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| Thursday, June 15, 2006 12:46 PM |
| Thoughts on House of Leaves (updated) |
 by Fëanor |
I finished the book yesterday afternoon. The short version of my reaction: I liked it very much. The longer version (no spoilers): I found it quite excellent, very smart, but occasionally also too smart, and a little corny and pretentious. But a fantastic story, loaded with amazing ideas and images, and written in a unique and intriguing way. I found that the movie, and the book about the movie, both ended in a pretty satisfactory manner, but I found that the frame story - the story of Johnny Truant - ended rather...unsatisfactorily. But I'm not sure if that's a flaw in the book, or a flaw in my own perception. I feel like I may have missed something. (More, w/spoilers, below; highlight to read.)
All through the second half of the book I was sure some kind of huge revelation was going to come. Namely, I thought that someone in Johnny's world (Zampano, Johnny himself) was going to turn out to either be somebody who was in the movie, or be related to somebody who was in the movie. (I also had some other crazy ideas, like maybe Johnny was in the house all along, and his entire world was trapped inside of it, or that the house was from an alternate dimension, or that it had existed in Johnny's world, but had erased all evidence of its existence somehow...)
For instance, for a while I was convinced that Zampano is Tom, thanks in part to a line in the later part of the book where Zampano mistakenly refers to Tom as "me" (I don't have the book in front of me, and I'm not sure I could find the page again anyway, but it's in the bit where Tom thinks Navidson is lost for good and has started drinking heavily). But that was the only hint; nothing more ever came out in that regard. And there was really no huge revelation waiting for me, although the plot of the movie did surprise me a couple of times.
I feel like there might be more to find, encoded in the pages of the book, that I missed somehow. (There was that check in the bottom corner of that one page - which totally blew my mind, btw - just like Johnny's mother refers to in her letters; and a few little quotes that were meant to be read in her encoded style, by just reading each starting letter...) I almost want to read it again right now, in the hopes of finding some further revelation that will bring together Johnny's story, or explain exactly why and how Zampano died, and what the cats were all about. But maybe it's just not there. Maybe some things are meant to be left maddeningly mysterious.
I feel like maybe the book as a whole is really a lot more about Johnny than I at first gave it credit for. (Which is a little disappointing, as Johnny's story is probably the least interesting of the various story-layers, but whatever.) That the movie and the book about the movie are all just there to illuminate Johnny's own personal family history, his own tortured mind and past. That his crazy hallucinations and so forth are really just his own memories and psychological issues beating their way out of his head, helped along by the frightening, surreal book.
Or maybe it's all about post-modernism and layers of reality and fantasy, what with the possibly false movie about a supposedly real experience that may be false, the book about the movie, the guy reading the book about the movie, and then us reading the book about the book about the movie, with editorial comments by some other person, along with the footnotes by Johnny, and the footnotes by Zampano. And then there's the scene where Navidson reads House of Leaves - the book itself! that's about the movie about the house - in the house in the movie, by the light of the book's own burning pages!! So mind-warpingly ridiculous and awesome.
The whole book is of course a puzzle, a labyrinth, a collection of constantly shifting layers, just like the house at its center. It is what it does.
Other bits I liked: just the house in general. The house is amazing, and the description of the movie about it is just fantastic. Somebody should make that movie - not a movie of House of Leaves, which would be pretty much impossible, but an exact copy, following along the lines of Zampano's descriptions, of the movie The Navidson Record. That would rock. Anyway, I also particularly liked the reveal that the house has existed for a very long time, both via the rock samples, and the fantastic journal entries by the early American colonist hunters. That was trippy and awesome. (Btw, make sure to read all the material in the appendices closely, as some of it adds to the history of the house and of the people in the movie.)
I don't know. I'm impressed. And I'm really curious to hear now what it was about the book exactly that pissed you off, Peccable! I kept reading, waiting for that really stupid moment that annoyed you and ultimately made you hate the book, but it never came! Maybe I just have a higher tolerance for pretentiousness? That seems unlikely. :) |
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