House of Leaves- Review- The Great American Novel?

“This is not for you…” the first line of this novel reads. And by the end of the book, you will know what that means, precisely because nothing else will make sense at that point. You clearly must’ve picked up the wrong book, been at the wrong bookstore, the wrong section. This was a mistake. A waste of time. This is what you might think. But in the back of your mind, it’s still gonna be there. Crawling around in the grey matter of your brain like some sort of quantum neural worm. Because that’s what House of Leaves does.

House of Leaves was the debut novel of Mark Z. Danielewski. The son of a Polish avante-garde singer Ted Danielewski and the sister of American singer Poe, Mark Z. Danielweski is one of those weird and brilliant writers you’ve never heard of. He went to Yale and USC School of Cinema-Television and then, around that time, his father passed. This was the genesis of the idea that would become House of Leaves. A house bigger on the inside than the outside.

As you all know, I am a pretty big DOOM fan and one of DOOM’s most famous WADS is called “MY HOUSE.” In “MY HOUSE” you navigate a seemingly normal house that suddenly becomes extremely complex and mazelike. It’s one of the most intricate and artistic DOOM maps ever made and maybe one of the greatest user-made video game levels ever. That level is inspired, almost entirely, by House of Leaves.

House of Leaves is like no other book in the American literature pantheon. It’s completely unuitintive, it’s laden with footnotes, sidetracked naratives, unreliable narration, random and seemingly pointless diatribes on things like the Minotaur, architecture, echoes and photojournalism. Yet, it’s one of the most compelling books I’ve ever read and after a while becomes almost addictive. It’s more than just a normal book, it’s like a playable, constantly shifting object. I can’t even fully capture how it functions within the mind. There parts that are upside down or backwards or shaped like things, there are page long footnotes that are just list of names and things, most of which don’t even exist. It feels like the work of a schizophrenic or an alien.

But what is House of Leaves about?

So the book is credited to Zampano, with an introduction and notes by Johnny Truant. Surrounding these two pivotal authors are another set of editors, seemingly spearheaded by on guy called Ed. That’s not to mention the tens, if not hundreds of other voices presented through the footnotes in the form of quotes and interviews. But overall, the two main voices are Johnny Truant and Zampano.

The introduction establishes that Johnny Truant knew Zampano, who was a much older, strange man living in his area. Upon hearing of Zampano’s passing, Johnny Truant goes to look through some of his things and help clear out his apartment. There, he stumbles upon a massive heap of pages, the remains or beginnings of a book Zampano was writing about a film called “The Navidson Record.” Only problem- this film doesn’t exist. Not in the real world, nor the world of the book. And Zampano was actually blind. Even if this film existed, how would he have seen it?

Yet Johnny Truant takes this bundle of pages home with him and reads through it, at first curious, then compelled. The film the book is about concerns a house in Virginia owned by Pulitzer winning photojournalist Will Navidson, along with his companion Karen, a former model and their two kids Chad and Daisy. Navidson documents their daily lives with cameras frequently and this is why we (the reader and Zampano and the world) have evidence of the oddities and horrors of his home.

One day they wake up and there’s a new door, which leads to a new hallway that doesn’t make logical sense with the way the house looks on the outside. Then Navidson discovers that the house’s measurements are consistently off by 3/4”. He invites his brother Tom, a carpenter, to investigate and Tom promptly discovers that Navidson was wrong. The house is actually off by 5/8” of an inch. Then the hallway changes and a staircase appears and Navidson enlists more help, this time from notable and well known friends such as Professor Billy Reston and famous explorer Holloway and his team. Needless to say, these explorations become darker and more chilling the more they spend the time in the house.

Turns out the staircase not only goes a ways under the house but it actually changes it’s destination and that there’a an entire labyrinth inside of it. This labyrinth shifts and changes frequently, with distances growing and shrinking at seemingly random intervals, depending on who is interacting with it. There are some landmarks, but they don’t seem set in conventional time and space and it’s possible to not only spend days exploring the house but to also get entirely lost within it.

And that’s not all. The house appears to exhibit hostility and passive (negative) effects. Growling can be heard inside the labyrinth, the kids personalities change and Navidson himself becomes obsessed. His obsession with the house and it’s mysteries threatens his relationships with Karen and the kids and most of all, his sanity. And as much as this could be construed as Navidson’s fault, after a preponderance of evidence, it’s clear the house plays some role.

But it’s not just this narrative that’s interesting- it’s the detailed, robust way in which Zampano presents it. His academic approach allows us to see the characters from multiple angles, some of which enlarge and shrink them in our eyes. Old articles and essays about Karen’s smile and her previous sexual history, works that study Will Navidson’s photojournalistic techniques, anecdotes and tales about Tom Navidson’s everyman charisma- these all create a layered and enriching portrait of these characters and also give us some insight into Zampano’s panoramic worldview, even as he remains largely an enigma. And then there’s Johnny.

