House of Leaves: The Remastered Full-Color Edition Paperback – March 7, 2000

Do the words meta, post-modern, or experimental make you cringe when used to describe books? Then turn back now. I feel the need to say that up front because many people seem to go into this book expecting a horror novel and wind up wasting their money. Just take a look at the genres that goodreads lists this as. Horror, fiction, fantasy, and mystery. With inapt labels like that, it's easy to see how people could get the wrong idea.This is not a horror novel, nor is it a mystery novel or a fantasy novel. This book is, among many other things, a personal story about the author's parents presented as experimental literary fiction that's thinly veiled as a horror novel. Confused? Good, stay that way for now, and don't think too hard about what I just said. I'm not that into horror novels, and I generally like post-modern and experimental stuff, and I knew what I was getting into when I bought this. Know what you're getting into, that's all I'm trying to say.Here's the basic concept as clear and concise as I can tell it. There are essentially three narrators that will be addressing you, the reader.1) Zampano, an old blind man2) Johnny Truant, a thirty-something druggie3) The "editors"Johnny's friend, Lude, knows Zampano because he lives in the same apartment building. The old man, ominously, tells Lude he's going to die soon, and does. After the body is gone, Lude and Johnny sneak into the apartment to take a look around at Zampano's things. They find a crazy manuscript, which Johnny takes home with him.The manuscript is a non-fiction book/dissertation about a documentary called "The Navidson Record." The Navidson Record is about a famous photojournalist named Will Navidson and his family moving into a new house that is bigger on the inside. When I say non-fiction, I mean it. It reads like a textbook. On every page there are footnotes about other articles and other books that reference this documentary that, by all accounts, doesn't exist (I'll get to this in a second).It starts out simple at first. After the family returns home from vacation they notice a hallway on the second floor connecting two bedrooms that wasn't there before. They track down a blueprint of the building and see that there is a space between the walls, although it's not supposed to be a finished hallway with doors. Okay, no big deal, maybe they didn't notice the doors before, it's a new house after all and they had just moved in before going on vacation. Then comes the realization that measuring the house through that hallway results in an extra inch that shouldn't exist, and that can't be explained. Then a new door appears, on the first floor this time, that should lead to an empty back yard but instead leads to a long, dark hallway that extends into an endless labyrinth of cavernous, thousand-foot rooms that leads to god knows where and contains god knows what, and the exploration of this door is the main focus of the documentary.So Johnny finds this manuscript, reads it, edits it, adds his own footnotes relating to research he's done on Zampano's life and the manuscript contents (translations of foreign phrases, for instance), but also personal tangents about his own life and stream of consciousness ramblings. In the prologue where he explains how he found the manuscript, he also says that The Navidson Record doesn't actually exist. Johnny's editors also appear in footnotes and in the first say they have never met Johnny Truant in person, only communicating via letters and rare phone calls. Weird, right?What follows is 528 pages of an interwoven, multi-layered story. On the one hand, you have Zampano's non-fiction book about this fictitious documentary, which simmers as a slow-paced "found-footage" horror novel that can be unsettling, thought-provoking, but is likely to disappoint hardcore horror fans looking for adrenaline-pumping scares.Then you have Johnny's story, told through long footnotes, which is more vague and slow to reveal itself, but the basic idea is that although he knows the manuscript is fiction, the act of reading it causes him to lose his marbles. Whether the manuscript or Johnny's brain chemistry is to blame is up to the reader. Whether Johnny is even telling the truth is up to the reader. And, to be honest, Johnny's parts can sometimes be hard to read because he's just pitiable and depressing and the stream of consciousness prose can wear down your focus. It gets Joyce-esque at times, though only for short stretches, because Danielewski is a nice man who wants you to have a good time, unlike Joyce, who hates you and hates fun. Then the "story" part ends, and you have 130 pages of appendices (which you should read) which include things like:Zampano's writings which are not a part of The Navidson RecordThe obituary of Johnny's dadChildhood letters from Johnny's crazy, institutionalized, long dead motherPoemsSo what does it all mean?Well, it means a clever and perhaps over-educated man named Mark Danielewski decided to write a novel that