House of Leaves

This is probably the strangest book I've ever read. One of those cult favourites where you'll either passionately love the book, or vehemently hate it. Everything depends upon how much are you willing to invest - when you have to read the words upside down or sometimes vertically, when there are pages after pages after pages of incomprehensible texts, when you lose control of story at every step of the way and wonder what's really happening, are the characters losing their minds or is it you - you have to remember that this is just a book. Nothing more, nothing less. Otherwise, you'll end up like me, obsessing over every tiny detail, wondering at midnight whether the emptiness and coldness you feel is just because the temperature is low or are there other factors in play.

I know. I sound paranoid. But this is exactly what the author intended.

On surface, House of Leaves is a book about a house which expands on the inside while remaining unchanged on the outside, the vast empty space consisting of nothing but darkness accompanied by a vicious and nerve-wrecking growl. But it is so much more than that. This is the story of a famous photojournalist who is retiring from his life to fix his broken marriage in a quiet, suburb place. What he gets instead is a haunted house which initially intrigues his interest, but later on consumes him completely with its idiosyncrasies. How the paranoia creeps into his wife and his friends, threatening to break their entire relations. Eventually, it becomes a tale of how love redeems him and brings them closer than ever. All this sounds like a normal story, except the way Mark presents it makes it special. You find footnotes to footnotes of a book inside the book, with narrator consistently interrupting the flow with his own, fucked up life, slowly spiralling out of control from reality.

I'm glad I picked it up. The only letdown was that I read it on kindle, 'cause I couldn't afford the paperback version at this time. But, this is a book that is meant to be read on paper. I will surely revisit it once I have the paperback in my collection.

1) "This is not for you."

2) "A little while later, when we said goodnight, Thumper gave me a big, sweet hug. Almost as if to say she knew where I'd just been.
'You're alright Johnny,' she said for the second time that night. 'Don't worry so much. You're still young. You'll be fine.'
And then as she put her jeep into gear, she smiled: 'Come down and see me at work some time. If you want my opinion, you just need to get out of the house.'"

3) "Can Navidson's house exist without the experience of itself?"

4) "Audrie, however, claims Karen only flirted and her indiscretions never went further than a coy drink or a curt meal. She maintains that Karen never slept with any of them. They were just a means to escape the closeness of any relationship, particularly the one with the man she loved most."

5) "Though Karen gives her piece the somewhat faltering title A Brief History of Who I Love, the use of Navidson's photos, many of them prize-winning, frequently permits the larger effects of the late 20th century to intrude. Gordon Burke points out the emotional significance of this alignment between personal and cultural pasts:
'Not only do we appreciate Navidson more, we are inadvertently touched by the world at large, where other individuals, who have faced such terrible horrors, still manage to walk barefoot and burning from the grave.'
Each of Navidson's photographs consistently reveals how vehemently he despised life's destruction and how desperately he sought to preserve its fleeting beauties, no matter the circumstances."

6) "(Untitled Fragment)

Little solace comes
to those who grieve
when thoughts keep drifting
as walls keep shifting
and this great blue world of ours
seems a house of leaves

moments before the wind."