This novel is so strange. I really appreciate the reading experience, but nothing deeper stays with me after I read it. Yet, I have returned to it and read it three times. Maybe the lack of center is what draws me in. There is a human desire to find meaning. That is what pulls people deeper into the House.
> nothing deeper stays with me Well you just proceeded to describe a really deep experience of understanding why you are drawn to what you dont understand
I think the lack of meaning that is explicitly implied allows for the reader to relate to different aspects. I too have read it many times across 15 years of my life. Each time I find new things that grab my attention or that I can empathize with.
I think there's a lot of symbolism, I loved Zampano s version of the minotaur and I think Johnny's mom was his minotaur and the little girl Navidson photographed was his minotaur and we all have a minotaur in our lives somehow. The more Navidson was haunted by the image of the little girl the more the labyrinth (the hallways) opened and multiplied , I think it was his hell, it's like a symbol of unprocessed trauma, same as with Johnny and his mom, the mom is like a minotaur.. exactly like Zampano said. And I sometimes think Zampano is Johnny, a creation of Johnny and everything is a creation of Johnny to deal with the trauma his mother inflicted on him and the abandonment he endured and all that. It's a really tricky book 😭
I just finished the book and there is this weird feeling inside of me. Now I'm looking up all sorts of videos and forum pages talking about House of Leaves. I kinda feel like Johnny haha
This happens to so many. Back in the early days of the internet (late 90s / early 00s) was the perfect time and place for this book, to get lost in its labyrinth and then find another door into another labyrinth with its online forum and puzzle solvers and literary sleuths and mad-folk piecing together all sorts of connections. Imagine the same is true even today...glad the house is still pulling people into it.
@@booksosubstance I am very late to your video, but I was one of those people! Scouring the old forum, joining in the quest for meaning. Now, I think I ended up falling for one of the jokes embeded in the book.
@@booksosubstance I feel like its not something I imagined but something I've seen before that's the difference. Have you seen those optical illusions that make you look at the negative of an image for 30 seconds and then you look at a white wall and can see the image? I feel like this book did a mental version of that. Makes you read all this dark imagery for hours. Then after you recall the memory and can see the scene clearly. Danielewski didn't want you to think of house of leaves. He wanted you to picture and see the Navidson Record
omg such an underrated comment. that happens to me frequently. The other day my buddy mentioned I should buy a cam corder, and immediately my brain thouight of the navidson record, i almost started talking about it and then was like wait, theyve never read it (and ive never seen it) - it exists in my head only. i was like - how did he know about cam corders and HoL hahaha this book literally lives with us. its an utter masterpiece
@@ThaKid14 another observation I made is I believe that the book Neverending story was a heavy inspiration for HOL. In Neverending story there is the house of change which is said to be bigger on the inside then the outside and every person that enters sees something different. The main antagonist is The Nothing which is similar to the recurring theme in HOL. Also it has more than one narrator which appear in two different colours so even playing with the typography may have been inspired by it. Not to mention they both involve the reader the same way by making the book they're holding part of the story.
The Minotaur is interesting in it’s connection to the House. Both are described best by what they are not. The House is not a home. The Minotaur is not a monster.
Those are one way to describe them, I wouldn't say "the best" ways. If someone had no idea what a minotaur was and you said "oh, it's not a monster" they aren't going to know much. Did you just say that because you thought it sounded cool?
I approached this book, and the author's quote about it being "about" interpretation, like a David Lynch film. Like Lynch, I believe Danielewski did imbue meaning on purpose (he strikes me as too meticulous an author to do otherwise), and I believe Danielewski made specific connections within and between the narratives, but also like Lynch he doesn't want to guide the audience towards his own interpretations through his outside-the-book commentary but leave it up to us. He knows what he meant, but wants us to get there (or somewhere else entirely) on our own. All the ingredients we need to interpret and/or experience the story are there, but we're left to our own devices to determine how much of each ingredient we're including in our recipe, how long to cook it, what to serve it with. If I feel like the creator of a thing knows what's up, I never feel cheated, even if I'm the one missing something. I fully understand why the made-up story about Johnny and the doctors felt like a slap in the face, but that sequence actually struck me as a pivotal insight into Johnny. He's more self-aware than we might think at first. He knows what it's going to take to sort himself out, but he can't, for whatever reason, implement it.
This is not the first comment I read in which someone associates this book to David Lynch. I also thought of Lynch when I was reading it. I feel like he's the only one who could adapt it into something, he gets it.
I really enjoyed reading this book but definitely think a lot of the charm for me was in the novelty of reading it and half way through realizing that I too was in the labyrinth. Im not sure I would pick it up again because you can only experience that once. If I do ever decide to read it again i think its likely I'll only read the parts describing the "films" narrative because those are the sections I enjoyed the most.
(David from BOSS) Agree. I think I loved this book so much as an 18 year old because of its uniqueness. But it fades. Nostalgia often replaces that feeling, but it can only hold up for so long. HoL is still an incredible feat and a remarkable piece of design and craftsmanship.
@@booksosubstance Im serious. If everything is good and your bills are paid and you have food and work and friends, this book doesnt mean much besides the outward abstract. It looks cool, its unique in idea and layout. I read it when I was on the street, no money, had pushed everyone away and was circling the drain. It hit me like a spaceship breaking thru the atmosphere. You have to be in one of those hallways then it makes alot more sense. This is a fucking dangerous book but im glad I read it. Getting to the tree of life literally almost killed me.
