House of Leaves

IdleRich

IdleRich
Anyone read this? What do you reckon? (Although if you do say anything don't give the end away 'cause I started it on Friday and I'm only about half way through.)
For those who don't know it's a peculiar (you might say experimental) book that purports to be a compendium of notes by a narrator called Johnny Truant compiled by some unknown editors after he disappeared.
This Johnny Truant describes finding a manuscript in the house of a dead man and he himself reproduces that manuscript which makes up the bulk of the book. The manuscript itself is presented as a critical treatise on a film called The Navidson Record (which according to JT he has not been able to track down despite extensive research and he has therefore concluded does not exist).
The narrative proceeds as though you are reading the manuscript which has many footnotes supplied either by its author, by JT or by the editors. These footnotes in turn link to other footnotes or appendices and at times the text is written upside down, backwards or in little boxes. This is what I mean by the book being peculiar.
From the start the book has a slightly creepy air as JT alludes to terrible things that have happened to him after finding the manuscript. The author of that manuscript also appears to be scared by something at times and may have come to a sticky end. The film that is crtiqued and which appears to be the main source of this fear is about a family who move into a new house, they go away for a weekend and when they return they discover a mysterious doorway has appeared between their bedroom and their children's room. To investigate this they buy plans of the house and while taking measurements they discover that the house is bigger inside than out. Later on another doorway appears leading to a corridor and a mysterious space. The family get some experts and explore the space.
Something seems to be very wrong about it and there are constant allusions to something bad that seems to have happened and leaked out into the life of the man who wrote the critique and then into the life of Johnny Truant as he reads that critique (JT is slowly getting weirder and weirder, becoming obsessed by the book, forgetting to go to work and finally being scared of going outside) the implication is that ultimately this will happen to you (the reader).
Anyway, it's great stuff so far but I would be interested to know what anyone else thinks
More info here

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/House_of_leaves
 
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nomadologist

Guest
I have read House of Leaves. If you end up liking it and would like to get more into this "genre", let me know. My mentor in college was a huge part of this new experimental literary movement, so I have a lot of reading recommendations for you if this is to your liking.

Have you read much Calvino?
 
N

nomadologist

Guest
Ehh. Really hard to say if you'd like it--if anything, it fills this void in contemporary literature where it escapes being just a work of "fiction" in that Oprah Book Club way, but also avoids being one of those obnoxious "new classic lit" narratives like Everything is Illuminated.

I think if you like Calvino, Dellilo, Eco, and can stomach James Joyce, DF Wallace, and Pynchon, this is worth a read.

If you read it I would be interested in your reaction.

I have a beat up copy you could have if you wanted it.
 

IdleRich

IdleRich
"I have read House of Leaves. If you end up liking it and would like to get more into this "genre", let me know. My mentor in college was a huge part of this new experimental literary movement, so I have a lot of reading recommendations for you if this is to your liking.
Have you read much Calvino?"
Would certainly be glad of similar recommendations. I've got a lot of stuff I plan to read at the moment but I can always add things to the list. Don't know how many things like this I will stand for but so far I'm enjoying this.
The only one I've read is If On A Winter's Night....

"I think if you like Calvino, Dellilo, Eco, and can stomach James Joyce, DF Wallace, and Pynchon, this is worth a read."
Yes, although the actual writing style is nothing like any of these.
The narrative itself is fairly simple, relative to the techniques being used - on the other hand it is a narrative that I am (so far at least) finding very gripping. For me that certainly helps the thing work. At times there is a suspicion that the book is not so unusual as all that, it switches (say) from an exciting bit in the film to a more mundane and extremely long footnote from Truant - exactly as would be done in many a "normal" book by the use of a new chapter.
I guess that one of the points of using such labyrinthine text is to echo the labyrinth in the film. There are also (of course) loads of references to Borges, Theseus and the Minotaur etc
 
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nomadologist

Guest
You're right, the style isn't much like the authors I listed, but something about the feel of it reminds me of them. Borges is pretty clearly stamped all over it, and since I love Borges, I tried to assess it outside of his influence, because that would give an unfair advantage.

It's no small feat to get me to read contemporary fiction so House of Leaves has at least that to recommend it.
 

IdleRich

IdleRich
"You're right, the style isn't much like the authors I listed, but something about the feel of it reminds me of them."
Sure, I'm not disagreeing with you. I think that whatever it is that, say, Pynchon does (or attempts to do) with his writing style, Danielewski does much more literally with his placement of the text. Reading the book certainly does put me in mind of Pynchon.
I described the book to one of my friends at the weekend and he promptly handed me (we were at his house) this, saying it was similar

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Third_Policeman

I'll read that as soon as I finish HofL and see if I agree.
Alternatively you could compare it to those choose your own adventure fighting fantasy books that we all read as children (with the important distinction that here you don't choose - unless you choose not to read the footnotes and appendices and concentrate on one thread of narrative I guess).
 

gek-opel

entered apprentice
Oh yeah I've read the Third Policeman. S'alright, seems to be massively overrated in some quarters.

