House of omgwhyamIturningmybook Leaves.

[Sir_Elderberry]

I have a Kindle, and I love it, but this is a book that really works the very best on paper.

And it's a bit of a mindfuck, but I don't know if I would call it horror. I was never scared while reading it. Only afterwards.

[Chfan]

Okay. I feel a tad disappointed because I accidentally read "Yggdrasil" on Wikipedia, but I don't remember much so it'll probably have the same effect or close.

I'm actually liking it so far, I've gotten over the hump where it seems most people would put it down, so I feel happy. My next task is to read the letters...

By the way, can anyone make out the writing on the wall on the back of the book? It's upside down.

[kandalf]

I just bought the book. Mine is the "Full Remastered Color Edition", it was the only one in stock. I'm on chapter V, and so far it's interesting... :/

[Chfan]

It gets better.

I finished it! *dances*

I thought it was interesting, although not very scary. I still don't gtet Yggdrasil (I don't think I ever will) but whatever. Now to open all those spoilers...

[Upsilon]

I didn't think it was scary either. Then, a few weeks later, I noticed that dark places made me uncomfortable.

[Midnight]

I had no problems with it.

[4N6addict]

I loved the book, and had no problems with it either

[6453893]

Flipped through the book again for the first time in months. I never realized how much I enjoy those first few chapters, especially when they are dealing with the quarter inch. Just wonderful. It also looks like I attempted to make notes in the margins of the book on my second or third read. I should really finish those.

[rrwoods]

notes in the margins of the book

I don't know why, but the idea of putting notes in the margins of House is completely hilarious to me.

[Ati]

Just finished the book (picked it up on a bookstore date last Friday). Holy shit on a biscuit, that was a/n amazing/confusing/recursive/terrifying/disturbing piece of fiction. I'd almost like to say that watching Johnny fall apart at the seams was scarrier than the House on Ash Tree Lane. Then I remember exactly how disturbing I found the quarter-inch discrepancy.

This actually reminds me strongly of (though in reality, the influence is almost certainly in reverse) John Dies At the End. The core idea that all it takes is one impossible thing, one truly impossible thing, undeniably in front of you, to completely destroy your life and everything you care about is present in both works. The difference is that JDATE is played for laughs and branches out it's horror content substantially, while House of Leaves is (subtle mocking of academia and Tom's whistling in the dark joking aside) played straight and entirely focused on two elements: The House itself, and (indirectly) the Minotaur. One of things that occurred to me while I was reading it was that when Johnny Truant slips into his psychotic episodes (particularly when he fights Gdansk Man), his thinking process becomes incredibly simple, animal-like, and reminiscent of a certain Household Guardian. I believe there was even a mention of him 'growling' or 'shouting' at the girl (forget her name) and stopping her from coming closer.

Since the Minotaur was stalking him and apparently killed Zampano, it's quite possible that the Minotaur is the corrupting influence of the House (and/or possibly the book) on the people around it. The House (or it's guardian) crippled Navidson, killed every single person who initially set about trying to explore it, killed one of the people who set about documenting it, and drove the other nuts (possibly turning him into the Minotaur in the process. In fact, you could argue that it did the same to Holloway.

My best guess is that the book itself (which occurs in both layers of the narrative, and the real world) is another form of the House. The House on Ash Tree Lane may or may not have existed in the universe that the book takes place in, or it could be the book (fictional)'s interpretation of itself (hell, it's recursive enough as it stands).

Anyway, I'm rambling now, so I'm going to go away.

[Jesse]

Go read Danielewski's forums (Obviously, the HoL one) they've got some amazing ideas over there.

[el_loco_avs]

What do you guys think of Danielewski's other works? I've read Only Revolutions. It was... interesting and complex. Amazing at points but I felt like I was missing a lot.

[McCaber]

I really enjoyed Only Revolutions, but there's so much more there than just the two stories. I need to set aside a month sometime to analyzing it all. The interplay of the plots, the tale of years along the margins, and the format was what I feel the point of the novel. It was about drawing connections between people and concepts, and about fast cars and eternal summer.

I loved how in each story the main character begins as this larger-than-life figure performing mythic deeds and over time is changed by their relationships with each other, and diminished with the size of the print. And those last scenes hit me every time.

But I could never see it becoming a cult hit like House is, though.

[el_loco_avs]

I think i do get most of the main story, loved when things were symmetric etc... but the historic events and all were interesting but i just stopped reading them. Did I miss anything?

