Chet Reads & Writes

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 don’t usually include images on the blog, however because of the ergodic nature of House of Leaves I want to share my favorite page from the book.

I loved this page not only because it starts with an Edgar Allan Poe quote, continues with a solid paragraph of Braille, and of course has the Braille translated in a footnote. You may not like it, but I loved the poem in the Braille. No other page stuck with me as much.

After this post I’m going to put up a small collection of other examples of pages from the books, but I want to see your favorite pages too!

Are you reading this as a Facebook Note? I promise you, it looks way cooler at it’s site of origin: http://chetgassett.com. Please follow the link to see the post with it’s original full-color formatting, and freedom from spoilers.

It took much longer to get through House of Leaves, than I originally thought it would. Between visitors, work, and enjoying the summer months in other ways, I allowed myself to meander through the long ashen hallways found within the Navidson’s house. I’ve decided that there is a lot I’d like to share from this book, and to do so properly is going to take more than one post.

To start I’m just going to share the basic lasting effects from this story, and make a few comments about its arrangement. I’m do not intend to release any information in this post that would spoil the book for someone else, but if I come across a section that I feel might be a little too revealing, I’ll make sure you can skip over them without too much effort.

The book is presented innocently enough as a non-fiction write up on the documentary film The Navidson Record by Zampanò, of course there are also the hundreds of footnotes and tangents presented by The Editors and Johnny Truant. As I made my way through the book I quickly discovered that the notes surrounding Johnny Truant are just as important to the development of the over all feeling and characters of the story as the Minotaur mythos.

If you’ve heard anything about this book it’s probably been one of two things: It’s terrifying and will most likely induce nightmares. The text is arranged in such a manner that the person running the printing press is either a child, or totally unstable. For me, there were no nightmares. I can see how under the correct circumstances, or with enough claustrophobia, this book could be quite distressing. I don’t think I can say it enough, I do not recommend this book to anyone who suffers from extreme bouts of claustrophobia; however Danielewski’s ability to relay the vast emptiness within the house is one of my top reasons to recommend this book.

The printing on the other hand, is exactly what you’ve heard. It will have you turning the book to angles you’ve never read at before. You’ll be looking for people to translate things for you, and mirrors to read backward text, you’ll wish you knew Braille and there are a couple bars of music. Your pulse will increase, you will become anxious and nerve wracked. You’ll be reading faster than you’ve ever read before, tensions are building, something is coming but then it just stops. Dead. In the middle of a sentence. The formatting is most often presented in a manner representative of the feelings of the characters or the rearrangement of the house.

All in all I really enjoyed every piece of information contained in this book. I have nothing but heartfelt care for Johnny Truant, and a bizarre curiosity about whether that never-ending house of leaves still stands in Virginia today.

I still haven’t read any additional research into the book. I wanted to give my first, totally untainted, thoughts about the book before I delved into that. I’m going to do some reading this afternoon, but it may be put off for a week. We have family coming to visit!