This is not for you. (1)

(1) The only words on the dedication page of House of Leaves by Mark Z. Danielewski. 

Believe you me, he means it.

At 662 pages, House of Leaves is Danielewski's magnum opus, a work deified by a large and devoted cult following, and swallowed hook, line and sinker by numerous literary critics from such august  institutions as The New York Times (go figure), The San Francisco Chronicle, The Wall Street Journal, Newsweek and The Guardian. My question is this: what is wrong with these people?  

What? You think I'm being unfair? Okay, maybe just a bit. Not everyone who holds House of Leaves in high esteem is a pretentious douche attempting to demonstrate their intellectual superiority by claiming that they get it. I'm pretty sure I got it, and by it, in this case, I mean Danielewski's number. With regards to the book as a whole, it is all about the footnotes. I'm not fooling myself into believing my completion of it means anything other than I--possibly--halfway understood the meaning behind my labors. 

And, I do mean LABORS. Furthermore, FYI: House of Leaves is not a challenge one undertakes with the expectation of receiving a rewarding experience in return. Being an interactive work, it demands audience participation. It is not a quick read, and it enjoins the reader to pore through volumes of footnotes, and upside down/sideways/kitty corner/empty pages, entire paragraphs written in various foreign tongues, some ancient, some unrecognizable, and that's before we get to the braille. House of Leaves, is often incoherent, overthought, overwrought, and exhausting. And yet, in spite of everything, I don't exactly hate it. The author obviously put a huge amount of thought, time and effort into creating this monumental epic; I might even go so far as to call him brilliant, albeit brilliant without a leash. 

Lest my previous comments be misconstrued as an endorsement for House of Leaves, they are not. With that in mind, I'll offer my take on the book and try to keep spoilers to a minimum, just in case you care to rush out and pick up a copy from your nearest bookstore. (Don't worry, it's been in bookstores since first being published in 2000 so there's likely not much danger of it going out of print.)

The plot of House of Leaves is multi-layered, with--at least--three separate narratives going on at once. I'll attempt to explain, but be forewarned, this is not an easy task. 

Front and center (maybe), there is The Navidson Record, a notorious home movie that has seemingly become a worldwide phenomenon. Thanks to its purported authenticity, the prominence of the filmmaker, and the innumerable talking heads--scientists, philosophers, intellectuals, psychiatrists, authors, paranormal investigators, etc.--analyzing, opining on, and dissecting, every frame of the film, its presence in the collective consciousness is pervasive. 

The Navidson Record, completed several years prior to the beginning of the book, presents Will Navidson, noted photojournalist and adrenaline-junkie, as the center of the film. Although Navidson won the Pulitzer Prize for his work, he is a man haunted by the very photo that made him famous. An absentee parent and sometime domestic partner (he's frequently away from home for six months at a time), Navidson determines to do better by relocating his family from their Manhattan home to the boondocks of rural Virginia. This is where The Navidson Record actually begins. The family's new house is old but fairly ordinary looking--on the outside, anyway. Inside, well, it's a different story: the dimensions inside exceed those on the outside by almost an inch. Will is intrigued, which does not sit well with his fashion model/girlfriend, Karen, who is already concerned with the effect his career has had on their relationship and two small children. We came here so you could pay attention to us, for Christ's sake! 

