House of Leaves: The Remastered Full-Color Edition

I first read this book in 2023, and I'm still thinking about this book.

Crazy book that will stay with you for a long time

It’s a mystery book that’s a mystery book.

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.

A mirror to the reader that presents the simulacrum of multiple stories, House of Leaves is probably the most subjective book I've ever read. I loved the experience of reading this book. And make no mistake: you must choose how to read it. More questions than answers or perhaps even a narrative, the book presents a multilayered facsimile of a few different kinds of fiction. So my review is as the book intends. Merely my own reading and far more reflective of what I saw of myself while consuming it, than of anything else. This book makes space for a plethora of different kinds of readings. And I studied the text as much as I was able, tabbing and underlining and making marginalia to see if it does support my reading. And it does, I think. I'm going to be brief because I'm doing a video review on my Youtube that will be much more in-depth. Borgesque in its "main" narrative, The Navidson Tapes presents itself as academic criticism of a cult film that does not exist. In its granularity, this reader found that there was a very meaningful difference between consuming a film and reading the piece about the film that retreads every shot composition and feeling, every visual perception, endowing it with something beyond the film could hope to convey in a viewing. As a visual thinker, the film was even richer and textured and my comprehension of it so augmented, that I think it's a far superior experience. If watching it even were such an option. We follow the Navidson's, Will and Karen, children: Chad and Daisy, put down "roots" in Virginia. Only their colonization of the property is inverted, and the house colonizers Will, the patriarch and famous war-time photographer that sets aside his exploration to be with his family. Only, after the family is settled, the house changes, given new space--altering its dimensions in a literal sense--growing to accommodate Will's primordial self. His maze. Or labyrinth. The journey is literalized just as he believes he's completed every journey and there is nothing left but to conquer being a father. The family finds a door to a hallway to a great foyer to a spiral staircase to a maze. This causes a rift in the couple Karen, who has claustrophobia and is too afraid to enter it, and Will, who sees the next adventure and finds it irresistible. What follows is the horror of a space reflective of the people traversing it, ostensibly, but I believe more of Will's internal selfhood, and by extension humanity. And from the wreckage of the horror of trying to navigate this maze, a movie is (fictitiously) created. The movie's critical evaluation is done by a man named Zampano, who dies at an old age after becoming obsessed with the film. Researching every thematic linkage and creating his own reading. Another horror that reflects himself, driving him literally mad, or so it would seem. Because the actual person who compiled Zampano's work is Johnny Truant. A fake name, fake person, steeped in fiction that obfuscates his own trauma hidden in the footnotes in the critical analysis Zampano had written. Literally interrupting and resisting the spiral of Navidson's narrative into the maze, as well as Zampano's dark and turbulent thoughts that similarly spiraled. Johnny's story is mostly of self-aggrandizement and sexual exploits and chemical debauchery. Generally interceding when we reach points in the Navidson narrative that trigger his trauma, though he is only aware of the metaphor he has created which haunts and dogs him, as he becomes more like Zampano. Reclusive and colonized by the reading of the Navidson story. Rather than process their trauma, see only darkness and are ultimately consumed by it. Depending on what you believe "actually" happens in the narrative, anyway. I think the key themes in the book are trauma and colonization. They're hit on the head the most, in every prose craft fashion. Metaphor, allegory, symbolism. Everything seems to me, to point to the idea of patterns colonizing minds doomed to trace the same doomed lines on every layer of the fiction, regardless of whoever and however they consumed them. Everyone needs other people to feed them information outside of their own darkroom to truly see themselves. And without outside intercession, I think we all wander our own internal maze, whether we are aware of it or not. More so for people who carry trauma, who seem to have more darkness and less light to navigate the labyrinth.

At first glance, horror for the thinking man, but ultimately no more than smut and pedantry.

Uno de los mejores libros que he leído. No solo la edición y el diseño están cuidados hasta el mínimo detalle; la historia en si me cautivó desde el primer momento. Es un libro que merece la pena ser leído varias veces. Recomiendo adquirir la edición en inglés porque, aunque no he leido la versión en español, imagino que habrá muchas cosas que se pierdan en la traducción; la historia está repleta de juegos de palabras, referencias y sobre todo (y más importante) hay algunos mensajes escondidos entre las palabras. Esta edición en tapa blanda con solapas está a todo color (eso es, con la palabra "house" en azul, los pasajes del minotauro en rojo, las palabras correspondientes en morado y las imágenes del final en cuatricromía). El peso del libro y su volumen hacen que sea un poco incómodo de leer, y la letra es un poco pequeña, pero merece mucho la pena. Un buen acompañamiento para este libro es el álbum "Haunted" de Poe (el nombre artístico de la hermana del escritor), ya que ambas obras fueron hechas (según el propio Danielewski) para complementarse mutuamente.

