"House of Leaves" Review

Thoughts after finishing the book:

Multiple interpretations based on who you imagine is in charge of the story. And how the story is ordered. And when the story was written. And the story is really 3 stories, maybe 4, maybe 5?. With 3 authors. Maybe 4 (Editors). Maybe 5? (MZD)

Zampano: Pseudonym meaning Big Shot (derogatory). The old man that Johnny remembers dying is a mysterious façade that he can attach himself to. Which Johnny does frequently attach to other peoples' lives and memories without realizing. It's really hard to tell how real he was, and how tied together he was to the House of Leaves. His and Johnny's ramblings blur, giving an impression that they may even be the same person. His blindness forces a lot of questions to come to the forefront of the whole story and meta narrative. How did he do anything he did? What did Zampano “see?”

Johnny: Johnny Truant is also a fake name. His memory is so bad that he has no clue who he is or which parts of the book he "wrote." Which parts he destroyed. When he shipped the book to the editors. When the book was published. He surprises himself to find what he has been working on is already published and people know his name. Or did he ever write the book at all? Did the letters his mom sent him end up being her notes and inspirations that wrote the book in the first place? Did anything Johnny ever did happen? Were the sex romps and violent outbursts playful and terrible fantasies to make himself seem less fractured? More alive? Was he invented by his mother, as he already died at birth 4 days after being born with holes in his head? Or was the strangling memory the real cause of his death? Is he real and this entire book is a love letter to his insane mother, trapped in a nutHOUSE, while she is periodically raped by her caretakers? OR IS HE CHAD? AND KAREN IS PELAFINA? THE ONLY TWO SURVIVORS OF A DREADFUL ACCIDENT THAT DROVE THEM BOTH TO MADNESS

Pelafina: She is pervasive throughout the story once you discover her style [DANTE]. But I think Mark Z. D. tries to tie the book itself to her (Lievre typo to livre, meaning book) and I just think it's the less interesting interpretation. But I'm not sure MZD really minds how people interpret the book. The different interpretations are kinda the point.

Editors: Never have the full picture. But are likely the ones who ended up gluing it together anyway.

MZD: Well yeah, duh.

Is the book really about a shipwreck? Sinking to the bottom of an inky black ocean? The labyrinth becoming rows of dark gray hallways slowly filling with and emptying of water as the ship tumbles, flips, beneath the ocean, lacking gravity but being pulled to the center of something vast, destructive, forcing metal and wood to scream and gasp, as the last man, men? struggle to survive the arctic cold, rescue teams trying to recover them before the ship reaches the bottom of the ocean? Sliding down a muddy pitch of underwater Earth, pushed/rocked by water currents, thought to be mostly empty? Who really knows what lurks in the darkest depths of the coldest oceans on Earth? Is there nothing, or be there dragons? Rescue members dying in the process of trying to prevent more deaths. The ship taking one last tumble off a cliff just as the rescue mission is about to conclude, taking 2 men and [Zampano's son?] with it? One step forward, two steps back. A mountain of earth and water that grows taller as the ship sinks farther. The water travels, sloshes, and slides the occupants into new dizzying perspectives. A steel shell becoming home to some lucky kaiju-sized sea snail.
Probably not. But it's a fun interpretation.

IS THERE A BOOK? : The House is the Book is the House is the Book is the House is the Book is the XXXXXXXX

Descending vs Ascending: Birth, Death, Death, Birth, Birth, Death, Hell, Heaven...

Cardinal directions: Meaningless in a vehicle that has no notion of, or respect for, physics. The damn thing overlaps.

Did the children live? Did Navidson and Karen? If they existed, and the House was real, unlikely.

This entire story is a maze with no exit and no entrance. No creator and no destroyer. Holes in the brain. Windows to perspectives of nothing. It is a paradox solved only by the mind which interprets it. Any angle you read it from explodes with more questions. If there's an answer you want to find in the text, you can find it. If you decide a through-line is impossible, then it is. Just as the House changes shape depending on how the occupant/traveler imagines it, just as the author changes depending on how the reader imagines it, just as the ending changes depending on how the reader trusts or distrusts what they're observing, it's untrustworthy and genuine at the same time. It's not until you are inside the House, the book, that you understand you were already trapped.

