House of Leaves : A novel

Rating:
Summary: Popular Literary Prose
Review: I almost hesitated to add my thoughts to the reviews listed on this book, but after reading the most recent contributions here I thought it important to say something now, while I'm still in the "impassioned and excited" stage of discovering the narrative.

A few of the reviews you'll read below are obviously from academics--as a "refugee" from that world, i recognize their voices anywhere. They tend to take text much to seriously, deconstructing on a level that the average reader just doesn't comprehend or care about. Sort of like listening to Chopin and arguing about someone's technique.

However, the irony is it is only someone who has been part of that academic madness who can appreciate the full scope of what is going on in this book--the endless citations, and references, appendixes, and superficially meaningless trivia. The intent is to create a literary dissertation, so convinced of its own truth that the reader is fooled into thinking it is fact.

That is not to say that it is not good popular fiction; on the contrary, it is emotionally gripping and terrifying in how it speaks to the soul. But the plot is not the relevant focal point, and whether or not we buy the mystery of the house and the terror it inspires--real or imagined--is not what "sells" the piece. Instead it is the details, the little things that are almost lost in the grandness of this experiment. Like a lonely woman who practices her smile in the mirror. An irrational fear of space where you swear something is coming for you, but it never does. It is a narrative of moments. The concept reminds me of the novel "The Hours," only instead of happiness being seized in the small details, it is terror.

As a scholar, I am in awe of what Danielewski has accomplished, but as a woman who has woke up in the middle of the night swearing I've just seen the shadow of something pass over my bed--I'm not so much terrified as relieved that I'm not alone in that paranoia.

All that said, I will put this as simple as I can: This is the first book in a long time I not only couldn't put down, but was excited enough to recommend to my friends--and to you now as well.

Rating:
Summary: Packed with a complete experience
Review: Danielewski proves himself to be the writer of the modern literary movement to create a staying power which will distinguish House of Leaves as a classic. Through Truant's poetic, lyric entries, the reader is sucked into a world of prose so beautiful, excerpts can be heard on the radio. I read this book over a year ago, and I am still figuring out all the symbolism and underlying themes, the markings of a classic. This book is the best piece of literature I have ever read.

Rating:
Summary: me and johnny...
Review: i don't know how to describe my appreciation of this book. i have never read anything like it. i doubt that i ever will. i cried a hundred times while i read it, i could only read a little piece at a time, it's hypnotizing, it put a spell on me. mark z. is nothing less than a genius.

Rating:
Summary: IT'S LITERATURE, JIM, BUT NOT AS WE KNOW IT . . .
Review: Please bear with me for a bit of essential background. "Redaction criticism" is the study of the process by which compilers and producers select and use existing material from a variety of sources, give it a personal slant, and ultimately create an original statement (the phrase originated in the study of how the Christian Gospels came into being). This auteurial process lies at the heart of the post-modernist ("po-mo") movement in the arts, whose central conceit is that you can make an original statement by nicking bits of earlier works according to your own agenda - while all the while maintaining an emotional distance from (or even taking the pee out of) the inspiration behind the works you are cannibalising.

This cold and ironic take on creativity is the inevitable result whenever people whose real gift is criticism dive into the medium and attempt to create subjective works of art. Critics of course know exactly what other critics will be looking for in a book/film/play, and they generally have the technical and analytical resources to produce workmanlike prose or action. The difficulty comes in finding a genuine subjective inspiration - an idea, a plot, a message - after perhaps years of pulling apart the work of others.

It was only a matter of time before somebody produced a redaction novel. Actually, given that "House of Leaves" has allegedly taken ten years to produce, it is surprising someone else has not beaten author Mark Danielewski into the shops. More to the point, now that the concept has effectively been test-marketed, it seems inevitable that someone else will come up with a perhaps more fully realised foray into this new genre. Inevitably, such books will represent a triumph of form over content.

The token plot in "House of Leaves" involves a psychologically damaged cameraman who sets out to make a fly-on-the-wall docusoap charting his dysfunctional family's acclimatisation to their new home in the country. To say that the house is haunted is to oversimplify the escalating temporal and spatial anomalies with which the house wrecks the lives of everyone who crosses its threshold. The Big Brother-style cameras in every room end up charting the family's fragmentation.