Fah, silly woman! Navidson thinks, but does not say, before proceeding to install motion sensor cameras throughout the house. More weirdness ensues, and both Karen and Navidson become convinced that, indeed, the interior of the house is not only larger than the exterior, but, in fact, seems to be expanding. When a door mysteriously appears in the living room wall, Navidson goes in to explore, because, why not?  He finds a long, dark, very cold hallway that eventually reveals a shape-shifting labyrinth that--apparently, depending on the whims of the house--ranges anywhere from a few feet to thousands of miles in almost every direction, but mostly down an immense spiral staircase that pops up out of nowhere. There is also a low growling sound emanating from the depths of this hallway. Karen again argues that Navidson's preoccupation with this anomaly is not helping repair their strained relationship, and may actually be putting them all in danger. They wind up staying in the house anyway. In order to shed some light on this enigmatic structure, Will enlists the aid of his estranged, twin brother, Tom, a recovering alcoholic, and a cranky, paraplegic engineering professor named Reston. However, it soon becomes apparent that this undertaking is going to require a lot more muscle than the three of them possess. So, instead of calling in a team of scientists, the National Guard, or even the Ghostbusters, Navidson hires tough, unstable macho man, Holloway Roberts, who shows up with his two young assistants in tow. Armed to the teeth and equipped with cameras, rations and camping gear, Holloway makes it clear that he is in charge and will tolerate no nonsense from the amateurs. Holloway and his men immediately set to work, and through the magic door they go, down, down, down into the abyss, leaving Navidson, Reston and Karen behind to monitor their progress via a complex system of screens, recorders and sensors. Of course, as will happen when macho men and their underlings decide to have a pissing contest while exploring an enormous cavity that is not only bottomless, but, potentially inhabited by who knows what, tensions flare and contact is lost with the outside world. The situation turns deadly when something supernatural, or extraterrestrial, or, possibly neither, begins stalking our hapless crew. But are there creatures in the labyrinth or is it all just part of this haunted house that plays with perception?  Could they have stumbled into another dimension, or is this, somehow, a unique mathematical force designed to fuck with Navidson's feelings of guilt? 

Without going further into the film, I'll just say that The Navidson Record is--by far--the best part of the book. It is absorbing, exciting and scary, just the thing Stephen King might have come up with in the 80's phase of his career. Or, think Jaws meets Poltergeist, only with the shark replaced by an existential menace that swallows people whole, just as surely as that shark did. That's basically it for The Navidson Record because I'm not going to get into who lives, who doesn't, who makes it out of the house and the scars they're left to deal with. If The Navidson Record were the sole plot element of the book, I would have been satisfied, perhaps only on a superficial level, but still....  The essentials of the film make for a highly entertaining beach read. 

However....

Danielewski has more on his mind. Much, much more. Unfortunately. The entire remainder of the book unfolds via a barrage of footnotes that seem to exist, in large part, to irritate, confuse and/or fuck with the reader. In other words, on every page of The Navidson Record, there are not one set of footnotes, but two, set down by two separate researchers/transcribers, both of whom are deeply, deeply disturbed by the material. 

So, in essence, all we know about The Navidson Record is that it is the end result of years of research and obsessive commentary compiled in a stack of incomplete, imperfect pages left behind by a dead man presenting himself as an academic scholar. In attempting to cement his recounting of The Navidson Record as an ultimate source of study, the elderly scholar--Zampano--utilized reams and reams of complicated footnotes citing magazine articles, interviews, op-eds, 17th century philosophical treatises, et al., to legitimize his project. On every single page there are copious, COPIOUS footnotes. 

Incidentally, Zampano, was also blind. Make of that what you will. 

So, Zampano lived in a rundown apartment building where the cats in the courtyard kept disappearing, and the old man nailed his doors and windows shut to...what? Keep something out? Or keep something in? Was Zampano's obsession with the film driving him mad, or were there supernatural elements working towards his demise? After all, when Zampano's body is found, investigators discover that part of his floor has deep claw marks on it. 

From reading this, you may think that Zampano had cornered the market on footnotes. But no, oh no. Not even close. 

An intolerable, pain-in-the-ass loser named Johnny Truant has that distinction sewn up. Johnny Truant's day job consists of sharpening needles in a tattoo parlor; by night, he ingests copious amounts of drugs and booze, bags a multitude of babes, parties in the Hollywood Hills and hangs out with his best friend, Lude. That's right: Lude. Aside from Lude's questionable influence, Johnny has big problems, but they become the reader's problems because, as it happens, Johnny is actually the principal narrator of this book. Johnny's footnotes begin on the first page and don't let up until hundreds of pages later. 

So, Truant got involved when his old buddy, Lude, told him about his neighbor's mysterious death, the doors and windows nailed shut, and the clawed-up floor. Unable to resist the call of the weird, Johnny enters the old man's apartment and discovers Zampano's unfinished manuscript in the, otherwise, empty space. That's when Johnny makes the fateful decision to restore the manuscript and add his own footnotes. The thing is, Zampano's footnotes are (or may be) pertinent to the proceedings (however obliquely), while Johnny's footnotes mostly veer off into his own trials and tribulations, such as the daily grind of indulging in massive amounts of drugs and alcohol, and graphic descriptions of interminable sexual encounters. Zampano's notes are--possibly--academically sound but Johnny is off on a tangent at the slightest provocation.

