61 - Mark Z. Danielewski's House of Leaves Examined 

This novel is so strange. I really appreciate the reading experience, but nothing deeper stays with me after I read it. Yet, I have returned to it and read it three times. Maybe the lack of center is what draws me in. There is a human desire to find meaning. That is what pulls people deeper into the House.

Sometimes I'm sitting around and I begin to vividly imagine scenes of the Navidson Record... Then it hits me like a brick.. I've never seen it.

I just finished the book and there is this weird feeling inside of me. Now I'm looking up all sorts of videos and forum pages talking about House of Leaves. I kinda feel like Johnny haha

The Minotaur is interesting in it’s connection to the House. Both are described best by what they are not. The House is not a home. The Minotaur is not a monster.

I approached this book, and the author's quote about it being "about" interpretation, like a David Lynch film. Like Lynch, I believe Danielewski did imbue meaning on purpose (he strikes me as too meticulous an author to do otherwise), and I believe Danielewski made specific connections within and between the narratives, but also like Lynch he doesn't want to guide the audience towards his own interpretations through his outside-the-book commentary but leave it up to us. He knows what he meant, but wants us to get there (or somewhere else entirely) on our own. All the ingredients we need to interpret and/or experience the story are there, but we're left to our own devices to determine how much of each ingredient we're including in our recipe, how long to cook it, what to serve it with. If I feel like the creator of a thing knows what's up, I never feel cheated, even if I'm the one missing something. I fully understand why the made-up story about Johnny and the doctors felt like a slap in the face, but that sequence actually struck me as a pivotal insight into Johnny. He's more self-aware than we might think at first. He knows what it's going to take to sort himself out, but he can't, for whatever reason, implement it.

YOU need to be in the right place to be able to appreciate this book.

I find it hilarious that the bit with Johnny's doctor friends actually fooled someone.

I really enjoyed reading this book but definitely think a lot of the charm for me was in the novelty of reading it and half way through realizing that I too was in the labyrinth. Im not sure I would pick it up again because you can only experience that once. If I do ever decide to read it again i think its likely I'll only read the parts describing the "films" narrative because those are the sections I enjoyed the most.

Reading this instills a sense of discordant dread I feel only when I am lost in man-made labyrinths.

You guys should check out NIght Mind's exploration of house of leaves, his interpretation derives a lot of the meaning you guys seem to think is absent.

I feel like reading the book without the videos and other ARG elements does a disservice to the story. The blurred line between storyteller, author, and story is largely lost without it. Whenever I introduce the book to people I always give them notes on how to follow along with the ARG elements as they read. Even if they can't follow like the original readers it's as close as you can get to the experience that made the book a cult classic.

I love this book but I think you all are way off on the interpretation.... could it have one author? Clearly ... yes ... the crux of this is the realization that the author is not Johnny, zampano, or pelafina ... the author is danielewski and if you take the time to look at him and why he wrote this then you understand that his interpretation is the only actual one that matters because this is one big maze that is at its core is an autobiography. The house is growing to symbolize the space between him and his family, primarily his father. He wrote this for his dad who scoffed at it and that draft was destroyed by danielewski and thrown away, later to be rescued and taped back together by his sister. If you research him then you can understand the book, he is really making the reader work far harder then speculated to be able to understand the point of the book.

There is nothing at the end of the hallways or corridors to frame the story and it really works for me. Some people fucking hate it but all that critique for nothing makes sense that’s art sometimes, most times. I went down all those rabbit holes to nothing and it truly boosted the experience.

I'll say this: I get why you guys didn't appreciate this book much from a pure literary standpoint. However, I think it was built for a different medium. My evidence for this is how quickly it was picked up by the ARG community. A community that revels in compiling information and parsing truth to solve a mystery was more fascinated by this book than you guys were.

Great pod! I just recently turned a buddy on to the book and he legit has become Johnny Truant. He loves it! I think the “horror” of the book isn’t from the content of the navidson record (it can be if you hate psychics breaking endlessness) but rather the infinite ambiguity from everyone in the book. You never know who to trust or believe. The vapid nature of answers or really anything will turn people off, which I get, but MZD’s choice to not spoon feed and leave things ambiguous adds to the mysticism of the book. You (or at least I did) feel like you’re reading a mad journal crammed into the wall of an insane asylum. And on top of that, the meta involvement from the reader turning into Johnny is also super unique and cool. House of Leaves is a fun, choose your own adventure book that upends the medium of what a book really is. I really dug it even if isn’t the most narratively satisfying read.

