Spinning off from the issue of "funny fonts", has anyone here actually read Mark Z. Danieliewski's book House of Leaves. Opinions?
caw.
caw.
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House of Leaves
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Loved it.
Fookin' LOVED it.
I loved the fact that it worked on such a variety of levels: it was a freaky horror novel, a post-structuralist puzzle, and a wonderful objet, to name but three...
Fookin' LOVED it.
I loved the fact that it worked on such a variety of levels: it was a freaky horror novel, a post-structuralist puzzle, and a wonderful objet, to name but three...
I thought it was a potentially nifty story buried under a lot of "Look at how bloody clever I am!" junk. My favorite novel of all time is Gravity's Rainbow- I like weirdness- but Leaves was far too gimmicky for me. It felt less like the story demanded it be told in the fashion it was told, and more that the author wanted to beef up the plot with kooky footnotes and fonts. Admittedly, it did make for a rather nifty central metaphor (the "house" of the title is both the house where the documentary takes place, and the book itself), but the central narrative was a semi-clever Lovecraft riff with flat characters that didn't really justify the incredible pretension that surrounded it.
But hey, it did look really, really cool.
But hey, it did look really, really cool.
Marlowe said:
That was kind of my initial impression, too, and, life being short, I have passed on reading it for that reason. But I am curious as to how a manuscript so formatically irregular was presented to an agent or editor. Anybody know the story?
caw.
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Jo:
Many of the pages are formatted in differing type faces, non-linear type arrangements, etc. Some pages have just one word or one sentence on it. There are many footnotes, diary entries, letters...
Here is an image of a page from the novel:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:HouseOfLeavesPage134.gif
I loved the mood of the book and couldn't put it down. But when all was said and done, it felt all glitz, no real substance.
Debbie
Many of the pages are formatted in differing type faces, non-linear type arrangements, etc. Some pages have just one word or one sentence on it. There are many footnotes, diary entries, letters...
Here is an image of a page from the novel:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:HouseOfLeavesPage134.gif
I loved the mood of the book and couldn't put it down. But when all was said and done, it felt all glitz, no real substance.
Debbie
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I've only glanced at it in the store (because it was discussed on a list). The book uses things like weird typefaces and unusual layouts (such as diagonal text on some pages) to tell its story. Plus footnotes. There's actually a Wiki entry devoted to this book. Go to the "Format" part of the article to see a sample page. Verrry interesting.Jo Scott said:
There's a hypnotic website devoted to the author's next book here.
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House of Leaves had a neat story.
Unfortunately, it also had a dreadfully pretenious whiny loser of a narrator in the footnotes who took over the whole damn thing, and whom I devoutedly wanted to shut up, and perhaps be eaten by naked mole rats.
It was like trying to read a decent story--something vaguely Lovecraftian, say, only without the eldritch bits*--that was buried in the liner notes of a bad emo album. You had to dig the interesting story out from under this pathetic and completely unengaging loser.
I have no doubt that this was a brilliant commentary on post-modernism or modern disillusion or descents into madness or something, and that I just wasn't smart enough to get it, but ugh. I just wanted to know what happened with the house! That was actually interesting! The other bit wasn't even good enough to qualify as a trainwreck--I could look away, very easily, and did.
The font thing, the reversed pages, the fact that the word "house" was always blue--these were small potatoes next to the fact that half the book was unbelievably annoying.
If there's a moral, it's that you can get away with weird fonts and formatting if you have a really good reason, but you can't get away with crappy characters.
*Plenty of non-Euclidean bits, though.
Unfortunately, it also had a dreadfully pretenious whiny loser of a narrator in the footnotes who took over the whole damn thing, and whom I devoutedly wanted to shut up, and perhaps be eaten by naked mole rats.
It was like trying to read a decent story--something vaguely Lovecraftian, say, only without the eldritch bits*--that was buried in the liner notes of a bad emo album. You had to dig the interesting story out from under this pathetic and completely unengaging loser.