Johnny Truant, whether he knows it or not, is sick. And it’s evident pretty early on in his writing. Yes he gives some traditional upkeep style footnotes on Zampano’s work, but he also writes pages long rants about who he’s sleeping with and what he did yesterday and what he ate for dinner and how his job was. It feels annoying and like an unneeded segue at first. And then you get invested. You start to understand Johnny. He’s a complicated character, a fully formed broken young man. He drinks a lot, hooks up with a lot of women and parties hard. And yet, since beginning his work on Zampano’s novel, this all slows down. The narrative and it’s mystery grabs him and he soon becomes obsessed. He also becomes crazy.

He begins hearing things and seeing things, getting physically ill and unwell. Strange beasts hover in the corner of his eye. He becomes reclusive and delusional. He begins having bad dreams and measures the inside of his apartment, boarding up windows and skipping work. It’s alarming and sad and forms an enthralling counterpoint to Zampano’s work. His story is the hard reality, interwoven with the questionable reality of “The Navidson Record.” Or is it?

Credit to Hannah (haunting the staircase on Substack) We’ve never met, I just copied and pasted this image from the Internet.

So what the hell is actually going on? What is real in this weave of narratives? Who should we trust? Well, that’s where it gets tricky. Zampano is extremely convincing and produces a load of evidence and citations. But they’re all fake. None of these sources exist. And Johnny’s part? Well, he imagines things that he himself knows are imaginings. They can’t be real. But he also provides the context for Zampano’s work. So he must be real. But even in the most trusting and innocent reading, he comes off as extremely mentally ill by the conclusion of the book. Read past the ending and into the treasure trove of additional addendums present in the Second Edition (there is no First Edition) and you find out that Johnny’s mother is in an asylum with what is likely schizophrenia. Schizophrenia is a not a strictly hereditary disease. But it’s not….not a hereditary disease, if you catch my drift. If your mom has it, your early-mid 20s would be when you get to find out if you have it. And Johnny is in his early to mid 20s….

The thing is, this book is often marked as a horror novel or an “epistolary novel” or even simply as a novelty. But what it really is is a purposefully jarring study of existential grief. The clinical detachment of Zampano’s work juxtaposed with the raw and real perspective of Johnny creates this sense of deeply rooted sadness about the human condition. And that’s really what the house represents in a way. Darkness, loneliness. The idea that exploration is searching. It’s a beautifully constructed novel that maybe misses in some spots but overall has an overwhelming impact. But most importantly, it’s not really meant to be fully understood.

So is any of this real? Is some of it real? What does that mean for our characters? What does that mean for us? Does it make the story better or our characters fates better or worse that it happened or it didn’t? What does it say about humans in general? What is the message of such a work? Is there a message? Or is an act of just screaming into a void, an act that is as human as it is alien? You see how things spiral. I was truly floored by this novel. I’ll never understand it in all the years I live. Like Johnny, I can only see it’s inner workings out of the corner of my eye and when I turn it’s gone entirely, as if it was never there.

Either way, this is a brilliant work of art. The idea that a human sat down and wrote this, this, this absurdity of a novel, boggles the mind. This is the kind of book that someone writes in a book or a movie. It’s terribly sad and heartbreaking but also beautifully and delicately written. It’s smart and stuffy but also edgy. It feels cutting edge and ethereal but also extremely solid and steeped in literary tradition. It’s a weird book and knows it. It’s pretentious as hell and so eager to be so that it actually then becomes unpretentious. It’s a work of contradiction and painful realizations. It’s about a house, but so much more than a house.

I couldn’t recommend this book enough, which is funny because I’m not sure I should recommend it to anyone. It’s vile in parts and dark, mysterious and achingly unresolved. It leaves you wanting more yet feeling entirely too full. It scrambles your brain like an egg and then puts it back in your head. It’s truly one of the greatest books I’ve ever read purely off impact. After reading it for about a month, I’m barely sure it’s a book at all. It seems to evolve and change every time I read it and not in the usual way.

We come to art searching for answers and within those answers meaning. But House of Leaves creates only questions and leaves meaning further away than when you first picked it up. It’s a riveting book that doesn’t feel like a book at all at times. But nonetheless, for all it’s absurdity and confusion, I think it’s a clearcut contender for the title of “Great American Novel.” It’s innovative, unique and universal in weight once you come to understand even a little bit of it. I’m not saying read this book or don’t read it (READ IT!!). But I will say this- this is not meant for you.