However, we are never party to a direct narration of the genuinely unsettling events in this storyline. Rather, we have an academic dissertation written by Zampano, a film critic, on the finished film - i.e. a film that has already been edited down from literally months of live action footage in service of the slant that the film-maker wants to put on events. More pointedly, not only is the film critic blind (!), but he has himself been fatally scarred by his obsession with the events portrayed in the film. Such narrative as exists is almost incidental to his analysis, and indeed we are led to believe that the film may not even exist - it may all be a figment of his paranoid imagination, an attempt to communicate the subjective experience of his own disorientation.

Even that is not the end, as the film critic's papers have been assembled and edited after his death by a literate but dissolute creature of the night tagged as "Johnny Truant". This physically and emotionally scarred survivor is our only point of contact with either Zampano or the events in the eponymous House, and he is more concerned with giving us a disjointed and rambling autobiography of self-justification than he is with acting as a window on the unfolding narrative. His footnotes, often lengthier than the underlying prose to which they refer, are themselves the subject of further interpretive comment by the putative publisher.

Thus in order to follow the haunted house story (the story that should but doesn't altogether lie at the heart of the book), we have to strip away layer after layer (leaf after leaf?) of interpretation, reinterpretation and suspect motivation. Moreover, the text that is the vehicle for this excavation is more akin to a series of web pages than a traditional book: Odd fonts, odd spacing, sometimes less than a word to a page, overprinted, inverted, encrypted. The medium has literally become part of the message, while the style has become part of the medium.

Of the hundreds of footnotes, many provide information that is central to what passes for narrative, while others (particularly the many references to fictitious books and academic papers) are simply there to serve the core fiction that the book is itself a serious literary dissertation. So there is wit and erudition aplenty, in what will almost certainly be a template for more excursions into what we might call hyper-literature. The tale itself contains moments that are deeply unsettling, and for them wot is interested there is some biting satire on the mannerisms of academic and critical writing.

So Danielewski's book is probably tantamount to art, but is it entertainment? The answer is in my view a resounding no. "House of Leaves" is so in tune with the artistic zeitgeist that it probably had to be written. As to whether it has to be read (for any of the normal reasons for picking up a book, such as fun, insight or escapism), the jury is still out.

Rating:
Summary: Inventive, but I can't say that I recommend it...
Review: As much as I love experimental music, I just can't handle the fictional brother. This book was a monumental task for me to read . . . mostly due to the rambling footnotes (which are sometimes nothing more that tediously lengthy lists).

House of Leaves is basically a wonderful idea and a book with a few truly disturbing images . . . that is surrounded by needless experimental TEDIUM. I commend the author on having the balls to write something as freakish and risky in such a spoonfed environment.

There are two good storylines: The main story of Navidson and the house, and the footnoted story of Johnny Truant and his mad obsession with the Navidson record and the house. The rest is just something to suffer through. When I closed the book, I was disgusted and sorry that I had wasted so much time with it. This is a rare thing for me. What a terrible feeling.

Perhaps I have missed the point of House of Leaves. I certainly would never trudge through it again to try to "get it."

Rating:
Summary: Narrator in story said it was all [bad]: take him at his word
Review: Imagine instead of horror, a comedian; telling six separate jokes, not sequentially, but simultaneously. Some people would get all six jokes, some only five and some even less. No matter how brilliantly intertwined, the whole is not greater than the parts. The Navidson record is good horror, but the balance is just like Lucifer's Hammer, and the 100 other stories written by Niven and Pournelle. So much twisted, sorted garbage. Nonsense detail about the the dark nature of humanity. In it, there is little or no redeeming value, and I am at a loss to understand how it builds the element of suspense or magnifies the thrill of the major story. For the time alone expended to track and understand the simultaneous stories, you could have read three or four other books, and be left with a lot less clutter in your head. Is this contemporary literature? If so, certainly our culture is dumbing-down. In some ways, I do see its appeal, however I have to ask the question: did the lifestyle, fabricated stories or personality traits of the narrator have anything to do with telling this story? Sorry, he's not anyone I desire to relate to, and telling the story through his eyes added nothing.