@@stariswartorn This is one of the beautiful and transcendent aspects of literature, they have the ability to pierce us, move us, change our lives. So glad you made it to the tree of life, friend.
He clearly wasn't paying attention, since it was at the beginning, that Johnny explained, that he was very good in making up stories. So it didn't came out of nowhere and is a clear hint at the end of the book, that he is a unreliable narrator.
I'll say this: I get why you guys didn't appreciate this book much from a pure literary standpoint. However, I think it was built for a different medium. My evidence for this is how quickly it was picked up by the ARG community. A community that revels in compiling information and parsing truth to solve a mystery was more fascinated by this book than you guys were.
I love this book but I think you all are way off on the interpretation.... could it have one author? Clearly ... yes ... the crux of this is the realization that the author is not Johnny, zampano, or pelafina ... the author is danielewski and if you take the time to look at him and why he wrote this then you understand that his interpretation is the only actual one that matters because this is one big maze that is at its core is an autobiography. The house is growing to symbolize the space between him and his family, primarily his father. He wrote this for his dad who scoffed at it and that draft was destroyed by danielewski and thrown away, later to be rescued and taped back together by his sister. If you research him then you can understand the book, he is really making the reader work far harder then speculated to be able to understand the point of the book.
Interesting. That context certainly adds another level, another branch in the growing labyrinth of interpretations of the novel, no doubt something Danielewski would have liked. What must be appreciated about this book is that it means so much to so many and in each in a different and unique way.
Mark's Sister Poe made Haunted which is a cd that contains the missing pieces to the narrative. Mark couldn't bring himself to make the story about what it was really about, his father old man Danielewski being way to much into art (him being a scholar and film director) at the detriment to his kids and probably his sick wife. Poe's album on the other hand is directly about her relationship to the Father, and contains a heap of sampled tapes found by Poe after his passing, which contained messages from their father. Actually it was the Thousand year sword that was makulated and saved by Poe. Mark wrote it driving home to his dying father, and after he had read it, his only comment was something akin to, "don't quit your dayjob. HoL is human emotion covering itself up in academic studies No way to understand the whole without Haunted So old man Zampano seem to be both Mark and his father in a way, but clearly inspired by Jorge Luis Borges as well The metaphysics library of babel seems to me to be of massive importance to understanding the labyrinth that is HoL
@@scabbarae it is a book about itself, self referential in that Johnny finds out that other people are quietly reading and sharing a book called House of Leaves at the end.
You guys should check out NIght Mind's exploration of house of leaves, his interpretation derives a lot of the meaning you guys seem to think is absent.
There is nothing at the end of the hallways or corridors to frame the story and it really works for me. Some people fucking hate it but all that critique for nothing makes sense that’s art sometimes, most times. I went down all those rabbit holes to nothing and it truly boosted the experience.
(David here, hi). I was one of those as well. When I first read this, I must have been 18 years old. I became obsessed with it. Hunting for clues, looking for the edge of reality/fiction. It was a hell of a lot of fun and one of the best reading experiences of my life. But age and experience sobered me, and after reading it this last time with the podcast, I think it may be the last time I read it. Nothing will capture that first read as a younger reader. So I will always have a fondness for it. And it is worthy of respect for its inventiveness in craft and style. Happy reading, Hiro.
I'm wondering how many fans have mental illness in their vicinity, as for me the meta layers of HoL was so clear and Mark's voice as a game designer's voice, guiding me through the story via the narrators and the invisible hand that is design, learning me how to traverse the footnotes, only to get stuck in the neverending loop some hundred pages in, where you have to take agency as a reader and choose how to break the circle and progress the to the next cycle, like a scratched record of a Fighting Fantasy book you have to lift the needle but the next part isn't causally, linearly the next part. Strongest for me was the first time the story really lost me, I'm a analytical and quite slow reader, doubly so as I'm not a native english speaker, but at a certain point Johnny totally interrupts Navidson (or maybe himself) so to totally go off the deep end in what is the first time I didn't feel I knew what the game was going on about, which some 7-8 pages into his cleary disturbed ramblings we're met with the socalled Editors, letting us know that Johnny rambling was somewhat lost on then as well but if the reader is up for breaching the natural flow of the pages of the book we can go several hundred pages into the book and read the whalestoe letters. This is akin to a game where after level 45 we get the chances to skip to level 900 but with no experience as to overcome what were met with, like facing Ganondorf without the master sword in the Zelda games. If we have the courage to go that far, we find not something obscure and high leveled, not at first, but the very clearest voice the book has had yet. We have to go outside the "main book" and into the appendices to find something tangible, the real reason johnny is disturbed, is growing up in his mother's illness, even when she is taken away she continues to be play a substantially part of Johnny's inner life. This is true even if the letters are a fabrication on Johnny's part, or it's Zampano doing a bad job of masquerading as a young man, vice versa, or as it ultimately is an, at least partial, fabrication on Danielewski's part. After reading the whalestoe and returning to and rereading Johnny's rambling a strong sympathy was fostered to Johnny of course, but to Mark as well Thanks for the ending, which somewhat made up for 1 hour of what was mostly platitudes
I find this discussion very interesting, particularly as someone who loved the book. There are too many points to go over, but I did love the play of it - it really felt playful to me. That it is so deliberate and so carefully constructed to seem improvisational and spontaneous doesn't make it just a dry facsimile of something 'genuinely soulful,' but rather that craft *is* its mode of expression and that very much reached me, as Zampano's writing reached Johnny. It feels to me like the book's relationship with the act of interpretation is very direct, in that like the House, its reality is shaped by those moving through it, experiencing it. But then, I suppose an inherent problem of that is that you might always shape an uninteresting or unenjoyable path, depending on how you engage with it. I, for one, was very grateful for my compelling journey through the House of Leaves. Good talk, at any rate!
