I watched your video right after having finished the book and daaaamn the discovery of that checkmark in the lower right corner made me shiver. Great video about a great book!
When i read House of Leaves i did so pretty much exclusively at night in low light so i didn't notice that everytime the word "house" is printed its in dark blue until about half way through the book. It was a perfect accident because it really amped up the effect of the psychological horror on me as I frantically flipped through previous pages questioning my sanity as the book seemed to have actually changed as i was reading it much like the house itself. Such a fantastic read, dude.
Pelafina has a message for Zampano in her letters too. Taking the first letter of each word in the paragraph that mentions zealous accomodations it reads 'dear zampano, who did you lose?'. I found that out on a reddit thread last just after finishing the book and now I feel like it's entirely changed what the book is about and who the 'author' is
I always interpreted the novel as being entirely in Pelafina's mind, the house being the warped representation of her psyche. It implies that she, perhaps, killed Johnny as a child - she said that she squeezed him until he urinated (that could have easily been her choking him to death). Also, his name - Johnny "Truant" - I think she created a character based on what her son would have been like, had he grown up. Pelafina is also cited to be extraordinarily intelligent and a polyglot, which explains the depth and detail in the research papers. The parallel to the minotaur hunting down Johnny is a juxtaposition to the demons (or guilt) in her sick mind, an inescapable labyrinth.
I hadn't heard that interpretation before, but I know Night Mind was able to parse that the Minotaur was a representation of Pelafina strangling Johnny, and how much that broke him. For all the things that I dislike about Night Mind's deep dive into HoL, that was legitimately interesting, as well as the echoes he was able to draw out of the text.
@@DubiousConsumption I haven’t seen that one, yet. I’ll have to check it out. Your video was really well-researched and insightful, too. Thank you for the response!
Thank you as well. I'm always up for hearing different interpretations. I still have multiple copies that I try to get my friends to check out. Night Mind's is like a 4-5 hour focus on mostly the Navidson Record, but he has some good stuff in there. In ep 2, he tries to trick you and then make you feel dumb for being fooled, when it seemed no one was. Kinda took the wind out of my sails for that. What's So Great About That and Jacob Geller also have fantastic videos about HoL. Definitely check them out.
@@DubiousConsumption Okay, will do! And who knows, I may make an analysis video one of these days, too! I read House of Leaves five years ago, before I started blogging, so I haven’t really given it a proper review. 😅 While I can’t say that I have “multiple” copies, I can partially relate because I own two!
Coming back to say, I have been binge watching Jacob Geller's content. Thank you for introducing me to another great channel, it is much appreciated! 🤝
Near the end in the book, I actually realized I couldn’t trust Johnny’s narration after he admitted to lying. How much else was he stretching? what really happened? That proved to me to be the biggest mystery.
Right. Do you understand the last part of Jonny's notes, which starts from the "birth of a baby"? Its so confusing. Who is the baby and the mother? I am dying to know what is going on. This book just makes me crazy.
Have you guys watched the Night Mind exploration of the series? I'm not a fan of how long it is, plus some of the things he tries to "trick" the audience. But, he explains a lot of stuff I missed, like the echoes between the stories and what the shadow creature haunting Johnny actually is.
Man i tried to explain to explain this book to my wife and the best thing i could come up with was: there is a litteral monster in that book that gets out whenever someone reads it....
Navidson's story is a pretty straight hero's journey and love story. It's true that most of the characters in this immensely complex literary kaleidoscope go through some sort of lovecraftian horror, but I've always seen that as window dressing, which could all be dropped without affecting the central narative. And it's definitely a satire of modern literary criticism, so overall I'd describe it as a love story, with a decorative border of eldritch horror and satire, with a focus on the effects of obsession and madness. Still not sure why the stone of the labyrinth is older than the earth.
Times font relates to the first person and the "times" as they were reported. Courier corresponds to JT as he is the "courier" of the found story. Bookman font refers to the editors. This book is a joy to read and reread every year - as I have done for the past 21 years. It never gets old.