experiments with the format of the novel, that pushes the boundaries of what a novel can be and what it can do. While much of it could quite fairly be called a gimmick, and it won't be redefining how all novels are written going forward, it's a gimmick that works, that is unique, that is stimulating, that is discussion-worthy, that makes the world more interesting by existing, and isn't that what good art is supposed to do? It is an unmitigated success at being singular, and because it is singular it will inspire intense love and intense hatred from different people.It means that while there are answers, you will have to work for them. I mean this both figuratively and literally. On the literal side, there is a letter in the appendices that is written in a simple code, which you will have to translate into a coherent message with pen and paper. And that's a code that is plainly said to be a code. There are other codes that are truly hidden.Many sections have weird, cluttered layouts that make the act of reading them hard, and make tracking down the right footnote a scavenger hunt. You'll be presented with footnotes that make no sense until you realize the text is broken up over several pages and presented backwards. There are a lot of elements to the story, little throwaway lines and facts that you need to remember, or write down. How did Johnny's dad die. How did Navidson's dad die. Stuff like that. While it's not absolutely necessary, I'd recommend having a notebook handy starting on page one. I have an amazing memory, took notes here and there, and still wish I'd taken more. Like I said, this book is work. It's fun work though, depending on your tastes and personality. I'm an INTP and I loved it. Your mileage may vary.On the figurative side, the book still won't hold your hand and spell out what it all means in flashing neon. That's up to you to figure out by gathering all the evidence together and deconstructing the book on several different levels by asking yourself what's true and what isn't, what matters and what doesn't, what's literal and what's figurative, what's the metanarrative, what's the subtext. Ultimately it's up to you to decide when you're satisfied with your answer.While this is nowhere near as open to interpretation as most books you'd label as post-modern or modernist, it is still open to interpretation compared to a typical novel, which isn't open to interpretation at all. There are no easy answers, no definitive answers, but there are satisfying answers that I firmly believe are more or less what the author intended, if you're willing to put in the effort to discover them and have a flexible mind that delights in abstract concepts. Alternatively there are, of course, existing breakdowns of it on the internet that you can turn to for some help, although none I've read have gone far enough into speculation. They present facts and evidence, point out what's true or not, but none of them have drawn the kind of final conclusion that I've drawn. That's how it should be. You should decide for yourself. If none of this sounds like fun to you, I recommend giving this one a pass

Disclaimer: this book can mess you up. The writer is completely consumed by the idea of writing - I can't imagine he lives in any manner a routine boring life. I imagine he has demons running around writing many books in his head at all times and pushing the idea of writing and narrative in directions our brains are afraid to venture into for fears they might not return from the dark.For anyone who has lived a weird existence, this book will feel eerily familiar. Something about the levels of unreliable narrators, a story within a story, within another story. The being on the outside of society looking and not knowing if you are inside or outside the fishbowl observing. The alienation, the experiencing something that no one else really believes, and the work we do to prove it - but how we don't get anywhere when the world, or our little world, won't accept our reality.I can't even tell you what this book is "about" because it's not. It's not about. It's about not about. It's about something larger than truth and smaller than a lie - and it's about how alienating it is to know - and not know.The first time I read it I was 21 or 22 and I was afraid of everyone. I was alone while surrounded by others, alienated from my family because of their issues, because of what I lived through, because I could not understand that people don't tell or even know their own truth. When I read it, I went down a wormhole of insanity. What is real? Who would believe it anyway? Who is allowed to tell a story, and who is barred? Where am I and what is the depth of this? Is there a bottom? What is the point?Anyway - that was more than 20 years ago. A lot has happened since then. It's time to read this book again - with the eyes of a well worn soul, someone who has had a lot more experiences. What will happen this time? What will the reading group learn - us from very different lives, some who have seen the bottom, some who never sank.