House of Leaves in Classics Without All the Class

Dec 04, 2010 rachel rated it liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: 2010

This lukewarm "liked it" rating represents the averaging of both the admiration and complete frustration I felt while reading this book. I'm going to have to ultimately side with other reviewers and say that I think this book had elements of a classic, plot-wise, but I'd really love to hear a good argument as to how the style and layout of the book helps the plot rather than hinders it at points.

Don't get me wrong, there were elements of the "art" of this book that I enjoyed. I enjoyed all of t This lukewarm "liked it" rating represents the averaging of both the admiration and complete frustration I felt while reading this book. I'm going to have to ultimately side with other reviewers and say that I think this book had elements of a classic, plot-wise, but I'd really love to hear a good argument as to how the style and layout of the book helps the plot rather than hinders it at points.

Don't get me wrong, there were elements of the "art" of this book that I enjoyed. I enjoyed all of the academic citation footnotes, because while the titles and names were completely irrelevant, their existence lent an unsettling realism to the story within a story within a story -- whether it was actual reality or one that only existed within Zampano's pages. (I get that they are also a satire of pedantic academia, and am less interested in this function.) In reflection, I also thought the layout of the labyrinth chapter was neat and worth wading through, as the frustration the reader feels getting lost within the pages mimics the frustration the expedition team feels as they are lost in the labyrinth of the house.

But I didn't enjoy Danielewski playing with the shape of the text. In part because spacing and arranging text to "artistically" symbolize textual movement has always struck me as being a very fourth grade tactic, and in part because when I'm reading artistically arranged text, I am thinking too much about how to read it and what the author means for me to feel by arranging the text this way, rather than actually feeling anything. (You can do a hell of a lot emotionally with a good line break. That's not what I'm talking about. It's stuff like t
h
i sssss. That I'm talking about.)

And this is the main complaint I had about the book: truly unsettling horror is visceral. House of Leaves, while scary without equal in certain scenes -- the sudden opening of the hallway behind Karen comes to mind, or the space between the bookshelves -- on the whole is mostly cerebral. So I suppose that it is not meant to be a mostly a horror novel at all, that Danielewski is more concerned with his metacommentary and semiotics. My lack of love for this book is because I would have liked to see it go in the other direction. There is a really good story in this House that defies understanding. I kept visualizing it as a mostly linear narrative (with all of the footnotes and the labyrinth chapter left intact) and wishing it was that.

Maybe Danielewski would argue with me and say that I am wrong to want to read this as a horror novel. To that I would say: you may have created a labyrinth, but the labyrinth still has a growl. ...more

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