House of leaves how many pages

In that style, everything that distracts from the directness of the subject is removed, making it as real as possible. We are not told of the confusion, but are confused by the arrangement of the book, its chaotic content reflecting the events within the book. Labyrinth: Not only is the book itself laid out like a labyrinth, but references to the labyrinth and mazes are peppered throughout the book.

As we turn the corner, we see a different path, similar to walking in a maze, never sure what will come next. Due to the wall-shifts and extraordinary size, any way out remains singular and applicable only to those on that path at that particular time.

All solutions then are necessarily personal. Navidson, the impartial journalist, reacts to the labyrinth in a calm and curious manner. His filming of the house shows his sense of aesthetic and steadfastness even through the fearful events. The film records made by other members of the inhabitants are skewed by the events and are not as precise in its accounting.

Each reader, also, came out with varying reactions and interpretations to the House of Leaves. The mysterious hallway itself is a labyrinth that constantly shifts and change, with more empty hallways appearing out of nowhere. Mythology: The blind Zampano is like Homer, the blind Greek poet famous for recounting tales of the trials and tribulations of heroes.

The brazen bull is a hollow brass bull made to roast a man inside its cavity. The Minotaur has multiple symbolism. Will, Karen and Johnny all had to traverse the labyrinth to overcome the figurative Minotaur, and embrace and accept the shadow in order to come out to the other side.

Zampano, who ultimately did not accept his shadow, as evidenced by his crossing out of all passages relating to the Minotaur, died. Hear our captains! Growl: The ominous sound of the growl is significant throughout the book. That age, when I was four, is dark to me. Still, the sound is too vivid to just pawn off on the decibels of my imagination.

The way it plays in my head like some terrifying and wholly familiar song. Over and over again in a continuous loop, every repetition offering up this certain knowledge: I must have heard it--or something like it--not then but later, though when? Leaves are things people left behind, mementos, memories of themselves.

Zampano left his writing, Navidson wanted Karen's hair that's on her brush, and Truant's mom left one sole thing to him along with her letters. The book itself first made its appearance as leaves circulating through the internet. The leaves also bring to mind of the ash tree, of the House on Ash Tree Lane. Ashes are remnants left behind, a symbol of sorrow. A Deeply Felt Love Story Be sure I looked up at her eyes Happy and proud; at last I knew Porphyria worshipped me; surprise Made my heart swell, and still it grew While I debated what to do.

That moment she was mine, mine, fair, Perfectly pure and good: I found A thing to do, and all her hair In one long yellow string I wound Three times her little throat around, And strangled her. No pain felt she; I am quite sure she felt no pain This complex love story is at once agoraphobic and claustrophobic. Pelafina is confined at the Whalestoe Institute for the insane. We discovered in her letter incidences of suffocating love combined with questionable accidents, which Johnny and Pelafina declared were accidents.

Johnny made his journey through the maze caused by his complex love relationship with his mother. Additionally, Karen and Navidson overcame their obstacles and nightmare of the House in a parallel love story. It cannot be categorized as purely postmodern, horror, romance or general fiction. It cannot even be categorized as purely literature, but under a type of literature called ergodic literature.

Ergodic literature demands that the reader participates actively in the book, beyond the traditional linear reading of the text. The perspectives are spatial instead of linear, moving like a Russian nesting doll with a story nesting within a story within a story. It is a literary visual art. You cannot remove either the visual arrangement or the literary part without losing the full content of the book.

The pictorial arrangements of the words and spacing are meant to add meaning to the story. The complicated journey into the manuscript goes to the innermost nesting doll of the House and its occupants, and out to us, the reader, as we are either annoyed or obsessed with solving the puzzle of this postmodern, beyond postmodern labyrinth.

In the end, this book is about love and forgiveness overcoming the darkness in the labyrinth of our minds. View all 71 comments. Everything has been said but not everyone has said it yet. Morris Udall at the Democratic convention I've put in so many enigmas and puzzles that it will keep the professors busy for centuries arguing over what I meant, and that's the only way of insuring one's immortality.

And the mind of the thoroughly well-informed man is a dreadful thing. It is l Everything has been said but not everyone has said it yet. It is like a bric-a-brac shop, all monsters and dust, with everything priced above its proper value. This is a reaction one might have when first exposed to House of Leaves of course sans the "son of a bitch" part.

This is Mark Z. Danielewski's first novel, and he devoted 10 years that's like 10 whole years! Hey, would you look at me? Do you have an X number of hours to spare to decode me, boy?

