to be a real world scholarly study of multiple academic works, both fictional and otherwise. ³House of Leaves is written in a way that it can be explored through a multitude of methods. Some readers may read it front to back without engaging in the footnotes and appendices until after they've finished the main narrative, presenting the story in a mostly linear fashion with the citations serving as bonus material, while others encourage breaking chronology and getting lost in the novel's lengthy footnotes as they occasionally reference different sections of the book that often prove to be relevant to the current passage, creating a unique non-linear experience for the narrative. ⁴House of Leaves features several sections and passages that make use of unique text formatting and typefaces, serving to invoke very specific sensations while reading. To speak any further on the subject could result in a spoiler. ⁵Many fans of Danielewski's novel have gone as far as to say House of Leaves went on to inspire several pieces of media within the liminal horror genre.

If you don't have much patience, this book is not for you. If, on the other hand, you enjoy browsing and reading some books several times--particularly books like this, where at least a couple of readings are required, since there's so much to discover--then this IS for you. "House of Leaves" is indeed an experimental novel, but it's not precisely avant-garde. Everything follows a single cohesive storyline, even if it doesn't seem like it. Every digression and footnote is relevant, and enriches the experience. However, again, you must be patient, and you have to enjoy perusing a book at leisure--speed-reading does no good here (trust me, I'mm a speed reader). I don't want to go too much into the storyline (it's way too easy to offer spoilers) but basically, "House of Leaves" follows one man's discovery of a another man's archives documenting truly horrifying events chronicled by a pair of films that do not exist. These films were supposedly created by a professional photographer who was documenting his family's experience moving into a new house. Worse--or better, if you're into horror--those horrifying events are not really under the constraints of place or even time. It if sounds convoluted, it's really not. Or, at least, it's easy to understand; you might have to read the above sentences a couple of times, but you absorb these facts almost by osmosis when you're reading "House of Leaves." I'm afraid to say too much, because spoilers are much to easy to give away here, and while there's probably enough surprises and revelations in this novel that revealing a couple wouldn't make much difference on the book's impact, I don't feel like spitting anything out. I will say this is a very scary novel. If you're any kind of horror fan who longs, at least on occasion, for something beyond the usual spatter and gore, then "House of Leaves" is a must. If you're a reader looking for the next big thing--or at least the next talked-about thing--in literary forms, you, also, should read it. If, however, you're into perfectly streamlined, evenly chapter-divided stories that do not digress and get themselves over with quickly--or at least cleanly-- skip it. "House of Leaves" is a worthwhile experience--extremely worthwhile, in my opinion--but it is not easy, and it is often frustrating. This is not because it is difficult to read; rather, it is because you want to know every answer as soon as the question pops up. At times, it feels like it can't possibly make any sense, like the footnotes and notes and side stories can't possibly add to the story, like it's a waste of time. Trust me, though. It's not. This book isn't a runaway, blockbuster, billion dollar bestseller, and for several reasons. The form does put some people off. Also,it is genuinely frightening, and many people, contrary to what they say, do not actually like being afraid. However, the fact that it's been in steady print says something. "House of Leaves" will continue to develop a cult following; however, that should not be the sole factor in your decision to read or not read this book. It doesn't matter who likes or doesn't like "House of Leaves." It is unique enough that both its fans and detractors are all kinds of people, from all walks of life and learning and experience. This book does not appeal to any one type of person. If you read it, you'll probably understand why. "House of Leaves" is one of the most unique, enthralling, confusing, frustrating, infuriating, and rich reading experiences I've had in the last couple of years. With the former caveats in mind--it doesn't get itself over with quickly, it is often frustrating, the digressions are almost like non sequiturs in places, and it's very frightening-- I would still reccommend this novel to most.

