Enjoy your midterm free spring break. Take House of Leaves with you where ever you go (or don’t go). Leave your comment(s) here.
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Enjoy your midterm free spring break. Take House of Leaves with you where ever you go (or don’t go). Leave your comment(s) here.
I could easily spend 500 words explaining my frustration reading this text, but that would make it seem like I didn’t enjoy the text. Yes, it befuddled me to no end, but this is a text unlike no other I’ve encountered.
As unusual as it seems, what intrigued me most about this text was the author’s decision—or was it someone else’s decision? — to use the color blue to emphasize the word “house.” He never once strays from that pattern. Whether the word is in English or another language, whether it’s part of another word or by itself, the text is printed in blue, making the very word “house” almost like a character.
The color choice, in particular, strikes me as unusual because blue is a cool color, and as such, is traditionally employed by artists to indicate calmness. It’s the color astrologists often use when they want to represent water, one of the calming elements. Well, the house is anything but calm. Nothing about it or the way it effects its occupants is calm or relaxed. It drives Karen close to insanity and takes the lives of numerous characters including Holloway and Navidson’s brother Tom. Red would seem the optimum color to represent the house, but even orange or yellow would be more fitting than blue, as they indicate intensity, rage, passion, etc. Or maybe, given the fact that the interior of the house is utter blackness and there is no color, everything but the word house should be red and the word house should be black.
Overall, this whole idea of color and the absence of color leaves me questioning whether the author was trying to say something about the house by using blue? How does color play and at the same time not play a role in the text? Can we consider color or the absence of color a character in itself? Or is it all just a trick do drive the reader to insanity?
If you are ADD I think this book would be hard to read as there are so many distractions. It took me several readings to even try to get comfortable with the book. I had to figure out what “stitch” to concentrate on and what “stitch” to let go of and not worry about. There were so many pieces of information that seemed to create noise and seemed to take away from the story telling. Should I get a mirror so I can read the boxes that are written backward? Should I read the red pages with the lines through them? Should I turn the book up- side-down to read the passage? What story is the main story (Zampano, Johnny, The Navidson’s, Johnny’s mom, etc)? Should I decode the boxes within a page? The story both through the metaphor of the house and the overall structure of the book seemed like a labyrinth, you could choose left or right but you would be sucked into the constant change and ultimately find yourself lost, trying to figure out like those in the house expedition how the hell do I get out of here?
I just keep coming back to the structure of the book as I lost the story many times due to the structure. Being in UX I have been “taught” to keep is simple, create white space, make a clear, direct path…This book really took aim at many ingrained affordances I have been taught. I found myself frantic or even anxious reading this book, it seems very chaotic and the usage of cramming so much on page and then clearing the page of all of its clutter was quite distancing for me. It wasn’t the story anymore that I could tell you much about it really became more about the book itself…Reading became increasingly non-trivial, as did turning a page…
I also was interested in the repetitive element of the word “house” (and all other languages where the word is indicated, i.e., domus, for example) being represented by the color blue. From my experience researching for a book dealing with color, I’ve had the opportunity to talk to professionals about the color and what it can do. Here’s what I know: as a cool color, it can indicate spatiality. Lots of set painters use blue to make sets look bigger when photographed or filmed, with more perceived depth than they really have. I think maybe that’s where Mark D. was going with the color. Warm colors have less of a spatial trait than cooler ones.
One other interesting thing that I learned from my research was that the human eye has limited ability to recognize the color blue in high definition. We have an element within the optic nerve, a blocker, which does not enable high definition recognition of blue. The bottom line is that you can put two squares together, say a red one and a blue one, the blue one always looks to be in higher definition, as the eye overcompensates, even when the colored squares are the same size and resolution.
So the changing spatiality and definition of the house is symbolized by blue. And the difference in perception of that spatiality seems to shift the size of rooms, walls and staircases within the house. At least that’s my theory.
