![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
thessalianFinished House of Leaves. What an utterly bizarre book.
Yes, it's creepy, but I find the creepy lessened, at least through the first 3/4 of the book, by the stylistic tricks played by the author. The footnotes are bad enough; the fact that portions of the text are typed in sideways, upside down and in all kinds of strange shapes across the page, is even worse. I want to get lost in a book, not have to worry about, for example, bending my head around the curves the words take, or bashing the person in the seat next to me in the ribs with my elbow as I turn the book around and around. Not a morning commute read on any level.
There is definitely potential for a creepy book there, though. When the stylistic shit stops and you just get story, Johnny's anger and Navison's obsession, and the thing that might or might not be in the darkness -- that's when it's the book I want it to be. And the letters from the mother at the end ... brr.
I suppose it's just a little bit too ... busy. It's trying to do too much, say too much, and ultimately be too much, in my opinion. It seems to be trying to be about so many things that you're never sure which thread to follow. It's funny how Bret Easton Ellis' comments on the back cover say how "One can imagien Pynchon and Ballard and Stephen King and David Foster Wallace bowing at Mark Danielewski's feet...", and I can't. Pynchon, yes. Can't comment on Ballard or Wallace, really; haven't read any of their stuff. But I think the more likely comment from King is actually in the book text itself, best paraphrased as: "Interesting stuff; is this a real house? I'd like to see it". When King does text-based tricks, he does it to make it more real; to put the reader into the character's mind as far as he can, and thus to make them forget that they're reading at all. Danielewski seems to be hell-bent on never letting us forget that it is a book,and that takes me away from the creepy, no matter how much it's supposed to be about being dragged into the horror by reading this text. It just didn't work for me.
One down, 49 to go. Haven't decided which one's going to be next, but I will admit to wanting something a little less difficult. I don't have anything against difficult books as a rule, but after all those fucking footnotes, I think I deserve a little light reading.
And now I'm going to go to bed, and wake up whenever the hell I feel like it, hooray!
Yes, it's creepy, but I find the creepy lessened, at least through the first 3/4 of the book, by the stylistic tricks played by the author. The footnotes are bad enough; the fact that portions of the text are typed in sideways, upside down and in all kinds of strange shapes across the page, is even worse. I want to get lost in a book, not have to worry about, for example, bending my head around the curves the words take, or bashing the person in the seat next to me in the ribs with my elbow as I turn the book around and around. Not a morning commute read on any level.
There is definitely potential for a creepy book there, though. When the stylistic shit stops and you just get story, Johnny's anger and Navison's obsession, and the thing that might or might not be in the darkness -- that's when it's the book I want it to be. And the letters from the mother at the end ... brr.
I suppose it's just a little bit too ... busy. It's trying to do too much, say too much, and ultimately be too much, in my opinion. It seems to be trying to be about so many things that you're never sure which thread to follow. It's funny how Bret Easton Ellis' comments on the back cover say how "One can imagien Pynchon and Ballard and Stephen King and David Foster Wallace bowing at Mark Danielewski's feet...", and I can't. Pynchon, yes. Can't comment on Ballard or Wallace, really; haven't read any of their stuff. But I think the more likely comment from King is actually in the book text itself, best paraphrased as: "Interesting stuff; is this a real house? I'd like to see it". When King does text-based tricks, he does it to make it more real; to put the reader into the character's mind as far as he can, and thus to make them forget that they're reading at all. Danielewski seems to be hell-bent on never letting us forget that it is a book,and that takes me away from the creepy, no matter how much it's supposed to be about being dragged into the horror by reading this text. It just didn't work for me.
One down, 49 to go. Haven't decided which one's going to be next, but I will admit to wanting something a little less difficult. I don't have anything against difficult books as a rule, but after all those fucking footnotes, I think I deserve a little light reading.
And now I'm going to go to bed, and wake up whenever the hell I feel like it, hooray!