Finality from within the House - Johnny Truant
by Chet
This post may contain information that people who haven’t finished the book don’t want to know.
This is part one of the end of my House of Leaves series. I did some reading and some thinking. A lot of people have spent a long time discussing the many, many nuances from this book. I will be more than happy to discuss the book with everyone that’s read it, and wants to raise some new points with me; however I’ve decided that for the purpose of this blog I’m only going to expand on what I personally took away from the book. Bear in mind that this blog will be shorter than my initial feelings, and contains some ideas inspired and accepted from the Wikipedia article on House of Leaves.
At the heart of it House of Leaves is a love story, or stories even. The top most layer revolves around Johnny Truant and love in many forms. We see Truant through a difficult phase in his life, but from his writings we learn about much of his past. At first the only love Johnny is struggling with is finding a woman to complete him; his stories of sexual promiscuity, and his complete infatuation with “Thumper”. As he sinks deeper into his obsession with compiling The Navidson Record we start to see that there are questions within Johnny about the agape his mother, Pelafina, deserved, and the self-love that humans need to be able to prosper and remain happy.
Toward the end of story we see Truant going through some positive changes. Most of them occurred after he came across the band in New Mexico. Where he met someone who cared about him and his story more than anything. He left the band to their thoughts, and never let them know who he was, but it seemed to me that those people caring about him truly helped him see some positive light in life.
I’m still not entirely sure about Truant’s feelings toward his mother. The Whalestoe Letters is immensely helpful in seeing Pelafina’s worldview, and the constant love for a son that appears to have abandoned her. Though Johnny seems absolutely lost between whether his mother was strangling him or hugging him after the hot oil incident. What do you guys think? For me I think Johnny comes to realize that his mother was taken away to Whalestoe for the good of everyone. She needed the supervision found there, and he acknowledges that she believes everything she ever did to him, was truly out of love for him.
Truant is a difficult character to pin down in totality. He’s broken. He’s a liar. He’s trapped. There is enough happening to him that entire dissertations could be written solely concerning the life and feelings of Johnny Truant. Please discuss him with me in the comments though!
I’m curious as to what you thought of the space issue. How changing circumstances alter the way we view even our physical environment. How did the manuscript cause Johnny to feel like a stranger in his home?
It’s taken me forever to think of a response for you. The holidays really got in the way, but I also had to force myself to take time to think this through, and revisit the book a bit to really formulate an answer for you. Since you’ve been kind enough to not only read what I wrote about this book, but to actually attempt to converse with me on it, I thought it’s the least I could do.
The way space is presented throughout the book as we know is represented not just in the narrative, but the construction of the typographical layout. I enjoyed the intense anxiety provoking or stress relieving nature of these instances from Danielewski. It appeared to me as though he really wanted to express how the simple unknown emptiness of a space can completely change one’s perspective of their world and even destroy their emotional stability. That unrelenting empty space with no questions and no answers appears to lead man down a twisting road of self discovery and/or self destruction. This unwavering likelihood to be drawn into the Navidson Accord is what ultimately pushed Truant over the edge. Nothing felt comfortable in his home, even after he’d spent so much time withdrawing from the outside and everyone there.
That still feels a bit iffy, but it’s what I’ve got. Thanks again.