House of Leaves

 “Maturity, one discovers, has everything to do with the acceptance of ‘not knowing.”

― Mark Z. Danielewski, House of Leaves

Once you reach a certain age, modern media can appear pale compared to the panoply of the rose-coloured array of what came before, be it film, tv, whatever. Even books. You’ve experience so much! What can possibly compare to your first viewing of Star Wars? Your first reading of Lord of the Rings?

It comes as a surprise, then, when something exceeds your expectations. It comes to even further surprise when something “blows your mind”!

I’ve recently had such an experience. House of Leaves, by Mark Z. Danielewski.

How can I describe this book? That’s a hard task. At its heart, it is a novel. Is it Fantasy? One might make a case for that. It’s Horror, too. So too a – dare I say it? – a Love Story. It’s presented as erudite non-fiction. Epistolary, in places. A multiple frame narrative. It’s so many things at once. If it’s so indescribable, so lacking in genera appeal, why am I drawing your attention to Mr. Danielewski’s debut work? Because I believe it is worth your time, and your extreme effort. It’s going to take extreme effort to read it! It ought to; he spent 10 years of his life perfecting it before publication.

It has unusual formatting, at times, and personalised fonts clambering for attention and leading you down unexpected paths. The text itself can be a maze, directing you to appendices, and to pages far forward of where you happen to be reading, sometimes even back to the beginning of the chapter, to collages, to exhibits, and to an altogether perplexing index.

Have I scared you off? I hope not. That’s not my intent.

I hope you have the curiosity to read on: The novel is about a young man who finds and compiles a dissertation by a blind old man concerning a supposed documentary detailing the altogether horrific experiences of a family who buys a house on Ash Tree Lane that is bigger on the inside than it is on the outside, a house that contains an infinite and eternally altering labyrinth that suddenly appears within it, a dark, cold, and almost featureless maze that attacks and warps the psyche of all those who enter it.

Does this description intrigue? The book obviously left a colossal imprint on my psyche. I experienced the dizzying thrill I once did delving in those first labyrinths of my first foray into Dungeons & Dragons, all those years ago. It is altogether different, however. Our protagonists do not face down monsters within that malleable maze. What they face is far more disturbing. They face something altogether surreal, a Lovecraftian, non-Euclidean universe. The maze shifts, never the same twice. But it can be traversed repeatedly. Certain features can, and will, be visited, time and again, so long as the explorers stays a path threaded by a line that never breaks however many times the passages twist and shift, regardless whether doors appear and disappear; because perhaps the maze WANTS them to find the central staircase that spirals down into its depths, a stairwell sometimes only fifty feet across, sometimes a hundred, and at other times five hundred feet across. Where it may be a mere one hundred feet deep once, it may descend a staggering thousands of feet another, even miles, thousands upon thousands of miles. And all the while they wander within, a growl stalks them. Like the Minotaur.

“Little solace comes

to those who grieve

when thoughts keep drifting

as walls keep shifting

and this great blue world of ours

seems a house of leaves

moments before the wind.”

― Mark Z. Danielewski, House of Leaves

Is it real? Figuratively speaking? The Labyrinth? The House? That depends on your interpretation: Do you believe the tale Johnny Truant tells us about Blind Zampano’s book about a film that was supposedly in wide release, but no one has ever heart of? Zampano added hundreds of footnotes. As did Johnny. As did the later Editors. The footnotes even have footnotes. (They are hilarious, BTW. Some critiques have called them a parody of literary criticism - which they most surely are.) Some of the books referenced are even real (not many, but those few lend credence to the body as a whole, itself an absurdist maze). The thing is, Johnny declares early on that he spins tales to entertain, calling question that everything that follows. He admits to changing Zampano’s text, further eroding our faith in him. Johnny is a liar. Or is he?

Johnny’s mother, Pelafina, is institutionalised. Certified. That calls Johnny’s state of mind into question, to say nothing of his tragic, and heartbreaking, tale. Johnny is also perplexingly omniscient. One wonders how he could be, given the life story he relates to us. Does Johnny even exist or is he himself an elaborate fiction? Zampano too, our Historian of “The Navidson Record,” is also called into question as his hinted at history somewhat mimics that of Fellini’s Zampano in “La Strada.”

Questions arise: Who actually wrote House of Leaves? Zampano? Or Johnny? The book is a case study of Echoes. Phrases repeat, in Johnny’s life story, in Zamano’s text, and even more importantly, in Pelafina’s letters to her son, calling into question everything you’ve read. Is this all a confession, steeped in metaphor and myth? In the subtext of Echo, Error, the Minotaur and his Labyrinth? And in Yggdrasil, the ash tree that spans planes of existence?  

It’s altogether dizzying.

The book defies description, and categorising.

But it may also be one of the most extraordinary works you will ever have the good fortune to have undertaken.

It is thrilling, horrifying, and heartbreaking too. I’ll leave it to you to decide.

“Passion has little to do with euphoria and everything to do with patience. It is not about feeling good. It is about endurance. Like patience, passion comes from the same Latin root: pati. It does not mean to flow with exuberance. It means to suffer.”

― Mark Z. Danielewski, House of Leaves