I loved the book. It is my favorite book (for right now), and my interpretation of it is how we cope with the unknown and trauma. Johnny is not a great person, and his many vices are the only way he could escape his past and to escape the affect the book had on him. He tried to escape, run, and face everything that has happened and is happening to him. It's hard to relate to him, especially through all his rants and his experiences, yet I found a overall meaning of it. Johnny's story is about sinking to rock bottom, and through facing his own past and current troubles, he made a small step forward. He's not as well off as he was at the very beginning of the story, but he has stepped up from rock bottom and the story ends with him going forward and facing the unknown madness that spoils his mind. Navidson was different. Instead of avoiding the unknown and the trauma of being close to death, he puts everything to the side in order to explore what he doesn't know. While hesitant, at least at the start, he was willing to lose a lot (if not all) of what he had in life in order to explore the unknown and to triumph. He is seen by the people around him as a person that has to be the hero, that he desires to be the one at the front of every grand event in order to cope with the sacrifice made along the way. That was until he actually started to lose everything, and it broke him. Eventually when he sees himself as a man with nothing to lose, he went to adventure the house with a reckless abandon. Even when he was saved, he was permanently scared. He learned what was at the bottom and understood at the very end that by looking too deep, he can lose everything. I see the two stories of these characters as separate lessons about the same topic. One that says you can lose everything if you venture to deep into the unknown by using adventuring as a way to cope with one's past and to avoid dealing with other matters at hand. The other lesson is that when you can also lose everything by distracting yourself about what really matters with vices that cause such self destructive habits. And when the need to avoid the problems in life by looking for distractions, a person can hit rock bottom without even realizing that they have started to plummet in the first place. And such things can be avoided if you stop trying to cope and face these problems head on, even though the solution is still unknown. It's just two different stories around the same principal on facing the unknown and one's past trauma and mistakes.
I feel like reading the book without the videos and other ARG elements does a disservice to the story. The blurred line between storyteller, author, and story is largely lost without it. Whenever I introduce the book to people I always give them notes on how to follow along with the ARG elements as they read. Even if they can't follow like the original readers it's as close as you can get to the experience that made the book a cult classic.
@@booksosubstance appreciate the response. I can understand not liking the book, but it's just so important to note that it's not written as an 'A to B' plot, it's more like being handed a paint by numbers and having to fill it in by guessing what numbers they are hinting at along the way. It's a complicated read, but so much of what it says is off the page. By reading all those 'boring' or difficult bits, its giving you an insight into the characters and what they're thinking, maybe a glimpse at some sort of truth behind it. The real horror and story is not even in the book, you only find that when you go down the same rabbit hole that the characters all do. It's all a bit meta, but not reading it all is like saying you dont like the book, is like licking plain flour and saying you dont like cake. Yeah, you tried a bit, but you didnt see the whole picture, and the flour isnt supposed to be ate on its own
@@mattyirvine6298 i have read the book and found it to have not been worth the effort spent. I'm sure there are many secrets, jokes and deeper connections that I have missed but it felt like a paper "ARG" with no center.
I found this book scary too, since it made me consider gouging my eyes out while going through the science behind the "echo" for what felt like 300 pages
@@daanvanhoof9458I’m almost finished with it in my reading group and I feel the same way. “That’s the point, that there’s no center!” isn’t much of a point. It wants to present as sophisticated but mostly it feels onanistic.
I got really excited when you compared it to prometheus, because I always bring up prometheus if I talk about HOL. Unfortunately, I bring it up for a different reason. They both have an ending that I absolutely love, and everybody else I know hates. They both make you hungry for an answer to a huge question, and you eagerly await the reveal, only to just kind of end. Then, upon further investigation, you might realize the answer you wanted was revealed multiple times throughout. It just seemed so asinine that everybody ignores it. Meanwhile, there's a subtext about how the characters would be better off if they just quit trying to solve unanswerable questions and had a family with someone they love. They're actually quite similar in overall message. I would add that HOL heavily deals with trauma, and is a metaphor for how people deal with it. Other than that, this is one of the best analyses on the book I've heard. You guys didn't fall into the trap of focusing too much on the footnotes, but at the same time, you didn't completely ignore them and just touch the surface. It's a riddle, wrapped in a mystery, inside an enigma, with at least 3 layers of metaphors, all hiding a love story juxtaposed with nihilistic reality.
Thanks for the listening and feedback. Though we didn't love HoL or Prometheus, it is always great to see people who love art and find meaning in it. Also, excellent point on HoL as a book about dealing with trauma. It most certainly is.
