What to look out for in House of leaves

A long while ago I read the book “House of leaves” by Mark Z. Danielewski. It was and still is a wonderful book. However, I ws left with a long list of lingering doubts about the book and am starting to re-read it. Does anyone have any tips as to what I should look out for? I’ve already visited the site House of leaves for dummies, but I’m looking for more information. Thanks to anyone who can help me reach new depths of this novel’s meanings.

Look for parallels between the events in the story’s two storylines.

Think about the names, and their possible interpretations or significance.

Look for indicators that whole storylines may be made up, particularly as it pertains to, um, the main guy (who has the “book”) and his mom.

I don’t have any tips, but when you get to the coded letter written by the mom, email me and tell me what it says. I got lazy when I was reading and quit halfway through the letter :wink:

Thanks for your advice, I was actually looking for more concrete things, as I have said, I’ve read the book, I noticed the two storylines intertwining, I know Truant is making most of it up. I was wondering more about the subtle clues left by Mark. The book is so dense with meaning that sometimes small things escape me.

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Appendix II-D contains letters sent by Johnny Truant’s mother, while she was residing at the Three Attic Whalestoe Institute. Her letters became one of the most popular sections of the novel. Due to the popularity of the letters, Danielewski released a companion piece, titled The Whalestoe Letters, which included the letters featured in House of Leaves, as well as several new entries. There are three encoded portions within the letters. One of those encoded portions is featured here as an audio piece. Another translates to: When you take the capitalized letters and arrange them into a sentence, you find “A face in a cloud, no trace in the crowd”. This is part of a song Poe wrote that hasn’t been released yet. And finally on pg. 615 we get “Dear Zampano, Who did you lose?” From “…destroyed. Endless arrangements–re. Zealous accommodations, medical prescriptions, & needless other wonders, however obvious–debilitating in deed; you ought understand–letting occur such evil?” When you take the first and letter of each word, starting with “destroyed”, and spelling the &'s as “and”, it reads “Dear Zampano, Who did you lose?” Which is odd–how did Johnny’s mother know about Zampano? The letters were written years before Johnny even found out about him.
Meantime, on pages 632-634 is a very odd letter.We’re still not entirely sure about this one. One suggestion was made that the whole thing is made up of anagrams. Another suggestion is to look elsewhere in the book for a connection. Pay attention to the date.

Ah, gotcha. Thanks!

You’re quite welcome