Do you have a dumb question that you're kind of embarrassed to ask in the main thread? Is there something you're just not sure about?
This is your opportunity to ask questions. No question too simple or too silly.
Culture war topics are accepted, and proposals for a better intro post are appreciated.
Jump in the discussion.
No email address required.
Notes -
I read House of Leaves during high school. I enjoyed The Navidson Record, but I didn't care for the Truant and Zampanò elements. I ended up skimming the footnotes.
Yeah, I had pretty much the same experience. The footnotes are boring, and Johnny Truant doesn't really have much of a story to him. The meat of the book is in the story of the house.
I also agree with @5434a that the book is kind of overindulgent. The author really wanted to play around with the structure of a book, but I didn't really find it added anything (with some rare exceptions). It's the sort of thing that appeals to college students who are like "this is so deep, maaaaan"*, but outside of that audience I think it falls kind of flat.
*I read the book in college so I'm not just being mean here, lol. I had some peers who were so enchanted by the book's gimmick that they thought we should be reading it for classes rather than classics of literature. It's pretty funny to me in hindsight.
I can see why younger readers might be impressed, it's a moderately clever conceit. It's less impressive if you've experienced any kind of meta-text before. Layering additional meta-texts on top only subtracted from the sum of its parts, which is ironic in the context of writing about a house that is larger than its external dimensions (with the extra irony that the book itself is physically larger than a typical fiction book). Less would have been more.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link