I have no doubt that this was a brilliant commentary on post-modernism or modern disillusion or descents into madness or something, and that I just wasn't smart enough to get it, but ugh. I just wanted to know what happened with the house! That was actually interesting! The other bit wasn't even good enough to qualify as a trainwreck--I could look away, very easily, and did.
The font thing, the reversed pages, the fact that the word "house" was always blue--these were small potatoes next to the fact that half the book was unbelievably annoying.
If there's a moral, it's that you can get away with weird fonts and formatting if you have a really good reason, but you can't get away with crappy characters.
*Plenty of non-Euclidean bits, though.
UrsulaV said:
Huzzah for naked mole rats!
That said, the initial post piqued my curiosity, but after reading the replies I'm thinking maybe this is another book to pass by, oddball or not.
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At least he wouldn't sneeze while they were eating him.UrsulaV said:
Darn, the actual quality of the story always gets in the way.UrsulaV said:
UrsulaV said:
What did happen to the house?
I only read the first 150 pages or so in a class at the university, found it interesting, but too exhausting to read all the way through.
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J. Weiland said:
It's been awhile, but if memory serves--
*SPOILERS AHEAD!!!!**
--nothing happened to the house. The filmmaker guy got lost in it, fell into an endless abyss, was nearly dead of exposure, and then the house spit him out and they moved away rapidly and hopefully lived happily ever after and then the narrator snivelled along for another agonizing fifty pages or so, the end.
'Course, by that point I was skipping large sections just trying to get to the end, so I could be wrong, and missed the bit where they bulldozed the house and sowed the fields with salt.
J. Weiland said:
I did about the same, minus the university aspect. Had hopes for it, but abandoned it in a cloud of confusion. As noted earlier in the thread, there were more than a few instances of what seemed as random indulgence. The work is compared to Lovecraft. I've read a few Lovecraft stories (though I'm more a Poe fan) and they were not nearly so difficult to follow.
There's a second work by Danielewski on Amazon. Don't know if it's horror but it also has an experimental aspect.
Okay, enough people liked it that when they put out a House of Leaves for Dummies with just the neat scary story and without all the crappy parts I'll read it.
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Me too! Though I must admit it's a love/hate thing for me. There are elements of the book that have stayed with me and I sometimes find myself thinking about them even though it's years since I read it - but the the very elements that resonated with me are the ones which are almost buried under the pretension!
I appreciate the inventiveness of the formatting etc and love the way the author played with the physical properties of the book so that the reader got as lost as the folks in the story; but I'd rather have the chance to just read the story. It's a cracker of a tale which got lost under the tangle of 'art' surrounding it. Like someone else said - give me the House of Leaves for Dummies version and I'd be a happy camper.
I have this book somewhere and made a serious attempt at reading it, but in the end all the funky formatting and whatnot drove me nuts. I read for relaxation, not to increase my stress level. While I appreciate what the author tried to do, it just didn't work for me.
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The horror story aspect of it actually gave me nightmares, but the Johnny Truant sections just made me roll my eyes. I've recently started reading Nabokov's 'Pale Fire,' and from page 1 it's easy to see where Danieliewski picked up a lot of HoL's stylistic tricks. I highly recommend it if you liked House of Leaves, as it's also got a unconventional structure and a seriously unreliable narrator. If you didn't like House of Leaves, I still recommend it's fantastic (and the narrator is a lot less annoying).
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I read it, and left an unfavorable review of it in AW's Book Club forum.
I appreciate the concept of "experimentalism" or whatever it's called, but how would you query this? "A manuscript written by a blind man who describes a movie he watched. . . ." With as picky as literary agents are, how did this book ever get published?
I appreciate the concept of "experimentalism" or whatever it's called, but how would you query this? "A manuscript written by a blind man who describes a movie he watched. . . ." With as picky as literary agents are, how did this book ever get published?
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