[mispeled]

I'd loved this book for a long time. I've always been curious as to why some aspiring your indie filmmaker hasn't set out to make a blair witch type version of "The Navidson Record." I think it could work. It wouldn't be the same as the movie, and it shouldn't try to be. Since the book already has a Poe album to go along with it, a film could be cool, too. Kinda like rounding out the multimedia experience.

[el_loco_avs]

Well that would work yes. But it wouldn't be as awesome as the book. As the book is the house. I'd want a movie to be the house too. Wrong size.. things shifting. Tunnels. etc.

[Midnight]

Frankly I wouldn't mind if they just made a Navidson Record movie, without any of zampano's analysis or anything of johnny truant. Would make a good horror flick.

cause, you see
-it's almost literally impossible to do the whole book line for line, without resorting to doing weird/annoying shit with the screen and camera (flattening it out or making it spiral around when the text flattens or spirals) that would just remove the audience instead of sucking them in.
-doing any movie-within-a-movie is usually impossible to pull off, especially cause the outer movie is an analysis of the inner movie (and that's not counting johnny analyzing the outer movie)
-johnny's tale is rather sparse compared to the not-footnotes, so in order to flesh him out you'd need to do pretty much everything in johnny's footnotes, at the expense of the 'real' plot. furthermore, it's impossible to fully flesh him out without doing awkward cuts back to his mother's letters.


NOW
if someone made a 2-3 hour movie that's JUST the navidson record
and someone ELSE made a 2-3 hour "making of"/faux-documentary-analysis of the movie, directed by the pseudonym Zampano, that at least captured the spirit of Zampano's bits (perhaps talking about the real actor's "Reactions/real life stuff", instead of the character's reactiosn/real life stuff--though obviously it wouldn't be their REAL real life)
and a DIFFERENT someone else made a 2-3 hour movie about a man (named johnny truant) who has SEEN both movies and, because of them, fucked up his own life terribly.


That'd be... really really really awesome. it'd be possibly the greatest effort in film mankind has done, and would get the perfect reaction form the masses who'd go "so did you hear about the documentary of the navidson record.. and then there was another documentary about a guy that saw both movies and freaked out... crazy shit, man".
i mean, it'd require a ton of work and secrecy to get the actors to film two movies simultaneously while making sure the masses don't know that there's a second movie involved. That'd be the hard part, the crazy coordination part. Doing the johnny truant part would not be as difficult once the first two are made.
it would also require the first movie to be fucking AWESOME so people would see the other ones, and it would also require that the pseudo-sequels are NOT involved.. ie, NO "house of leaves III" or "from the makers of the navidson record"



yeah.

[Jesse]

Also, loads of amateur filmmakers do create stuff like the 5 & 1/2 Minute Hallway for film projects. Hell, even I considered doing it for my final piece.

[diotimajsh]

Only Revolutions? Boring, I'm afraid. And maybe over my head. I got about halfway through it (I think. Reading from both ends.). I felt like a lot of the textual gimmicks were done "just because", not because they were supposed to contribute meaningfully to the story (although who knows, maybe that's because I wasn't thinking about it hard enough).

It's interesting seeing how much you can stretch language and still be fairly comprehensible, but I think Danielewksi perhaps sacrificed readability too much in his efforts to be creative and unique here.

[el_loco_avs]

Only Revolutions? Boring, I'm afraid. And maybe over my head. I got about halfway through it (I think. Reading from both ends.). I felt like a lot of the textual gimmicks were done "just because", not because they were supposed to contribute meaningfully to the story (although who knows, maybe that's because I wasn't thinking about it hard enough).

It's interesting seeing how much you can stretch language and still be fairly comprehensible, but I think Danielewksi perhaps sacrificed readability too much in his efforts to be creative and unique here.

OR felt more like an.... experience type thing than a full-on story.

It's hilarious to read on the train with people staring at you while you keep turning your book upside down btw.

[Jesse]

Only Revolutions is an epic poem, and follows some of the forms of that, which can bother people who were expecting a novel. But it's at least as deep as HoL once you start to get into it, and by the end, it affected me just as much as Leaves ever did.

[Chfan]

Well, they had only one copy of the one-color HoL at my library, so I doubt they have OR.

[Midnight]

Also, loads of amateur filmmakers do create stuff like the 5 & 1/2 Minute Hallway for film projects. Hell, even I considered doing it for my final piece.

yeah but there's a difference between a load of amateur filmmakers creating the 5.5 minute hallway and big-name directors creating big-budget movies about other big-name directors and their movies. getting 3 production companies and directors and stuff to work together for a multi-year saga like that has never been done, to my knowledge, and I doubt it ever will.

[Ati]

I think I broke my friend...

