House of Leaves.

I'm not entirely sure how to go about writing about the last book I read, House of Leaves, by Mark Danielewski. It defies easy description, and any sort of conventional review or analysis is right out. So I won't be attempting to do so in any concrete or normal fashion. In lieu of such, I am putting here bits and pieces of conversation, some observations, a few photographs taken while reading, and other flotsam and jetsam.


A conversation:

Nicholas: the book is the house is johnny is zampano is the film is the book
The Bandit Queen: Care to elaborate?
Nicholas: not yet, need to formalize thoughts a bit more
Nicholas: but the book is obviously the house, that much is easy
The Bandit Queen: yes. And Johnny's story is the same. The house is just one name they put on this intense madness that they all confront.
Nicholas: mmhm
The Bandit Queen: It's like the Boogeyman in that very real sense: just that basic, primal childish fear that comes with being alive.
Nicholas: the house = the other outside which is also within
The Bandit Queen: It's no one thing in the world, it's just...yeah, yeah exactly
Nicholas: also, god as an equals sign and an echo
The Bandit Queen: It's any inner place you're unwilling to go.
The Bandit Queen: oh god.

Nicholas: It's also about how art critique is irrelevant, as any art's meaning can only be entirely unpacked by the artist, and even then its an unreliable sort of unpacking
Nicholas: It's also about relation of cinema to print and vice versa
Nicholas: labyrinths and spirals and echoes and codes and oh god I'm never getting out of this am I
The Bandit Queen: Don't worry. At least you're in good company.
The Bandit Queen: Also: moo hoo ha ha.
The Bandit Queen: At different times, Truant says: "Known Some Call Is Air Am". Although it appears to be a random string of words, it is actually phonetically equivalent to "Non sum qualis eram", Latin for "I am not as I was".

Nicholas: ALSO, theory: the Navidson Record is entirely fictional, even in the world of the book
The Bandit Queen: Oh, yeah! That's totally a possibility. Which...what was Zampano's deal?
Nicholas: three pieces of evidence of such: Johnny can find no trace of anything to do with the house or film, there's a card in the front collage (more visible in the appendices) saying something about "killing the children", and how the house might do so
Nicholas: also, the occasional pronoun switch in zampano's writings like, in while writing about Tom Navidson: "He might have spent all night drinking had exhaustion not caught up with me"
Nicholas: also, the "deletion" of all the minotaur sections, as they implicitly mention that the minotaur was a hoax and not real, though the labyrinth was
Nicholas: so the labyrinth/book is quite real, and you can become lost in it, but the secret it contains/story it tells is not
Nicholas: I am way too into this


Words are swallowing me, surrounding my head with suffocating syllables and breathless boundaries, all ensconced about my person, my throat closing from declension and circling the systematic series of statements started and stopped in my stead. I am lost in the leaves, pages turning over like a record and repeating around themselves again, footnoted and obliviated into a perfect spiral of senseless apprenticeship. They are eating me alive. I see them, in the corners, lurking, waiting, to tear into me with claws of consonants and teeth of tangents, low murmurs and growls emanating from the walls of willful mispronunciations. I hear them, I see them, I know them, they are mean and meant and meaningful and meaningless and every verbal trick in the vast vocabulary I can voice does not dissuade. I am drowning drowning drowning drowning drowning drowning drowningdrowning drowningdrowningdrowning drowningdrowningdrowningdrowning. Breathing in brings broken phrases, basked in battled bafflement, breaking down the days and numbers into equational phrases and fractured fractions of format. I am sorry to suffer for sensory perception, still somehow syllable and sentence stick together to set me aside and send me swooning. Air air air. I need some air.


Additional thoughts:

:: A blind man "writing" a book about a film is too much of an irony to not be a comment on the writing process, and how one is always feeling in the dark towards a goal you cannot see and will not witness entirely.

:: The journey into the house as an exploration of the human brain, as one cannot map out or define what one does not understand and is constantly changing.

:: The center of the story really being about the damage one's own history causes on the present and the future. Navidson's past intruding and effecting his relationship with Karen; Johnny's past disconnecting him in his relationships with everyone he encounters, especially all the various hook-ups and one night stands he mentions.

:: the underplayed story of Zampano as a world war vet whom life has passed by, leaving him blind and unloved. Also, the connection between him and Johnny's mother: "My dear Zampano, Who did you Lose?"

It is very easy to get lost in this House.