One other short note: the breaks from Zampano’s work to Johnny Truant’s story were certainly ergodic. I found it a little difficult to determine a “dropping off” from one text to the other. It made for an interesting ride… umm, read.
It’s 3:00 p.m. on Saturday, March 15, and I just finished the book.
House of Leaves has a very clever nesting of a stories: Navidson’s story, as told by the deceased Zampano, as rediscovered/reassembled/remediated by Johnny Truant, their stories intertwined and whose shared center is that which can not be described. Although far more sophisticated it shares some qualities with Kate Modern in the way that is plays with the reader’s desire for wholeness and completion. Seldom is an action resolved without presenting a new question, a frightening concern, another quest or voyeuristic opportunity. In the end, Danielewski finally gives us what we want; the Navidsons reunited (even if Navy is missing a few parts) and Johnny Truant with some peace of mind (even if he is broke and living on the street.)
I stayed at the MGM Grand in Vegas most of this week for a very large software conference. I brought the book with me for reading on the plane and the odd free moment that might present itself. The extremely long hallways and cavernous spaces of the hotel provided a weird parallel to the infinite spaces of the house. (I will forward a couple of pictures to Dave.) I am happy to report the lights stayed on 24/7.
According to the paratext of the cover, the story originated on the internet – and it seems well suited for that medium. Although the printed copy provides a sequence for us (thankfully), it could easily be broken up into hypertext. While controlling some sequence, side-branches could be grafted on using the footnotes, appendices and some of the faux analysis. Pictures of items from the trunk would make interesting graphics.
The web often functions as an aggregator of various media and sources; the story’s various implied sources and media types would easily be improved in web pages. Upside down and rotated text on a traditional computer monitor would be intolerable – but on a smaller mobile device (like a smart phone) it would be no problem. Being hypermediated would likely add another sense of authenticity to the story. The small purple text on the printed cover comforts us by declaring “A Novel” (as in: don’t worry, it’s only a novel.)
Hmmm…what to say about House of Leaves…
It’s like monkies typing Shakespeare, except all of the words and phrases have been written, and they jumbled everything together to create this book. I’m having a hard time pin pointing one thing in this book to bring up for discussion, but here goes nothing.
My eye/mind immedietly grasped on the 2001:A Space Odyssey and The Shining references. And not just the glaringly obvious monolith discussion and the numerous footnotes. The Navidson Record read much like a Kubric film.
I’m not trying to put words into Danielewski’s mouth, but it seems as though he’s paying homage to Kubrick and his way of telling stories. Kubrick has this innate sense of taking something of literary value (if you notice a lot of his movies are based off of known stories-written and verbal) and transform them into unique visual experiences; he creates a detailed representation of a story by the casual climb of rising action to reach a peak that seems to extend into eternity. One thing I’ve struggled with is finding the climax in a Kubrick film, because there are so many moments that are keep you on your seat in suspense and have you begging for more. That’s how I felt with House of Leaves. You keep on going, expecting some form of a resolution, but you get another plot point and the suspense continues.
To continue, but not to go into depth, the book reads like a film. I can see the camera moving and cuts (think The Shining meets Lolita, both Kubrick films) at appropriate places. The visual of the book having different pieces, the abundance of footnotes, multiple perspectives and all of the randomness that would drive an ADD person insane, that’s what we do with films.
This book made me work hard in reading each page. To put it in a metaphorical comparison, a complete maze of text. It seems that Danielewski wanted to to break from the traditional style of book writing and do something more intensive, something to make the reader’s mind more active, and it worked. Particular pages within the book was a collection of encyclopedia information, while other text takes on unusual visual shapes. To me, some of the pages in the books look like informational pages that you would see on a website, you know, like weather on the right hand side, stocks and headline on the bottom, and is it just me or does anyone else notice that the word house was highlighted blue? It is very similar to a hyperlink text that will take you somewhere else. At other times, the text, forms to what was going in the story, for example, pages 193-245 was structured oddly to express a strong sense of intensity and forboding.