One thing I will say about House of Leaves: it's ambitious in its experimentation. Maybe too much. It has a unique quality, is different than anything I've ever read, or ever will read. It's also a difficult book to put in one genre because it has many elements: it has horror, a bit of humor and satire, erudition, research and footnoting, has building suspense and elements of the supernatural, contains a romantic story, has shifts in time, place and narrative, and skews the line between reality and illusion. It's structure that not only moves from different vantage points of narrator and time, but also forces you to turn the book upside down and sideways to read, flip to the appendices at the end of the book, and puzzle over ambiguous clues. In many ways, the narrative flow of the book mirrors what takes place. In short, this is one bizarre, but entertaining read. There are several focuses in House of Leaves. We learn of a mysterious Navidson Record from one of the narrators, Johnny Truant, an aimless, slacker type, a bit of an unreliable narrator because of his reckless, wild, and somewhat erratic state of mind. The Navidson Record, discovered in an apartment that Johnny is renting, is an account of a perplexing documentary of the Navidson family, whose home is the basis of some bizarre happenings. The Navidson's home has a mysterious space where there was once a wall. As Will Navidson begins to explore and discover this, this odd phenomenon takes on a life of its own (in both the story and the pages), and becomes the source of inquiry from Navidson and a few others. This account is all documented extensively in research that is included in Zampano's manuscript, which is a source of Johnny's narrative. The new dimensions of the home, and the subsequent explorations that take place, have an emotional and physical toll on those who are involved. As Truant gets further and further into the details of this manuscript, he also details his own instabilities--past and present-- and the many issues he deals with: delusions, drug abuse, depression, alienation. Within the framework of the narrative, we have details told from Johnny's point of view, but also from Zampano's document. There are also letter from Johnny's mother as well as interviews about the infamous house and the Navidson Record. At many points, things become a little muddled as we try to put many of the pieces of this account together; we are even sent on an occasional wild goose chase moving back and forth through the book. I'm not sure if this can be classified as pure fiction or literature, as there is a certain level of artistic quality (some may see this as gimmickry) that overrides aspect of the plot. I'll admit that I was a bit annoyed at points, especially with all the erudition and overblown research that had me using more than one bookmark while reading, flipping back and forth from narrative to appendix. Still, though, somehow this all is fitting and appropriate for House of Leaves. In House of Leaves, format is as important as its story, and both are reflective of each other. What the author does exceptionally well is make all aspects of the novel work, both the structure and mutli-layered storylines. Another positive is simply the level of mystery involved that we have to carefully follow--the author is adept at withholding key revelations. For sheer inventiveness and creativity, House of Leaves is an interesting read, one that will make you think (sometimes too much). Ultimately, House of Leaves has many levels of storytelling and is very experimental. In the end, I found the payoff to this bizarre, poetic, inventive ride to be a rewarding one.

