hell of a read! rarely does a book challenge its readers in this way. the narrative is complex, the characters are multilayered and unique, and the imagery will stay with you. if you're up to it, it is more than worth a read!

Boy shut up

.
Did anyone else near keel over when Derrida and Bloom hit on Karen? No? Just me? If Derrida asked anyone out I'm sure he did it while talking in circles. And Bloom? Well i think Danielewski nailed that one on the head. Sure of it.

The best thing about this book is that You don't have to know semiotics to enjoy this. You don't really need to "get" all the jokes (and honestly, he's poking fun much of the time). But you can still see what he is doing with the text. You can experience it.

I'm afraid certain people might get angry at my comparing Danielewski to Burgess, especially Burgess himself, but I felt like reading House of Leaves was a similar experience to reading Clockwork Orange because you are challenged to learn how to read the book. You have to relearn to read and so you're asked to be fully present as reader. For Burgess this was through language but for Danielewski it's through the text design.

I loved how I was forced to find my way through the pages of the story much as the explorers had to find their way through the house. At times i felt lost and i felt Danielewski controlling my every move. If you don't play his game you might miss out or become even more lost. And no, I didn't see it as a gimmick. It didn't get old. Through its refusal to revert to a standard format, the book feels like this laborious love story for semiotics. With its whole being, the book asks you to forget your preconceptions of how a novel, especially a horror novel, should appear. There's no concrete definitions here, no hegemony, no single truth.

From the very start with Truant's focus on authenticity and his obsession with translating, the message is delivered. Truant wants to contain and desperately wants to know the truth about this work. He wants to change words as he sees fit, he wants to translate all, he wants to redirect the story. And he wishes that he knew the author's real name and that Zampano, as he surrenders to calling him, wrote accurate footnotes. What is the point after all of fabricating footnotes? Something that is widely used in academia to authenticate, and give authority, guide to truth. I don't know why but while it seems to poke fun at all of the sedentary academics fussing about with their APA and Chicago styling, it also seems to point to something larger. Zampano's refusal to play by the rules academia set forth turns Truant's idea of footnotes on its head. Like everything else, this can't be trusted. Even the fact that Zampano is blind, and cannot see for himself or write for himself all the time plays into this question of accuracy, authenticity and truth. And in that vein, don't get me started on the unreliable narrator bit or the different narratives that could in fact be the same (is Johnny all of these people? Is the whole darn book exhibiting his loss of control and of his own mind?). I could go on and on.

The Bcc says it all for me: "a semiotician's love story." It took me so long to grasp the basics of semiotics. And I still barely grasp them. If only someone would have dropped this in front of me at the time in my life when i first started reading Barthes and Derrida. The house is language. The word and object not at all what it seems. No one larger truth or hegemonic structure to rely on. It even defies math when the inside and outside measurements do not add up. Like language, the house cannot be contained and those inhabiting the house must be careful or it will contain them.

The book itself engages in play as Derrida defines it. There is no center; the center is constantly moving. There's absence an there is presence. It is sort of hurting my head to think of all of this again. I feel like I'm going in circles.

I'm sorry. This was just all to say: I bought it. I drank the kool-aid.