I also notice that there was another narrative going on as well, Zampano was mentioned many times in this second narrative, so it seems like someone was writing a story according to his works, now I’m no literature expert but this was something I assumed but I could be wrong.
The storyline itself is based on mysterious investigations, something you would get out of X-files or the show Supernatural so the term mysterious or enigmatic correlates well with the way that the text has been structured throughout the whole book.
This is the first time that I have ever read a book of this particular nature. Was the writer’s intent for this book to be more interactive and immersive for the reader much like Shelley Jackson has done for Patchwork girl or did he take Derrida’s concept of literary studies and tried to break the socially accepted form of book writing ?
House of Leaves.
It’s difficult to focus on one particular issue with a complex work of literature such as House of Leaves. However, it’s clear that the formal aspects of the novel are the ones that stand out the most (in my opinion in detriment to the story) There are the issues concerning the experiments in form and presentation (changes in font for each character and of color for some texts, design and placement of the texts within the page on certain chapters, etc) and their relation to a possible meaning or effect they were trying to achieve.
Of these formal qualities, the one I found more interesting is the contrast presented when the expeditions inside the hallway took place. Because of the massive amount of footnotes, and having to participate in non-trivial efforts to read the text, the process of reading slows down, and in addition there are times when there’s simply too much information being presented (some of it relevant, some seemingly relevant, and, I suspect, a great deal of it completely irrelevant) all of this collaborating to make the novel dense and obscure at best, or tedious and repetitive in certain moments. Which explains why when one comes to the part when the characters immerse themselves in the hallway in order to explore it (and it’s on these occasions when one finds pages filled with fewer words), that the process of reading accelerates and becomes much lighter, to the point that one wishes that the whole novel would take place inside the ever-changing hallway, but then again if it did there would be no contrast.
There’s also the contrast between the main narrators: Zampano and Johnny, one erudite and perhaps excessively pretentious; the other, more crude and down to earth in his manner of addressing the reader, although in the process he becomes on occasions more… (I guess the word is lyrical, but I’m not sure it fits well). One interrupting the other, reminding me constantly of the unpleasant experience of watching TV with someone very annoying who from time to time changes the channel you’re watching to some other channel, which leaves you a bit frustrated, until you become interested in the new channel, which only means it’s time for switching back to the previous one.
How many levels deep does this novel go?
The Navidson Record
Zampano’s comments
Zampano’s story
Truant’s comments
Truant’s story
The editors’ tidbits
What readers make of it all
That’s seven from a quick count without getting the love story, academic discourse, or literary theory into the mix. Yes, just like shifting rooms, the “stories” change up on us just when we think we are getting somewhere. But that’s not entirely true. The stories don’t change as much as they seem to. The entire book seems to follow a labyrinth. We read about the labyrinth under the house, Truant and Lude’s lives are anything but straight (and let’s not even get started on the names – Truant = absent, ludes make people absent….), Zampano navigates through all kinds of academic writing and Danielewski takes the time to place text in different positions so we actually turn the book when Holloway and Navidson turn corners. All the stories seem so unrelated yet are so tightly intertwined we wouldn’t have one without the others.
But how much of that connection is planned? When Truant’s water heater goes out at the same time Karen complains of lacking hot water he openly admits he altered the story to make it seem like a huge coincidence. Later, Truant tells us about the doctors in Seattle, then calls us stupid for believing him. It’s not a far stretch to think Truant may have had his fair share of manipulation before sending the book off.
Come to think of it, Truant spent most of the novel chasing “Thumper,” who if I remember correctly had a white rabbit tattooed someplace near “the happiest place on earth.” He’s following a white rabbit while Navidson is conduction explorations down his own rabbit hole of sorts. (Very Matrixy way to refer to “Alice in Wonderland,” that one.)