If I had a one-liner for the story it would be: Living in a Post-COVID society really has colored all my perceptions of what "cabin fever" really fucking means, including in what are supposed to be fictionally and supernaturally horrifying situations.

How does memory work? How do we use memory? Where does memory start and end?
We see memory through multiple mediums

• Physical. True to a point (easily falsifiable to a point). Tied to a piece of hardware or some record. Shareable and rewatchable in the same form until republished and repackaged in new hardware with edits, additions, subtractions, and eventually dissolving with time, leaving you unable to experience it yourself or with anyone else the same way ever again. Limited only by length of tape, bytes of data, bits of streaming code.

• Relational. Someone experiences something. They relate that to someone else. Who relates it to someone else. The retelling polluted by each subsequent retelling. Imperfect recursion. Telephone Game. Until all original context is lost and all that remains are interpretations. Sinking sand. Object impermanence. Details leaving the story and re-entering the story at the will, or whim, of the Storyteller. The camera focused too deeply, or too broadly, on any given subject. Limited by angle and lens. Quality indeterminate. Reflecting the original voice. Echoing.

• Personal. The original experience. Voiced by the one who experiences the memory. Difficult to verify in itself. Deceptions and self-deceptions spread just as easily as truth. So which memory is truth and which memory is false? Are those terms easily blended? Mercurial? Elusive? Can you trust someone to take accurate measurements of a room within fractions of an inch? To remember what they did hours ago? Minutes ago? What you heard someone say earlier today? Can you remember what you ate for breakfast 7 days ago? 6 days ago? 5 days ago? On a specific day when the sun shined on your face, you smelled sizzling meat, fizzling drinks, chlorinated water, and the person you had a crush on said your name, took your hand, and dragged you somewhere private to engage in youthful taboos? And who could confirm it if nobody ever saw it with you? When even the scars on a man's arms can tell you they are likely burns but the person wearing them can tell you anything they want about how they got them? Can you trust your senses? Are you smelling the death and decay that I'm smelling? Is toast burning? Are ou feeing the same colors I'm feeing? Do you ever feel like you are being watched for no reason only to discover it was all in your head? How can you ever truft yourfelf again after discovering your senses can be corrupted? When you discover that your memory is not a glue of conti[ ]uous mo[ ]nts from b[ ]rth to now, char[ ]able and verifiable down to what people [ ], s[ ], but a fractious neverending fleepwalk in which you clofe your eyes, awaken not here, the[ ] here again, then not here, [ ], then not here, then her[ ], then not her[ ], then her[ ], sometimes not remembering her[ ], not [ ]ng not here. True to a point. Eafily falfifiable to a point. Tied to the hardware of your body. Shareable and rewatchable in the same form of your own mind until reimagined, remembered, told with edits, additionf, fubtractionf, eventually diffolving to atrophied cellf, leaving you unable to experience it the original way ever again. Limited by length of lobes, cells of brain tiffue, bits of streaming erythrocytes, g[ ]ps in your XXXX like windowf to a nonexiftent foul. You experience something someone elfe experienced through their telling. You retell it to fomeone elfe. Who relates it to fomeone elfe. Each retelling corrupted by each fubfequent recounting. Imperfect recurfion. Telephone. All original intention is loft. Quickfand. Object permanence. Leaving detailf in and out of the ftory at your will, or whimfy. Zonule of Zinn focufed too deeply, or not enough, on what you meant to fay. Limited by perfpective and vifion. Inconclu five and a half. Projecting your voice. Echo... Ing - - - . . .
  Until you get the ending that you imagine you deserve
  Or want to be leave it was all just a dream
  Walk through the door
  to your end

The physical is relational is personal is physical is relational is personal is House is book is MINOTAUR is

X

This making any sense to anyone else? I don't remember what I was trying to say.

Anyway. 5/10 wtf there was so much weird sex stuff and the run-on sentences gave me headaches.