The text leaves an impression with goes beyond the signifying to the signified. Along with Infinite Jest, it goes to what is the difference and différance between meaning as it is now and meaning deferred. Talking about the book changes its meaning.
Maybe the book isn't a product of its time. Maybe it is a product of being the age we where when it came out. I know that the hopelessness and rage in the book really spoke to me when I first read it as compared to my recent reading. Like, Johnny is a cartoon character now to me but there was a time when it wasn't. I we no evidence for it, but I imagine someone who is currently the age I was, with the mental health issues I had, would have a simular experience to my first reading of it. Then again the novelty of certain aspects is definitely deminished. Like this seems like a precursor for Marble Hornets, which is a precursor of all the different ARGs, which seem to primarily attract people of a certain age. People who are trying to make sense of life. Trying to draw connections in the noise of life. The book didn't hold up for me, I still do remember it affecting me. Maybe because it provided me with a maze for me to try to make sense of things going on outside the book. So maybe it's just growing older that makes the book less meaningful.
I realized that there is wordplay with "nom de guerre" early in the book, and clearly Johnny "Truant" is one. Even the mother comments on it in the letters. You wonder how he decided to use it, and whether that just became his moniker when he wrote things in the midst of his turbulent childhood, and being "truant" from all manners of emotional expression and connection.
I think im just stupid. I read it and was like "okay. Im finished. I dont know why this book was considered to be such a big deal." And so now im watching all these videos on it, and now i feel so dumb. 😂
To go to the source of this experimentalism we must start from Joyce's Ulysses, Borges' Fictions and Aleph and all the writings of the Oulipo school: Queneau, Perec, Calvino, Eco, after which these alleged new contemporary geniuses come out greatly reduced
i agree. it felt very gimmicky and trying too hard to be clever. there were moments of good, even great, writing and there were moments where reading it in the dark actually did feel creepy (especially when johnny is describing his symptoms and starts breaking the fourth wall) but the rest didn't hit as hard. infinite jest was more "obnoxious" (footnotes within footnotes, the language was more difficult and referenced a wide variety of subjects like psychoanalysis) and it succeeded in being touching and saying something meaningful about being human. this... the power of love? i could have watched the lion king instead. i think it definitely was a product of its time, there's been a shift in how much patience we have as a culture towards this cynical approach, even comedies have become more wholesome. irony isn't as novel now, it isn't refreshing. and yes the misogyny bothered me. even in the depiction of karen (she dropped out of a study because it ruined her orgasms and made her gain weight.. i mean.) only johnny's mother was portrayed convincingly.
This book was recommended to me by my lifelong best friend who's opinion on literature I value wholeheartedly. I purchased it a few years ago....working... Busy... Blah blah blah... I passed my first copy to another avid reader. He never mentioned it after that. I purchased it again 6 months ago. It sits on the bar in my home. I look at it every day. I've not read a word of this copy since it arrived on my doorstep. It seems to me as a book you have to read continuously. I want to be able to read it bit by bit as my life is very busy and I don't have much time to free my brain and open my imagination up for days on end. Is this a waste of time? My trying?
This is one of the funnest reads of all time (IMO OBVIOUSLY). It is funny, it’s loaded with satire and it its a one of a kind read that should you come to enjoy, you’ll be starving for something else like it. From the first time you meet Balyal, to the little dog, and the stories about King Minos and the Minotaur…. Well worth a read! Thanks for the video guys.
Really enjoyed this video! Would be into hearing about The Raw Shark Texts and see what you guys feel about that one (unless you already have.) But good shit regardless! Subscribed.
This is one of the funnest reads of all time (IMO OBVIOUSLY). It is funny, it’s loaded with satire and it its a one of a kind read that should you come to enjoy, you’ll be starving for something else like it. From the first time you meet Balyal, to the little dog, and the stories about King Minos and the Minotaur…. Well worth a read! Thanks for the video guys. There are many fantastic analogies that alone make it special. 17:51 what a beautiful point. Now I’m gonna have to subscribe and watch your other videos! Thanks boys o7
Such kind words. Thank you so very much. It is, absolutely, a one of a kind book. The humor is not something enough people discuss. Thank you for listening.
@@ThaKid14 Delial, the little Sudanese girl Navidson shot pictures of dying from malnutrition. He kept thinking about her after exploration 4 I believe and he went back because he thought she may be in there or he deserved to be punished for not just helping her.
I think I had been hoping that I was going to end up watching Johnny be tied into the house more or that we were gonna find out the characters were different pieces of his personality and that he wrote the papers he found in the apartment and then it wasn’t and it was disappointing..
Enjoyed your review. Whem I tried to read it, the book struck me as a convoluted insult to the reader. Seems like the passage you read about lost love was the heart of the book and the writer spends the whole book trying to hide, obscure and protect it just as that character rums away from the girl he loves.
@@booksosubstance i just started this book and I'm already confused. Some of the authors citations don't even exist. Now im questioning if this is some encryption or why the author even bothered making fake citations.
lol yeah I can see why you would have no idea what tf going on if you didnt even read the appendixes. It's clear you took zero care in reading this book so its odd to me to make a podcast about it. the audacity and self importance to think people should spend their time listening to your opinions about a book you havent even read............