I think it's safe to say that there is nothing quite like HOUSE OF LEAVES. It purports to be a novel, but is it? It's a puzzle, a mirror, an ouroboros, a maze, labyrinth, a nightmare, a psychological study, a critique on semiotics... I don't know. While I can briefly describe what it's about, I can't say WHAT it's about, in that sense of getting at the deeper level, the ultimate WHAT. At least not yet. I liken reading HOUSE OF LEAVES to watching any number of mind-bending, inscrutable films, INCEPTION, MEMENTO, MULHOLLAND DR., PRIMER, where it takes multiple viewings, discussions, and lots of thought to understand what you just saw. And many times, even after all the effort, it remains a mystery. In the simplest of terms, HOUSE OF LEAVES is about a young family moving to a house in Virginia. A house they soon discover which is larger on the inside than on the outside. First, it's only noticeable by fractions of an inch, discovered when measuring for work on the house. Then a door and hallway appears where there should be none, leading somewhere, but logically not possible. The door is on an outside wall. They soon discover that the space behind the door seems to be an infinite black labyrinth. The husband and father, Will Navidson, a photojournalist by trade, has already set the house with countless cameras and motion detectors as part of a film project centering on his family's adjustment to the rural life. Now that project turns to documenting the strangeness of the house itself. However, we learn none of this first hand -- and this is one of the mechanisms of the book which distances the reader from all information, getting it instead second, third, fourth hand, by way of footnotes from the studies of others, from fragments of poems, a series of letters, etc. And none of the sources, it becomes clear, can be relied on completely. The actual story of the Navidson Record, as it comes to be called, is brought to us by way of a young, sometime druggie hipster who finds a trunk full of documents in the apartment of a dead man, Zampano, who was obsessed with documenting this story about the house -- his pile of documents, clippings, scraps of paper, footnotes, personal observations. Now, with Zampano dead, Johnny Truant takes up the task of assembling the old man's findings into a coherent book, the HOUSE OF LEAVES. As he does, he begins his own footnotes and observations, which oftentimes lead into his personal life story. Very quickly, Truant becomes obsessed just like Zampano did. That's about as close to a simple outline as I can get. From there, it spirals out of control in many directions. Believe me, there is a lot, lot, more in there than I can begin to explain. I will need considerable time to think about HOUSE OF LEAVES. Perhaps there is no one way to understand it. One essay I read may come closest to what Danielewski has achieved with HOUSE OF LEAVES: "Danielewski builds disorientation and difficulty into the reader's experience of this text. ... The difficulty of the nonlinear text functions to heighten the reader's awareness of the kinds of interpretive decisions and reading strategies necessary for navigating the text: choosing to refer to a footnote or not; looking at illustrations or 'exhibits' before reading the book; deciphering or not deciphering coded text, etc. We come to realize that the interpretation derived from one reading strategy will undermine, negate, or obscure other possible interpretations of the text; knowing this, our interpretation seems unstable, arbitrary." [House of Leaves as Lemniscate (also Hofstadter, Derrida, etc.), by Scully, http://forums.markzdanielewski.com/fo...] By it's very complexity, HOUSE OF LEAVES is open to a seemingly infinite number of explanations -- no two people may use the identical strategy for reading the book. Truant's story is mixed within Zampano's description of Navidson's story of the House. Oftentimes, on the same page, using different fonts. Do you read Truant's story all the way through first, then double back to read Zampano? Or do you read everything on a page, like you would in a normal book, before going on to the next page? And what about the copious footnotes? And the multitude of appendices containing poems, media clippings, letters, scraps of text, letters, obituary. etc. How do you decide to tackle such a book? Presumably how you read it, what strategy you choose, will determine what interpretation you arrive at. There are scraps of text you'll need a mirror to read. Sometimes you'll have to turn the book at odd angles to read. Throughout the book, the word 'house' is printed in blue ink. Is there a purpose behind all this? If so, what is it? Portions of text are in red ink and crossed out, presumably excised by Zampano but resurrected by Truant. Why? Only several of the hundreds of mysteries in HOL. I'll leave it at that. I still have some appendices to go through, some footnotes to re-read, and tons of my own notes and scribblings to go over -- which, in a way, brings me, the reader, into the story, just as Zampano and Truant made there own marks on the Navidson Record. Clever stuff.

