House of Leaves

by Mark Z. Danielewski

Johnny Truant (Introduction)

Years ago, when House of Leaves was first being passed around, it was nothing more than a badly bundled heap of paper, parts of which would occasionally surface on the Internet. No one could have anticipated the small but devoted following this terrifying story would soon command. Starting with an odd assortment of marginalized youth -- musicians, tattoo artists, programmers, strippers, environmentalists, and adrenaline junkies -- the book eventually made its way into the hands of older generations, who not only found themselves in those strangely arranged pages but also discovered a way back into the lives of their estranged children.

Now, for the first time, this astonishing novel is made available in book form, complete with the original colored words, vertical footnotes, and newly added second and third appendices.

The story remains unchanged, focusing on a young family that moves into a small home on Ash Tree Lane where they discover something is terribly wrong: their house is bigger on the inside than it is on the outside.

Of course, neither Pulitzer Prize-winning photojournalist Will Navidson nor his companion Karen Green was prepared to face the consequences of that impossibility, until the day their two little children wandered off and their voices eerily began to return another story -- of creature darkness, of an ever-growing abyss behind a closet door, and of that unholy growl which soon enough would tear through their walls and consume all their dreams.

• ISBN10: 1417709049
• ISBN13: 9781417709045
• Publish Date: 7 March 2000
• Publish Status: Active
• Imprint: Turtleback Books
• Edition: 2nd School & Library ed.
• Format: Hardcover (Library Binding)
• Pages: 709
• Language: English

Reviews

[celinenyx]

Stopped reading around page 320. This book is so meta that even meta isn't meta enough for it. Sheesh.

As someone who has been trained in literary theory of various flavours, I do get what House of Leaves is trying to do. It seems like the author had an absolute field day putting in as many obnoxious references to various literary theories as possible.

Let's talk narrative. The main body of the text is a pseudo-academic article about a piece of film. This article is then commented on by some random guy who has a lot of sex adventures and becomes increasingly paranoid. Those commentaries are then mentioned and bundled by nameless editors curating the work. The whole thing becomes a mess as more and more pieces of the different layers become interconnected and deconstructed.

What started as quite a fun idea, turned into boring slush. The form of the text mirrors the narrative. For example, as the article goes into discussing labyrinths, the reader's eye is forced to go all over the page trying to take all of the footnotes in, some going nowhere, forcing you to backtrack. When the narrative mentions windows, we see a square on the page which illuminates a certain (random) piece of text. When we turn the page, we see the piece of text mirrored, exactly as it would have looked if the text had been written on a window. It's nifty. But Mr Danielewski's trickery didn't make up for the fact that the story itself is incredibly dull.

When I started reading House of Leaves, I really enjoyed it. It's deeply disturbing, both the story itself as the reading experience. It has the same nightmarish quality Kafka has, which is high praise indeed. However, every inch of enjoyment I might have had, had drained away by the 150th page. The problem is that the heart of the narrative is an extensive pseudo-academic article. If you've ever been forced to read an academic article, you'll understand what I mean when I say that they don't necessarily make for exciting reading material. They're not too bad if you have an interest in the subject that is discussed - but when it's a hundred page long dissertation on some fictional piece of film, I'm not on board.

The second layer of the story was okay, but didn't move fast enough to hold my interest. House of Leaves is a book I would recommend for literature professors who would like to have a few chuckles, and no one else.

[cornerfolds]

This review is also available at Cornerfolds!

House of Leaves is the kind of book that requires a huge investment from it's reader - both in time and mental capacity. I found this book through the IMDB message boards after watching The Hole on Netflix and thought, "hey, I bet that's a creepy book!" Lo and behold, the glowing reviews confirmed this times a thousand. Of course, I immediately bought a copy on Amazon (the "remastered full-color edition)... and it proceeded to take up space on my bookshelf for the next year and a half. Honestly, the book looked intimidating. The word "house" is always blue and "minotaur" and all struck passages are in red. Why? Nobody knows. When you flip through, there are tons of confusing formatting choices. From what I've read, these things are supposed to coincide with the two narrators' (yes, two - I'm getting there) deteriorating mental states. I didn't make it far enough to find out.

So there are two narrators in House of Leaves, Zampano and Johnny. Johnny finds the manuscripts for the main work in Zampano's house after the old man keels over and then Johnny proceeds to lose his mind while reading it. The main work is about a documentary following a rather strange house that seems to grow and change. While I won't deny the premise is original, the execution left a lot wanting - for me, at least. A main point of the book is to satirize academia and footnotes abound. They're full of fictional references and about half of them go off on tangents about Johnny's life and how all the girls love him. To be honest, the book would have been a million times better without all of this pretense. At about 20 pages in, I gave up on the footnotes and read only the "main" story about the house. Unfortunately, nothing really happened there either.