This novel is so strange. I really appreciate the reading experience, but nothing deeper stays with me after I read it. Yet, I have returned to it and read it three times. Maybe the lack of center is what draws me in. There is a human desire to find meaning. That is what pulls people deeper into the House.
> nothing deeper stays with me
Well you just proceeded to describe a really deep experience of understanding why you are drawn to what you dont understand
I think the lack of meaning that is explicitly implied allows for the reader to relate to different aspects. I too have read it many times across 15 years of my life. Each time I find new things that grab my attention or that I can empathize with.
I think there's a lot of symbolism, I loved Zampano s version of the minotaur and I think Johnny's mom was his minotaur and the little girl Navidson photographed was his minotaur and we all have a minotaur in our lives somehow. The more Navidson was haunted by the image of the little girl the more the labyrinth (the hallways) opened and multiplied , I think it was his hell, it's like a symbol of unprocessed trauma, same as with Johnny and his mom, the mom is like a minotaur.. exactly like Zampano said.
And I sometimes think Zampano is Johnny, a creation of Johnny and everything is a creation of Johnny to deal with the trauma his mother inflicted on him and the abandonment he endured and all that. It's a really tricky book 😭
I just finished the book and there is this weird feeling inside of me. Now I'm looking up all sorts of videos and forum pages talking about House of Leaves. I kinda feel like Johnny haha
This happens to so many. Back in the early days of the internet (late 90s / early 00s) was the perfect time and place for this book, to get lost in its labyrinth and then find another door into another labyrinth with its online forum and puzzle solvers and literary sleuths and mad-folk piecing together all sorts of connections. Imagine the same is true even today...glad the house is still pulling people into it.
@@booksosubstance I am very late to your video, but I was one of those people! Scouring the old forum, joining in the quest for meaning. Now, I think I ended up falling for one of the jokes embeded in the book.
jonny wasn't joking or making empty threats in the introduction. If you read this book, in at least some way, you really do become obsessed.
How sure are you that you're not Johnny?
@@bartmossyou did. The book has already done all the analysis as you read the footnotes. It leaves you with nowhere to hide.
Sometimes I'm sitting around and I begin to vividly imagine scenes of the Navidson Record... Then it hits me like a brick.. I've never seen it.
But you have. All in the infinite labyrinth of the skull.
@@booksosubstance I feel like its not something I imagined but something I've seen before that's the difference. Have you seen those optical illusions that make you look at the negative of an image for 30 seconds and then you look at a white wall and can see the image? I feel like this book did a mental version of that. Makes you read all this dark imagery for hours. Then after you recall the memory and can see the scene clearly. Danielewski didn't want you to think of house of leaves. He wanted you to picture and see the Navidson Record
thank you
omg such an underrated comment. that happens to me frequently. The other day my buddy mentioned I should buy a cam corder, and immediately my brain thouight of the navidson record, i almost started talking about it and then was like wait, theyve never read it (and ive never seen it) - it exists in my head only. i was like - how did he know about cam corders and HoL hahaha this book literally lives with us. its an utter masterpiece
@@ThaKid14 another observation I made is I believe that the book Neverending story was a heavy inspiration for HOL. In Neverending story there is the house of change which is said to be bigger on the inside then the outside and every person that enters sees something different. The main antagonist is The Nothing which is similar to the recurring theme in HOL. Also it has more than one narrator which appear in two different colours so even playing with the typography may have been inspired by it. Not to mention they both involve the reader the same way by making the book they're holding part of the story.
The Minotaur is interesting in it’s connection to the House. Both are described best by what they are not. The House is not a home. The Minotaur is not a monster.
Those are one way to describe them, I wouldn't say "the best" ways. If someone had no idea what a minotaur was and you said "oh, it's not a monster" they aren't going to know much. Did you just say that because you thought it sounded cool?
@@JohnnyJohnny-f5oyou don’t seem like you’re fun at parties
I approached this book, and the author's quote about it being "about" interpretation, like a David Lynch film. Like Lynch, I believe Danielewski did imbue meaning on purpose (he strikes me as too meticulous an author to do otherwise), and I believe Danielewski made specific connections within and between the narratives, but also like Lynch he doesn't want to guide the audience towards his own interpretations through his outside-the-book commentary but leave it up to us. He knows what he meant, but wants us to get there (or somewhere else entirely) on our own. All the ingredients we need to interpret and/or experience the story are there, but we're left to our own devices to determine how much of each ingredient we're including in our recipe, how long to cook it, what to serve it with. If I feel like the creator of a thing knows what's up, I never feel cheated, even if I'm the one missing something.
I fully understand why the made-up story about Johnny and the doctors felt like a slap in the face, but that sequence actually struck me as a pivotal insight into Johnny. He's more self-aware than we might think at first. He knows what it's going to take to sort himself out, but he can't, for whatever reason, implement it.
Fair enough. Thanks for the comment and for listening.
This is not the first comment I read in which someone associates this book to David Lynch. I also thought of Lynch when I was reading it. I feel like he's the only one who could adapt it into something, he gets it.
I really enjoyed reading this book but definitely think a lot of the charm for me was in the novelty of reading it and half way through realizing that I too was in the labyrinth. Im not sure I would pick it up again because you can only experience that once. If I do ever decide to read it again i think its likely I'll only read the parts describing the "films" narrative because those are the sections I enjoyed the most.
