So I’m sitting in the waiting room at the dentist and I’m reading House of Leaves. No, I’m trying to read House of Leaves. I’m not enjoying it a huge amount, but I’m still reading. I’m intrigued to some extent.
And then I hit the list. A list of names. It goes on for over a page, just names in a tiny font. I read them, by god. I read the whole damned list. And then the author decides to tell me that the names are random.
Do you know how long it took me to read that godforsaken list of random names in the dentist’s waiting room? Do you know how many times I was interrupted and struggled to find my place reading that godforsaken list of random names in the dentist’s waiting room? And for nothing!
I’m on page 40-something and I’m seriously tempted to set this damned thing on fire. I like footnotes that add to the reading experience. These things are pointless as hell and if Danielewski were here I’d bite him.
I finished it I think. The story is the method of telling the story and all that jazz. Did you know what you were going into when you got it? And are you listening to the Poe CD?
Don’t read the footnotes, seriously. In fact, the whole Johnny Truant storyline is a wash. I hated this book until I decided to stick with the Navidson storyline and ignore the rest until a later point (which I still haven’t gotten back to); it’s fairly interesting but a more mainstream writer like Stephen King could have done a lot more with this story. I’m not a big fan of experimental fiction; I thought that this book was little more than a gimmick and that Danielewski wasted what could have been an incredibly creepy and philosophical idea. If it had been done in a more standard style, even as a “straight” epistolary novel, it would have been far more effective. Or maybe I’m just not hip enough to get it.
I didn’t know ole Edgar had a cd! Wow, the music biz sure has changed.
I don’t know if I knew what I was getting into. But I also don’t know if I can just skip the footnotes. They call to meeee. I hate them (in this. I loved the footnotes in Jonathan Strange) but they are still there, begging to be read!
I don’t think so, Meeko. At least so far, there hasn’t been much liberty taken with spelling/capitalization/spacing, etc. It’s more of a book within a book, with the outer frame being the story of Johnny Truant telling his story and that of Zampano, and the inner story being Zampano telling the story of Will Navidson who told the story of a house with a fake documentary.
If you aren’t confused by that, you’re smarter than I am!
Huh. I just bought this book on a whim, and haven’t started yet (only read the first page). Is the part about it originally being a sheaf of papers and pictures passed around randomly true? That’s what it said on the inside blurb.
Don’t worry, you’ll feel pretty productive once you get to the pages that only have two or three words on each page. You’ll realize that you just breezed through 30 pages in less than two minutes!
Ok if this is true you guys are gona save me 20 bucks or so.
In my High School Sociology class we all had to do a glorified book report that pertained to one of the chapters of the Text. Someone I thought picked House of Leaves and commented about how weird it got, and showed examples of the e e cummings // ascii character art stylings the book used to get the point across.
There was also a point made that the house was 5/8s or so bigger on the inside, than on the outside.
Sorry to hijack the thread… but can someone point me in the right direction then?
