House of Leaves by Mark Z. Danielewski

underthecity

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I was recommended this title by a fellow AW member. It sounded intriguing: a book within a book about a film, kind of a literary version of Blair Witch Project.

I had to read it.

On the outset, the book is very interesting. A guy named Johnny Truant learns from his friend Lude that an old man living in Lude's apartment building died recently of mysterious circumstances. They go check out the old man's apartment. It's very weird in there. Johnny finds a trunk containing manuscript pages and other odds and ends relating to a book called The Navidson Record. The Navidson Record is a scholarly nonfiction treatise about the experiences of filmmaker/photographer Will Navidson and family when he owned a unique house filled with mysterious hallways.

Johnny pieces the manuscript together, and as he does this, he adds his own footnotes that detail what he's going through in his own life as he reads TNR. Eventually, Johnny's life starts falling apart as he further delves into TNR. How is his life becoming meshed with TNR exactly? The reader never really finds out. In the end, Johnny goes on a quest to find the house "on Ash Tree Lane" in Virginia, but never finds it.

My take on this book.

First, TNR. I've written three nonfiction books, and none were as "scholarly" and annotated as TNR. EVERYTHING has a footnote, some extremely long and usually unnecessary. The old man who wrote it, "Zampano," writes in incredible vivid detail of the house and its explorations and how it affected everyone involved in it. At times I found it interesting, and other times it was relentlessly boring. There were numerous "stylistic" choices made, such as a single word on a page (usually relating to explorations), upside down writing, reversed writing, all for reasons relating to the current theme. I had no idea if Johnny was supposed have created the manuscript this way, or if it were Zampano's choices.

Overall, TNR itself was interesting "nonfiction" but didn't draw any conclusions on whatever became of the house and where the mysterious hallways came from, even though Zampano interjected a lot of his own opinions throughout. I found it fascinating, though, just how much press and analysis Navidson's house gained after his movie was released.

Johnny's story. Johnny is shown slowly losing his mind as he continues piecing together TNR. This is done in gigantically long footnotes that were at times compelling, and other times confusing and, well, boring. The writing itself was solid and, even though both TNR and Johnny's story were in effect written by Danielewski, the two voices were distinct.

What I didn't understand, though, was why those things were happening to Johnny. Why was he hallucinating? Why was he screaming out in his sleep? All he was doing was compiling TNR. Why would he think that whatever happened in the house in TNR was also happening to him? The author never shows us.

Even worse, is that there is no end in Johnny's story. He goes off to find the house, doesn't find it, and then . . . that's kind of it. Even more confusing is when he visits a bar and hears the band playing a song inspired by TNR. He talks to the band and discovers they have a manuscript "downloaded off the internet" that they had voraciously read and marked up. The story in TNR inspired one of their songs (The Five and a Half Minute Hallway). Johnny is surprised, but doesn't reveal that he is the Johnny in the footnotes in the story.

When had House of Leaves/TNR been made available to the reading public? Johnny almost burned the manuscript once, but he never said that he published it online. Never. That one really threw me, even though Johnny himself didn't question it, like wait a minute, that manuscript is still in the trunk of my car.

Then there's all the supposed "secret codes" the reader is apparently supposed to decode (which I ranted about in another thread). After going through this thing, I had no desire to search for the sentences to decode.

By the time I got to the end, with the pages and pages of letters from Johnny's mother, I had lost interest. At this point I had a signed copy of Will Lavender's Obedience waiting for me to read, and every one of Johnny's mother's letters were redundant and didn't add any sort of conclusion to House of Leaves or Johnny himself.

All in all, House of Leaves is a unique approach to novel writing and story telling. I wish I had thought of the idea first, though. My approach, would have been different. I suppose HOL is "modernist fiction" but it really didn't thrill me as the awesome piece of literature so many people make it out to be.