(David from BOSS) Agree. I think I loved this book so much as an 18 year old because of its uniqueness. But it fades. Nostalgia often replaces that feeling, but it can only hold up for so long. HoL is still an incredible feat and a remarkable piece of design and craftsmanship.
YOU need to be in the right place to be able to appreciate this book.
Almost certainly, preferably a place that follows the laws of physics and does not contain a -minotaur-
@@booksosubstance Im serious. If everything is good and your bills are paid and you have food and work and friends, this book doesnt mean much besides the outward abstract. It looks cool, its unique in idea and layout.
I read it when I was on the street, no money, had pushed everyone away and was circling the drain. It hit me like a spaceship breaking thru the atmosphere. You have to be in one of those hallways then it makes alot more sense. This is a fucking dangerous book but im glad I read it. Getting to the tree of life literally almost killed me.
@@stariswartorn This is one of the beautiful and transcendent aspects of literature, they have the ability to pierce us, move us, change our lives.
So glad you made it to the tree of life, friend.
I find it hilarious that the bit with Johnny's doctor friends actually fooled someone.
He clearly wasn't paying attention, since it was at the beginning, that Johnny explained, that he was very good in making up stories.
So it didn't came out of nowhere and is a clear hint at the end of the book, that he is a unreliable narrator.
Reading this instills a sense of discordant dread I feel only when I am lost in man-made labyrinths.
Finishing this book was one of the most satisfying experiences of reading.
Absofruitly!
I'll say this: I get why you guys didn't appreciate this book much from a pure literary standpoint. However, I think it was built for a different medium. My evidence for this is how quickly it was picked up by the ARG community. A community that revels in compiling information and parsing truth to solve a mystery was more fascinated by this book than you guys were.
That makes a lot of sense. This novel deserves a lot of appreciation and respect, though it can be frustrating. Appreciate giving us a listen.
Yeah it felt less like a piece of literary art and more like a visual art experience
I love this book but I think you all are way off on the interpretation.... could it have one author? Clearly ... yes ... the crux of this is the realization that the author is not Johnny, zampano, or pelafina ... the author is danielewski and if you take the time to look at him and why he wrote this then you understand that his interpretation is the only actual one that matters because this is one big maze that is at its core is an autobiography. The house is growing to symbolize the space between him and his family, primarily his father. He wrote this for his dad who scoffed at it and that draft was destroyed by danielewski and thrown away, later to be rescued and taped back together by his sister. If you research him then you can understand the book, he is really making the reader work far harder then speculated to be able to understand the point of the book.
Interesting. That context certainly adds another level, another branch in the growing labyrinth of interpretations of the novel, no doubt something Danielewski would have liked. What must be appreciated about this book is that it means so much to so many and in each in a different and unique way.
Mark's Sister Poe made Haunted which is a cd that contains the missing pieces to the narrative. Mark couldn't bring himself to make the story about what it was really about, his father old man Danielewski being way to much into art (him being a scholar and film director) at the detriment to his kids and probably his sick wife. Poe's album on the other hand is directly about her relationship to the Father, and contains a heap of sampled tapes found by Poe after his passing, which contained messages from their father.
Actually it was the Thousand year sword that was makulated and saved by Poe.
Mark wrote it driving home to his dying father, and after he had read it, his only comment was something akin to, "don't quit your dayjob.
HoL is human emotion covering itself up in academic studies
No way to understand the whole without Haunted
So old man Zampano seem to be both Mark and his father in a way, but clearly inspired by Jorge Luis Borges as well
The metaphysics library of babel seems to me to be of massive importance to understanding the labyrinth that is HoL
That would make House of Leaves a book about itself, then. I guess that's another thing a labyrinth does: loop back on itself.
@@scabbarae it is a book about itself, self referential in that Johnny finds out that other people are quietly reading and sharing a book called House of Leaves at the end.
You guys should check out NIght Mind's exploration of house of leaves, his interpretation derives a lot of the meaning you guys seem to think is absent.
Cool. Will check it out. Always happy to see a different point of you and change our minds.
There is nothing at the end of the hallways or corridors to frame the story and it really works for me. Some people fucking hate it but all that critique for nothing makes sense that’s art sometimes, most times. I went down all those rabbit holes to nothing and it truly boosted the experience.
(David here, hi). I was one of those as well. When I first read this, I must have been 18 years old. I became obsessed with it. Hunting for clues, looking for the edge of reality/fiction. It was a hell of a lot of fun and one of the best reading experiences of my life. But age and experience sobered me, and after reading it this last time with the podcast, I think it may be the last time I read it. Nothing will capture that first read as a younger reader. So I will always have a fondness for it. And it is worthy of respect for its inventiveness in craft and style. Happy reading, Hiro.
I'm wondering how many fans have mental illness in their vicinity, as for me the meta layers of HoL was so clear and Mark's voice as a game designer's voice, guiding me through the story via the narrators and the invisible hand that is design, learning me how to traverse the footnotes, only to get stuck in the neverending loop some hundred pages in, where you have to take agency as a reader and choose how to break the circle and progress the to the next cycle, like a scratched record of a Fighting Fantasy book you have to lift the needle but the next part isn't causally, linearly the next part.
