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House of Leaves: The Remastered Full-Color Edition
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THE MIND-BENDING CULT CLASSIC ABOUT A HOUSE THAT’S LARGER ON THE INSIDE THAN ON THE OUTSIDE • A masterpiece of horror and an astonishingly immersive, maze-like reading experience that redefines the boundaries of a novel.
”Simultaneously reads like a thriller and like a strange, dreamlike excursion into the subconscious.” —Michiko Kakutani, The New York Times
“Thrillingly alive, sublimely creepy, distressingly scary, breathtakingly intelligent—it renders most other fiction meaningless.” —Bret Easton Ellis, bestselling author of American Psycho
“This demonically brilliant book is impossible to ignore.” —Jonathan Lethem, award-winning author of Motherless Brooklyn
One of The Atlantic’s Great American Novels of the Past 100 Years
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 made available in book form, complete with the original colored words, vertical footnotes, and second and third appendices, the story remains unchanged. Similarly, the cultural fascination with House of Leaves remains as fervent and as imaginative as ever. The novel has gone on to inspire doctorate-level courses and masters theses, cultural phenomena like the online urban legend of “the backrooms,” and incredible works of art in entirely unrealted mediums from music to video games.
Neither Pulitzer Prize-winning photojournalist Will Navidson nor his companion Karen Green was prepared to face the consequences of the impossibility of their new home, 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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House of Leaves: The Remastered Full-Color Edition
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Original price was: $29.00.$17.36Current price is: $17.36.
David –
Do the words meta, post-modern, or experimental make you cringe when used to describe books? Then turn back now. I feel the need to say that up front because many people seem to go into this book expecting a horror novel and wind up wasting their money. Just take a look at the genres that goodreads lists this as. Horror, fiction, fantasy, and mystery. With inapt labels like that, it’s easy to see how people could get the wrong idea.
This is not a horror novel, nor is it a mystery novel or a fantasy novel. This book is, among many other things, a personal story about the author’s parents presented as experimental literary fiction that’s thinly veiled as a horror novel. Confused? Good, stay that way for now, and don’t think too hard about what I just said. I’m not that into horror novels, and I generally like post-modern and experimental stuff, and I knew what I was getting into when I bought this. Know what you’re getting into, that’s all I’m trying to say.
Here’s the basic concept as clear and concise as I can tell it. There are essentially three narrators that will be addressing you, the reader.
1) Zampano, an old blind man
2) Johnny Truant, a thirty-something druggie
3) The “editors”
Johnny’s friend, Lude, knows Zampano because he lives in the same apartment building. The old man, ominously, tells Lude he’s going to die soon, and does. After the body is gone, Lude and Johnny sneak into the apartment to take a look around at Zampano’s things. They find a crazy manuscript, which Johnny takes home with him.
The manuscript is a non-fiction book/dissertation about a documentary called “The Navidson Record.” The Navidson Record is about a famous photojournalist named Will Navidson and his family moving into a new house that is bigger on the inside. When I say non-fiction, I mean it. It reads like a textbook. On every page there are footnotes about other articles and other books that reference this documentary that, by all accounts, doesn’t exist (I’ll get to this in a second).
It starts out simple at first. After the family returns home from vacation they notice a hallway on the second floor connecting two bedrooms that wasn’t there before. They track down a blueprint of the building and see that there is a space between the walls, although it’s not supposed to be a finished hallway with doors. Okay, no big deal, maybe they didn’t notice the doors before, it’s a new house after all and they had just moved in before going on vacation. Then comes the realization that measuring the house through that hallway results in an extra inch that shouldn’t exist, and that can’t be explained. Then a new door appears, on the first floor this time, that should lead to an empty back yard but instead leads to a long, dark hallway that extends into an endless labyrinth of cavernous, thousand-foot rooms that leads to god knows where and contains god knows what, and the exploration of this door is the main focus of the documentary.
So Johnny finds this manuscript, reads it, edits it, adds his own footnotes relating to research he’s done on Zampano’s life and the manuscript contents (translations of foreign phrases, for instance), but also personal tangents about his own life and stream of consciousness ramblings. In the prologue where he explains how he found the manuscript, he also says that The Navidson Record doesn’t actually exist. Johnny’s editors also appear in footnotes and in the first say they have never met Johnny Truant in person, only communicating via letters and rare phone calls. Weird, right?
What follows is 528 pages of an interwoven, multi-layered story. On the one hand, you have Zampano’s non-fiction book about this fictitious documentary, which simmers as a slow-paced “found-footage” horror novel that can be unsettling, thought-provoking, but is likely to disappoint hardcore horror fans looking for adrenaline-pumping scares.
