Anyone here read House of Leaves? It's basically a 700 creepypasta describing a critical essay describing a movie called The Navidson Record which is apparently a pseudo found-footage film about a house which possesses randomly appearing hallways that lead to spaces of infinite dimensions. Very creepy stuff. Anyone who's read it got anything to say about it?
(Posted here instead of /lit/ because I didn't want to get called a pleb)
I read a quarter or so of it and got indefinitely bored, I think before anything spoopy actually happened. Don't really care for the author's writing style, was kind of tedious to read and jumped all over the place. Worth picking back up at all?
Danielewski is a hack, my friends and I were into him when we were edgy 17 year olds.
>>17135553
> indefinitely bored
thats pretty spooky. You read a book once and you are bored for the rest of your life.
Sometimes I use big words I don't understand to seem more photosynthesis
>>17135558
IoI
I thought it was great. Here on 4chan you're going to get a lot of contrary assholes who skimmed a pdf of it on their phones. These are the same shitheads who will dump all over Lovecraft because they have no appreciation of the printed word as a medium.
>>17135558
Bored of the book to to point I dont want to read it anymore unless I decide to change my mind, dumbass. Lern2context. I guess I'm just not hipster enough for this type of literature.
>>17135558
Chlorophyll?? More like boreophyll!
>>17135573
Also you'll get people who have read the bulk of his work and only enjoyed Only Revolutions for the prose and thought HoL was totally full of hot air and more of an exploration in the arrangement of text on print instead of a valid literary accomplishment. But you can continue to devise your own little narrative in your head in order to feel comfortable in your own mediocrity without actually questioning if the things you like hold more substance than "well I like them and it's my opinion". Fucking hate people like you.
I'VE BEEN READING HOUSE OF LEAVES
>>17135582
Someones angwee.
Do you need to go in the Safe Place Playpen?
>>17135577
no i kno wut u meen dawg
>>17135582
>HoL was an exploration in the arrangement of text on print instead of a valid literary accomplishment
Yeah. That's exactly what it is, plus a test of how much stratification a narrative can bear. Problem?
Go read Catcher in the Rye for the twentieth time, ya fuck.
The idea was cool, desu it would have been much better if it was just called "The Navidson Record", and only concentrated on the transcripts / reports about the house.
The whole Johnny Truant story wasn't particularly interesting. The colors / placement of the text was pretty cool, but only when they served a functional purpose.
>>17135631
Yeah, it's interesting that the Johnny Truant layer is by far the least interesting to most readers who aren't nihilistic junkies. I'm guessing Danielewski was trying to make that part seem more "real" as a balance to Navidson and Zampano's stories.
Also, remember that we the reader is supposed to feel drawn into the creepiness as if the book in our hands is a mysterious unknown tome that our reading of puts us in some kind of danger as part of a string of disappearances and conspiracy. I'm 100% positive this element is diminished by not reading an actual print copy.
I liked the concept behind the book but I feel like if it were 300 pages rather than 700 it would have been a far better read. The crossing narratives were an interesting approach but they just weren't interesting in themselves - I kept waiting and waiting for the Johnny narrative to end up linking into the house itself somehow and it just never did. So like 50 pages from the end I suddenly realized that about 1/3 of the book was just a plain bad story that had been pointlessly shoehorned into the margins.
Like this guy said >>17135631 , if it had just been "The Navidson Record" and had the more brief and pertinent Zampano annotations in it I think I would have really enjoyed it. He could have still done all of the weird text tricks and blamed it on Zampano while trimming out the unnecessary garbage, which unfortunately was over half of the book. There were genuinely creepy parts to the book, but the impact was really hampered by the bullshit.
>>17135655
I loved that feeling of legitimacy when I first started reading it. Really though, I think the Johnny truant part was just a huge mistake. I'm honestly surprised some editor didn't read it and say "look, cut out this entire Johnny bullshit."
I passed the book around to a few friends and the universal comment was "the Johnny crap really ruined it for me." I started telling people to not read the Johnny part and suddenly everyone started liking the book.
>>17135663
Yes, it's quite long winded and as much as I enjoyed the book I did find myself skimming the Johnny parts once the Navidson parts became so interesting. One friend I loaned the book to loved Johnny but he's a self-absorbed depressive type who really identified with the character, which I think actually cost him a layer of appreciation as he didn't feel like he himself was a character.
If Johnny seemed more like some kind of borderline schizo Anon from the Internet or something who had vanished, leaving you the reader with the only copy of his notes I think it would have been more effective.