The soft cover version of HoL (the one shown at 11:00) has an Easter egg I don’t think you mentioned... the cover is trimmed to be a little too short to cover the pages. The book is 5/16ths of an inch larger of the inside than on the outside. The Fifty-Year Sword is, as you mention, told through five voices with color-coded quotation marks. But, on page 136 two new voices appear: Sam and Hailey from Only Revolutions pop in with their misspelling of the word “allways” quoted in their gold and green colors used in OR.
That is awesome. I'll have to recheck both of those once I get them back. I (of course) talked all those books up to some friends of mine, but I think I may have overloaded them.
I'm not an _avid_ reader, but I've never struggled with a book before. Never. That being said, House of Leaves was a difficult read. I had a hard time keeping track, maybe notes in the margins would've done me some good. It was a great read though. Truly gripping.
I just finished reading the book not two minutes ago and here I am, looking for some sort of explanations because I'm so sure a lot of it went right over my head.
House of Leaves is an existential nightmare rapped up in a hard or soft bound cover. It's a masterpiece and it's my favorite book ever, I would go so far as to describe it as my favorite book I've ever read.
@Epoch plus5 Such as? You can't just leave me hanging like that. And fine, you know what? If you're so adamant about that, I'll revise to "my favorite book I've ever read".
It's a beast. I've tried reading his other stuff and it's just too weird/dense for me. On a separate note, the two closest movies I've seen recently is Dave Made a Maze (which gets the weird space inside of another and a minotaur, though it's a slacker dramedy at its heart) and You Should Have Left (which seems to be a direct ripoff of this when the movie kicks into gear).
House of Leaves genuinely gives you what you put into it. If you're invested in their journey, you're invested and left pondering at the end, this book's amazing. You can also be amazed by the extent of fiction being able to be expressed in such a medium and only in such a medium. You may feel like reading multiple accounts from different people at the same time is cool as heck. You can also feel snubbed and feel like you've been trolled after spending so much mental energy on this book, only to be left with nothing. You can feel like it's like your friends said: post-modern bullshit - a bunch of cheesy gimmicks (VERY well-done in my opinion, by the way) done to make something stand out, with a simple plot so drawn out that even a 7 year-old who woke up from a nightmare could do it. I never believed something like "You get what you put into it", but in this book, it really is the personification of that saying, I feel. Caroline Johnson on RU-vid read this book and introduced me to this word: "Ergodic". It's not necessarily about what genre it is, what the plot leads to, what ending it has, what lessons to gain, but it's the *reading experience* that's the main part of House of Leaves, which is why I am SO happy the author of House of Leaves insisted that it should only be in this particular book form, it's because it genuinely is ergodic. You really do gain what you put into this book. Love it, hate it, this book still successfully did whatever it's meant to do, SUCCESSFULLY. You lose, and the House of Leaves still won.
I found the full color addition and the constantly flipping around to the back of the novel etc would really take me out of the story emotionally and so while it was intriguing and I’m glad I read it, it didn’t really move me or frighten me on any level. It did manage to annoy me though haha. Pretty damn creative overall though.
I think that's why I focused more on the interesting ideas than anything that scared me. Though, for something that is trying to be more "scary," you might try the movie You Should Have Left. It's a German ripoff of House of Leaves that just tells (essentially) The Navidson Record. Though the ultimate theme is about acceptance, rather than giving into your obsession that destroyed your life, so big whiff in the last 30.
there is a video game out as of 3/2/2023 called "MyHouse". if you're not a gamer there are some very popular videos of the game play on YT. It draws heavily from " House of leaves"
If I had to guess, I would say the Navidson experience took place completely externally from that of the interwoven narration told by Johnny Truant, his Mother, and Zampano. They all share similar sentiments, approach similar symbology in their expression of said sentiment, and provide a humanized tone for the entire experience. Maybe Johnny was Zamapano's grandson, maybe an invention of his own blind psyche to label all the different dimensions of his diverse personality, as is apparent in his poetry, but he parallels between the three would be foolish to ignore. One can almost see the schizophrenic tendencies snowball from Zampano, with his irregular mood swings, to Pelafina with her fugue states and manic episodes, to JT who literally disassociates and loses his sense of identity entirely. Anyone is right or wrong, just like the house, which is wrong. lol.
