House of Leaves

Do the words meta, post-modern, or experimental make you cringe when used to describe books? Then turn back now. I feel the need to say that up front because many people seem to go into this book expecting a horror novel and wind up wasting their money. Just take a look at the genres that goodreads lists this as. Horror, fiction, fantasy, and mystery. With inapt labels like that, it's easy to see how people could get the wrong idea.This is not a horror novel, nor is it a mystery novel or a fantasy novel. This book is, among many other things, a personal story about the author's parents presented as experimental literary fiction that's thinly veiled as a horror novel. Confused? Good, stay that way for now, and don't think too hard about what I just said. I'm not that into horror novels, and I generally like post-modern and experimental stuff, and I knew what I was getting into when I bought this. Know what you're getting into, that's all I'm trying to say.Here's the basic concept as clear and concise as I can tell it. There are essentially three narrators that will be addressing you, the reader.1) Zampano, an old blind man2) Johnny Truant, a thirty-something druggie3) The "editors"Johnny's friend, Lude, knows Zampano because he lives in the same apartment building. The old man, ominously, tells Lude he's going to die soon, and does. After the body is gone, Lude and Johnny sneak into the apartment to take a look around at Zampano's things. They find a crazy manuscript, which Johnny takes home with him.The manuscript is a non-fiction book/dissertation about a documentary called "The Navidson Record." The Navidson Record is about a famous photojournalist named Will Navidson and his family moving into a new house that is bigger on the inside. When I say non-fiction, I mean it. It reads like a textbook. On every page there are footnotes about other articles and other books that reference this documentary that, by all accounts, doesn't exist (I'll get to this in a second).It starts out simple at first. After the family returns home from vacation they notice a hallway on the second floor connecting two bedrooms that wasn't there before. They track down a blueprint of the building and see that there is a space between the walls, although it's not supposed to be a finished hallway with doors. Okay, no big deal, maybe they didn't notice the doors before, it's a new house after all and they had just moved in before going on vacation. Then comes the realization that measuring the house through that hallway results in an extra inch that shouldn't exist, and that can't be explained. Then a new door appears, on the first floor this time, that should lead to an empty back yard but instead leads to a long, dark hallway that extends into an endless labyrinth of cavernous, thousand-foot rooms that leads to god knows where and contains god knows what, and the exploration of this door is the main focus of the documentary.So Johnny finds this manuscript, reads it, edits it, adds his own footnotes relating to research he's done on Zampano's life and the manuscript contents (translations of foreign phrases, for instance), but also personal tangents about his own life and stream of consciousness ramblings. In the prologue where he explains how he found the manuscript, he also says that The Navidson Record doesn't actually exist. Johnny's editors also appear in footnotes and in the first say they have never met Johnny Truant in person, only communicating via letters and rare phone calls. Weird, right?What follows is 528 pages of an interwoven, multi-layered story. On the one hand, you have Zampano's non-fiction book about this fictitious documentary, which simmers as a slow-paced "found-footage" horror novel that can be unsettling, thought-provoking, but is likely to disappoint hardcore horror fans looking for adrenaline-pumping scares.Then you have Johnny's story, told through long footnotes, which is more vague and slow to reveal itself, but the basic idea is that although he knows the manuscript is fiction, the act of reading it causes him to lose his marbles. Whether the manuscript or Johnny's brain chemistry is to blame is up to the reader. Whether Johnny is even telling the truth is up to the reader. And, to be honest, Johnny's parts can sometimes be hard to read because he's just pitiable and depressing and the stream of consciousness prose can wear down your focus. It gets Joyce-esque at times, though only for short stretches, because Danielewski is a nice man who wants you to have a good time, unlike Joyce, who hates you and hates fun. Then the "story" part ends, and you have 130 pages of appendices (which you should read) which include things like:Zampano's writings which are not a part of The Navidson RecordThe obituary of Johnny's dadChildhood letters from Johnny's crazy, institutionalized, long dead motherPoemsSo what does it all mean?Well, it means a clever and perhaps over-educated man named Mark Danielewski decided to write a novel that experiments with the format of the novel, that pushes the boundaries of what a novel can be and what it can do. While much of it could quite fairly be called a gimmick, and it won't be redefining how all novels are written going forward, it's a gimmick that works, that is unique, that is stimulating, that is discussion-worthy, that makes the world more interesting by existing, and isn't that what good art is supposed to do? It is an unmitigated success at being singular, and because it is singular it will inspire intense love and intense hatred from different people.It means that while there are answers, you will have to work for them. I mean this both figuratively and literally. On the literal side, there is a letter in the appendices that is written in a simple code, which you will have to translate into a coherent message with pen and paper. And that's a code that is plainly said to be a code. There are other codes that are truly hidden.Many sections have weird, cluttered layouts that make the act of reading them hard, and make tracking down the right footnote a scavenger hunt. You'll be presented with footnotes that make no sense until you realize the text is broken up over several pages and presented backwards. There are a lot of elements to the story, little throwaway lines and facts that you need to remember, or write down. How did Johnny's dad die. How did Navidson's dad die. Stuff like