The New Canon: House of Leaves by Mark Z. Danielewski - Page 2

But this book is not for the faint of heart. I’m not just talking about the macabre Stephen King-ish atmosphere in this iconoclastic novel — which is downright creepy at times. Even more striking is the way this book forces readers out of their comfort zone. Danielewski gives you no quarter, no place to hide. There are a handful of books I have encountered over the years — such as Heidegger’s Being and Time or Joyce’s Ulysses or Pynchon’s Gravity’s Rainbow — that possess a “will to power,” an ambition to dominate the reader. You must address books of this sort on their own terms, or not at all. House of Leaves is one of those works. It sets its own rules, and you can play or walk away, but not much in-between.

For those who are patient in tackling this monster, Danielewski delivers a brilliant conventional novella in epistolary form toward the close of his book. This section has been published separately as The Whalestoe Letters, and is well worth reading if you don’t have the courage to enter the whole House of Leaves. Yet don’t kid yourself: this incisive story-within-a-story only gives you a glimpse of what this author has constructed.

And what has he constructed? Take a night in the funhouse with the doors locked. Mix in the mutterings of mad academic pushed over the brink by a persnickety tenure committee. Add footage from a surrealistic film auteur, the worldview of a tattoo artist, the metaphysics of fortune-teller, the tricks of a vengeful print shop devil. Simmer over a fire of burning reference books. Spice with various fonts. That is the closest I can get to describing House of Leaves.

For someone like me, who doesn’t skim or speed read fiction, the only thing scarier than reading House of Leaves is the idea of re-reading it. Yet I am tempted to do so, if only to consider some of the alternative angles to this text. You could read this book as a savage commentary on literary and artistic criticism. You could read it as a verbal equivalent of a labyrinth, or as some sort of a Borgesian nightmare brought to life. You might look at the genre-oriented aspects of the story, and classify it as a horror tale or a romance or a Philip-K-Dick-sian exploration of a universe gone crazy. There are many doors into House of Leaves, although I am still unsure about the exits. Put simply, in an age that has a fetish over deconstructing the text, this is one text that will keep you busy for a long, long time.

Article Author: Ted Gioia

Ted Gioia is a writer and musician. He is the author of Delta Blues, The History of Jazz and, most recently, The Birth (and Death) of the Cool. You can follow Ted Gioia on Twitter at www.twitter.com/tedgioia.

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