I tried HOUSE OF LEAVES when I clerked last in a fading L.A. first editions bookshop. I was getting old and tired, just like the 'career' my adulthood years careened through. It was not enough to wrestle with the typography and shifting POV, before another lost pedestrian wandered in, asking if this was a sandwich shop or thrift store... distraction as consciousness...
Man, I have struggled with this book. I _hated_ it the first time I read it--I found the Truant sections to be painfully forced and inauthentic, and so much of the clever formatting just seemed like distractions to make a decent spooky story seem Literary. I revisited it a few years ago and was mildly charmed by the ambition; the Truant stuff still feels pretty goofy to me, but it has its moments, and i really do like the Navidson Record bits. But ultimately it really is just a decent spooky story buried under presumably sincere but not particularly meaningful tricks. Yes, I get it "House of Leaves" is another name for a book, and this one keeps expanding just like the Navidson house did, but to what end? To just get me to read more mediocre poetry about Johnny's traumatic childhood? I love books that make an effort to include their own existence in their fiction (ala Pale Fire), but this is ultimately as hollow as any pulp horror novel, only with a boatload of pretension to distract from the obivous.
I don't know if King and Hill meant it this way, even in part, but I think HOUSE OF EAVES can accurately be called the MOBY DICK of horror novels in that everyone knows about it, or has heard of it, many have cribbed from it, or think they were/are cribbing from it, and yet almost no one alive has actually read the damn thing. That's Moby Dick right there.
I'll come back to the rest of this article someday when I myself actually read the damn thing. I still want to, all reason aside.
wrong
how are you so dumb?
I tried HOUSE OF LEAVES when I clerked last in a fading L.A. first editions bookshop. I was getting old and tired, just like the 'career' my adulthood years careened through. It was not enough to wrestle with the typography and shifting POV, before another lost pedestrian wandered in, asking if this was a sandwich shop or thrift store... distraction as consciousness...
Man, I have struggled with this book. I _hated_ it the first time I read it--I found the Truant sections to be painfully forced and inauthentic, and so much of the clever formatting just seemed like distractions to make a decent spooky story seem Literary. I revisited it a few years ago and was mildly charmed by the ambition; the Truant stuff still feels pretty goofy to me, but it has its moments, and i really do like the Navidson Record bits. But ultimately it really is just a decent spooky story buried under presumably sincere but not particularly meaningful tricks. Yes, I get it "House of Leaves" is another name for a book, and this one keeps expanding just like the Navidson house did, but to what end? To just get me to read more mediocre poetry about Johnny's traumatic childhood? I love books that make an effort to include their own existence in their fiction (ala Pale Fire), but this is ultimately as hollow as any pulp horror novel, only with a boatload of pretension to distract from the obivous.
I don't know if King and Hill meant it this way, even in part, but I think HOUSE OF EAVES can accurately be called the MOBY DICK of horror novels in that everyone knows about it, or has heard of it, many have cribbed from it, or think they were/are cribbing from it, and yet almost no one alive has actually read the damn thing. That's Moby Dick right there.
I'll come back to the rest of this article someday when I myself actually read the damn thing. I still want to, all reason aside.