House of Leaves
Mark Danielewski
March 2000
709 pages
So I have read (and bought) House of Leaves. But I think I missed about 90% of what the book is about, for a variety of reasons:
- I will confess to skimming many of Zampano’s footnotes. Although I did read all of Johnny Truant’s.
- I don’t want to work that hard at reading a book.
- There are poems in the back, and I SUCK at reading poetry.
- There were whole sections about architecture, and engineering, and carbon dating, and philosophy, and language, and other things, all of which went right over my head.
- There’s also an index, although it doesn’t always tell the truth. It must take after the narrators.
- It’s bizarre.
I read this book for a read-along with Rebecca and Jenn. I had noticed it in the bookstore before, because if you leaf through this book, you’ll find that it’s intriguing to look at. There are giant sections of unconventional text (pages where the text is sideways, or circular, or upside down, and pages with just a few words and pages jam packed with words). There are scads of footnotes (seriously, it makes Oscar Wao look wimpy in the footnote department) and there are Appendices with pictures, and poems, and letters, and collages and quotes. Also, the aforementioned index. I read somewhere that the book has been described as ergodic literature. Espen Aarseth, the expert in ergodic literature (so says Wikipedia) explains:
In ergodic literature, nontrivial effort is required to allow the reader to traverse the text. If ergodic literature is to make sense as a concept, there must also be nonergodic literature, where the effort to traverse the text is trivial, with no extranoematic responsibilities placed on the reader except (for example) eye movement and the periodic or arbitrary turning of pages.
And that’s enough about that, otherwise I’ll run screaming away from this post.
There is a story. Actually there are two stories. Or maybe three. Maybe even four. The first story is about Will Navidson, a famous photojournalist who has bought a house in Virginia in an attempt to settle down and save his relationship with his family. But after Navidson, his girlfriend Karen, and their two children move into the house, they begin to notice a few odd things. There are rooms that suddenly appear. And the house is bigger on the inside than the outside. And then one day there is a hallway that seems to go on forever. And it growls. As Navidson and various friends begin to explore the house, things just get creepier and creepier.
Meanwhile, in the footnotes, there is a second story. Johnny Truant, who found this whole tale on scraps of paper in a dead man’s apartment (the dead man being Zampano), is telling his own story. Johnny becomes obsessed with the story, to the point where he is slowly going insane. Although all of the drugs he took and his own mother’s history of mental illness may be contributing factors. One can never be sure with Johnny. He is amusing, though. Take this response to a quote from Heidegger:
Which only goes to prove the existence of crack back in the early twentieth century. Certainly this geezer must of gotten hung up on a pretty wicked rock habit to start spouting such nonsense. Crazier still, I’ve just now been wondering if something about this passage may have actually affected me, which I know doesn’t exactly follow, especially since that would imply something in it really does make sense, and I just got finished calling it non-sense. (p. 25 or footnote 33)
Johnny also said (page 20 footnote 25) “We all create stories to protect ourselves,” casting doubt on pretty much anything that comes after.
Zampano, the original narrator, and the house itself could also be considered stories, although we never do learn anything concrete about either one.
So that’s the gist of the story. But it’s almost impossible to just read this book. It’s more like you have to experience it. And study it, because there are hidden clues and meanings and references scattered through the whole thing. And that’s where I get lazy, because I don’t want to spend days poring over footnotes and looking for hidden messages. The one place where it’s obvious there is a hidden message is in the letters from Johnny’s mom, found in one of the appendices. She even explains how to find the message. Did I bother? No. Because I don’t want to spend the rest of my life decoding the damn book!
I did do a little Googling, to see what popped up about House of Leaves and Mark Danielsewki. There are a couple of interviews…the Bookreporter interview is kind of fun, the Guardian interview more serious.
And then there’s Danielewski’s Wikipedia page, which explains a few things, such as the fact that his father was a film professor and his sister is Poe, a musician who wrote songs that relate to the book. Which explains why the word Poe appears on the back cover. And why there is so much about film in the book.
And there is a whole forum devoted to discussing the book, which is way more info than I ever wanted. Although I did learn that one possible explanation for why the word house always shows up in blue is because of the blue screen that is used in filmmaking to create special effects. Therefore, a blue screen can be anything, or nothing. Is your head spinning yet?
In the bizarre column, I mentioned in my last Sunday Salon post that it wasn’t the weirdest book I’d ever read in terms of content…that honor goes to Geek Love, by Katherine Dunn. Later that day, as I was reading along in House of Leaves, I came across this reference:
Katherine Dunn is rumoured to have invented her own version of Karen’s journal. (p. 416)
And yes, that is how rumoured is spelled…there are other English spellings throughout the novel.
That was a bit of a Twilight Zone moment. The Dunn reference, not the spelling of rumoured. So maybe it is the weirdest book I’ve ever read. All I know is I’m tired of thinking about it.
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