House of Leaves

The typesetting stuff in House of Leaves is unique, clever, impressive from a technical standpoint, and certainly not like anything I had ever seen before. Unfortunately, it is often little more than a gimmick — some of the most striking and complex printing in the entire book is used for what amounts to filler, never used for anything with more depth than adding some visual flair to a linear text. That might be enough for some, but it was hard not to be disappointed after hearing so much about the the novel's legendary reputation.

I enjoyed the book. I enjoyed the academic/informational presentation of the main text, I enjoyed the house and the analysis surrounding it, and I enjoyed some of the narrative around Johnny Truant, even if I found his footnote interjections mostly tedious and annoying, particularly earlier into the novel. I don't think I would have enjoyed these elements any less if the book's strange typesetting was taken out entirely, though, which seems like a real missed opportunity.

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."

This is amazing. There are two narratives here, the book itself and another, squeezed haphazardly in the footnotes. I felt torn between the two narratives the whole way, impatient with the one as I was waiting to get back to the other.

The first one is by a man known as Zampanò, whose prose is exquisitely Lovecraftian. Speaking as someone who's actually reading Lovecraft at the same time, I'll say that this echoes those of his works which are most disturbing. And I mean that in the best way possible.

In between and among Zampanò's book is the other narrator, Johhnny Truant (the one who ostensibly "found" Zampanò's work), whose words are just... beautiful. Well, I say "beautiful." Mostly I mean the language is fascinating, even if what the words mean is anything but beautiful. It is a masterpiece of... not quite stream of consciousness, but nearly. Wandering, barely-connecting thoughts, but with punctuation, and occasionally coherence. It's so wandering, and full of black-ish whimsy. I love it. It's art, pure and simple.

Seriously, this book is like a Film - with a capital F, mind you - or like a goddamn surrealist avant-garde museum exhibit. Sometimes the words are upside down or backwards or slanted; often they make shapes on the pages (shapes which match the action or echo the mood); whole sentences are drawn out over several pages for effect. Everything means something, you're pretty sure - unless it doesn't, and you're just reading too much into it. Two thirds of the way through, and the storyline(s) just fell apart in my hands, crumbling into glorious madness.

And once having finished... I felt wrung out to dry.

I just... I wish he'd stop saying "alot." All I see is that bit from Hyperbole and a Half.

I was disappointed in this book. It started so promisingly; here was a spooky story written in a challenging way. We had two narrators, one dead, one so unreliable that you begin to question everything he says. Getting lost in the labyrinth along with the characters was genius. Then you begin to realize this story is going nowhere. Just twist and turns, but nothing is behind the door only more doors and empty hallways. I felt the character development was weak, the whole Johnny Truant story got tedious. The house was never explained, getting lost in it could have been really chilling (ha) with the growl and endless twists and turns and changes and impenetrable darkness. The psychological aspect could have been elaborated but it was just kind of left to fizzle.

Meh, I really wanted to like this but ultimately I felt let down. It could have been so much more IMHO of course.

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Review of House of Leaves

One word: beautiful.

Elaboration: The kind of beauty that is more pronounced since you see it surrounded by so much sadness and misery. The beauty for example of a pure-white lily, growing amidst the brown loam of a graveyard, or to invoke a more buddhist image, that of a lotus flower emerging pure white from the bottom muck and mud of a pond.

Specifics: The story is about a weird house and the family who moves there. The father is a world-famous photographer, a veteran of the warzones, more than a bit high-strung. There is his wife who is the love of his life, the mother his two children (a boy and a girl), a former model. The main story of the novel explores the unusual and supernatural things that happen to them and to those connected with them as they live in that house.

What is great about this is that the narration is unique. The narrator is unreliable, as he is an obsessed drug user. The framing is this: so this old guy dies, and in his apartment is found all these notes which turns out to be a book in progress. The narrator somehow becomes interested in how the pieces of the story unfolds and he takes it as his task to edit the notes into a book. The notes that the old man wrote becomes the main storyline of the novel. The narrator himself becomes an important part of the novel. Besides this, the actual text of the novel is presented in a dizzying manner. There are pages that only contain a few words. There are pages that are filled with just footnotes. The footnotes, my god, the footnotes, they are everywhere in this novel.

Conclusion: if you want something deep, something that you will be obsessed with, something that will keep you awake nights just so you can read some more of it, then this book is for you. reading the book is an unforgettable experience. so much so that upon finishing it, you would take the time to ponder and just let all the emotions sink in.

Dec 15, '11 10:49 AM
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