My distrust of Truant and his footnotes, when they pertain to the main (can we call Zampano’s a main?) narrative increases when I come across the two open references to Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s Rime of the Ancient Mariner. If I remember correctly, the glosses, which came later, were almost BS, often repeating what the poem said with little to no additional information. Isn’t this Johnny Truant’s role? We see him making up stories to impress girls. Did he make up the girls, too? Zampano seems to be the guest telling the Mariner’s tale and Truant is the glosses running off on his own little errand. Or, maybe I’m mistaken and reading too much into yet another book. Whatever the answer, all the stories work on their own, but work better when viewed in light of the other.
Note: There is one instance of “house” in red rather than blue, although had it not been stricken it may have appeared blue. (But technology allows both colors to exist; so keeping it red was conscious decision.)
i had to take some time to digest all that. After the reading of remediation, I wrote that I believed nothing has been done that is new, but, not everything has been experienced by everybody, so that when someone experiences for the first time, something I have previously experienced, it is new, just not new to me. This is how I felt after reading it. I have read this before, but I had not read this book before. [redrum] Two things that intrigued me. First was that, just as when Navidson says “Can’t be a light. Care-” and we know what happens, but we don’t know what happened to him. It’s not an ending, it’s and ending to that element of the narrative. That’s how I feel about the book in general. In my understanding so far, this could be deconstruction. To what end? The book ended on page 709, but the narrative did not end there. That is not to say the story is not meaty, or engaging, because it is that, but, I did not feel like it “paid off’ at the end. I felt as if I had read a treatment of the story of the house. Secondly, is the comparison of the book to a labyrinth. A labyrinth was a structure or a path that had x amount of turns and way, and when arriving at the center, you changed direction and that would lead back out to the beginning. A maze is difficult to navigate through, but you ended up out at the end in a different location from the entrance. House of leaves is a maze that wants to be a labyrinth. Which I guess, keeping in the deconstructive method of non-category, achieves its end, if that was the purpose. The story was great, and is homogeneous with The Twilight Zone and The Outer Limits. The big difference is that we are reading material that moves away from intentionality and teaching, and moves towards the dissection of the narrative.
[btw...where this site is hosted, has a time machine. I looked at Candiluu's comment and it was posted tommorrow at 12:40 in the morning
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I would say that I found it easy to lose the story as I read the novel, but that implies that there is a linear story to lose in the first place. I understand how the structure of the book mirrors the house in the text. It’s confusing. Expansive, yet cramped. Etc. I acknowledge the cleverness of this, but the aesthetics of the idea don’t make up for the fact that I found the story to be very dark and frustrating. Things like character and setting are things that draw me into a story, and this story didn’t have appealing enough characters or settings to justify my trudging through what I will call the intentionally semi-incoherent narrative. My question to the author is did he assemble the story in a normal way before fragmenting it and changing it around? I can’t imagine someone creating such a thing as is. A fragmented mirror is best created by making an assembled mirror first and then breaking it.
Wikipedia does a great job of describing this book. After the first 50 pages or so I was feeling pretty lost so I went to Wikipedia to see if I could get some helpful tips. What I found were some pretty interesting things I had not caught on to. For example, the different uses of font and font styles for each character. It really gives a particular dimension to the different characters. I’ve always been interested in typography since I began studying graphic design. I find the use of colors and layout in the book are quite profound for the book format. I never much think of a book as anything but something to read. I never open a book thinking I will be presented with a “game” type experience. This book seems more like a puzzle. Even though it contains many traditional novel elements it seems even those elements are used as puzzle pieces.
I must say this book reminds me of how thankful I am for Wikipedia. Sometimes I like getting lost in a book and trying to make sense of it, but even if that is the case it is nice to know I have a resource I can go to if I need some help. I definitely appreciate House of Leaves from more of an aesthetic appeal than a technical one. After reading about all of the connections in the book between authors, story lines and metaphors I thought, “Oh, that is really clever.” But the thing that will stay with me most about the book is how it breaks with traditional layout of a novel in so many ways. The context of the book is not manifested in the words written on the pages but in the actual physical book itself. House of Leaves equals Book of Pages.