"I didn't like the book" also "I didn't bother to read the whole book" Well there's your answer right there

I want this to be a limited tv series. The book blew my mind 20 years ago and I've given it for gifts many times.

I'm wondering how many fans have mental illness in their vicinity, as for me the meta layers of HoL was so clear and Mark's voice as a game designer's voice, guiding me through the story via the narrators and the invisible hand that is design, learning me how to traverse the footnotes, only to get stuck in the neverending loop some hundred pages in, where you have to take agency as a reader and choose how to break the circle and progress the to the next cycle, like a scratched record of a Fighting Fantasy book you have to lift the needle but the next part isn't causally, linearly the next part. Strongest for me was the first time the story really lost me, I'm a analytical and quite slow reader, doubly so as I'm not a native english speaker, but at a certain point Johnny totally interrupts Navidson (or maybe himself) so to totally go off the deep end in what is the first time I didn't feel I knew what the game was going on about, which some 7-8 pages into his cleary disturbed ramblings we're met with the socalled Editors, letting us know that Johnny rambling was somewhat lost on then as well but if the reader is up for breaching the natural flow of the pages of the book we can go several hundred pages into the book and read the whalestoe letters. This is akin to a game where after level 45 we get the chances to skip to level 900 but with no experience as to overcome what were met with, like facing Ganondorf without the master sword in the Zelda games. If we have the courage to go that far, we find not something obscure and high leveled, not at first, but the very clearest voice the book has had yet. We have to go outside the "main book" and into the appendices to find something tangible, the real reason johnny is disturbed, is growing up in his mother's illness, even when she is taken away she continues to be play a substantially part of Johnny's inner life. This is true even if the letters are a fabrication on Johnny's part, or it's Zampano doing a bad job of masquerading as a young man, vice versa, or as it ultimately is an, at least partial, fabrication on Danielewski's part. After reading the whalestoe and returning to and rereading Johnny's rambling a strong sympathy was fostered to Johnny of course, but to Mark as well Thanks for the ending, which somewhat made up for 1 hour of what was mostly platitudes

Just found you guys through Leaf by Leaf. So much amazing content. Thank you for making my summer here in Melbourne eventful! :)

Finishing this book was one of the most satisfying experiences of reading.

I remember reading this in summertime in the garden and feeling hella creeped out even tho it was a lovely day

Kid a fits so well with the vibe of HoL

Awesome review, I always enjoy long analysis of this deep book

I got really excited when you compared it to prometheus, because I always bring up prometheus if I talk about HOL. Unfortunately, I bring it up for a different reason. They both have an ending that I absolutely love, and everybody else I know hates. They both make you hungry for an answer to a huge question, and you eagerly await the reveal, only to just kind of end. Then, upon further investigation, you might realize the answer you wanted was revealed multiple times throughout. It just seemed so asinine that everybody ignores it. Meanwhile, there's a subtext about how the characters would be better off if they just quit trying to solve unanswerable questions and had a family with someone they love. They're actually quite similar in overall message. I would add that HOL heavily deals with trauma, and is a metaphor for how people deal with it. Other than that, this is one of the best analyses on the book I've heard. You guys didn't fall into the trap of focusing too much on the footnotes, but at the same time, you didn't completely ignore them and just touch the surface. It's a riddle, wrapped in a mystery, inside an enigma, with at least 3 layers of metaphors, all hiding a love story juxtaposed with nihilistic reality.

I think i just find gold guys, loving this podcast.

Wonderful pod! I loved the book!