Many might find that they do not wish to spare the hours required by this tome; to them the book issues a warning right at its beginning, stating that "this is not for you. However, as we know such warnings are like catnip for curious cats - I mean, seriously, who would have stopped reading right there? Have we all forgotten about all these horror movies where protagonists go exactly where they should not go, ignoring all the warning sings, because they want to "check things out"?

I see what you did there, House of Leaves. The story is this: A man named Will Navidson moves with his family into a new home on Ash Tree Lane, somewhere in Virginia just next to West Virginia where they set all these hilbilly horror movies. Navidson, a recognized photographer a documentarist of war is accompanied by his wife, Karen - a former fashion model - and two children, Daisy and Chad.

Some stress has been plaguing the family of the Navidsons, so they decide to change environment in hope of restoring family dynamics Remember The Shining? Remember how it ended? Only when they move in they discover that the house has changed: it appears bigger on the inside than the outside, by a fraction of an inch. But that's not it! Soon a mysterious new hallway appears.

What does Navidson do? Take the kids and run out of this scary house like normal people do? No, of course they stay - I mean, if they didn't we wouldn't exactly have much to read about. Like a good horror protagonist, Navidson does exactly what the genre demands of him. He goes exploring. While this might not sound like the most original or compelling thing on the planet, you have to understand that House of Leaves is all about the execution as opposed to content.

Althought the novel has everything and the kitchen sink in it, it's all about how these things are put together. See, House of Leaves is a narrative which does absolutely everything to be as unconventional as possible - the story of Navidson, his family and explorations of the house are not narrated by him or the traditional third person omniscient narrator - that would be much, much too simple.

The narrative is reminiscent of a Russian matryoshka doll: all we know about Navidson comes from The Navidson Record , which is the name of the documentary film Navidson has made about the house, consisting of the tapes he filmed there. Now, since we are dealing with a recorded narrative, there must be somebody who put it together for us - and there is.

We never get to see the actual Navidson Record - what we get is an academic analysis of it, made by a man named Zampano. Zampano did an impressive amount of research and created a definite analysis of The Navidson Record - analyzing every scene in great detail, offering every possible interpretation, and making footnotes, lots and lots and lots and lots of footnotes.

Another reviewer called the amount of footnotes in this book "retarded" and I can't really disagree. Even footnotes have footnotes. So, this Zampano feller must be really proud of what possibly is his life's worh, right? Well, he can't really be - he's dead. What he wrote about The Navidson Record is discovered in his apartment by a man named Johnny Truant who was out of housing and out of luck, and with nothing better to do went to see the dead man's apartment.

Here's the kicker - Truant knows that the decribed film cannot possibly exist, as he finds not even a mention of it anywhere outside Zampano's notes - and Zampano could not even see the film; he was "blind as a bat". Zampano himself described the Record in his analysis as having been classified as a hoax by most experts. Nevertheless, Johnny is drawn to Zampano's analysis and begins filling the blanks he left behind - a process which starts messing with his head that and all the drugs he does.

Johhny also inserts lenghty footnotes into the text, footnoting Zampano's footnotes and producing his own - many of which are unrelated to The Navidson Record or are they?

Now, although Johnny is the closest of what this book has to a protagonist, he is not the narrator either - the whole text has been put together by anonymous Editors, of whom we know nothing, and who claim to have never even seen or met Johnny - all matters concerning the text have been discussed via correspondence or in rare instances on the telephone. Thank God all of these at least have their own font!

Can it get any better? Yes, it can. The important aspect of this novel is how the text is arranged on the page. Well, at least that's what we're supposed to think when we're reading it. At first the text appears like any other academic journal, but as it progresses And is House of Leaves the book which will make you use the mirror to decipher it?

Oh yes. Oh yes, dear reader, you are holding that book. XKCD, a popular webcomic, does a pretty accurate impression of th structure of House of Leaves - with pancakes. Here's how it looks like. There is a fair amount of humor in House of Leaves. Danielewski really hams it up here: the whole book is a fictional analysis of a fictional document which is a fictional study of a fictional film.

But that is not all. Danielewski hams it even further, making the only expert on the non-existent film blind and dead , and gives the task of analyzing his work to the most unreliable of all characters, Johnny Truant, a Bret Easton Ellis-ish character whose junkie lifestyle is such that half the time he is not sure he is even there get it?