In 80 pages (so about 15% of the book, not counting the two hundred pages of "exhibits" and appendices), the family moved in and a door appeared. Then a hallway appeared and the main character got lost for about a page and a half. It took me three days to get this far in the book. Nothing.Happens. I gave up. This is honestly the second time in my reading lifetime that I've given up on a book. But having only made it 15% through the book, seen one "exhibit," and not even gotten to the crazy formatting, I realized this was not the book for me. It may be the creepiest book on the planet or whatever, but I'll stick to stories with actual plots where something actually happens. Would not recommend unless you have a lot more time than patience than I do.

[Chelsea]

This is the craziest thing I have ever read. In a good way though. It was scary, creepy and weird all at the same time. There’s footnotes telling another story on just about every page and at some point you need to turn the book upside down to read it. It’s a really clever book and some people think you need to read it more than once but I could never read this book a second time. The formatting with the upside down parts, footnotes and even some blank pages all has to do with the story. It’s crazy. I can’t say anything about the plot here because I really have no idea what happened in this book! You have to read it for yourself. I’m warning you though, it could take a while to get through it. There’s so many questions you’re asking throughout the book and not a lot of them get answered. Usually this would bother me but in this book it makes sense. I don’t even know what else to say about it but it was really good.

[Michael @ Knowledge Lost]

Johnny Truant searches an apartment for his friend and finds an academic study of a documentary film called The Navidson Record. This film investigates the phenomenon of the Navidson’s house where the house is larger inside than the outside. Initially it’s less than an inch difference but it keeps growing. The only problem with all of this is there is no evidence of this documentary ever existing. The book House of Leaves is that academic study (with all the footnotes) mixed with Johnny’s interjections, transcripts from the documentary and anything else.

This debut novel of Mark Z. Danielewski tries to mix a horror novel with some romance and satire but it mainly focuses on just how unreliable a narrator can be. I’ll be honest with you; I struggled to work out if I should review this as a piece of literature or as art, so I’ve done both and you can find my art review on Knowledgelost. Danielewski has really come up with a unique idea here, it’s almost the literary equivalent of The Blair Witch Project; there is a lot happening on the pages but the reader never gets a full grasp on what is actually happening.

The first 150 pages of this book were quite enjoyable, there were some funny moments and it gave you a real feel for what was going on. But then everything turns completely weird and I found myself raging and sometimes going insane. This is by no means an easy book to read, more of an exploration in the postmodern idea of Post-structuralism. I don’t pretend to understand postmodern literature but it was interest to see what Mark Z. Danielewski does in this book.

You’ll either love or hate this genre blending novel; for me, I hated the story. I think my wife got more enjoyment out of watching me rage than I did with reading it. House of Leaves is known as Ergodic literature, which requires the reader to navigate the text in a non-traditional way; this is the first time I’ve seen a book like this. Everyone will have a different interpretation of this novel, so I would love to hear what others thought. Also make sure you check my post about this book as an art form.

This post originally appeared on my blog; http://literary-exploration.com/2012/11/29/book-of-the-month-house-of-leaves/

[Eve1972]

I don't think I was in the right mood for this book and just found myself slogging through it because it was due back at the library. I think I am going to return it and maybe buy myself a copy so I can read it at my own pace. It is most defiantly a very intriguing book!

[empressbrooke]

In short, House of Leaves is about a house that's bigger on the inside than it is on the outside.

A bit of a longer synopsis: Johnny Truant finds a manuscript. The manuscript is an academic article about a documentary. This documentary was created by Will Navidson, who discovers that his house is larger on the inside than it is on the outside and decides to explore the strangeness and videotape it as he goes. The academic manuscript about the movie was written by Zampanò, who is blind. Will Navidson's story is told within Johnny's story as the manuscript begins to affect Johnny's life.

House of Leaves is unsettling, disorienting, and terrifying. These words describe not only the plot, but the way the book is presented. On many pages, words go up and down the page. Some parts are printed backwards. The formatting of the text often corresponds with the action going on in the words. There are small chunks where there are only a few words on each page, which, when paired with what the words actually say, creates a strong sense of foreboding. The plot definitely would not have impacted me as much as it did if it was presented in the standard format.

Since the manuscript is a scholarly article about the documentary, Zampanò's parts of the book read like one, with copious footnotes and analysis. Johnny's text reads more like fiction as he describes finding and reading the manuscript. Despite the academia and weaving between fiction and "non-fiction," House of Leaves never loses its rhythm. The academic tone also does not cut into the terror of the narrative; there were times when I had to put the book down, turn on the lights and television, and walk around while breathing deeply in order to shake off the creepiness. To this day, two years after I first read it, I still get chills while thinking about certain scenes.

The fun doesn't stop when you turn the book's final page. The author's sister, Ann Danielewski, better known as Poe, wrote her rather spectacular album Haunted to tie into the book (sample lyrics: Johnny dear don't be afraid / I will keep your secrets safe / Bring me to the blind man who / Lost you in his house of blue). Haunted carries some of the book's creepiness with it by including voice recordings of the siblings' father that they discovered after he passed away.

I really can't convey just what an Experience reading House of Leaves is. Some might find the footnotes and scholarly tone too cumbersome, but you owe it to yourself to give it a chance. And if a door suddenly appears in your house where there wasn't one before, for God's sake, get the hell out of there.