I would love to know Danielewski's background, though: his inspiration for writing it, his background in writing nonfiction, and especially how he found a publisher for it. How do you write a query letter for something like this?

allen
 

zahra

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Yes, I read this a couple of years ago and was impressed by the concept but bored in some parts by the footnotes etc. But being post-modernly post-modern here, I almost didn't mind because this is often the case with documented true tales - there are some boring bits, some flights of erudition etc ( I remember some parts of 'The Onion Field' for instance, I could have lived without). I honestly took this as something the author did on purpose - given us something we could 'geek into' if we wanted.

Just my opinion, though, and I have to agree I wasn't totally in love with the execution and wished someone with a slightly more populist pen had had the idea first.
 

willietheshakes

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Postmodern, not modernist.

And while I won't fault your opinion (we all have them), I have to say I vehemently disagree...
 

zahra

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Well, I intend to re-read the house at some point soon, so I'll have a go with the other points you make - must say, I've forgotten a lot of the details of this book, but I was certainly left with the impression I posted earlier.:)
 

jscribbles

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I know this is an old thread, but I'd like to point out to underthecity, if he's still around, that Mark Danielewski is the singer Poe's brother. She released a CD around the same time called "Haunted," and some of the songs parallel events in the book, especially her "5 1/2 Minute Hallway."

Here's a link to an interesting interview with MD, in which he talks about his idea for the novel: http://www.flakmag.com/features/mzd.html

As for experiencing the book, I read this when I was in college, and it gave me nightmares for weeks. This may sound a bit new-ageish, but it opened my mind to parts of myself I'd never known were there, and they were dark, ugly parts. I think his novel is brilliant and haunting and terrifying.
 
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Zoombie

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Sounds really cool, like something out of the World of Darkness, where books regularly make college students go crazy, meet vampires, and then turn into wizards, then get their souls sucked out through their noses.

I'll have to check it out!
 

TrickyFiction

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As for experiencing the book, I read this when I was in college, and it gave me nightmares for weeks.

Yep. Same here. It is the only book I have actually had to put down and tell myself to breath because it's just a book. I felt obligated to it somehow, and not in a good way. It was wearying and thrilling and boring and dizzying. It seems to have a life of its own and you start (or at least I did) reading it in a non-order which only sucks you further in.

Johnny's mother's letters were probably the freakiest part of the novel. I'm surprised the OP felt they didn't add anything to the book. She is writing from a mental institution. One of her letters (decoded) is a message to her son, begging him to remover her from the hospital because, she says, they rape her every night. It is also interesting that her son's last name is Truant, which means absent without permission.

One of the students in my class guessed that the entire thing took place in the mind of Johnny's mother, that she wrote the book and the footnotes too, and that there was no such person as Johnny Truant. That was an interesting take. Another idea is that mental illness is often passed down through families, and that Johnny's susceptibility is illustrated through his mother's letters: the ultimate "show, don't tell."
 

Inkdaub

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I hated the book when I first picked it up and eventually put the thing down about half-way through. It kept nagging at me, though, and finally I went back. I enjoyed it much better the second time.

There was an aspect of the Truant narrative that was really bothering me. Yet that nagging voice in my head finally reminded me of something Johnny said that really helped me accept the aspect that was bothering me, or maybe understand it a little better. It was all good from then on.
 

feeblepizza

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House of Leaves by Mark Danielewski

Hey, AW. I've recently become immersed in an Internet meme known as Slenderman (Slendy can be further researched on YouTube or at Something Awful forums). On the SA thread concerning the meme, several posters referenced that Slenderman reminded them of the book House of Leaves by Mark Danielewski, especially because of its ergodic style and horrific elements. However, further research at the book's Wikipedia page reveals that the author said this:

"I had one woman come up to me in a bookstore and say, 'You know, everyone told me it was a horror book, but when I finished it, I realized that it was a love story.' And she's absolutely right. In some ways, genre is a marketing tool."

So, my question is this: have any of you read it? Is it a horror novel or a romance story? Is it worth my money to buy, and my time to read? Thank ya'll for your no doubt helpful responses beforehand ;)