The footnotes? Oh God, the footnotes. Footnotes in this book often have their own footnotes often concerning material appearing hundreds of pages later and are a giant sandbox for Danielewski to play in. Most of the material he cites The Feng Shui Guide to The Navidson Record is cited when describing the house's interior, and a dismissal of something as crap is quoted from an article titled There's a ton of examples like these in the text, and I am completely sure that D's grocery list is there, too.

He has his fun with those who read these scrupulously - at one point Zampano footnotes an abysmally long list of names, which goes on for absolutely forever At another point Zampano claims that the Weiner Brothers cut a whole sequence from the theatrical release of The Navidson Record because it was too self-referential And this is in a book where half of it is a commentary on the other half.

Near the end Johnny starts wondering that maybe he too does not exist, which drives the poor boy nuts - along with the readers. If there was a troll of the year award when this book was published, mr. D should definitely have won it.

His aesthetic is that of excess; with all its immense superabundance of all things it is reminiscent of the Pierce Brosnan James Bond films, especially the first one - GoldenEye - where Brosnan engages in an unforgettable tank chase through St. Petersburg , undoubtedly the finest moment in the Bond franchise and arguably one of the finest scenes in contemporary cinema. The moment where he hits that statue and drives with it on top of the tank alone made it worthy of at least two Oscars.

Also, House of Leaves has a section with fake interviews with real people about The Navidson Record which is flat out funny and very well written, as the author manages to capture the personas of his interviewees: Hunter S. Thompson begins by stating that "it was a bad morning", Steve Wozniak is jolly and Stephen King wants to see the house.

There's even America's most famous literature critic, Harold Bloom, who calls the interviewer "dear child" and quotes at lenght from his famous work The Anxiety of Influence which is another joke inside a joke - Bloom's book is about the relationship poets have with their predecessors - it is a source of anxiety and troubles their originality - pretty spot on for a book which is a commentary on a commentary.

More on it later. Some readers wrote that this is the scariest book that they have ever read. Remember that movie? It's the one with a group of students who get lost somewhere in the woods of Maryland and can't find a way out. Of course they are in the woods because they're investigating a local legend of the Blair Witch - so lots of creepy stuff happens in that forest.

Blair Witch has singlehandedly resurrected the genre of film known as the "found footage" - the viewer knows that these students have disappeared in these woods, and all that has been found of them is this video. The studios spend millions promoting it with the emphasis on the thin barrier betweeen reality and fiction, making many people wonder - is it real or not? Blair Witch has essentially brough back such filmmaking into the mainstream, allowing for movies such as Paranormal Activity to achieve success and become franchises; it has also aged quite badly, as now most kids with camcorders and Adobe programs can essentially film if again.

Film lots of woods; rustle the leaves a lot; wait for the night to fall and make some scary noises. You've got your own movie. This approach did breed some interesting offspring, such as the intriguing YouTube series Marble Hornets - creepy and addictive! House of Leaves takes the Blair Witch approach with the Navidson Record , but the constant footnotes and interruptions make it impossible to lose track of the fact that you're reading an analysis of an analysis of a film.

It's like watching The Blair Witch Project with audio commentary, when the director and cast describe their experiences on set as the movie plays along. Imagine watching this suspenseful scene, where the heroine is all alone in a tent in these dark and creepy woods - at night - and she hears these creepy noises outside the tent which are getting nearer and nearer Boy, you should have heard him yell.

We had to cut the audio and redub it in the studio. Hank: yeah, I almost lost my balls. Many readers will feel that they are not experiencing the descent into madness; it's the writer who drives them mad with his big, if repetitive, bag of tricks. In Imaginary Magnitude he collected introductions for nonexistent books; A Perfect Vacuum is a collection of reviews and criticism of nonexistent works of literature.

In Provocation and Library of the 21st Century are both collections of reviews of books which do not exist. Lovecraft to whom this book oves an obviously great debt invented whole universes and mythos, and Necronomicon is an account of their existence.

In The Blind Assasin , Margaret Atwood also employs a fictional text of the same name, which plays a crucial role. Jorge Luis Borges wrote of nonexistent works in his fiction: a good example is his short story Pierre Menard, Author of the Quixote. In , Jerzy Kosinski wrote The Hermit of 69th Street , a fictional novel which is largely composed of quotations from real texts or utterances, all of which are sourced and credited to their respective authors - in no way a small feat, and it does make House of Leaves look a bit pale when you realize that mr.