Then you have Johnny’s story, told through long footnotes, which is more vague and slow to reveal itself, but the basic idea is that although he knows the manuscript is fiction, the act of reading it causes him to lose his marbles. Whether the manuscript or Johnny’s brain chemistry is to blame is up to the reader. Whether Johnny is even telling the truth is up to the reader. And, to be honest, Johnny’s parts can sometimes be hard to read because he’s just pitiable and depressing and the stream of consciousness prose can wear down your focus. It gets Joyce-esque at times, though only for short stretches, because Danielewski is a nice man who wants you to have a good time, unlike Joyce, who hates you and hates fun. Then the “story” part ends, and you have 130 pages of appendices (which you should read) which include things like:
Zampano’s writings which are not a part of The Navidson Record
The obituary of Johnny’s dad
Childhood letters from Johnny’s crazy, institutionalized, long dead mother
Poems
So what does it all mean?
Well, it means a clever and perhaps over-educated man named Mark Danielewski decided to write a novel that experiments with the format of the novel, that pushes the boundaries of what a novel can be and what it can do. While much of it could quite fairly be called a gimmick, and it won’t be redefining how all novels are written going forward, it’s a gimmick that works, that is unique, that is stimulating, that is discussion-worthy, that makes the world more interesting by existing, and isn’t that what good art is supposed to do? It is an unmitigated success at being singular, and because it is singular it will inspire intense love and intense hatred from different people.
It means that while there are answers, you will have to work for them. I mean this both figuratively and literally. On the literal side, there is a letter in the appendices that is written in a simple code, which you will have to translate into a coherent message with pen and paper. And that’s a code that is plainly said to be a code. There are other codes that are truly hidden.
Many sections have weird, cluttered layouts that make the act of reading them hard, and make tracking down the right footnote a scavenger hunt. You’ll be presented with footnotes that make no sense until you realize the text is broken up over several pages and presented backwards. There are a lot of elements to the story, little throwaway lines and facts that you need to remember, or write down. How did Johnny’s dad die. How did Navidson’s dad die. Stuff like that. While it’s not absolutely necessary, I’d recommend having a notebook handy starting on page one. I have an amazing memory, took notes here and there, and still wish I’d taken more. Like I said, this book is work. It’s fun work though, depending on your tastes and personality. I’m an INTP and I loved it. Your mileage may vary.
On the figurative side, the book still won’t hold your hand and spell out what it all means in flashing neon. That’s up to you to figure out by gathering all the evidence together and deconstructing the book on several different levels by asking yourself what’s true and what isn’t, what matters and what doesn’t, what’s literal and what’s figurative, what’s the metanarrative, what’s the subtext. Ultimately it’s up to you to decide when you’re satisfied with your answer.
While this is nowhere near as open to interpretation as most books you’d label as post-modern or modernist, it is still open to interpretation compared to a typical novel, which isn’t open to interpretation at all. There are no easy answers, no definitive answers, but there are satisfying answers that I firmly believe are more or less what the author intended, if you’re willing to put in the effort to discover them and have a flexible mind that delights in abstract concepts. Alternatively there are, of course, existing breakdowns of it on the internet that you can turn to for some help, although none I’ve read have gone far enough into speculation. They present facts and evidence, point out what’s true or not, but none of them have drawn the kind of final conclusion that I’ve drawn. That’s how it should be. You should decide for yourself. If none of this sounds like fun to you, I recommend giving this one a pass
Anonymous –
Una lectura increíble, aunque difícil. Está a un nivel distinto el libro, es una obra de arte. Me ha gustado tanto hasta el punto de haberme comprado una segunda unidad porque la primera se me estropeó (quedó fea y arrugada) por un accidente con agua, aún habiéndomelo leído ya.
En cuanto al envío y la entrega, perfecto. El libro llegó impecable y rápido.
Usuario –
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El libro es muy bueno, una lectura original. El libro es de pasta dura (hardcover) con un diseño de collage en ambos lados y tiene una solapa (case) con el bien conocido diseño del laberinto en relive con fondo negro. Ambas tienen distinto diseño. Personalmente preferiría que el diseño de la solapa la tuviera en la tapa dura. La edición definitiva (full edition) es la mejor opción ya que puedes notar todos los detalles extra que tiene el libro, referencias dentro del mismo texto.
Fraser Simons –
Its a bit complex to read at first, but It was worth the hassle, it was a pleasant read.
Lionheart –
I’ll try not to repeat what others must have said, and others after them repeated, probably a thousand times by now.
1. The book is not as big as it appears (opposite of the HOUSE!) Many pages have just a few lines written on them, or the formatting is such that you can blow right through them. So don’t be intimidated. It’s actually a pretty quick read.
