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House of Leaves
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Binding: Paperback
Dewey Decimal Number: 813.54
EAN: 9780375703768
Edition: 2nd
ISBN: 0375703764
Label: Pantheon
Manufacturer: Pantheon
Number Of Items: 1
Number Of Pages: 709
Publication Date: March 07, 2000
Publisher: Pantheon
Release Date: March 07, 2000
Studio: Pantheon
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Editorial Review:
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 Zampanò, 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 Zampanò'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 Zampanò, 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
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.
Customer Reviews
Average Rating: 
Rating:  - I promised myself to only write reviews of my top 5 Fav. books and this is one of them...
So here we go.
I read some of the reviews before mine, and I must disagree with some of them...I first read this book when I was 19 and I didn't find it "challenging " in anyway if anything, this is the first literature piece that I have encounter , that makes you interact with it , to reveal secrets, and to be able to understand more, also it isn't scary in anyway as some people have described it. If I were to warn you about one thing, it would be that when you do read it, you feel emotionally ... Read More
Rating: - Cronenberg For Movie
Who else here thinks this book should be made into a movie by David Cronenberg? It makes perfect sense. He's taken on this type of subject matter before. I think the notion of directing "unfilmmable books" really intrigues the guy, i.e. Burroughs "Naked Lunch" and Ballards "Crash". I think this book would fit in well with his filmography. How can we notify him that this book should be his next project? If anyone out there knows him personally, please tell him.
Rating: - Terrifying, Horrifying and Tragic
Danielewski has created a genre of his own. Reading House of Leaves is like watching a film on paper. His method of writing in frames (as if it were a film reel) is nothing short of genius. His use of footnotes and fake texts had me feeling like I was doing investigative research on something absolutely terrifying. Johnny Truant's interludes and back story are another amazing innovation in writing. The best way that I describe this work to fellow readers is that it's a intertwined three-part narrative. ... Read More
Rating: - amazing
This book is absolutely amazing. I would recommend it to anyone. Actually I wouldn't. It literally changed my life... It's moved me to feel things I've never felt before. I find myself scared of the dark (I've never been scared of it) and the book has made me hyperventilate and everything has become so unusual to me. It's a great book, but it's more than just a book..
Rating: - Great Book
This book is an adventure wrapped up in a mystery inside a fantasy world almost too real to be fictional. It was absolutely captivating.
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