Strongest for me was the first time the story really lost me, I'm a analytical and quite slow reader, doubly so as I'm not a native english speaker, but at a certain point Johnny totally interrupts Navidson (or maybe himself) so to totally go off the deep end in what is the first time I didn't feel I knew what the game was going on about, which some 7-8 pages into his cleary disturbed ramblings we're met with the socalled Editors, letting us know that Johnny rambling was somewhat lost on then as well but if the reader is up for breaching the natural flow of the pages of the book we can go several hundred pages into the book and read the whalestoe letters. This is akin to a game where after level 45 we get the chances to skip to level 900 but with no experience as to overcome what were met with, like facing Ganondorf without the master sword in the Zelda games.
If we have the courage to go that far, we find not something obscure and high leveled, not at first, but the very clearest voice the book has had yet.
We have to go outside the "main book" and into the appendices to find something tangible, the real reason johnny is disturbed, is growing up in his mother's illness, even when she is taken away she continues to be play a substantially part of Johnny's inner life. This is true even if the letters are a fabrication on Johnny's part, or it's Zampano doing a bad job of masquerading as a young man, vice versa, or as it ultimately is an, at least partial, fabrication on Danielewski's part.
After reading the whalestoe and returning to and rereading Johnny's rambling a strong sympathy was fostered to Johnny of course, but to Mark as well
Thanks for the ending, which somewhat made up for 1 hour of what was mostly platitudes
I find this discussion very interesting, particularly as someone who loved the book. There are too many points to go over, but I did love the play of it - it really felt playful to me. That it is so deliberate and so carefully constructed to seem improvisational and spontaneous doesn't make it just a dry facsimile of something 'genuinely soulful,' but rather that craft *is* its mode of expression and that very much reached me, as Zampano's writing reached Johnny. It feels to me like the book's relationship with the act of interpretation is very direct, in that like the House, its reality is shaped by those moving through it, experiencing it.
But then, I suppose an inherent problem of that is that you might always shape an uninteresting or unenjoyable path, depending on how you engage with it. I, for one, was very grateful for my compelling journey through the House of Leaves.
Good talk, at any rate!
I want this to be a limited tv series. The book blew my mind 20 years ago and I've given it for gifts many times.
It could be interesting as a series.
I loved the book. It is my favorite book (for right now), and my interpretation of it is how we cope with the unknown and trauma. Johnny is not a great person, and his many vices are the only way he could escape his past and to escape the affect the book had on him. He tried to escape, run, and face everything that has happened and is happening to him. It's hard to relate to him, especially through all his rants and his experiences, yet I found a overall meaning of it. Johnny's story is about sinking to rock bottom, and through facing his own past and current troubles, he made a small step forward. He's not as well off as he was at the very beginning of the story, but he has stepped up from rock bottom and the story ends with him going forward and facing the unknown madness that spoils his mind. Navidson was different. Instead of avoiding the unknown and the trauma of being close to death, he puts everything to the side in order to explore what he doesn't know. While hesitant, at least at the start, he was willing to lose a lot (if not all) of what he had in life in order to explore the unknown and to triumph. He is seen by the people around him as a person that has to be the hero, that he desires to be the one at the front of every grand event in order to cope with the sacrifice made along the way. That was until he actually started to lose everything, and it broke him. Eventually when he sees himself as a man with nothing to lose, he went to adventure the house with a reckless abandon. Even when he was saved, he was permanently scared. He learned what was at the bottom and understood at the very end that by looking too deep, he can lose everything. I see the two stories of these characters as separate lessons about the same topic. One that says you can lose everything if you venture to deep into the unknown by using adventuring as a way to cope with one's past and to avoid dealing with other matters at hand. The other lesson is that when you can also lose everything by distracting yourself about what really matters with vices that cause such self destructive habits. And when the need to avoid the problems in life by looking for distractions, a person can hit rock bottom without even realizing that they have started to plummet in the first place. And such things can be avoided if you stop trying to cope and face these problems head on, even though the solution is still unknown. It's just two different stories around the same principal on facing the unknown and one's past trauma and mistakes.
I feel like reading the book without the videos and other ARG elements does a disservice to the story. The blurred line between storyteller, author, and story is largely lost without it. Whenever I introduce the book to people I always give them notes on how to follow along with the ARG elements as they read. Even if they can't follow like the original readers it's as close as you can get to the experience that made the book a cult classic.
"I didn't like the book"
also
"I didn't bother to read the whole book"
Well there's your answer right there
Fair point, though that is not true for every one of us. Anyway...thanks for listening.
@@booksosubstance appreciate the response. I can understand not liking the book, but it's just so important to note that it's not written as an 'A to B' plot, it's more like being handed a paint by numbers and having to fill it in by guessing what numbers they are hinting at along the way. It's a complicated read, but so much of what it says is off the page. By reading all those 'boring' or difficult bits, its giving you an insight into the characters and what they're thinking, maybe a glimpse at some sort of truth behind it. The real horror and story is not even in the book, you only find that when you go down the same rabbit hole that the characters all do. It's all a bit meta, but not reading it all is like saying you dont like the book, is like licking plain flour and saying you dont like cake. Yeah, you tried a bit, but you didnt see the whole picture, and the flour isnt supposed to be ate on its own
@@mattyirvine6298 i have read the book and found it to have not been worth the effort spent. I'm sure there are many secrets, jokes and deeper connections that I have missed but it felt like a paper "ARG" with no center.