Rating:
Summary: This book is not (bad)
Review: There is a trend today to always be original, outlandish and witty, very often at the expense of actual quality. The stunning orignality and creativity of House of Leaves does not, in any way, limit it's quality and merit as an amazing piece of literature. This book is not just a story, not just a plot, not just an essay on human nature and the human mind. It is way beyond anything I have ever read, anything I have ever seen. It is not for the simple or weak minded, not for people who want to finish a book, not for people who want something handed to them. House of Leaves makes you work. You have to ponder the philosophic passages, you have to make connections between the interviews and the soundbites and the essays and the story itself. You have to go out and take the book, it will not automatically download itself into your mind.

And in the end, you are shellshocked. I was reading it in bed one night, and I heard my mom walking down the hall, and I panicked, thinking "the minotaur is coming to kill me". And I am not the type of person to get spooked. I saw Blair Witch and was not scared. I wasn't scared when I saw What Lies Beneath. I'm not afraid of the dark (well, not before this book), and I seldom get the creeps. But this book scared me.

Read it for thrills, read it for fun, read it for the betterment of your intellect. Read it.

Rating:
Summary: Creepy Book, Great Plot
Review: I had first read about this book in a review in Newsweek. I felt that this would be an overhyped book that completely sucked. Boy was I wrong. Only a few authors can actually write a book that is funny, but scary. Interesting, but not boring. Danielewski was able to accomplish this. From the beginning essay by Johny Trudant to the "actual" story of the Navidson family that lives in a house that can only be described as hell on earth. But the real grabber that this book has is how Navidson is the...well I don't want to give away the ending. The only reason why I gave this book a 4 was because I couldn't get over the fact that there are unneeded issues that I ,or any other reader, should know. Who really cares about all the art scetches that filled up about two or three pages that could have been used to explore thae relationship betwen Navidson and his family, especially Karen Green. Or it could have been used to explian why the family doesn't get out of the house before the Hollyway team massacre or anything else. So the plot is good, the book is effectively creepy, but the ramblings from a new(but good) author keeps it from getting to the point. And that is where the book fails.

Rating:
Summary: Two steps from Wonderful
Review: Some book reviewers have called this title "Pynchonian in scope". While that is certainly not true, this book is Pynchonian in aim. Just as Pynchon is not the easiest material to comprehend, nor is House of Leaves.

The thing that will most easily grab your attention as you casually thumb through the pages of House of Leaves is the page layout. Some pages will have only one word, maybe two. On some pages the words will form patterns. Some chapters seem like a ficitonal version of an e.e. cumming poem.

Once you get into the book, you realize that much of the playfullness with layout is parallel to the storyline itself. Mark Schorer in his essay "Technique as Discovery", wrote, "For technique is the means by which the writer's experience, which is his subject matter, compels him to attend to it; technique is the only means he has of discovering, exploring, developing his subject, of conveying its meaning, and finally of evaluating it." What becomes obvious, as one reads House of Leaves is that the book could have just as easily been written without the "left-of-center" technique, but much of its charm and personality would have been lost.

The story line itself is pretty good ... not great. Those who compare it the literary "Blair Witch Project" are not that far off the mark. It's different: yes. Is it great: not quite.

The bottom line is this: If you like to read and are interested in something that is different from what you've been reading, then you owe it to yourself to take this one for a spin. If you are a casual reader who will read if there is nothing else to do (and there is nothing wrong with that), you may want to leave this one and the shelf and pick up something like The Hobbit.

Rating:
Summary: it's either genius or crap, I can't tell
Review: I'm 39 pages into the book but I have discovered something that is perhaps the clue to this book's A) genius, or B) total careless implausibility. Once I began reading Johnny Truant's introductory essay, I almost immediately noticed a grammar mistake that he makes consistently: "could of" instead of "could have." He repeats this error many times and in fact (to my knowledge) never writes "could have." I was intrigued, especially since Truant's writing doesn't seem to contain any other obvious or repetitive mistakes. But the real clincher was when I found, on page 39 (top), the *exact* same mistake in Zampano's text!! Granted, I'm still on page 39 so I don't have an answer to this enigma, but I'm thinking either A) this is the clue that Zampano and Truant are the same person, or B) Danielewski harbors a little grammar misconception and his proofreader as well.

Does anyone else have the answer? [e-mail]