(I’m still finishing the reading, but I’m posting now..)
I also enjoyed the varying typographic styles in House of Leaves. One example (and my personal favorite) occurs between pages 270 and 295 during the Navidson and Reston rescue mission. While this is not the first instance of mostly blank pages, this instance successfully illustrates the gravity of the staircase as well as the emptiness and nothingness of the house itself. The upside down text on page 293 is especially striking because it gives that block of text an uncertain and hanging feeling. As Navidson attempts to grab on to the last piece of rope (and it snaps), the snap action is spread out over several pages to where it gets you (the reader) begging to get to the next page.
My question is this: if House of Leaves moves to some other format (for instance, a text on a computer) and loses its book format, will the text still have the same effect on the reader? What effect would changing those elements of type have? Would the “nothingness” still be as powerful if not in a book?
This is a late post, as I was wrapped up in spring break and sort of forgot to leave a comment. But, I did read the text, and I knew what to expect as I had read some of it before and put it down as I didn’t feel I had the time to fully read it. I still don’t feel I have fully read it. There is so much there, that each time I look at the pages, I see something I missed, or parts I might have skipped over previously suddenly become more meaningful. What I originally thought on my first attempt at reading this text several years ago, was that the story content didn’t necessarily warrant the crazy text format and the dual storylines in play. But this time, I caught on much more to the relationship between the characters, and felt a strong connection between JT, Z, and Holloway. I still, however, feel that at times the clever design type aspects to the book detract from the story, and the “scholarly” texts referenced seem to give the story a sterile feel in places where I would have liked to see more action. Nonetheless, I did have a few nightmares and suspicious glances at dark spaces while reading this text!
One of the things that stood out for me in this text is the way in which the notions of architecture, structure, house, and instability are carried throughout the text. There are several good examples of this and it’s hard to tell if the story and the house on Ash Tree Lane (Navidson Record) are mirroring the structure of the book or if the book is reflecting the architecture of the house and the story. We begin to see the instability of the text beginning with Chapter 8 on page 97. The check mark at the bottom right of the page appears to be a marker for this constant shifting and where the structure of the text is showing outward signs of breaking down. These are quite minor until we reach page 103 where the white space of the break is significantly larger. Also in Chapter 8, the thread of the labyrinth is introduced, which is picked up, developed, and expanded upon in Chapter 9. The discussion of the labyrinth leads to references to architecture, organization of space and the instability of space, form, time, and structure—the “house-shifts” (n. 150, 121). The notions of the labyrinth and structure are reflected in the labyrinthine passages found in the layout of the text. The description (Chapter 10, 154) of Navidson’s approach to photographing of the Anteroom foreshadows the descent into hell, by way of the spiral staircase, reflected in the layout of the text: Zampano’s scholarly writing and any text referring to Karen and Tom (at ground level) is located at the top of the page whereas any text referring to Will and Reston (after they have descended the staircase into hell) is located at the bottom of the page (at least from pages 153-193 and 206-213). Text on pages 217-224 suggest a “domino effect” of each door slamming shut, one after another, giving no hope of escape. The text on page 233 suggests the ricocheting of a bullet and resulting in the splintering of a door panel. In Chapter 11 (246-252) the layout of the two columns reflects both the discussion of twins and the strips into which Zampano tore some of his pages. The break of the text reflecting what is happening at the top of the stairs versus what is happening at the bottom of the stairs is seen again in Chapter 12. Similar structural changes or shifts are also seen in Chapters 19 and 20.
Note: I have another definition for TNT (145)—tedious and tiresome. As clever and impressive as this piece of work is I found it a chore to get through. Guess Dave will have to add me to the short list of those who are not fans of this book.