„This is not for you“ So begrüßt einen dieses Buch, und je tiefer man vordringt, desto mehr hat man das Gefühl, dass dies wahr sein könnte. House of Leaves ist sicher kein gewöhnliches Buch. Schon den Inhalt sinnvoll zusammen zu fassen fällt mir fast schwer, denn hier gibt es verschiedene Ebenen die parallel erzählt werden. Die oberste Ebene bildet wohl Johnny Truant, dessen Geschichte und Anmerkungen im Vorwort und in Fußnoten zu finden ist. Er findet, dank einem Freund, die Aufzeichnungen von einem blinden alten Mann, die ihn fortan fesseln sollen. Daher kommt dann auch die nächste Ebene, die aus den Aufzeichnungen von dem alten Mann Namens Zampanò bestehen. Über ihn selber erfährt man nicht all zu viel, stattdessen kommentiert er einen Film. Dieser Film bildet auch die letzte Ebene dieser Erzählung, das eigentliche Herz des ganzen. In diesem Film, dem „Navidson Record“ geht es um die Familie Navidson, die in ihr neues Zuhause zieht. Was eigentlich ein harmloses kleines Projekt werden sollte, nimmt eine düstere Wendung, als sich herausstellt, dass das Haus in keiner Weise gewöhnlich ist. Es verändert sich von jetzt auf gleich und birgt ungeahnte, gar unmögliche Tiefen. Der Preisgekrönte Fotograf und Familienvater Will Navidson kann gar nicht anders, als mitsamt seiner Kamera in die tiefen dieses Hauses vordringen zu wollen und herauszufinden, was es damit auf sich hat. Mehr will ich auch wirklich nicht verraten. Nur noch so viel vielleicht: Es stellt sich sehr schnell heraus, dass der Film den Zampanò so ausführlich behandelt überhaupt nicht existiert – nicht einmal in Johnnys Welt gibt es eine Spur von diesem Film. Und doch scheint etwas düsteres aus diesen Seiten zu kommen, etwas das Johnny nicht mehr los lassen will. Die Geschichte ist geheimnisvoll, trotz aller Analyse im Buch bleibt vieles im dunkeln, im wörtlichen wie im übertragenden Sinne. Viele Fragen werden aufgeworfen und nur wenige auch beantwortet. Am Ende lässt die ganze Erfahrung einen etwas ratlos zurück, aber grade das ist doch der Reiz an diesem Werk. Wenn man die letzten Worte gelesen hat, ist man eben noch nicht unbedingt fertig damit. Es lädt dazu ein es noch einmal in die Hand zu nehmen und durchzusehen, Dinge nachzuschlagen und darüber zu philosophieren. So bleibt auch immer die Frage, was am Ende eigentlich wie glaubwürdig ist. Wie viel von dem, was da auf Papier gebannt wurde kann auch wahr sein, und wie viel ist nur der unzuverlässigen Erzählung Johnnys zu verdanken? Neben der wirklich wunderschön aufgebauten Geschichte ist aber auch die Darstellungsweise erwähnenswert. In der von mir gelesenen englischen ‚Remastered Full-Color Edition‘ wurden verschiedene Schriftarten für verschiedene Autoren der Passagen verwendet und verschiedene Worte und Abschnitte in verschiedenen Farben gedrückt. Viele Fußnoten weisen auf Quellenangaben zu Zitaten (teilweise nicht-reale Werke zu dem Film) hin oder dienen als Anmerkungen von Johnny oder Zampanò. Am interessantesten jedoch ist das Spiel mit dem Layout des Textes, welchem sich hier bedient wird. So ist der Text teilweise auf den Kopf oder die Seite gedreht, es werden nur halbe Seiten beschrieben oder gar nur einzelne Sätze und Worte die in faszinierenden Anordnungen über die Seite verteilt werden. Je tiefer man vordringt, um so verwirrender wird es auch, allerdings nie so, dass es frustrierend würde. Ein Nachteil dieses Buches ist allerdings, dass es grade am Anfang doch etwas abschreckend wirkt. Es dauert eine Weile, bis man zum Herz der ganzen Sache gelangt und bis dahin wurde zumindest mir ein kleines bisschen Geduld abverlangt. Ganz sicher kein Buch, welches man nur mal nebenbei liest, sondern tatsächlich eines, welches etwas Zeit und Aufmerksamkeit fordert. Aber das hat es auf jeden Fall auch verdient, jeder der dieses Art von Buch mögen könnte, sollte ihm zumindest eine Chance geben. Sicher nicht etwas für jeden, aber für mich auf jeden Fall 5 Sterne wert! Ich werde wahrscheinlich noch eine Weile etwas davon haben.