If a blackhole were to appear in our minds, would we walk into it, against our best judgment? Even after we confirm its nothingness and endlessness, would we still continue into its depths? Would we bring along others? Would we abandon life as we know it to seek meaning in it? The protagonist of Mr. Danielewski’s novel, Johnny, a tattoo parlor worker whose tenuous links to life comprise of Lude with whom he has “spent a good deal of time wandering all over this odd city [Los Angeles]. We both thrive in the late hours, appreciate its sad taste and never get in the way of each other’s dreams, even though Lude just wants more money, better parties and prettier girls…” and Thumper, not her real name, a stripper and a frequent customer to the tattoo shop who mesmerized our protagonist, “Her hair reminding me of a shiny gold desert wind brazed in a hot August sun, hips curving like coastal norths, tits rising and falling beneath her blue sweatshirt the way an ocean will do long after the storm has passed…” and calls her pussy “the Happiest Place on Earth,” inherits a blind recluse’s (Zampano’s) voluminous notes about a “film which doesn’t even exist,” in which a family have to reckon with a cavernous deprivation-tank-like hallways and staircases emerging in their idyllic Virginia country house (“House”). The narrative in the book occurs at different levels – the base is Zampano’s fictitious film, The Navidson Record, where Navidson, an accomplished photojournalist, loosely modeled on Kevin Carter, moves his family of 4 to the House together with a lot of video equipment that he first uses to capture daily life in the House, and then to explore its emerging dark hallways. While the base story has the unremarkable premise of a “haunted house,” complete with Navidson’s beautiful wife Karen, “a cold bitch, plain and simple. A high-fashion model, not much smarter than a radiator, who grew up thinking life revolved around club owners, cocaine, and credit card limits,” and their two young kids, it is done extremely well. The base story is way better than any haunted house story or horror flick, propelling the story forward. The action is nicely punctuated by philosophical asides, mostly appearing as fictitious commentary on the Navidson Record. The other narrative is the story of Johnny, moving forward from the point Johnny came in possession of Zampano’s materials and also backwards to trace his tumultuous childhood. Johnny’s story appears in his highly personal footnotes as he edits Zampano’s materials into the novel. As Johnny tries to edit Zampano’s materials comes in contact with folks who collaborated with Zampano, and we start tracing the story of Zampano as well. Though this third story line mostly focus on Zampano’s last years as he worked with a number of volunteer readers and scribes, most of whom happen to be attractive women, to pull together his work. These three stories of apparently distinct men, Navidson, the famous photojournalist, Johnny the aimless drifter, and Zampano the reclusive literary genius, intertwine amid commentary and discussions of fundamental questions of philosophy. Here are some examples: On reality versus fiction: “La Belle Nicoise et Le Beau Chien [a fictitious movie] … portrayed the murder of a little girl in such comic reality it was instantly hailed as the belle of the ball in the palace of the grotesque, receiving wares at Sundance and Cannes,… until of course it was discovered that there really was such a little Lithuanian girl and she really was murdered and by none other than the wealthy filmmaker himself. It was a slickly produced snuff film sold as an art house flick. Emir Kustrica’s Underground finally replaced Nicoise as the winner of Cannes Palm d’Or; an equally absurd and terrifying film though gratefully fictitious.” On physical reality of perceptions: “Can Navidson’s house exist without the experience of itself? Is it possible to think of that as ‘unshaped’ by human perceptions? Especially since everyone entering there finds a vision almost completely – though pointedly not completely – different from anyone else’s? Leonard [a fictitious commentator] claimed people create a ‘sensation of space’ where the final result ‘in the perceptual process is a single sensation – ‘a feeling’ about that particular place…’” As well lyric poetry: “Myth makes Echo the subject of longing and desire. Physics makes Echo the subject of distance and design. Where emotion and reason are concerned both claims are accurate. And where there is no Echo there is no description of space or love. There is only silence.” The layout of the book has some innovative designs which elevates the novel above pure text, adds a visual dimension, but this is a novel idea and a new art form. In House of Leaves different layout designs appear in different sections, never to reappear. I found them a bit forced. Yet the book in its full color edition is aesthetically pleasing. Finally, the overabundance of footnotes works to convey the sense of the mockumentary, but at certain points they pile up to break the flow of the narrative. With so many different academics or critics commenting on the Navidson Record, I quickly lost interest in tracking them. Perhaps it would have been better to streamline those to a handful and include them as additional characters. All in all, this is a great book, an artful post-modern narrative structure, with innovative layout designs, but most importantly some great, good old story telling.

I’d read House of Leaves when it was released and loved it then, but after revisiting it now, I’m even more enthralled. It comes as no surprise that reviews for Danielewski’s weighty tome are rather sharply divided, but I think this perhaps says more about the reader than the book itself. As we witness the inevitable effects that technology, and the instant gratification and high stimulation that go hand in hand with it, have made the expectation in our lives, it can hardly come as any surprise that the way that we read, as well as our expectations and preferences from our literature, have insidiously changed, too. House of Leaves is not “fast food fiction” to be gulped down as a quick, tasty snack, but rather a luxurious “fine dining” experience that requires time to consume and digest. For readers who have an appreciation for a book that immerses them body and soul, and the patience to allow the story to fully develop, House of Leaves will be a deeply satisfying and fully immersive reading experience. For those who prefer more bells and whistles and a beeline trip to the finish line, the story will seem painfully tedious and slow. As always, books all have their target audiences, and the challenge will always be getting them into hands where they will be most appreciated. I also think that books can strike us very differently depending on what’s going on in our personal lives, so recognizing that simple reality is something we need to consider when we pick up any new book. Sometimes those quick, tasty snacks hit the spot! That, however, is not the kind of book that House of Leaves is. It is a book that requires your commitment and patience, and ultimately rewards the persistent reader with a unique and memorable experience. And should you find that it’s not connecting with you right now for some reason, set it aside and try it again some future day. It’s a challenge worth attempting again.

