House of Leaves: Book Review

I just finished reading House of Leaves, by Zampanò and Johnny Truant. This is a literary horror novel, and a postmodern novel that I bought probably over a decade ago, after watching a video about it. But I was quickly intimidated by it, and it remained on my shelf for that length of time. But finally, finally after deciding to put my foot down this year and read all the heavy books that need to be read, I finished this beast of a book after a month or two of reading. I didn't count the time, but it was a chore and I know that this is a good ballpark estimate. Borrowing the basic concept from a comment by Vince Gilligan, I did not enjoy reading this book, but I enjoy having read it. Let's explore what that means.

No Spoilers

Summary

The inside cover description of the book starts with the following: "Years ago, when House of Leaves was first being passed around, it was nothing more than a badly bundled heap of paper, parts of which would occasionally surface on the Internet. No one could have anticipated the small but devoted following this terrifying story would soon command." This is the perfect description, for multiple reasons. Partly, it is the self-awareness that it possesses, but also the fact that the description is not simply about the book, but within the book. It is not that the actual House of Leaves novel originally existed as a bundle of loose paper, eventually surfacing on the internet. In the context of the story itself, there is a story that existed in this form, and this description is referring to it as if it exists in our world. This blurring of the lines between our and the novel's reality is one of the key themes in the story.

How does this work? One of the ways in which this is achieved is through a Russian nesting doll of stories being narrated to the reader. There are multiple stories within one another, and this effect actually helps obfuscate the reality of this novel being a story within our real world, in a way. It is actually really interesting. Just explaining the basic concept of this story is very difficult. The first level is essentially a found footage film similar to the Blair Witch Project. Although that movie came out in 1999 and this book came out in 2000, this book took ten years to write—so this technically came first, conceptually speaking. The film is about a family who is trying to restart by moving into a new House. But they eventually find that the House is larger on the inside than on the outside. Strange impossibilities accumulate from there, until the family is confronted by a horror beyond comprehension. The second level is academic film analysis. The core of the story is actually what seems to be a non-fiction analysis of this found footage film, complete with citations and more. The third level involves a character named Johnny Truant. He is essentially a junkie who is not only addicted to drugs, but also to sex. Due to connections, he comes across the loose manuscript pages of this film analysis, which is called the Navidson Record. Zampanò, the man who wrote The Navidson Record, was a blind man—and he has now died. There are also appendices attached to the end of the book that add context to the story, notably, the letters that Johnny's mother sent to her son while she was in a mental institution. On top of that, there are also unspecified "editors" who provide corrections and translations to some of the quotations throughout the piece. Finally, over all of this is the ultimate author that is Mark Z. Danielewski. At the beginning of this review, I stated that the book was written by Zampanò and Johnny Truant, but that was a joke, of course.

Going back to the description that I quoted above, the "bundled heap" that was mentioned is actually in world, in the sense that Johnny Truant found the "bundled heap" and originally published it on the internet.

Blurring the Lines

There are different senses in which the story blurs the line between fiction and reality. The first sense is in the way I described above. By playing with a story structure that is similar to a Russian nesting doll, and by having the inside book description be inside the world of the highest level of the book, this messes with the mind of the reader and makes them ask questions, even when they know it is all part of the plan.

Another level of this is the way in which the author plays with the imperfections of the narrators, themselves. As is specified, this is about a documentary film, but the Navidson Record discussion that was written about it was written by a blind man. I cannot remember how the nature of Zampanò's blindness was specified, but did he ever watch it? He talks about the film as if it were real throughout, which adds a layer of incredulity. Another layer is that he uses other people to write it out for him. Then there is the claim that he makes up many of the sources that he cites. What he engages in is an academic analysis of a kind, which I will touch upon in more detail later; what matters here is that Johnny Truant says that they are references to nothing. However, the reader is also led to question Johnny's credibility, as well. He deliberately changes the text at one point in the very beginning, and is later corrected on his own corrections. Which leads to yet another layer of incredulity. There are the aforementioned editors who are in Johnny's world, and who provide translations and corrections and clarifications for the readers; and they even push back on some of the claims that Johnny makes in the story, which blurs the lines all the more. And can we trust them?

The Aesthetic of Intellectualism

In my years on the internet, it has not taken long for me to realize that much of what people see as intelligent is simply the aesthetics of intellectualism, not actual intelligence. This book is a good example of that. I don't mean that as an insult, I actually mean it as a compliment, as the purpose of this book is to riff off of this idea. As I mentioned above, the core of this story is actually a supposed academic level analysis of a found footage film, complete with citations. However, these citations are apparently made up. They all (or mostly) lead nowhere. This highlights the aesthetics of intellectualism, because the appearance of sourcing makes something look accurate. Just the sight of footnotes with these citations affects how you perceive the text. It makes you think it has more credibility than it does, and when Danielewsky snatches that away from you, it makes you step back and ask yourself whether other academic sources have citations that lead nowhere. We all know about systemic issues in even the sciences, like p-hacking and the replication crisis; hell, even physics seems to have fallen victim to its own version of nonsense via the endless tweaking and testing of hypotheses that they just can't abandon. Further, it stops and makes you think about what actually convinces you when you read an argument. Is it the cogency of the argument, or is it the surrounding aesthetics, like the presence of sourcing. If I presented an equivalent argument, but didn't bother with random sourcing to other works, would that change your perception of the argument?