There is a convergence of all the narratives in House of Leaves--first, The Navidson Record, second, Zampano's, and, finally, Johnny Truant's--that are, literally, piled one on top of the other on every page of the book. Eventually, the footnotes take up more space than the principal events they are trying to transcribe. Add to that, on the rare occasion that Johnny sticks to his subject, he uses his own footnotes to add to, comment on, or criticize, Zampano's footnotes. But, more than anything, Johnny goes on and on about his miserable childhood, his miserable adulthood, the legions of strippers, porn stars and wild girls he beds, and of course, Lude, and Lude's endless quest for new thrills. Anytime something exciting is about to happen in The Navidson Record, Johnny interrupts with his own long-winded digressions, leaving the reader hanging in the wind until he is finished. But, Johnny is never really finished, is he? He just goes on and on and on, ad infinitum. More than once, I wanted to throw this book across the room, thanks to Johnny Truant's constant intrusiveness and, to a lesser extent, Zampano's ridiculously dry notations. 

Towards the end of the book, you begin to wonder whether or not there was ever a movie at all. At one point, it is actually stated that there is no record of the film having ever existed. Of course, we only have Johnny Truant's increasingly disjointed ramblings to go by, and, as is demonstrated time and again, he's a most unreliable narrator. 

House of Leaves confronts the reader with many more questions than it ever answers. Allegedly, there are "clues" sprinkled liberally throughout the book--possibly hidden somewhere within the precious placement of words and phrases (i.e., the exotic languages, the braille, paragraphs where the first letter of each word purportedly adds up to a secret message). You get the gist. But, in the end, does any of this actually mean anything?  

Maybe. If you flip the narrative on its head, House of Leaves becomes Johnny Truant's story. In this case, The Navidson Record becomes secondary, and Zampano, himself, incidental. Johnny's tale (by way of those goddamn footnotes) slowly--oh so slowly--reveals the long-lasting effects of childhood trauma, mental illness, substance abuse and obsession. (With--maybe--a touch of possession.)  Johnny also hallucinates and is a confessed liar so you can never be certain of anything he says. Which calls into question the events presented in his footnotes. Johnny is clearly meant to evoke sympathy from the reader but, oh my God, he is simply unbearable. I hated, hated, hated this character. 

Oddly, Zampano--the book's middle man any way you look at it--emerges as the least developed character. I'm not sure if this was by design or disinterest. Sure, he's a vital character in the context of the book but he's a will-o-the-wisp with a limited backstory and a presence defined only by his academic observations in the manuscript. If not for Zampano's rediscovered poems published at the end of the book, I might have suspected that he, like The Navidson Record, didn't exist. Even so, I still have my doubts about this character. 

After spending nearly 2 weeks reading House of Leaves, I have come to the conclusion that it is a book subject to interpretation by the person reading the book. Until it becomes something else, that is. Let me put it this way: t's like staring up at the sky and seeing a cloud that resembles a jellyfish, while, at the same time, someone else looks at the same cloud and sees Taylor Swift. And then the cloud dissipates and merges into another and becomes a locomotive. The more you think about House of Leaves, the more it changes, and challenges your notions of what it is. An adventure dreamed up by a fabulist? A tortured man-child's descent into schizophrenia? A meditation on the nature of reality? An unsolvable puzzle? A practical joke poking fun at pretentious brainiacs who think they "get it"? Depending on your point of view, it may be all of the above. And then some. 

All that being said, the 2 weeks I spent reading House of Leaves are 2 weeks I'll never get back. As I said, I don't hate the book, and it did make me think--and work--a great deal. I like a challenge, but whenever a book requires pen, paper, a lost languages lexicon and a secret decoder ring to "get it", it's probably not something I'd willingly spend time with again. By the way, I've highlighted the word house in blue because that's what Danielewski does every time he uses the word house.