Holy shit. I was OBSESSED with Poe’s “Haunted” as a teen and had no idea of its relationship to this book. This was a huge revelation for me, oh my god.
Thanks for the great video! I'm 100 pages into the HofL and I love it! I find myself saying outloud, "OMG" just about every time I read a few pages. I am intentionally taking my time and reading EVERYTHING. I read all the letters from Truant's mom and found them the saddest things. Truly tragic and also help me understand his character much more. I look forward to many more of your videos!
i read it a few times over the years i had a close friend pass by her own hand and she had a brand new copy of this book on her bedside table. still trips me out it looked literally untouched.
This is the greatest novel I've ever read. I literally just finished it in 2 days. Some of the writing in this book (such as the poems in Appendix F) were so beautiful that I cried, I wasn't expecting that from a horror book
I'm a little -iffy about calling "House of Leaves" a horror novel, honestly. The label works for a lot of the book's narrative elements taken individually (like the plot of the Navidson Record, Zampanó's mysterious death, and Truant's psychological deterioration), but not really its overall tone. I feel like Danielewski was very intentionally blending horror genre plot elements with Postmodern ways of storytelling and an atmosphere that can dart from pseudo-academic, to deeply emotional, to surreal in the space of just a few paragraphs. In the end, I think one of the primary themes of the outermost narrative layer (the overall book, with both Truant's annotations and the notes from the editors) is the way that the stories people tell affect them and others. It's a conceptual and tonal trainwreck, difficult to classify as either genre or literary fiction, and that's kind of the point.
For those who love this "mind r*pe" type of fiction I recommend you Jorge Luis Borges short stories, especially "Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius", "Pierre Menard, author of the Quixote", "The Library of Babel" and "Three Versions of Judas". They are some of the best short stories of the 20th century.
Oh I feel mind r*ped alright. I haven’t got a clue what’s going on. I’m more co fused than scared tbh. The part where Zampano describes Navidson walking through the endless hallway in the 5 minute video kinda creeped me out. Reminded me of that one Japanese (I don’t remember exactly) video where the kid records his house after a Tsunami and it’s creepy.
Great video! I love your choice of film images to go with the story, they work really well! It can be difficult to keep things visually interesting when talking about written media and you did a really good job. I think it will also help anyone who hasn't read the book get a better grasp on what's going on as there's a lot to explain to new audiences. You can probably tell from my own video that I'd lean towards a horror classification, or at least describe it as "kind of a horror, I guess", haha. I think it just depends on what the reader connects with more. Although, if I was recommending the book to someone I'd have to mention post-modernism somewhere.
I just finished this book for the first time. I loved the experience. I was totally immersed and wrote notes in my own notebook. It grabbed me and pulled me in. I was really creeped out and it definitely got in my head a little bit. Yes, it has gimmicks. But they are used for a purpose, and they serve the story well. There is substance behind them.
Apparently Danielewski specifically went to the pushing house and did all the typesetting himself, unwilling to trust anyone else with the typesetting of the novel.
Mother! is very House of Leaves it seems. That film was so much I just sat in my seat with my mouth open as all the credits rolled and eventually the lights went up. Also, many a dream I've had about houses (or mazes?) of endless rooms. It's always an interesting adventure, not frightening though.
Nice video! If you go through the list of photographers and use the same cypher used by Pelafina but apply it to the last names you get (burried under alot of random letters): a long list f visinaries salut he said memories mean all but they are all dead who you i wait now for only the wind Guess the selection of names wasn't so random after all ;)
Needed something like this for closure after reading, the footage you choose is so perfect. Leaves a lot still to the imagination which I appreciate! Also love the PT reference :) satisfying to see the impact of house of leaves in so many things I didn't know had been inspired by it.
The moment when Navidson pulled up the book I WAS READING and it was described that it had the exact page count that the actual, real book has... that really did something to me man. Never has a 4th wall break tripped me up this bad
That part hit me like a truck at 4am. Navidson is a fictional character in a fictional documentary told by a blind man, transcribed by Johnny who is himself a fictional character in our own reality. I think what made this hit so hard is the fact that it breaks the fourth wall within the wall, wall-ception
I actually came to this book from the other side. I was a huge fan of Poe in the mid '90's. I bought the second album as soon as it came out, and upon reading the album notes, found it was the soundtrack to a book. I had to order the book because it wasn't in any of the bookstores I went to. I'm glad to see you reference it here. I'm still not sure what I think of the book. It took me years to read it the first time. I'm a big scaredy cat, and I went through many major life events during that time. I want to delve into it again some day, but until then, I try to watch really good video essays about it, and this was a great one.