Delillo, Pynchon, and Joyce are all more than tolerated by myself! (Though Umberto Eco has always and will always strike me as a smug prick of a writer in urgent need of a smack). Its not so much the experimental nature that puts me off this book (it doesn't) but rather the difficulty in ascertaining from reviews whether Danielewski is able to do something interesting and worthwhile with it (ie- everyone is so focused on telling me how whizz/bang it is they forget to actually say if its, y'know GOOD or not- does the experiment succeed? Or get lost in its own formalistic innovations? Is that itself a source of literary jouissance or merely annoyance etc etc..)
 

IdleRich

IdleRich
"Though Umberto Eco has always and will always strike me as a smug prick of a writer in urgent need of a smack"
Interesting, I quite liked The Name of The Rose and Foucault's Pendulum but when I read (I think it's called) The Island Of The Day Before (maybe Night Before) I suddenly realised that it was possibly the most annoying thing I'd ever read and since then I haven't been interested in any of his stuff. His new(ish) book has loads of pictures and stuff in it that are supposed to be some kind of gimmick and involved with the story I guess.

"the difficulty in ascertaining from reviews whether Danielewski is able to do something interesting and worthwhile with it"
At the moment I would say yes. Then again most of my friends who have read it say "yes, up to a point and then definitely no" so it may change. I would give it a go if I were you - what have you got to lose?
(that other thing is coming by the way I promise)
 

vimothy

yurp
Sure, I'm not disagreeing with you. I think that whatever it is that, say, Pynchon does (or attempts to do) with his writing style, Danielewski does much more literally with his placement of the text. Reading the book certainly does put me in mind of Pynchon.
I described the book to one of my friends at the weekend and he promptly handed me (we were at his house) this, saying it was similar

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Third_Policeman

I really enjoyed this - very funny stuff.
 
N

nomadologist

Guest
Sure, I'm not disagreeing with you. I think that whatever it is that, say, Pynchon does (or attempts to do) with his writing style, Danielewski does much more literally with his placement of the text. Reading the book certainly does put me in mind of Pynchon.
I described the book to one of my friends at the weekend and he promptly handed me (we were at his house) this, saying it was similar

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Third_Policeman

I'll read that as soon as I finish HofL and see if I agree.
Alternatively you could compare it to those choose your own adventure fighting fantasy books that we all read as children (with the important distinction that here you don't choose - unless you choose not to read the footnotes and appendices and concentrate on one thread of narrative I guess).

Ahh Flann O'Brien, this is a good reference point.

I don't think I like Pynchon as much as I like Borges or even Joyce, but I don't think he's as terribly hard to read as people seem to think.

Thomas Mann's Magic Mountain in German is another story.
 
I would agree about it being good up to a point.
In the end I guess it's not as great as you think it's going to be when you first get into it.
Sometimes I thought it would have been better as a straight telling of the fictitious film rather than framing that with Johnny Truant and the diary stuff.

So what Borges should I read? I am always hearing interesting stuff about him but yet to read any.
I am interested in his writing about infinity etc.
 
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nomadologist

Guest
Ficciones is really great. Most of his stuff comes in compilations of short stories. "Labyrinths" is probably the most popular.
 

IdleRich

IdleRich
Yeah, just get any of the short story compilations and there are bound to be some in there that you like.
 

IdleRich

IdleRich
Finished House of Leaves anyway. I kind of agree that it didn't maintain the same level of excitement all the way through but it is definitely worth reading to the end. The things that in some sense unsatisfactory couldn't really have been resolved in any other way. Lots of questions are left unanswered but I think I'm gonna have a butchers at this forum and see if there is anything of interest there

http://www.houseofleaves.com/forum/forumdisplay.php?f=5
 

IdleRich

IdleRich
"I have read House of Leaves. If you end up liking it and would like to get more into this "genre", let me know. My mentor in college was a huge part of this new experimental literary movement, so I have a lot of reading recommendations for you if this is to your liking."
Yes, please do, I would love to hear of similar things. Danielewski has written another book that obviously didn't create such a splash but it sounds as though it is more of the same but different. I'd be interested to hear of other authors though rather than read him again straight away.
 

slim jenkins

El Hombre Invisible
I enjoyed 'House Of Leaves'. Got his latest too, which is very different and interesting as an experiment but I haven't been able to read it straight through (more dipping in and sampling the 'Joycean' prose). At least he's aiming to create something different, which in itself is not a recommendation, I know, but he does it with great verve.

I keep having a go at Borges but despite (or because of) his obvious intellectual prowess I find him hard work. Ditto Pynchon.
 
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