I introduced him to the book a few weeks ago, and haven't seen him yet. His emails to me during that time have gone something like:

"Man, this is a really good book. Its almost hard to believe it's fiction. It's written so dryly, but it sucks you in."

"This book is approaching obsession status."

"Oh fuck, there are secret messages?"

"What the hell is going on?"

"I think the shade of blue is changing."

[TheLimerick]

I figured there would be a topic about this book in here already, but I couldn't find one in the first 3 pages of this section, so here goes...

I began reading House of Leaves a week or two ago, and it's probably one of the best books I've ever read. For people that have read it, I just got past the point where he talks about the house as a labyrinth (and the footnotes make you backtrack and run around like you're in a labyrinth), and Holloway and his team are coming back up the staircase after being down there for 4 days.

For those that haven't read it... Read it. Just, read it. There's no reason not to. Unless you like your head not blown to bits.

Anywho, DISCUSS!

[poxic]

Join the fun over here. You probably didn't find it because the title was different from your search.

[TheLimerick]

Wow. My bad. Close this plz!

[Hammer]

So I just started reading this book like a week ago. I just got up to the part about the labyrinth- where the chapter goes back and forth like you're in a labyrinth, coordinating with the content - and now I'm just at the part where Holloway and crew are coming up the staircase after spending 4 days at the bottom. There are lists of different types of buildings, and backwards passages about house-building materials, and artist's names upside-down... WHAT THE HELL IS GOING ON.

The more my mind explodes, the more I love it. Is that a weird thing to say?

[Midnight]

Oh you got some Real Shit coming your way. It only gets more intense.
Like, imagine some kind of crazy fractal, where each of those exploded pieces of mind explode... then THOSE pieces explode--all the way down to an atomic level, and then you've got a Nuclear Mindfuck.

[Sir_Elderberry]

Oh you got some Real Shit coming your way. It only gets more intense.
Like, imagine some kind of crazy fractal, where each of those exploded pieces of mind explode... then THOSE pieces explode--all the way down to an atomic level, and then you've got a Nuclear Mindfuck.

My mind temporarily pseudo-transblew its own substructural soul before reassembling into a sheer stormwarp. I don't even understand what happened, I just know it was weird.

[TheLimerick]

So I've been reading all day, and I got to the part where they've moved to New York and Navidson's going back one more time. Why, oh why is he going back...Such bad choices! However, I'm so engrossed into the story that it's almost becoming a problem. Like, lack of sleep problem.

Also, the shade of blue for "house" changed. I'm not sure why, but it definitely did.

Coincidentally, I just read a passage in my textbook for a class that started out talking about Pierre Menard's "rewriting" of Don Quixote. Which I thought was really awesome, seeing as I knew exactly what he was talking about, from House of Leaves.

[icenine]

Yeah, it did. And coming after Ati's post it's weirder than usual.

[Midnight]

can someone give me an example of the shade of blue changing? I never really noticed it.


I think my problem in this book is that I picked it up, read some, put it down for a week, picked it back up. read a lot more. put it down for a few days... etc. Should've gone with one sitting, or a close series of sittings.

[Internetmeme]

My High School library just got this book in because I requested it! I asked them to get the full-color edition, and it is awesome! I got past the first couple pages, and I am going to bring a mirror to read the reverse bits when I get to them in class. I just know I am going to get some odd looks from the people around me.
So far, House of Leaves is pretty awesome.

[el_loco_avs]

Behind you...

[Otacust]

When I read this the first time, I finished the Navidson Record part of it at about 3 in the morning, alone in an empty house. That was one of the more terrifying nights of my life.

This book...just...managed to take my perception of reality and utterly destroy it. At first it was subtle; a fraction of an inch in the house that didn't match up. Before I knew it, though, my ideas of reality were gone. The rug was pulled out from under my feet without my noticing, and when I started to look for it, it was long gone.

What an amazing book. Started reading it again this week, and it's at least as good now as it was the first time.

[Chfan]

Funny, it's been almost half a year and it wasn't the earth-shattering experience you guys seem to describe even after. I just kind of liked the book.

[oracle989]

I've gotten around to starting into House of Leaves, but the style of the book has prompted me to ask you fine people a question about it. Do you think it would be better to read it straight through, page by page, or to read the manuscript and its footnotes first, then go back for Truant's story?

Also, has anyone read Only Revolutions? If so, how is that?

[Lazar]

Funny, I just ordered that book after hearing some of my friends enthuse over it.

[rrwoods]

Also, has anyone read Only Revolutions? If so, how is that?

I was not thrilled with OR. Honestly it was kind of terrible. House is just so much better.