Thank you so much! Glad to hear that Poe's work led you to this. I'm honestly surprised more video essays haven't brought it up. I definitely recommend Jacob Geller and What's So Great About That's video essays. Night Mind did a super indepth breakdown, and while I have some major issues with how he presented it, he was also able to pull together a lot of the disparate threads in the book and really make a compelling case for what a lot of the Minotaur imagery actually is.
The Doctor Who episodes Logopolis and Castrovalva features a storyline with the TARDIS (A blue wooden box that contains infinite hallways and rooms) being inside itself, a woman lost inside the corridors of it, rooms being deleted, then visiting an MC Escher style town where all the edges of the town lead straight back into the town as if it's a Pac-Man screen, etc. All done with the limitations of 1980's BBC production, but the concepts are wild. (This isn't even mentioning the parts of the story where people intone mathematics to keep the universe running, a trip outside of the universe, a half-formed possible future man taking actions to ensure his own existence, etc). This book probably owes something small to Doctor Who.
House of Leaves is the only other piece of artwork that gave me the same feeling I had watching the Shinning. I don't know what that feeling is but I know when I feel it
I just finished reading the book, I really enjoyed it, if I had to choose a genre for it, it wouldn't be a horror, nor a love story, but a drama. This book is heartbroken, Zampanò's loneliness, Johnny's loss of sanity, Pelafina's letters, and pretty much everything about the character from The Navidson Record. This book has a heartbreak for everyone.
danielewski has actually tried to work it into a script ... he decided it would have to be done as a multi episode mini series because of the time needed to fully draw out the entire story while remaining true to the story ... some production of this was filmed and if I remember correctly they had it up online as a teaser long trailer to try to attract possible financiers that could fund a large totality of the filming costs ... it never picked up enough investors and they couldn’t self fund without chopping it down to a degree that would kill the story so the project was scrapped .... I think this was done overseas in Brazil or somewhere in that area so this may be why you haven’t come across the article about the filming situation I think your analysis is good but I think there is a parallel between Johnny and mark that gets missed from most analysis. Just my opinion but I think Mark is Johnny and Chad, Poe is Daisy, the navidsons are their parents, and the house growing and enlarging is a giant metaphor for the dissolution and distance in the relationship he experienced from his own father. He began to write House for his father and gave it to him while he was in the hospital on his death aged ... his dad shunned it and he chopped it up and threw it away and Poe dumpster dived it back out of the trash and taped it back together for him (funny since Johnny also had to compile it for Zampano) ... also audio clips of Marks father are used in the Haunted cd. I don’t know who Pelafina is supposed to represent ... maybe his mom but in not sure, I haven’t found anything much mentioned about her. I think his fathers bad side is the claw mark making creature, chasing Johnny into a grey abyss with distance the soul shattering feeling Mark experienced cutting him to pieces inside as he accepted that he most likely would never please his father. Just my opinion but I think it’s all a big massive metaphor.
This is a good video but it is very difficult to understand what you are saying due to the sound mix. The background music is just as loud, and sometimes louder, than your speaking voice. I had to replay several parts of the video over and over to make out what you were saying.
I have read this book twice, and owned it twice. Both times I have loaned it out to someone who I thought might read it, and haven’t gotten it back. I have gotten the itch to read it again, and will probably buy it again.