Johnny as he was was too cool, too long winded. Basically a hipster and it was difficult for me to even sympathize with him.
The BOOK is the 'House of Leaves', pages as leaves, see pic for house shape.
The TEXT is the labyrinth. It goes this way and that and doubles back and has dead ends. Go ahead read every word if you want, but you don't need to, You don't go over every possible path in a maze do you? Come on, footnotes that are lists of hundreds of different kinds of windows -- reading every word of that is OCD crazy. This is where people that hate the book go nuts, YOU DO NOT NEED TO READ EVERY WORD. The idea is to follow one thread to the end.
Who is the Minotaur is the key question. The author? The plot? The Reader. At one point the book says the Minotaur is made of string... hmm, your route thru it all??
>>17135558
>someone didn't like my fad book, WAHHHH
House of Leaves is garbage kid.
>>17135540
The concept was good, and it was fairly well executed, but I still felt it lacked something. It was amusing to read, but to be honest it's not one of those books that I can say blew my mind or really caught my attention. I think it failed to really create the atmosphere it was supposed to have created.
>>17135655
>>17135661
>>17135663
Agreed, if the book had been just the Navidson record plus some annotations done by an anonymous author it'd have been fucking brilliant.
I read it awhile ago, I liked it. thought it was cool.
>>17135775
>you don't go over every possible path in a maze do you? Come on, footnotes that are lists of hundreds of different kinds of windows -- reading every word of that is OCD crazy.
Ooops. Looks like you found me out ;)
It helps if you can scim over a page of HoL in about 3 seconds with getting all the content. And, incidentally, for some mazes it is the only way to break out.
>>17135579
NO I WILL NOT MAKE OUT WITH YOU
>>17135540
I remember a hipster tried to recommend this book to me, told me about the fonts and formatting only. I told him I like books that don't need gimmicks. Needless to say, he insisted it was too complex for me and then asked what I was reading. Fans of this book get butthurt easily, just saying.
>>17135540
I thought it was a fun read, some parts were pretty poorly written, but the Navidson Record was at least effective. My takeaway from it was that the maze is representative of the mind, as a lot of the book involves different sort of mental illnesses. Have fun with it. [spoiler] I thought the Minotaur was therefore a symbol of mental deterioration. [/spoiler]
Some of the Navidson portions were really good. Like others have said, the Johnny bits were largely unnecessary and a drag. Overall it was decent, the font gimmicks weren't really necessary and didn't improve the book in a noticeable way
>>17135540
shit, i read it a while ago
it felt long, and i didn't find it as spooky as i thought it would, though johnny's tale was pretty interesting
>>17135558
kek. you dick
ANY SPOOPY BOOKS besides this does anyone recommend?
>inb4 stephen king
>>17136250
Richard Bachman
>>17136255
Thanks a lot boso
>>17136255
>anon doesn't want Stephen King
>recommends Richard Bachman
I hope you're trying to be funny.
Never read it; but if I ever do, I'll sure as hell avoid the goddamn Johnny parts. Thanks, /x/.
>>17135540
Book fucking rules, it's one of my very favorite things.
Hipster faggots who love it because "IT'S GOT FONTS AND SHIT" are cancer.
10/10 book imo, objectively 0/10 following which tends to ruin it for a lot of people.
>>17135585
BY MARK Z DANIELEWSKI
fugg people that know this book only because of that song doe. that whole 'emo crowd' following makes me sick. tried to discuss this book with one of them and apparently he absorbed zilch from this book aside from "the house is weird and the guy reading about is it too!!!11" and said all the appendices were unimportant.
>>17136284
if this board had less humor, it'd be reddit
>>17136284
Not the one you're replying to, but to be fair, they are drastically different in style.
>>17135540
> It's basically a 700 creepypasta
That's called a book.
>>17136366
what song are you talking about? need to know about songs mentioning HOL
i haven't read this book in like 5 years but i really loved it when i read it. the johnny truant stuff, like people have said, really drags the story down, but the navidson record is soooo effective. people can talk down the "gimmicks" of the book but that sequence when there's only a few words per page as navidson explores the halls for the last time... i've never felt so horrified or claustrophobic or any sort of negative emotion while reading a book. so much more effective than any other normal horror novel. the labyrinth footnotes and appendixes only add to that maelstrom
>>17138267
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=axSh7EqNPmw
There you go anon.
>>17138312
this song sucks big time. thanks senpai
>>17136901
Its actually called a novel, you DIP
>>17135577
Apparently you don't understand jokes.