D is simply making up the vast majority of his referrences as he goes on. Of all the women Johnny interacts with, Danielewski has to commit the biggest cliche and make him be most devoted to a stripper - a whore with the heart of gold. A lot of this novel can be seen as autobiographical - Danielewski traveled to Paris, therefore Johnny has lived in Paris and traveled around Europe; sources are quoted in German and not always translated, and also in Latin and other languages; one can only imagine what the author must have felt when he was discovering LitCrit and browsing academic journals.

At the very end, the reader discovers a section devoted to Johnny's mother - letters she sent him from a mental hospital, sort of a reversed Flowers for Algernon. The damn thing even has an index! Ona can imagine Danielewski sitting in his chair, back to the reader, petting his cat and laughing devilishly, hiding behind his post-modern armor. You thought it was funny? Well, you don't know my art. What, you didn't thought it was funny?

Well, shame on you, you missed my joke! He has cornered all the corners. He holds all the guns in a Mexican standoff. He cannot lose; he always wins. He's the Steven Seagal of writers.

Unlike Seagal's films especially the latter ones , House of Leaves definitely shows the author's talent and devotion to the project. His sister also contributed - she's called Poe and her album is titled Haunted , drawing inspiration from this novel. Danielewski's work is opaque just enough; it's not translucent, making the reader see right through it, but allowing too see one's reflection; much of how this work will be read and understood depends on its reader, if not all of it.

Some will see the most horrifying book of their lives; others will be bored; others will be genuinely interested, and some might even be fascinated. Who is right? Who is wrong? Does it even matter? Although House of Leaves does sound better than it actually is but then what does not? Few of those who will read this book all the way through will be indifferent towards it.

To talk about it, one has to expand and go beyond the book itself, towards one's outside knowledge and interests. Just like the book is not containted in itself, and is composed of quotations, other accounts and records. It is an excellent platform for discussion on influence, interpretation and meaning, and literary and structutal tradition. To think about what it means to track allusions in a novel. Literature as an art and history depends on us being able to do something with these allusions, have something to say about them - how we, as readers, make sense of them when we're looking at the evolution of the art form.

This is why studies of literature consist also of historical and cultural studies, and students read from a historical range of works which represent major historical periods and movements, and have to learn, acknowledge and understand the literary tradition.

Novels depend on novels written before them; this one is just a bit more virtuosic representation of this fact. And the funniest thing I left right for the end - because of its crazy layout the book is smaller on the inside than it appears from the outside.

Get it? Hats off! Meanwhile, you can check out the nice and condensed version and analysis at the same time: Torching Leaves This is a long review. I declare that I have oficially ran out of words that Goodrea Oct 12, BlackOxford rated it it was ok Shelves: fantasy-horror , american.

The question is whether the book is frivolous or serious sarcasm. Although that may be where it belongs as a whole, there are parts that might in fact be a more serious critique of the human obsession with abstract knowledge, what is generally termed Science or at least academic science. If House of Leaves has such a serious component, perhaps it might qualify as a cautionary allegory.

The house on Ash Tree Lane, the cosmos of the book, as it were, presents an epistemological problem. It appears to be one quarter of an inch bigger on the inside than it is on the outside. This is a typical start for a scientific inquiry. Some quantity is measured - size, speed, volume, trajectory - and is used to confirm or reject a theory or hypothesis. The only really interesting measurement, however, is that which detects a difference at some increased level of precision from previous measurements.

This difference, once confirmed, is what provokes questions about existing theories and can lead to new knowledge.

Or so some schools of the philosophy of science hold. Once started, the inquiry to understand the difference in measurement takes on its own momentum. Other people are recruited into the effort - specialists with high-tech instruments, teams which invest time and resources, even family members who may be effectively ignored in favour of the inquiry.

It is really at this stage that the inquiry becomes properly scientific in the sense that it is a publicly shared effort not merely personal research. Investigative work is planned, tasks allocated, responsibilities assigned. Rather than determining the true dimensions of the house, those involved find that their investigations appear to be changing the house. Rooms appear, corridors lead to yet more distant rooms, great halls open up, stairways penetrate unknown depths.

The mystery of the house deepens. As new spaces are discovered, the former level of ignorance looks trivial in retrospect. From an insignificant initial difference, therefore, enormously different perceptions arise. Everyone involved becomes confused. Professional rivalries flare up.