Spoilers. I think it's just a good look at schizophrenia. Until I read those letters from his crazy mom in the appendices, I assumed that Johnny was really experiencing the ill effects of some supernatural, monstrous void. But when I read that appendix, it all seemed to click, these things were only occurring in his mind. The evidence for a monster (a large gash in the floor, a big scrape upon Johnny's back after one of his episodes) could all be explained. It became apparrent how similair his behavior and episodes were to those of a paranoid schizophrenic and this is even more evidenced by the disease being genetic and especially prevalent in those with a rough home life, making Johnny a prime candidate for the disease. I believe that he found this wonderfully terrifying fictional analysis of a nonexistant movie within a dead man's apartment, that the discovery triggered or coincided with his increasingly worsening paranoid schizophrenia, and that ultimately the book is a comment on how mental illness and even homelessness come to be, and how their only intervention is love, trust, and caring.
nobody will see this comment but ive been seeing things from this book everywhere since ive read it. my little brother listening to "the ants go marching in," people talking of nonexistant movies or documentaries, my microwave dinner taking a total of 5 and a half minutes to heat. i think im going crazy and i cant stop thinking about it, the book
This novel really fucked me up. It took me six months to read. I read it every night though. And I’m normally a very fast reader. There was just so much. It was an experience. The dread I felt from the shadows in my home. I felt like the house was watching me. It was unsettling.
Finished reading this about half an hour ago - thank you for posting this! Will freely admit that it's taken me almost a year to read this book. My wife kept saying that it's because I wasn't enjoying it but I kept assuring her that I was, it was just a difficult and daunting read. Especially when I'd have a quick flick through the pages to see how long the next chapter would be and I'd see all of those footnotes. I was really impressed by the craft.amd detail that Danielewski has put into it. But I don't think that I could face reading his other work judging by what you've posted here. It's just too much for me. For me, I'll give it a 6/10 but maybe it would be a higher score if I had read it quicker.
My mum accidentally spilled boiling meat loaf grease on my brother's arm when we were kids. We're in our 60s now, but he still has a large, angry, blistered scar. That fact made the book infinitely more personal.
Mark is working on adapting HoL pilot for TV. Script has been pre-written. We are just now looking for an adequate director to help carry it into being.
As someone who is both a very long time fan of HoL and and English lit Major who had a focus in Victoria Gothic Horror, I don't feel there is a dialect divide between "literature" and "horror" as literature is less of a genre than an extremely and subjective classification of written works. That being said, it kinda drives me insane that book stores have a "literature" section in general.
I finished this novel a couple of hours ago for the first time. I do appreciate that you devote attention to the ergodic presentation of certain sequences in the novel. However, I do not care for the dismissive, skirting method in which you cover certain aspects of the novel, primarily the letters for JT from his mother Pelafina. If you pay close attention to her eccentric and florid letters that clearly demonstrate the root of much of Johnny Truant's psychoses(if you are one who chooses to interpret it that way), there is a whole subset of recurring metaphorical icons and phraseology we see displayed in the other narrative voices throughout the book that can be traced back to her poetic endearments she regularly sends to her son, with the house acting as a metaphor for her mind, or even the actual institution itself. Despite my initial 3-4 hours of searching, I've yet to see anyone note the reoccurrence of the simile of "summer like root-beer" comparison used by all three narrators( at least JT and Pelafina, I'm not gonna re-hash that monster of a tome but I'm pretty sure Zampano also uses it), the parallel between Johnny preparing to rip out Gdansk Man's liver and feed it to him along with his mothers's phrase in her letter that implied a curse that would eventually eat up his foster father, who eventually died of LIVER cancer. Not to mention both icons were abusive towards Johnny. I guess my main point is this is all provocative, but no one, not even the sick fuck who wrote this brilliant novel, intended for everything to line up like we were Russel Crowe in A Beautiful Mind. As disappointing as it might be, this book is a physical metaphor for the series of dead-ends that comprise the house, both in the story and in us, the author simply extorts the human impulse for curiosity in a fantastic way. Don't get me wrong, I want a different answer too, but an in-depth knowledge of the (factual) sources cited plus extensive analysis for parallels, not to mention the last 20 years of others' work, point to a man who is crafty, imaginative, and willing to work hard at being a motherfucker to extoll from us his readership. Also no one seems to want to acknowledge the sequence that is obviously referring to JT almost dying in the hospital and his mother's love saving him despite him having massive holes in his brain, and how the doctors have to use abdominal IV's(much like Navidson after Karen rescues him at the end of Exploration #5), so to me it really is whatever you make of it, and Zampano is the smartest one in the entire novel because he was blind.