2. The main story (about the Navidson HOUSE) is by far the most intriguing narrative going on in the book. It’s like a Twilight Zone episode written by an unusually sensitive Rod Serling, if you can picture that. In fact, the idea underlying “The Navidson Record” closely resembles a Twilight Zone: remember the one where the little girl gets lost in her own house? Which a couple decades later influenced the movie Poltergeist, and even later a Halloween episode of the Simpsons? Not that, but like it.
3. The Truant story is mostly forgettable. It gets in the way at first, because we want to hear about the HOUSE, not this apparently sexually-obsessed club kid hopping from liason to liason. He’s kind of sweet sometimes, but mostly crude, and not well-spoken, worth listening to only when he writes about Zampano or the book. There are some neat touches at the end concerning him, in the Whalestoe Letters section, but that’s about it. At one point, he goes on a journey to — find the HOUSE? Sort of, but mostly to rediscover the secrets buried in his past, which we are not very interested in. It would’ve been a much better book had he found some version of the HOUSE somewhere and disappeared into it. Or at least the narrative about him would have been more satisfying — and yes, I am aware that maybe Danielewski didn’t want it to be satisfying (because the HOUSE never satisfied an expectation). But I am just saying how I felt reading it. And I would have liked a different ending for Johnny.
4. The best scenes take place in the HOUSE. You never want them to end. Great fun, thrills and chills galore, and even intellectually engaging (something few other suspense novels can manage). Zampano’s footnotes are a brilliant device — they slow the narrative up in order to increase tension; but not with pointlessness. They’re almost always immensely satisfying; firing the intellect just as the HOUSE fires the imagination. There’s a fantastic two-step going on here that always keeps you turning pages, breathless for more.
5. Unpredictable storyline. As it unfolds, you will probably begin taking stabs in the dark about what will happen next, and after the third or fourth time of being completely wrong, will find yourself, like me, charmed by the writer’s inventiveness.
6. Psychologically perfect. One of the keys to good storytelling is including realistic characters who possess the totality of real human minds; otherwise, all you’ve got is a neat idea through which mental puppets stumble. Everyone here, however, is so well-constructed that the whole suspension of disbelief thing happens almost automatically, and you’re nearly instantly engaged.
7. Why isn’t this a movie?
8. Smarter than any other scary book I’ve ever read (and I’ve read quite a lot). And scarier than most of them, too.
9. Not really an “experimental novel,” as has been touted. It’s told in a kind of multi-layered way, and has some different approaches, but nothing too radical. The idea of footnotes that refer to fictional sources might be the most original aspect of it. But it is mostly a linear tale. Other devices are gimmicks, I think, unless you write the whole thing using them. Or maybe not gimmicks … Just neat little devices to poke the reader a little bit, keep him/her interested.
10. What killed Zampano? And all those cats? Was Johnny’s journey to Whalestoe what kept him from a similar fate?
11. The real footnotes about labyrinths, caves, mythology, and etc., were so fascinating (and frightening in their implication) that I felt there should have been much, much more. Like how Melville stopped and wrote a dissertation on all the known varities of whales and so made Moby Dick a larger figure.
12. The blending of fiction and reality, which has been done many times before, is done here with considerable artistry. I was blown away at times by just how well it was done. Yes! this, this is why I love literature, I often thought, for moments like these, because of books like this.
Unlucky 13, containing a spoiler. If the HOUSE is history (which only non-entities inhabit, not even ghosts), how many, many nights it kept me up thinking about how the various minds shaped it? I can’t even count them. Can’t think of another book that disturbed my sleep so much, in other words.
Anonymous –
A mirror to the reader that presents the simulacrum of multiple stories, House of Leaves is probably the most subjective book I’ve ever read. I loved the experience of reading this book. And make no mistake: you must choose how to read it. More questions than answers or perhaps even a narrative, the book presents a multilayered facsimile of a few different kinds of fiction. So my review is as the book intends. Merely my own reading and far more reflective of what I saw of myself while consuming it, than of anything else. This book makes space for a plethora of different kinds of readings. And I studied the text as much as I was able, tabbing and underlining and making marginalia to see if it does support my reading. And it does, I think. I’m going to be brief because I’m doing a video review on my Youtube that will be much more in-depth.
Borgesque in its “main” narrative, The Navidson Tapes presents itself as academic criticism of a cult film that does not exist. In its granularity, this reader found that there was a very meaningful difference between consuming a film and reading the piece about the film that retreads every shot composition and feeling, every visual perception, endowing it with something beyond the film could hope to convey in a viewing. As a visual thinker, the film was even richer and textured and my comprehension of it so augmented, that I think it’s a far superior experience. If watching it even were such an option.