The text leaves an impression with goes beyond the signifying to the signified. Along with Infinite Jest, it goes to what is the difference and différance between meaning as it is now and meaning deferred. Talking about the book changes its meaning.

i agree. it felt very gimmicky and trying too hard to be clever. there were moments of good, even great, writing and there were moments where reading it in the dark actually did feel creepy (especially when johnny is describing his symptoms and starts breaking the fourth wall) but the rest didn't hit as hard. infinite jest was more "obnoxious" (footnotes within footnotes, the language was more difficult and referenced a wide variety of subjects like psychoanalysis) and it succeeded in being touching and saying something meaningful about being human. this... the power of love? i could have watched the lion king instead. i think it definitely was a product of its time, there's been a shift in how much patience we have as a culture towards this cynical approach, even comedies have become more wholesome. irony isn't as novel now, it isn't refreshing. and yes the misogyny bothered me. even in the depiction of karen (she dropped out of a study because it ruined her orgasms and made her gain weight.. i mean.) only johnny's mother was portrayed convincingly.

This book makes you face your self

Great discussion and I really liked the excerpt on the atrocity

Am I the only one that thought it didn’t feel that long?

this was a very nice video

Really enjoyed this video! Would be into hearing about The Raw Shark Texts and see what you guys feel about that one (unless you already have.) But good shit regardless! Subscribed.

Maybe the book isn't a product of its time. Maybe it is a product of being the age we where when it came out. I know that the hopelessness and rage in the book really spoke to me when I first read it as compared to my recent reading. Like, Johnny is a cartoon character now to me but there was a time when it wasn't. I we no evidence for it, but I imagine someone who is currently the age I was, with the mental health issues I had, would have a simular experience to my first reading of it. Then again the novelty of certain aspects is definitely deminished. Like this seems like a precursor for Marble Hornets, which is a precursor of all the different ARGs, which seem to primarily attract people of a certain age. People who are trying to make sense of life. Trying to draw connections in the noise of life. The book didn't hold up for me, I still do remember it affecting me. Maybe because it provided me with a maze for me to try to make sense of things going on outside the book. So maybe it's just growing older that makes the book less meaningful.

I realized that there is wordplay with "nom de guerre" early in the book, and clearly Johnny "Truant" is one. Even the mother comments on it in the letters. You wonder how he decided to use it, and whether that just became his moniker when he wrote things in the midst of his turbulent childhood, and being "truant" from all manners of emotional expression and connection.

Indifference is exactly how I felt.

This is one of the funnest reads of all time (IMO OBVIOUSLY). It is funny, it’s loaded with satire and it its a one of a kind read that should you come to enjoy, you’ll be starving for something else like it. From the first time you meet Balyal, to the little dog, and the stories about King Minos and the Minotaur…. Well worth a read! Thanks for the video guys. There are many fantastic analogies that alone make it special. 17:51 what a beautiful point. Now I’m gonna have to subscribe and watch your other videos! Thanks boys o7

To go to the source of this experimentalism we must start from Joyce's Ulysses, Borges' Fictions and Aleph and all the writings of the Oulipo school: Queneau, Perec, Calvino, Eco, after which these alleged new contemporary geniuses come out greatly reduced

This book was recommended to me by my lifelong best friend who's opinion on literature I value wholeheartedly. I purchased it a few years ago....working... Busy... Blah blah blah... I passed my first copy to another avid reader. He never mentioned it after that. I purchased it again 6 months ago. It sits on the bar in my home. I look at it every day. I've not read a word of this copy since it arrived on my doorstep. It seems to me as a book you have to read continuously. I want to be able to read it bit by bit as my life is very busy and I don't have much time to free my brain and open my imagination up for days on end. Is this a waste of time? My trying?

Only book to ever scare mme. But I was little. Or so I thought. Read it again and since I still have a very active imagination still got scared

Enjoyed your review. Whem I tried to read it, the book struck me as a convoluted insult to the reader. Seems like the passage you read about lost love was the heart of the book and the writer spends the whole book trying to hide, obscure and protect it just as that character rums away from the girl he loves.

I think I had been hoping that I was going to end up watching Johnny be tied into the house more or that we were gonna find out the characters were different pieces of his personality and that he wrote the papers he found in the apartment and then it wasn’t and it was disappointing..

Xddddddd

man, you guys are a bummer.

lol yeah I can see why you would have no idea what tf going on if you didnt even read the appendixes. It's clear you took zero care in reading this book so its odd to me to make a podcast about it. the audacity and self importance to think people should spend their time listening to your opinions about a book you havent even read............