I think there's gonna be a lot of stuff every analysis and deep dive is going to miss. I find it interesting how the few video essays have something that piques their interest. It speaks a lot to us as well as the reader. Have you watched Night Mind's insane three-part series on it? I have issues with his methodology, but he did point out several things with Johnny's psychology and the real identity of the Minotaur.
@@DubiousConsumption Ya i've been trying to watch it for the last few hours but the bland voiceover and the person they chose to play JT is just not doing it for me, I need to be in a place where I can focus more i guess lol.
@@DubiousConsumption Don't get me wrong sir I truly appreciate what you're doing here, I was dreading the completion of this book cause I was certain there would be no one to discuss it with since its publication 20 years ago, so even though I won't shirk from disagreeing with some of your bullet points, I completely admire and commend your work. Thank you for taking the time to make this video so I knew it wasn't just a dead forum from 2002 lol. I'll give the Night Mind videos another try, maybe I was just too burned-out after reading the novel. We all tend to become loyal to how we envision things right? lol
Honestly, episode 3 is where almost all the relevations are. He tries to trick us with JT, as if it was real, then mocking us for believing him. Not a great look. But there's some good echoes and rhymes that he uncovers as well. I kinda want to react to it, but might need to trim down to just the good parts
I stumbled into HOL in late 2000, through a very, um, eccentric girlfriend. Through her (and copious amounts of drugs), House was an experience that I cherish to this day.
+Desirae Miller It's sooooo good. If nothing else, try reading The Navidson Record by itself, ignoring the footnotes as much as you can. It helps streamline the process and can sneakily get you into it.
Dubious Consumption yeah if I get to time to I might have to jump around the book a lot I tried reading it traditionally so next time I will try to read each story separately and go on from there. It was being taught as a capstone course at the university I attended.
I’m not sure I liked the book when I read it. I sure appreciate the creativity put into the pages onto themselves according to the narrative. This is a book I would recommend only on a physical read
Definitely. The kindle version is a mess, now that it exists. You should look into some of his other books, which (unfortunately) are nigh impossible to read but are really cool with ideas. Only Revolutions was his follow-up. 360 words per page, 180 for one protagonist, 180 for the other but you had to flip the book to read their stuff. As you got further in their journeys, the text got smaller. There was also a timeline alongside the page as these two ran through history. Oh, and it was written in Free Verse poetry.
@@DubiousConsumption I feel that way about Z's entire literary output. The more books he releases, the more I realize how pretentious he is. It's kinda ruined HoL for me. What I once saw as a genius, unique composition, I now recognize was nothing but a feeble attempt to make the book "difficult" for no narrative reason, but just to be difficult. It's like trying to sound much smarter than you actually are by claiming you've read "Ulysses". In other words, I now think it's post modern BS, artificially making itself tedious to read for no other reason than elitism and artificial intellectualism.
How would you categorize House of Leaves? Would you lump it into Horror, Modern Academia, a Love Story, or would you just throw it in the garbage and label it "Post-Modern Bullshit?" I'd love to know your thoughts on the book!
Dubious Consumption i would have to place this under Academia. To me this all felt like pouring over text or rather the ramblings of missing people. I am reading interpretations of people that used to be human and the only way I can find out what happened to them is following the path they laid before me. Kinda reminds me of the game "her story" or the parts in PT where you infer the foundation of what happened via the unreliable narrator on the radio and the poltergeist hauntings. However a good friend of mine read this text and it completely unphased him. He just said it was a fun read and he rereads it in it's entirety often. He also happens to be a physics/math guy.
I think it'd be cool if someone made a House of Leaves move, but instead of actually publishing it, they just discretely planted a few hundred VHS copies in various video stores, garage sales, libraries, etcetera. The movie would just be the Navidson Record, exactly as Zampano described it. All the actors would be very obscure, people who don't even have IMDB pages. There'd be no credits, no admission that the film is based off House of Leaves. That, in my opinion, is the only way that House of Leaves should ever be made into a film.
I had heard her music before but had no idea the two were related. It sounds like there's a possible TV series still being talked about but they haven't settled and it will likely get thrown out soon.