Careers are made and lost. Families fragment. Friendships are destroyed. The house itself seems a mysterious living creature which may be a hostile danger to those investigating it. Yet to those outside, those who are not part of the community of inquiry, the house appears as it always has.

If asked, these outsiders would think the insiders were hallucinating. Typical science. From a literary point of view, House of Leaves would probably have made an interesting short story or novella - at least if it does have any of the serious content I suggest. The fact that it goes on for pages or so does count against my theory.

On the other hand, the parallel narrative of the finder of the originary document who goes slowly mad as he reads it, does suggest that the penalty for pushing unprepared into the study of human knowledge has some very serious potential side effects. The consequences are the same. Shelves: new-dimensions , horror-modern. I think those parts were pretty good? I guess I'm more into its 1 part fascinating, 9 parts unbearable.

I guess I'm more into its mind. Really, fuck Johnny Truant! He brings out the worst in the author. Fun with formatting didn't bother me and sometimes kept me awake.

But mainly the book helped relieve insomnia. Nice title though. View all 39 comments. Oct 15, Robin rated it it was ok Shelves: horror , literary-fiction , , american , science-fiction. There are those who tout the brilliant ambitions of this something page tome [2 - Wil Wheaton, Goodreads review , "Hipsters, Hipsters, Everywhere" , pages , ] in which a family inhabits a house that spontaneously develops hallways and closets, and loses them too, resulting in madness and death.

However, I, like Dr. Whenever I was drawn into the story within a story within a story, I was doused with a 50 page pseudo-academic rambling, which had the same effect as a "monstrous bucket of ice water on a tiny little struggling flame" [4 - Chapter 7, "Ways to Ruin Your Novel" by I. Knightly, ].

So, with his permission, I did start to skip, especially the parts that were crossed out , blanked out because of "fire damage" to the text, or parts where any 's' is replaced with an 'f' actually, that was kind of funny.

This book gets major points for "incessant, dogged originality" [6 - "Grade School Teachers Almanac - Ways to Stay Positive" , page 3, ] and also "moments of breakneck writing" [7 - "Too Fast, Too Furious" , intro, Nupart Jhunisdakazcriddle, ], requiring "a hell of a lot of work" [8 - "Reading should be FUN" , John Updike, ], as well as an amusing reference to Donna Tartt that made me smile….

View all 38 comments. Sep 13, Nathan rated it did not like it Recommends it for: People I hate. Shelves: books-i-hope-die , fiction. One of the reviews I read of this book compared it positively bewilderingly to The Blair Witch Project.

I agree, only I thought The Blair Witch project was primarily a ninety-minute gimmick, and not particularly engaging, at that. Every person I know who has a brain currently, previously, or aspires to one day have a brai One of the reviews I read of this book compared it positively bewilderingly to The Blair Witch Project. Every person I know who has a brain currently, previously, or aspires to one day have a brain, who has read this book, swears by it.

Perhaps in the final 4th of the book the wizard was revealed, I just gave up too early, and everyone else was in on some giant joke I didn't get. Maybe I saw the previews too many times and all the tricks were spoiled. I should have seen it in the theater instead of on video. Little Eyes. Samanta Schweblin. Patricia Lockwood. Chuck Palahniuk. The Keep. Jennifer Egan. Sleep Donation. Karen Russell. You Should Have Left. Daniel Kehlmann. Another Roadside Attraction. American Psycho. Bret Easton Ellis.

The Fifth Child. Doris Lessing. The Ghost Tree. Christina Henry. Fever Dream. The Children of Men. Grady Hendrix. Zone One. Colson Whitehead. Mark Z Danielewski. House of Leaves by Mark Z Danielewski review - genuinely exciting. Read more.

Topics Books Fiction Horror books features. Reuse this content. However, reading House of Leaves this second time I realized a few things. And if someone were to do the obvious and strip out just The Navidson Record sections of this book and make that part into a real movie, it would drastically hurt the story. With each reading, you realize the novel is the only place you can find out what happens to the characters of the film.

House of Leaves is one of those works that makes you feel small before its brilliance, intimidated by its sheer imagination, inspired by the fact that something like it is possible.

Wondering where our RSS feed went? You can pick the new up one here. I dunno if House of Leaves reminds me of a movie so much as a heavily-indexed website.

The A. By Germain Lussier. Awesome House of Leaves art used with the permission of artist Rhys Wootton. Follow on Instagram rhyswootton Image: Rhys Wootten. Photo: Lionsgate. Two pages from House of Leaves showing examples of print style.