We follow the Navidson’s, Will and Karen, children: Chad and Daisy, put down “roots” in Virginia. Only their colonization of the property is inverted, and the house colonizers Will, the patriarch and famous war-time photographer that sets aside his exploration to be with his family. Only, after the family is settled, the house changes, given new space–altering its dimensions in a literal sense–growing to accommodate Will’s primordial self. His maze. Or labyrinth. The journey is literalized just as he believes he’s completed every journey and there is nothing left but to conquer being a father. The family finds a door to a hallway to a great foyer to a spiral staircase to a maze. This causes a rift in the couple Karen, who has claustrophobia and is too afraid to enter it, and Will, who sees the next adventure and finds it irresistible. What follows is the horror of a space reflective of the people traversing it, ostensibly, but I believe more of Will’s internal selfhood, and by extension humanity. And from the wreckage of the horror of trying to navigate this maze, a movie is (fictitiously) created.
The movie’s critical evaluation is done by a man named Zampano, who dies at an old age after becoming obsessed with the film. Researching every thematic linkage and creating his own reading. Another horror that reflects himself, driving him literally mad, or so it would seem.
Because the actual person who compiled Zampano’s work is Johnny Truant. A fake name, fake person, steeped in fiction that obfuscates his own trauma hidden in the footnotes in the critical analysis Zampano had written. Literally interrupting and resisting the spiral of Navidson’s narrative into the maze, as well as Zampano’s dark and turbulent thoughts that similarly spiraled. Johnny’s story is mostly of self-aggrandizement and sexual exploits and chemical debauchery. Generally interceding when we reach points in the Navidson narrative that trigger his trauma, though he is only aware of the metaphor he has created which haunts and dogs him, as he becomes more like Zampano. Reclusive and colonized by the reading of the Navidson story. Rather than process their trauma, see only darkness and are ultimately consumed by it.
Depending on what you believe “actually” happens in the narrative, anyway.
I think the key themes in the book are trauma and colonization. They’re hit on the head the most, in every prose craft fashion. Metaphor, allegory, symbolism. Everything seems to me, to point to the idea of patterns colonizing minds doomed to trace the same doomed lines on every layer of the fiction, regardless of whoever and however they consumed them. Everyone needs other people to feed them information outside of their own darkroom to truly see themselves. And without outside intercession, I think we all wander our own internal maze, whether we are aware of it or not. More so for people who carry trauma, who seem to have more darkness and less light to navigate the labyrinth.
Usuario –
– Em relação a História:
São 3 camadas/histórias acontecendo simultaneamente com diferentes níveis de sanidade. A mais profunda delas é de uma família que, ao se mudar para uma nova casa, encontra nela algumas distorções proporcionais absurdas, como um corredor super longo e escuro (que demora 5/1½ para se percorrer inteiro) em uma parede que, externamente, seria impossível sua existência. Essa família, então, cria uma espécie de documentário que teoricamente nunca foi publicado através de gravações.
A segunda camada é o de um senhor cego que supostamente encontra essas fitas com as gravações, as assite e passa a escrever um documento manuscrito formatado como trabalho acadêmico analisando o suposto documentário.
Por fim, a camada mais superficial é a de um tatuador que encontra o documento do senhor, que recentemente faleceu e passa a cumprir o último desejo do falecido: publicar o manuscrito como livro (que no caso é o livro que o leitor tem em mãos). No meio desse compilado dos manuscritos, esse último personagem passa a escrever, com uma máquina de escrever, comentários e fatos sobre a vida dele, isso contribui para o livro apresentar centenas de notas de rodapé.
Tá, mas o que tem de diferente nisso tudo? As três camadas principais (existem mais) ocorrem SIMULTANEAMENTE na MESMA página e devem serem lidas JUNTAS. Conforme o livro passa, a história vai ficando cada vez mais maluca tanto de enredo, quanto de diagramação (que de normal passa a apresentar elementos gráficos diversos) e o mais interessante nisso é que aquela insanidade do senhor começa a passar para a história em si e também ao próprio leitor. Tem páginas com texto em formato de espiral, textos invertidos que devem serem lidos usando um espelho, cartas de uma mulher no manicômio que ao ser aplicado um “código” de descriptografia mostra uma mensagem super perturbadora de como ela está sendo tratada nesse manicômio e por aí vai. Páginas com apenas uma palavra. Páginas com textos espalhados nas margens e um quadrado preto gigante no meio. Isso é só o começo e o melhor de tudo, faz muito sentido com o que está acontecendo na história.
Foi uma leitura SENSACIONAL e arrepiante com momentos inclusive de romance, mas sobretudo com predomínio do medo do desconhecido de tla forma que sua própria casa, antes um local de conforto e lazer, acaba ela própria se tornando um local dúbio a seus olhos, como leitor.
– Em relação a edição:
Adquiri uma edição denominada como “Encadernação Clássica” que nada mais é que a edição bruchura/paperback encadernada em capa dura/hardback pela empresa “TurtleBack Books” que prepara livros para bibliotecas a fim de que os mesmos durem mais tempo e tornem-se mais resistentes.