I love the stuff obviously inspired by House of Leaves. I'm trying to think of who could do the series, but the main thing is how the two would weave together. I'd say it'd have to be Mike Flanagan or Cary Fukanaga for how they're able to weave disparate stories together.
I want to read this book. I truly and honestly do. Based off everything I've heard the story(ies) sounds like something I'd massively enjoy. From what I've gathered it seems to poke at human nature and insanity in ways similar to Lake Mungo and Herzog's adaptation of Nosferatu, two of my favorite horror films ever made. I doubt it would scare me, although the idea of being dragged into the story itself, being part of this massive web of unknown mysteries and terrifying realizations sounds unbelievably intriguing. Almost as if you're just the next level up in this story in a story in a story. Now that I'm thinking about it that actually does sound pretty terrifying lol. That being said, I'm guessing if I did try to read and decipher the entire thing, I'd end up more angry and confused than scared or intrigued. I'm a kid who can barely get a passing grade on an Freshman AP History Course, let alone properly interpret 709 pages of 3 interwoven stories. I almost don't feel worthy. Like the book is on a shelf I'm not tall enough to reach yet. Everything you said here was extremely well expressed. Clearly your appreciation for this book and Danielewski's work runs very deep. I thought I might as well leave you with a couple recommendations for some great horror films while I'm here. - Lake Mungo (2008) - The only film I've ever seen that truly left me hollowed out from pure, unadulterated terror. Just thinking about one of the final shots gives me chills as I picture it. - Eraserhead (1977) - A David Lynch classic. Surreal and mind-boggling in the most perplexing way possible. - Nosferatu The Vampyre (1979) - Builds on a primal fear that many refuse to acknowledge, let alone capitalize on. The villain in this movie is one of the most terrifying in any piece of media I have ever encountered. - [REC] (2007) - The greatest found footage film ever crafted. I literally watched it once a day for almost a week straight because of how fantastically every layer of "oh fuck oh fuck oh fuck" is perfectly crafted to make you wait on the edge of your seat for the next twist in the story. I had to keep coming back to it again and again and again. A great film to watch with a bunch of friends. - House (aka HAUSU, 1977) - An unwind after the terror and confusion some of these other films will put you through. The most unique, undefinable, indescribably fantastic film ever made. Not straight horror like the rest of these, it's a horror comedy. Probably my second favorite movie ever made. If I tell you anything else, it might spoil the fun.
Just finished this absolute unit of a book and it's gonna take some time to digest. My mind's in whirl. A good read should evoke some sort of physical reaction. Reading some of Lovecrafts best work where he's just guzzling on the grizzly details of murder or lingering on the inevitable plot twist, always causes my lower back to sweat. This book is on a whole different level. The different layers of narrative - the house documented by the Navidsons, narrated by Zampano, the narration narrated by Johnny, intersected with letters from Pelafina and lastly compiled by the anonymous author - ultimately puts you as a reader last in line. And all the while messing with everything else you know about storytelling. It forces you to physically twist and turn the actual book and partake in the absurd reality. I knew I was in for a non-linear albeit coked-up narration while tracking down the last copy on the shelves in the whole of Sweden... but this is really next level. I don't know yet if it was good. But it is an experience. With all that rambling out of the way... I would've loved a bit more Lovecraftian horror in it.
I've read through tons of comments and didn't see any that cover the footnotes in details so I'd like to find out, did anyone else actually try searching the magazine articles mentioned? I know the titles didn't exist but if for example you searched the old edition of Vogue mentioned (on the month, page mentioned etc. )and read the old magazine article, it could be interpreted as being part of the story. For example, while reading about Navidson's relationship with his wife one footnote led me to an article about intimacy. Another example is when we read about the relationship between Navidson and his brother and it talks of their father, a footnote leads us to an article about a serial killer that was active during that time in real life that committed his crimes when Navidson's dad would have been away. I want to fully research the footnotes upon a reread of the book!
As much as i understand that mark dosent want a film adaptation whatsoever, i cant help but feel like this is built to be the most unsettling movie and intellectually sparking movie of all time. Instead of him saying no i cant help but feel like hes saying " OHOOH JUST YOU FUCKING TRY I FUCKING DARE YOU" 🤣