This actually connects to a recent article that I read that was critiquing Stephen Jay Gould, who was a paleontologist and an evolutionary biologist. He was rather popular in the public eye, but is rather controversial among more rigorous scientists for the reasons discussed in the article. One of the rhetorical flourishes that was called out by Gould's critic was his use of quotes, especially in foreign languages, which gives his work a veneer of intellectualism—making his work look smarter than it actually is. Much of the citations in this book are exactly this. Shoehorning foreign language quotations into the book, forcing Johnny and the editors to translate them for him (Zampanò). If you had removed much of these, it would not change the substance of the arguments, but it would change the aesthetic.

There are similar questions in relation to where something comes from. While the Navidson Record, as a film analysis, looks academic in nature, the source of the record seems to be a random man with no academic credentials to his name. This highlights how easily the academic aesthetic is mimicked by people who have no academic credentials whatsoever. But it also makes you stop and wonder what it is about being academic that makes the work credible in the first place. Why does it matter whether he is an academic in the first place? Is the analysis sneaky because it has citations? To what extent do we know they are being used correctly? How are they being used? Is the argument even substantive? How often do you check the citations of the academic works that you read?

One final bit I want to tack on to this portion is one part where the book took a temporary diversion to talk about geology, and was even delving into the technicalities of the science—but then it cuts off with an apology from Johnny. He had accidentally destroyed the next ten pages of that very, very boring discussion that you totally wanted to read. One has to wonder why it was there in the first place. And that is the point. Shoehorning a discussion of geology into the book for seemingly no reason is just the aesthetics of intellectualism.

Interpretation

There are apparently many reddit pages dedicated to analyzing this book, and there are countless reviews dedicated to picking it apart. I know the latter is the case, because I have watched more than a few of them in preparation for this review of my own. Throughout there is quite a bit of discussion about the many different interpretations that one can have of the book, namely concerning whether the House in question is real, whether the film in question actually existed, whether Johnny Truant existed (and Zampanò, by extension), and more. If these sound completely out of wack, then you are completely right. They aren't spoilers, they are just wild interpretations. There are so many ways in which you can pick apart this book.

I, however, have to take the alternative route. I don't have any particular interpretation, except for the shallow one, I guess, though that misses the point. I think the book is deliberately playing off of the idea that there can be many different interpretations. There is no true interpretation, in some respects. With regards to the existence of the House or the rest of the questions that I posed, I don't think you're supposed to find a real answer. Evidence is provided every which way, and it can all be questioned one way or another—and I think that is the deeper reality of the book.

This is postmodern fiction done right. It is fiction that makes you think about fiction itself. It makes you stop and wonder about the craft, and also about the nature of interpretation. What makes a particular interpretation correct in the first place? This is supplemented by the discussions regarding the aesthetics of intellectualism, and also by the blurring of the lines. At every level, the evidence presented can be questioned, and Danielewski knows that and uses that to his benefit.

Formatting

The formatting is the most esoteric aspect of the story. In some respects, I think it works to the story's benefit, but in other respects, it is invasive in that it impedes the reader's ability to actually read the story in a productive manner. If you've seen the layout of some of the pages, then you know what I am talking about.

In the instances where it works, we are talking about using white space and the placing of the text in a way that mirrors the story. It often mirrors the characters' positions in question. For some people, it might be too much, in that it comes off as contrived, but within the overall context of the story, it worked for me.

One way in which it did not work for me was when the formatting felt like it was just being wasted. There were parts where there were large info dumps with random information that added nothing. To be clear, there was at least one part where there was an info dump, where the text itself acknowledged the vacuousness. But at another point, at the height of the insanity that was the formatting, there were other random text insertions that contributed nothing to the work—and I thought it was a major missed opportunity.

The formatting had these footnotes scattered across the pages, etching every which way, and I thought he could have mirrored this in the text by having arguments about the Navidson Record, perhaps. In the same way that the text is formatted to run across one another, these arguments would essentially do the same. Instead? We just have info dumps and irrelevant rambles about nothing.

Horror

People often claim that this book is the most horrifying novel that they have ever read. Naturally, others come forward and say that they did not find it scary at all. Just like humor, horror is rather subjective. And books don't have jump scares, so there are no cheap gimmicks designed to make everyone spook even for a second.

Now that said, what I find to be scary tends to be the more abstract things. Philosophical and existential horror are what unnerve me, and House of Leaves was exactly that. For some reason, the mere idea of finding out that an extra door has appeared in your House was just so unsettling to me. This book messes with your understanding of reality, and makes you question your understanding of the reading experience, itself.

And I think this is another layer to the horror. It is not just the idea of reality bending horror, but also the way in which it was presented. I know some commentators complained that the immersion of the story was too often broken by the ergodic story structure, but I think that misses the point. This story is immersive in an entirely different way. The manner in which you engage with the text is immersive, because it mirrors an investigative act, where you are sifting through internet archives, or are digging through notes, rather than reading a novel. And that makes the whole experience feel . . . real.

Conclusion

Overall, I have to say I quite enjoyed having read this book. Not only that, but it sits quite well in my memory. I think I will give it an 8/10.

Video: https://youtu.be/7DXqWSGp_rw