NOTE: Reviews are the opinions of the individual reviewers and not necessarily those of The Chiaroscuro as an entity unto itself.
NOTE: Reviews are the opinions of the individual reviewers and not necessarily those of The Chiaroscuro as an entity unto itself.
House of Leaves Composed by Mark Z. Danielewski Reviewed By Stephen Studach... House of Leaves
Ah, that pitchy, architecture and physics defying region makes me suspect that the crawling woman from Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s "The Yellow Wallpaper" may well be, even now, making her way along those ashen walls. Stranger things might be found there. Or very little at all. House of Leaves... Is a big, bad, bastard of a book. A work of fiction (?) with its own index. A craft project from a confused and disturbed mind. A well educated upstart’s wank with no climax. A cruel collage. Hefty, heavy, (go on—when you catch one slap it—Hard! Drop it on a desk from a decent height. It resonates not just in words and format. Its dull thud, thump, informs it as—Book!). You can go around slapping walls with this tome, try it, it’s great! Heck, you can practically hammer nails with it. It is hard going, if you are a reader who doesn’t like to let a word get by you. An "easy read" Not. ¹ It might take you a month to read! It could infuriate you. It is arrogant. Impertinent. Deathly dull. Insufferable in parts. And it has oh so many parts. It is a liar’s bullshitting mouth. It’s an anus with word diarrhoea. It’s a simple list. It is a whale. And a wail. It will piss you off. You will dislike at least And some appallingly bad writing. Possibly two. It will make you resent the fact that you just spent (whatever quantity) of your own time reading that. It sucks away at time . . . . . It has given some people nightmares apparently. You will either love or hate it. It’s nothing new. But it is a very thick, big effort of nothing new. It’s sly. Something nestles at the core of it. Like a big fanged cat or a scorpion.
Back in 99 I was working on an experimental novel entitled "The Pet AKA The Atrocity Box". It was done in a style I came to title "mosaic". A broken style with font, time, spacing, narration and perspective changes and other odd stuff. Little did I know that Mr. Danielewski was labouring away at his own unique piece of "X" literature. Subsequently published in 2000. A Hill House of a book. A haunted book. This one runs the whole gamut. Pulling in everything it can grab to its black hole soul. The extensive footnotes and lists are two of its less pleasing conceits. But hang in there, keep paying out the line behind you, after 150 pages it’s not so bad. When he sticks to his central narrative Danielewski gives us a tale of good Stephen King grade work. (King actually makes a type of cameo appearance, as does Stanley Kubrick and a number of others.) As is often the case, not really being a "Horror" writer helps his horror writing. For me however, the best thing about this book is that it is a book. It demonstrates the possibilities that a book can be heir to. At that it may only be scratching the surface of multimedia potentials. And all that encompassed in a disseminatory entertainment form that we have been told for the longest time is either dying or dead. Well, this one’s come back friends, risen with a rustling of "leaves" up from the publisher’s stack. And it ain’t no zombie. It truly lives. It is neither groundbreakingly unique nor particularly good or particularly bad. But I thought it needed comment. For its true talent is not its creator, but the fact that it has been compiled, and thus wise. It simply sits and is a book whether you want to wrestle with it or not. It simply is. And as a book it is sufficiently different to garner interest. Its creator has a philosophy on books you see (which is a good thing for writers to have). And that’s a good thing for books. It will cost you though, to read this book. For you will have to Expend Time.
There are two primary narrators (though the duty is shared by many) neither operating with a "right mind". Though both could be super sane. There are three or four books in this one actually. There’s the Navidson Record, compiled by the blind Zampanò. There’s the at times somewhat irritating Johnny Truant parallel story stream. Then there’s the back story assemblage on each of these gents, outside of their immediate tellings, beyond their direct voices. You may prefer to read along the separate threads of the weave, ignoring others, imposing your own order upon these layers of leafy rakings. If you’re a completist reader like me you’ll take it all in pretty much chronologically, as set down, even the oft infuriating parts. Or you could focus on the footnotes. Yeah right.² Some of the sequences work brilliantly. There are some heart breakers here. It demonstrates that a book can be organic. Though this one might not be an organism you want to take on. This one with a gothic bone central to it, set in contemporary meat and fat. This one, this organic pile possibly "unsane", or at least not good to be pondered upon. It’s a labour intensive joke. A publication fluke. A one-off? May Be. ? I don’t know. Read it yourself. If you want to take it on. If you dare.
¹ A professor of my acquaintance described reading (parts of) it as akin to wading through treacle. Some might even say it isn’t as much fun as that. It simply won’t engage with some people/minds/imaginations. Especially in this easy-read, close to nil attention span, micro fiction age. Then, others will help it acquire its cult status. ² You might wonder—when footnotes consistently take up more space on a page than the actual narrative text—are they still footnotes? Should they be termed differently? Footnarration? Additional or supporting narrative/text? Yardnotes? Footnotes R us? |
