House of Leaves - Initial Thoughts

When I was a kid, I shared a bedroom with my brother. It was on the second floor of our family's two-story Cape Cod, at the end of a long hallway. In some ways, it was the best bedroom of the four in the house: large, with plenty of closet space and windows arranged so that, morning or afternoon, the whole thing was bathed in a pleasant diffusion of sunlight. As if that wasn't enough, out bedroom also harbored a secret, a tall, thin door tucked away in the far corner, between the closet and the wall, which led to a storage room we called 'the attic', despite it not being an attic. It was, I believe, just something that was tacked on to provide some extra space for clutter. But to my child brain, it was a gateway to an infinite number of magical worlds. It represented something hidden, yet accessible. 

 So, it has finally come to this. I've grown so bored at work that I have decided (at last!) to delve into the Ulyssean tome that is House of Leaves by Mark Danielewski. 

House of Leaves is a novel presented as a dual narrative- the reader learns in the first pages about Hollywood small-timer Johnny Truant and his encounter, via his friend Lude, with a dead man's unpublished manuscript. Against his better judgement, he begins to read it. Just a few pages at first, but soon it has consumed his life totally, and he has shut out everyone and everything that is not the manuscript. The second narrative, which, along with copious footnotes from three sources (more on that later), makes up the bulk of the novel, purports to be an academic analysis of a semi-famous cult film made by former photojournalist Will Navidson. 

Dubbed "The Navidson Record", this film supposedly depicts a man and his family reacting when the house they live in suddenly becomes non-euclidian, with doors leading to black mazes of hallways appearing overnight. It relates the events of the Navidsons' documentary film made during this difficult period, contemplates the cultural and social ramifications of the strange occurrences, and even charts the decline of the once happy relationship between Mr. Navidson and his partner, as his obsession with the foreboding labyrinth grows. The only issue: neither William Navidson nor his eponymous Record have ever existed. I don't mean, they're fictional media created for the purposes of this novel. Rather, it appears that even within the universe of Johnny Truant, no such film or people have ever been anything other than figments of one old, blind man's imagination.

Reading this book is like doing a logic puzzle: it requires the audience to piece things together, to read between the lines, and to be content with conjecture when, as is often the case, no answer is forthcoming. I think part of the reason I wanted to make this website and write this post is that I wanted to put down my thoughts about this book. Let me say at the outset that this is a book which repels fast reading. It is so dense, so multifaceted, that to skim-read or otherwise speed through it for the plot alone would be to miss 99% of the meaning. It is also long- over 700 pages, inclusive of the manuscript, the frame narrative, and extensive appendices. Therefore, I have decided a plan of attack (as it were): I intend to limit myself to about 100 pages every few days. This is a perfectly achievable goal for me, and will go some way to sating my appetite for narrative, while maintaining my ability to remember and comment upon parts that I find interesting or compelling.

So, to begin in earnest. The first hundred page section of this book, what I'll refer to (for convenience's sake only) as Section One, ends just before what I suspect will be a major event in the plot: the Fourth Expedition into the mysterious space. But more than a basic story cashing in on cheap thrills, this book is much more concerned with chronicling the relationship of the Navidson family as their seemingly disparate reactions to this admittedly strange occurrence begin to drive them apart. The question is not 'can they survive?', but rather 'can their relationship survive?'. 

Originally, I had suspected that the somewhat unusual format of this novel would serve to repel me as a reader, but I have been pleasantly surprised to find how simple it is to follow. The two (and, at times, three) narrative threads weave together nearly seamlessly. One aspect of this that helps is, I think, the fact that the various narrators are differentiated by way of font, with Truant in the screenplay-esque courier, and the old man's original text as well as his footnotes restraining in the more traditional, academic times new roman. There have been some portions which I have found my eyes skimming over, but that isn't because the style is too dense. Rather, it is because the content is, I suspect, intentionally dull and overly academic. Remember, this is not only a narrative about the Navidsons, it is equally a story about the old man, and also about Truant. 

Indeed, when early on in the story, Truant admits (via footnote) to having altered a portion of the original manuscript (inserting 'water' before 'heater') simply because it meshed better with the story he was going to tell, I was not surprised. Rather, I was refreshed by the honesty of this modern-day amanuensis.

Anyway, I have to bring this to a close soon, as I have to get up for work fairly soon. I'm sure I'll expound more on my thoughts on the plot and style in later entries. For the moment, I'm looking forward to diving into the next part of this book. Whatever anyone thinks about the style or plot, to have managed a work which retains the complexity of multifaceted nature of Ulysses or something in Middle English while being rendered (mostly) in modern language is an undeniable achievement.