#pelefina

“This is not for you”

Okay.

Okay.

If you haven’t read it, House of Leaves is a post-modern book written by Mark Z. Danielewski in 2000 written in epistolary form. It’s a story within a story within a story within a story. What do I mean by that? Well at the heart of House of Leaves is The Navidson Record, a proposed documentary about a photographer, Will Navidson, who buys a house to reconnect with his family; his partner Karen Green and their children, Chad and Daisy.

Not missing any opportunity to work, Navidson sets up cameras around the house to capture little moments of their daily lives. Then one day, they notice that the inside of the house is a little bigger than the outside. Then a little bigger. And bigger. Then one day a doorway that wasn’t there before appears in the living room of the house. Opening the doorway they find a hallway. The bulk of The Navidson Record is the exploration of that hallway.

So I say bulk of The Navidson Record, isn’t this the book? Well, yes and no. Because taking a step back, we have Zampano. Zampano is a blind uh, I guess maybe former academic? Zampano is examining the truthfulness of The Navidson Record, touching on the filming style of it. Examining the lives of Navidson and Karen. Delving into critical discussions, photography, architecture, Biblical studies. Only House of Leaves doesn’t stop here.

Because Zampano recently died. So we’re introduced to Johnny Truant, who was introduced to the deceased Zampano through his friend Lude, who knows that Truant will love this guy’s apartment and the rabbit hole of The Navidson Record. So we’re also given through Truant’s footnotes of the story his life story; way more of his sexual encounters than I cared to know about, his lusting over a stripper who frequents the tattoo parlor he works for named Thumper, on account of her tattoo based on the Disney’s Bambi character.

Finally, we have the unnamed Editors of House of Leaves, who are adding footnotes to all of the above throughout the entirety of the story. Also keeping in mind is the author, Mark Z. Danielewski and the reader, all taking part in this story, published now twenty-three years ago.

So House of Leaves is a book I’ve *attempted* to read several times and failed to do so until this past week, when I devoured the book. As I sit here writing this, I’m sort of mixed on whether devouring House of Leaves is the proper way to read it, or if not reading it alongside another book, sort of ploddingly moving through it would not have been the better method.

House of Leaves is fairly infamous at this point, unlike when I first heard about it. It’s funny because it’s origins are similar to The Blair Witch Project. I remember people claiming that no, this book was based on true events, which of course plays right into the post-modernity style Danielewski was going for. Critiquing literature and literature critics. One of the reasons it’s infamous for the style the book is written in. So I described the layers of the onion, so to speak, but I’ve read and watched quite a few opinions of the book at this point and I agree that the book in and of itself is the labyrinth of The Navidson Record.

That is you’re meant to get lost in it and like a labyrinth, there are dead ends. Unlike a labyrinth, I can’t say that at this point, twenty-three years into the story that I enjoyed “solving” the labyrinth. And that’s primarily for the Johnny Truant sections of the book. Johnny is fairly certain that The Navidson Record is a fabrication, which to me, along with the story of Johnny’s mother, Pelefina, her notes, is actually a fairly big clue that Johnny is falsified.

Post modernism was a huge thing in the early aughts, where I don’t feel like its influences today are as far reaching, but pretty cliché by this point in time. But there was The Blair Witch Project, like I said that had the is this real-is this not real and all of the commentary that came with that. In video gaming you have Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty, a post-modern video game, which critiques the very people playing the game, playing off their expectations of what a sequel to Metal Gear Solid should be. There’s Mulholland Dr., which came out the same year as House of Leaves and is playing with *very* similar themes and to me, is superior.

So because of Johnny’s mothers letters, it seemed pretty clear to me that Johnny, the Johnny we’re reading about, is a fabrication of Pelefina. Her letter about creating a son who could live the life she never had is written nine months before Johnny’s birth. I think Pelefina actually choked Johnny to death and everything else that happens in House of Leaves is her way of coping with having done this, ala Diane in Mulholland Dr. and the events of that movie being a fever dream of Diane’s.

Anyway, so like this is all just interpretation and there’s probably no “answer”. That’s one aspect of post-modernity that I do like, the chin stroking that happens from it is just part of the cycle of this stuff. So do I like House of Leaves? A day after finishing it. Sitting here thinking about it, I like it more today than I did yesterday. I bounced off Truant’s footnotes pretty hard while reading it. As I write this though, I like the idea of that story quite a bit (the slight comparing it to Mulholland Dr. is no slight, that’s a Top 10 movie for me). The Navidson Record parts were pretty great, especially the earlier parts. Some of the later parts didn’t hit as hard for me, especially as they escape the house, but I also didn’t read this in optimal conditions. Oh, but I did *love* The NeverEnding Story aspect of House of Leaves being a book within House of Leaves. And I sort of wonder if like being frustrated by the Truant parts is akin to being frustrated by the labyrinth. I would have liked to learn more about Zampano, I think some of what we learned about him is interesting and I think I’d prefer that over Truant, but then that’s kind of the point of my interpretation.

Would I recommend House of Leaves? That’s a hard sell for me. Because how do you succinctly sell House of Leaves to someone in a way that doesn’t ruin the surprises or put them off the book? I feel like *most* people who want to read this story will seek it out and I think the reader knows pretty early on whether or not this story is for them.