'House of Leaves' by Mark Z. Danielewski

And I absolutely revelled in the Borges references.

explain please (i missed it!)

The Truant passages deliberately break up the tension of the Navidson bits, but do so in a really annoying way. All it really means is you reach some crucial point in the story and then have to wade through twenty pages of an objectionable little twat going on and on about nothing to get to the next good bit. It's bit like reading a book on the bus and having the guy sitting next to you interrupting every five minutes to tell you some irrelevant anecdote. I especially like how he constantly drops dark hints about the terrible fate that will surely befall him, but then *nothing does*. We don't even get the satisfaction of him dying horribly at the end.

Some things I liked. The gimmick of reducing the word count to a couple of lines-per-page during tense moments, leading you to frantically flip through the pages to see what will happen next. I also like how the middle pages of the book become a literal labyrinth, forcing you to trek back and forth through endless pages of footnotes leading nowhere, just like the corridors of the house.

The poems/letters in the appendices supposedly put a whole new spin on the Truant stuff, but after reading almost the whole thing in a week, I felt mentally exhausted and couldn't stand to read any more. Er, I didn't bother decoding the hidden messages either, although I thought I spotted some morse code at one point.

Did it really take ten years to write?

OTM, OTM, OTM. I loved this book on the first read but found on re-read that I was reading very much for just the Navidson Record and the Zampano notes, skipping totally past the Johnny Truant stuff - even the parts with sex in them! I disagree that Zampano feels tacked-on, though - the ghost story and the bullshit lit-crit are very closely intertwined. You sometimes have to suspend your disbelief that this academic text is wandering into Stephen King suspense writing style, of course. But I think it deserves recognition for the feat of having the ghost story be decentered in the text by treating it as a fictional film narrative under analysis... and still having it be immersive as a ghost story! Is it great literature? No. Does the typography/page layout stuff work? Most of the time. Is it worth the read? Hell yes. I won't soon forget the weirdo geography of the vague netherworld within the house, or the hole opening up to swallow the living room, or, indeed, the god damn spookiness of that 5/16 of an inch. From that detail forward MZD builds a continually building sense of "What...the...fuck" that never lets the ghost story down. Great stuff.

I didn't find the book that creepy, Johnny and the Whalestoe Letters notwithstanding. Also I've never heard of Poe.

The new book, from what the website betrays, looks twee and terrible.

Laura, you might as well not bother with the Johnny Truant bits, honestly. The Zampano part really is a ripping good yarn, horror-wise. Then again, you might not want to take the horror recommendations from a guy who practically muted the scary scenes in Alien (where the guy went after the kitty).

The whole scholarly edifice is actually completely unnecessary to the horror plot. I know that Zampano is supposed to be a critique of academia, but the critique doesn't have a lot of legs and easily gets overshadowed by the plot.

I like books with ridiculous footnotes, though (cf: The Third Policeman). I only remember the one which was a list of significant buildings, because when I bought the book I lived next-door to one of them.

But then the plot and my enthusiasm both just petered out. I skimmed over the letters at the end and I don't really care to figure out all the references anymore - I was reminded a little of the scene at the end of The Usual Suspects where you realise the whole thing is just a charade, based on irrelevant ephemera, and signfies nothing.

You all know Pelafina wrote the book, right?

should I read this or is it a bunch of wank?

mostly wank. someone should do a jefferson and abridge the mofo.

You should read it - it doesn't take long. Though I totally agree with the people upthread saying the Truant bits are annoying.

The bits with the house are genuinely creepy though

yeah i never finished but it's the only book that i've read where i was actually like 'creeped' while reading

For the ILB crowd... a pilot script for a streaming version that didn't come to fruition.

https://www.dropbox.com/s/w8ju058vnudefwz/HouseOfLeavesPilot_ByMarkZDanielewski.pdf?dl=0

I reaklly enjoyed it when i read it `15 years back. I think I read it summer of 2003 when i was reading pretty much non-stop. getting through things in a couple of days if not shorter then having to go back through them. think it may have taken me a bit longer to get through cos i did enjoy it.
Picked it up from a charity shop after that and don't think I've looked at that copy.
But did like the sudden labyrinth bits and stuff.

I've got this on my shelf. love the idea but not sure I've got the patience to hold such an awkward book for any extended period of time

I enjoyed the pilot script and am glad he decided to share it. I'm sad that the show didn't go ahead given the promise of this glimpse.

For all its flaws (Truant being the biggest of them, general smugness a close second) I love it, and think about it most days. It gets as close to a rendering of the uncanny as anything I can think of and you can map all sorts of stuff onto the house and Navidson's experience of it: depression, the infinite nature of the self (our experience/navigation of it, at least), hermeneutics. I barely think of it as a ghost story.