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| House of Leaves | 
 enlarge | Author: Mark Z. Danielewski
Publisher: Pantheon
Category: Book
List Price: $19.95
Buy New: $7.25
You Save: $12.70 (64%)
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Avg. Customer Rating:  (563 reviews)
Sales Rank: 1637
Media: Paperback
Edition: 2nd
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 709
Shipping Weight (lbs): 2.3
Dimensions (in): 9 x 6.8 x 1.3
ISBN: 0375703764
Dewey Decimal Number: 813.54
EAN: 9780375703768
ASIN: 0375703764
Publication Date: March 7, 2000
Release Date: March 7, 2000
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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| Editorial Reviews:
Amazon.com
Had The Blair Witch Project been a book instead of a film, and had it been written by, say, Nabokov at his most playful, revised by Stephen King at his most cerebral, and typeset by the futurist editors of Blast at their most avant-garde, the result might have been something like House of Leaves. Mark Z. Danielewski's first novel has a lot going on: notably the discovery of a pseudoacademic monograph called The Navidson Record, written by a blind man named Zampano, about a nonexistent documentary film--which itself is about a photojournalist who finds a house that has supernatural, surreal qualities. (The inner dimensions, for example, are measurably larger than the outer ones.) In addition to this Russian-doll layering of narrators, Danielewski packs in poems, scientific lists, collages, Polaroids, appendices of fake correspondence and "various quotes," single lines of prose placed any which way on the page, crossed-out passages, and so on. Now that we've reached the post-postmodern era, presumably there's nobody left who needs liberating from the strictures of conventional fiction. So apart from its narrative high jinks, what does House of Leaves have to offer? According to Johnny Truant, the tattoo-shop apprentice who discovers Zampano's work, once you read The Navidson Record, For some reason, you will no longer be the person you believed you once were. You'll detect slow and subtle shifts going on all around you, more importantly shifts in you. Worse, you'll realize it's always been shifting, like a shimmer of sorts, a vast shimmer, only dark like a room. But you won't understand why or how. We'll have to take his word for it, however. As it's presented here, the description of the spooky film isn't continuous enough to have much scare power. Instead, we're pulled back into Johnny Truant's world through his footnotes, which he uses to discharge everything in his head, including the discovery of the manuscript, his encounters with people who knew Zampano, and his own battles with drugs, sex, ennui, and a vague evil force. If The Navidson Record is a mad professor lecturing on the supernatural with rational-seeming conviction, Truant's footnotes are the manic student in the back of the auditorium, wigged out and furiously scribbling whoa-dude notes about life. Despite his flaws, Truant is an appealingly earnest amateur editor--finding translators, tracking down sources, pointing out incongruities. Danielewski takes an academic's--or ex-academic's--glee in footnotes (the similarity to David Foster Wallace is almost too obvious to mention), as well as other bogus ivory-tower trappings such as interviews with celebrity scholars like Camille Paglia and Harold Bloom. And he stuffs highbrow and pop-culture references (and parodies) into the novel with the enthusiasm of an anarchist filling a pipe bomb with bits of junk metal. House of Leaves may not be the prettiest or most coherent collection, but if you're trying to blow stuff up, who cares? --John Ponyicsanyi
Product Description
Years ago, when House of Leaves was first being passed around, it was nothing more than a badly bundled heap of paper, parts of which would occasionally surface on the Internet. No one could have anticipated the small but devoted following this terrifying story would soon command. Starting with an odd assortment of marginalized youth -- musicians, tattoo artists, programmers, strippers, environmentalists, and adrenaline junkies -- the book eventually made its way into the hands of older generations, who not only found themselves in those strangely arranged pages but also discovered a way back into the lives of their estranged children.
Now, for the first time, this astonishing novel is made available in book form, complete with the original colored words, vertical footnotes, and newly added second and third appendices.
The story remains unchanged, focusing on a young family that moves into a small home on Ash Tree Lane where they discover something is terribly wrong: their house is bigger on the inside than it is on the outside.
