House of Leaves

This is not for you.


House of Leaves
Zampanò 
intro by Johnny Truant
Mark Z. Danielewski, 2000
Randomhouse (Pantheon), 707 pgs.

This book and myself go way back. I believe it's best to start off this blog truthfully. I did not finish this book. I have tried to read this book 7 or 8 times, and it creeps me out so much that I cannot will myself to finish it completely. It changes your perspective of thinking, it takes you in and will not let you go. 

The house will swallow you (w)hole.

I cannot describe this book, so this review will be the most lackluster thing you will ever read from me. It's a maze, and a love story, and a horror story. Both fake and real (so real) at the same time. The best way I can describe it?  It's a book with 3 narrators (4 if you count the editors) The first narration is from Johnny Truant, who comes across the now diseased Zampano's in progress paperwork about a nonexistent movie called The Navidson Record. Within this, The Navidson Record is a documentary about a family who purchases a house in Virginia to try and save their flailing marriage and family. After a weekend away, they come back to the house and realize something is off. There is a door where there wasn't one before. 

Gradually- and frankly- weird shit starts to happen. The 2 most well known things (without giving too much of the book away) is that the interior of the house is slowly, slowly growing bigger and bigger while the exterior stays the same size and shape. The first of these changes is a doorway that is bigger than the exterior of the house by 5/16'', then becomes the "Five and a Half Minute Hallway" whereas a long, deeply inky dark, cold, and silent hallway opens up where there should logically be a wall. As there's no protrusions on the exterior. 

Between what's going on with the actual pseudo analysis, our unreliable narrators Johnny (as showcased by his Courier New font) and the editors (showcased by Times New Roman font.) the book becomes scattered, confusing, claustrophobic. Thus making the book one of the most popular types of New Media/Ergodic Literature in the last 10 years.

At its core, I believe this book is a love story. Do not ask me why, but I became obsessed with House of Leaves. I would stay up late into the hours of the night, feign sickness in order to spend a whole day in it's company. This lasted 15 days until I started to become ill while - and for a few hours after - reading this book. I cannot explain why, but I felt like the world was closing in on me, or I could actually FEEL Johnny's pain and suffering while he was reading the same text. Needless to say, it all got too creepy for me, and I had a life to work on. So I only got to 300 pages before I put the book down. I feel like a failure. House is still sitting on my bookshelf, with the half full notebook with all the notes and things highlighted in it so I could decipher some pages. She sits there and stares at me, knowing I will eventually return and start all over again. I will be continuously stuck in her labyrinth until the end of time.
In short, this is a book not to be messed with or taken lightly. It will eat you up and spit you out. It will feel real (Even though it's a work of extremely awesome fiction, a la Blair Witch Project scale.) but you have to keep telling yourself "It's only a book....It's only a book.....It's only a book...."



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