that. While it's not absolutely necessary, I'd recommend having a notebook handy starting on page one. I have an amazing memory, took notes here and there, and still wish I'd taken more. Like I said, this book is work. It's fun work though, depending on your tastes and personality. I'm an INTP and I loved it. Your mileage may vary.On the figurative side, the book still won't hold your hand and spell out what it all means in flashing neon. That's up to you to figure out by gathering all the evidence together and deconstructing the book on several different levels by asking yourself what's true and what isn't, what matters and what doesn't, what's literal and what's figurative, what's the metanarrative, what's the subtext. Ultimately it's up to you to decide when you're satisfied with your answer.While this is nowhere near as open to interpretation as most books you'd label as post-modern or modernist, it is still open to interpretation compared to a typical novel, which isn't open to interpretation at all. There are no easy answers, no definitive answers, but there are satisfying answers that I firmly believe are more or less what the author intended, if you're willing to put in the effort to discover them and have a flexible mind that delights in abstract concepts. Alternatively there are, of course, existing breakdowns of it on the internet that you can turn to for some help, although none I've read have gone far enough into speculation. They present facts and evidence, point out what's true or not, but none of them have drawn the kind of final conclusion that I've drawn. That's how it should be. You should decide for yourself. If none of this sounds like fun to you, I recommend giving this one a pass

What makes a good book is how much you put into it. Most good books don't tell you their meaning up front. You have to invest in the book to get something out of it. Mark Danielewski takes a radical approach in challenging the conventions of writing with this postmodern read. The very structure of the book creates visual experiences that convey meaning (even if it's small) in addition to the content of the book. This book explores structure and the style of writing, not just the content. The perfect blend of the two makes it a novel experience in enjoying both the challenging story, narration styles, and structure/form of the story to create a unique experience unlike most other novels you will read. This is not by any means even a moderate read - it is a hard read. But any good book is worth it if you stick with it and really try to understand it. Most people rate it poorly, even if they are avid readers, because it is not an easy read. It takes effort, but so does all good reading. Reading is not always so light and easy. There are books to enjoy that are more towards that end of the spectrum, but this is a highly rewarding text for its complexity. It is highly worth it if you understand that books don't always have immediate sense to it. That is what makes it a postmodern book, a book that challenges everything we know to be true and sensible in a "novel." I have read the entirety once and will do it two times again this next quarter in university and I look forward to it so much. Allow yourself to fall down the rabbit hole and discover a radical challenge to every convention of writing you know. An amazing book if you understand that you have to give yourself to a book in order to be impacted and changed by it. An amazing text if you approach it with an open mind. That is the only thing that is constant in this novel - open to the chaos, madness, and sheer beauty we find in Danielewski's vision of what is possible in a piece of written art. Art does not always make sense. Just as Oscar Wilde writes in his prologue to The Picture of Dorian Gray, "All art is rather useless." If you seek to understand the wicked truth in this novel, you will look into the abyss and the abyss will look back into you. There is beauty in the ugliness, there is peace in the chaos, and logic in the nonsensical rollercoaster of a ride this text is. It is a postmodern text that uses the conventions of the English language/syntax/grammar to break the conventions of English, showing its absurdity. It is truly amazing. So worth it if you allow yourself to be humbled and open to learning from a text as an intellectually honest person. A lot of people who read a lot of books become arrogant and lose their ability to have a growth mindset that can adapt and learn the value (or create value where you can't seem to find it readily) of a text that challenges what they expect or want out of a text. In school, college, university, and throughout life we learn to be skeptical, cynical, and rebellious to all things we encounter. While this can be useful and healthy, most everybody never learns to balance it out with an inquisitive, open, and empathetic side to it which helps you to not just tear down everything you don't understand but helps you to see the value in something novel. I feel bad for the other people who did not have a good experience reading this text and rated it poorly. A lot of them sound like they either gave up because it is a difficult text to read (not a very healthy way to read, which is to challenge and grow yourself while also enjoying the pleasure of prose and verse) or they were unable to see the value of something that seems immediately harmful because it challenges your worldview and assumptions as to what "good" (or what is safe) to read. Not all of them, but some of them are close-minded and do not allow themselves to adapt and change, to learn and grow from this text, even if it challenges everything you know to be true and good. Identify yourself with our amazing ability to change and adapt and to be smart, and you can't go wrong. Even "bad" texts can teach us something. Take the leap if you dare. With the right mindset, there is so much in this text to experience and to learn from. A truly challenging and amazing text to read.TLDR: it is so worth it. Open your mind to it, and let it break down everything you know to be true and good in our Western mindset, and in our limited English sense of grammar. Have the growth mindset and an inquisitive attitude and you will be fundamentally changed by the power of this book to restructure the way you think, freeing you from the captivity of our modern conventions of thinking. Radically changing book.