House of Leaves

What to say...

Friends in my spec-fic book club have been talking about House of Leaves off and on for a while. I took one look and said, “not for me, babe.” A few weeks later I was having drinks with some folks and one asked something to the effect of, “do you like ergodic literature?” After ensuring they hadn't said, “erotic literature,” I replied, what the hell is ergodic literature?”

A while after that, I was in my neighborhood bookshop looking for a copy of something I can't remember. I was in a money-spending mood and saw House of Leaves poking out of the shelf, one copy, already a little removed. Is this for me?

I opened it up and thumbed through. One of the first pages proclaims, “This is not for you.” Well, we can't have that, can we? But $30 for an odd book that I might hate? I was in the right mood for it.

I did a lot of chuckling as I read, because it started to teach me a lot about how I read and interact with books. A bit in, I caught myself writing a note, asking a question in the margin. I thought about that. Here I am, asking a question in the margin (asking who?) of a fiction novel that is essentially about an academic write-up of a movie that may or may not exist, about a house that may or may not exist, that may or may not (but definitely isn't) be cousin to The Doctor's TARDIS. Oh, and there are footnotes by not one, not two, but three different sources and connections to not one but two appendices.

It's just clever! I enjoyed engaging with the story. Decoding messages in an appendix after reading 50 pages of someone's descent into mania and psychosis - why not? But decoding a second message in the same place? That practice making everything else suspect (do the dropcaps mean anything? Does the translation say what the editors, what JT, says???).

All very, very, fun for me. I loved the constant in and out of the multiple stories, the intentional immersion breaking, the mystery. Nothing is true, but everything is true. Who can you trust? It's a work of fiction, what's it matter? Why are you flipping back to a piece of paper that's in a collage to identify a symbol, what are you some kinda nerd?

I had a really, really, good time reading this. I may have looked a nut rotating it and taking pictures and flipping them so I could read other parts, but it just tickled my fancy. I'll let other, smarter, folks talk about what it all means. I just had a good time.