Of course, neither Pulitzer Prize-winning photojournalist Will Navidson nor his companion Karen Green was prepared to face the consequences of that impossibility, until the day their two little children wandered off and their voices eerily began to return another story -- of creature darkness, of an ever-growing abyss behind a closet door, and of that unholy growl which soon enough would tear through their walls and consume all their dreams.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 558 more reviews...
 probably not worth it. May 12, 2008
A lot of people I know do like it, so there's something to be said for that, but I couldn't stand it. I have to say, when I first got it I was excited, just opening up to a random page, it looked chaotic and fascinating. I saw the comparisons to Borges, Pynchon and Nabokov in the reviews and I thought it would probably be an amazing book. Then I read it. The problem with it is, that though Danlielewski took a lot from Borges, Pynchon, Nabokov and Wallace, all of it was superficial. The story lacked a purpose. It was really something more like playing with style, without a good story to tell.
It might be interesting to people looking to disect and analyze something because it's there, but I personally don't think it's worth your time. It has worked as a decent primer for some people to get them into more serious authors like those whose work it's compared to, though, and if you're unfamiliar with authors like Nabakov and Pynchon, you may like it, but if you have read them and liked them, avoid it.
 Totally took me in May 6, 2008
This book, if you'll let it, will consume you. I still have trouble staying inside sometimes (I finished the book about a month ago), and if I think about it enough, I'll get chills.
Unique find April 28, 2008
This is a great book. One of the best things about this book is that you won't find others like it. The style is eclectic and draws you in from the beginning. Not only that you will learn a lot about an assortment of subjects (i.e. mazes, echos,...) Plus the description of the "film" in the book is very interesting and will leave you wanting to know more.
It is a good book for those that don't mind non-sequitors and unconventional storytelling.
One of THE BEST books i've ever read! April 16, 2008
Mark Z. Danielewski's "The House of Leaves" is certainly a rare find. It maintains to be funny, sexy, scary, amusing, and beautiful at the same time. A nice blend of Poltergeist, The Amityville Horror, The Blair Witch Project, and The Ring, with a style similar to famous authors Stephen King and Dean Koontz, it is, in itself, "a poetic labyrinth" with a story structure that is between an expository text/film review/journal/novel
Obsessive House of Horrors April 11, 2008
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
I came across some references to House of Leaves and was intrigued by the reviews. I became even more interested when my local library told me they didn't have it and didn't have any plans to get it. Hmmmmm. I came home and ordered it, then waited for this masterpiece that people either obsess over or hate entirely to get here. I flipped through it when it arrived to see what all the hype was about. My first impression was that it was a cluster...erm...mess. All of the strange formatting and different fonts made it seem horribly busy and my impression was that someone had gone out of his way to make a statement. Ah, the disappointment.
Not one to give up, I resigned myself to start the book and see where it led me. Only a few pages in (hooked), I made the executive decision to arm myself with those little page-marker sticky notes so I could go back and re-visit things of interest. Superficially, the challenge at first is to develop your own tempo in reading between the story (The Navidson Report) and the narrative. It took a little getting used to but once I got the hang of it, I actually found that it added to the story. This is expounded on further into the book when the strange formatting and page layout comes into play. What I'd thought would be a horribly distracting, PITA gimmick turned out to be an integral part of the story. Yes, in a few places it was a bit distracting. However, in most places it heightened the reading experience and upped the creepy factor exponentially. In some spots I actually found myself holding my breath as I turned the pages, not physically able to read fast enough to keep up with the suspense and dismay that was building as I read. Wow. My copy is littered with those sticky page-markers. Yeah, its that good and I found myself embracing its complexity. It grows on you.
This book has more layers than an onion. There is symbolism and foreshadowing galore, and a multitude of hidden codes within the text. Some folks will only catch the blatantly obvious, but the more astute people will catch the subtle 'secret' codes that have been painstakingly included. Everything in there has been carefully placed for a reason. I found after I read it the first time that the fun of reading it a second time is that you know what happens so you can pay even closer attention to the hidden goodies. Keep some page markers handy as you read so that you can go back and analyze the things that caught your eye on the first read.
When you're finished, I strongly suggest that you visit the HoL forum on the Internet. There are people who have picked this book apart and I guarantee you will be astounded by what you've missed and what others have found.
I loved the interactive experience of this book. It is a highly personal experience for the reader. A lot of the underlying messages and tones (and codes) can be interpreted in a multitude of ways, leaving plenty of room for the book to mean something entirely personal to you as a reader. It is artistic, experimental, and a fun read. I strongly recommend it.
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