A mirror to the reader that presents the simulacrum of multiple stories, House of Leaves is probably the most subjective book I've ever read. I loved the experience of reading this book. And make no mistake: you must choose how to read it. More questions than answers or perhaps even a narrative, the book presents a multilayered facsimile of a few different kinds of fiction. So my review is as the book intends. Merely my own reading and far more reflective of what I saw of myself while consuming it, than of anything else. This book makes space for a plethora of different kinds of readings. And I studied the text as much as I was able, tabbing and underlining and making marginalia to see if it does support my reading. And it does, I think. I'm going to be brief because I'm doing a video review on my Youtube that will be much more in-depth. Borgesque in its "main" narrative, The Navidson Tapes presents itself as academic criticism of a cult film that does not exist. In its granularity, this reader found that there was a very meaningful difference between consuming a film and reading the piece about the film that retreads every shot composition and feeling, every visual perception, endowing it with something beyond the film could hope to convey in a viewing. As a visual thinker, the film was even richer and textured and my comprehension of it so augmented, that I think it's a far superior experience. If watching it even were such an option. We follow the Navidson's, Will and Karen, children: Chad and Daisy, put down "roots" in Virginia. Only their colonization of the property is inverted, and the house colonizers Will, the patriarch and famous war-time photographer that sets aside his exploration to be with his family. Only, after the family is settled, the house changes, given new space--altering its dimensions in a literal sense--growing to accommodate Will's primordial self. His maze. Or labyrinth. The journey is literalized just as he believes he's completed every journey and there is nothing left but to conquer being a father. The family finds a door to a hallway to a great foyer to a spiral staircase to a maze. This causes a rift in the couple Karen, who has claustrophobia and is too afraid to enter it, and Will, who sees the next adventure and finds it irresistible. What follows is the horror of a space reflective of the people traversing it, ostensibly, but I believe more of Will's internal selfhood, and by extension humanity. And from the wreckage of the horror of trying to navigate this maze, a movie is (fictitiously) created. The movie's critical evaluation is done by a man named Zampano, who dies at an old age after becoming obsessed with the film. Researching every thematic linkage and creating his own reading. Another horror that reflects himself, driving him literally mad, or so it would seem. Because the actual person who compiled Zampano's work is Johnny Truant. A fake name, fake person, steeped in fiction that obfuscates his own trauma hidden in the footnotes in the critical analysis Zampano had written. Literally interrupting and resisting the spiral of Navidson's narrative into the maze, as well as Zampano's dark and turbulent thoughts that similarly spiraled. Johnny's story is mostly of self-aggrandizement and sexual exploits and chemical debauchery. Generally interceding when we reach points in the Navidson narrative that trigger his trauma, though he is only aware of the metaphor he has created which haunts and dogs him, as he becomes more like Zampano. Reclusive and colonized by the reading of the Navidson story. Rather than process their trauma, see only darkness and are ultimately consumed by it. Depending on what you believe "actually" happens in the narrative, anyway. I think the key themes in the book are trauma and colonization. They're hit on the head the most, in every prose craft fashion. Metaphor, allegory, symbolism. Everything seems to me, to point to the idea of patterns colonizing minds doomed to trace the same doomed lines on every layer of the fiction, regardless of whoever and however they consumed them. Everyone needs other people to feed them information outside of their own darkroom to truly see themselves. And without outside intercession, I think we all wander our own internal maze, whether we are aware of it or not. More so for people who carry trauma, who seem to have more darkness and less light to navigate the labyrinth.

At first glance, horror for the thinking man, but ultimately no more than smut and pedantry.

Uno de los mejores libros que he leído. No solo la edición y el diseño están cuidados hasta el mínimo detalle; la historia en si me cautivó desde el primer momento. Es un libro que merece la pena ser leído varias veces. Recomiendo adquirir la edición en inglés porque, aunque no he leido la versión en español, imagino que habrá muchas cosas que se pierdan en la traducción; la historia está repleta de juegos de palabras, referencias y sobre todo (y más importante) hay algunos mensajes escondidos entre las palabras. Esta edición en tapa blanda con solapas está a todo color (eso es, con la palabra "house" en azul, los pasajes del minotauro en rojo, las palabras correspondientes en morado y las imágenes del final en cuatricromía). El peso del libro y su volumen hacen que sea un poco incómodo de leer, y la letra es un poco pequeña, pero merece mucho la pena. Un buen acompañamiento para este libro es el álbum "Haunted" de Poe (el nombre artístico de la hermana del escritor), ya que ambas obras fueron hechas (según el propio Danielewski) para complementarse mutuamente.

Uno dei miei libri preferiti, questa edizione hardcover viene con due pagine di easter egg aggiuntivi ed è di fattura eccellente.

Great book. It was in excellent condition and arrived quickly