I found this book scary too, since it made me consider gouging my eyes out while going through the science behind the "echo" for what felt like 300 pages
@@daanvanhoof9458I’m almost finished with it in my reading group and I feel the same way. “That’s the point, that there’s no center!” isn’t much of a point. It wants to present as sophisticated but mostly it feels onanistic.
I got really excited when you compared it to prometheus, because I always bring up prometheus if I talk about HOL. Unfortunately, I bring it up for a different reason.
They both have an ending that I absolutely love, and everybody else I know hates. They both make you hungry for an answer to a huge question, and you eagerly await the reveal, only to just kind of end. Then, upon further investigation, you might realize the answer you wanted was revealed multiple times throughout. It just seemed so asinine that everybody ignores it. Meanwhile, there's a subtext about how the characters would be better off if they just quit trying to solve unanswerable questions and had a family with someone they love. They're actually quite similar in overall message.
I would add that HOL heavily deals with trauma, and is a metaphor for how people deal with it. Other than that, this is one of the best analyses on the book I've heard. You guys didn't fall into the trap of focusing too much on the footnotes, but at the same time, you didn't completely ignore them and just touch the surface.
It's a riddle, wrapped in a mystery, inside an enigma, with at least 3 layers of metaphors, all hiding a love story juxtaposed with nihilistic reality.
Thanks for the listening and feedback. Though we didn't love HoL or Prometheus, it is always great to see people who love art and find meaning in it.
Also, excellent point on HoL as a book about dealing with trauma. It most certainly is.
I remember reading this in summertime in the garden and feeling hella creeped out even tho it was a lovely day
Just found you guys through Leaf by Leaf. So much amazing content. Thank you for making my summer here in Melbourne eventful! :)
Our pleasure. Glad we could do something to help. Cheers.
Kid a fits so well with the vibe of HoL
It really does.
Am I the only one that thought it didn’t feel that long?
I think the first time we (Nathan and David) read it, the novel enraptured us and it felt very short. Time, our perception of it, is relative.
I think i just find gold guys, loving this podcast.
Awesome review, I always enjoy long analysis of this deep book
This book makes you face your self
And that alone (though it does have other merits; albeit we were a bit harsh on it in parts) is worth the read.
The text leaves an impression with goes beyond the signifying to the signified. Along with Infinite Jest, it goes to what is the difference and différance between meaning as it is now and meaning deferred. Talking about the book changes its meaning.
Maybe the book isn't a product of its time. Maybe it is a product of being the age we where when it came out. I know that the hopelessness and rage in the book really spoke to me when I first read it as compared to my recent reading. Like, Johnny is a cartoon character now to me but there was a time when it wasn't. I we no evidence for it, but I imagine someone who is currently the age I was, with the mental health issues I had, would have a simular experience to my first reading of it.
Then again the novelty of certain aspects is definitely deminished. Like this seems like a precursor for Marble Hornets, which is a precursor of all the different ARGs, which seem to primarily attract people of a certain age. People who are trying to make sense of life. Trying to draw connections in the noise of life. The book didn't hold up for me, I still do remember it affecting me. Maybe because it provided me with a maze for me to try to make sense of things going on outside the book.
So maybe it's just growing older that makes the book less meaningful.
It certainly may be a result of aging. Thanks for the note.
If there is a centre, I don't think it's going to hold
I realized that there is wordplay with "nom de guerre" early in the book, and clearly Johnny "Truant" is one. Even the mother comments on it in the letters. You wonder how he decided to use it, and whether that just became his moniker when he wrote things in the midst of his turbulent childhood, and being "truant" from all manners of emotional expression and connection.
I think Navy is another, after re-reading the bit about places that have been thought of as the "navel of the world".
I think im just stupid. I read it and was like "okay. Im finished. I dont know why this book was considered to be such a big deal." And so now im watching all these videos on it, and now i feel so dumb. 😂
To go to the source of this experimentalism we must start from Joyce's Ulysses, Borges' Fictions and Aleph and all the writings of the Oulipo school: Queneau, Perec, Calvino, Eco, after which these alleged new contemporary geniuses come out greatly reduced
Indifference is exactly how I felt.
it happens
i agree. it felt very gimmicky and trying too hard to be clever. there were moments of good, even great, writing and there were moments where reading it in the dark actually did feel creepy (especially when johnny is describing his symptoms and starts breaking the fourth wall) but the rest didn't hit as hard. infinite jest was more "obnoxious" (footnotes within footnotes, the language was more difficult and referenced a wide variety of subjects like psychoanalysis) and it succeeded in being touching and saying something meaningful about being human. this... the power of love? i could have watched the lion king instead. i think it definitely was a product of its time, there's been a shift in how much patience we have as a culture towards this cynical approach, even comedies have become more wholesome. irony isn't as novel now, it isn't refreshing. and yes the misogyny bothered me. even in the depiction of karen (she dropped out of a study because it ruined her orgasms and made her gain weight.. i mean.) only johnny's mother was portrayed convincingly.
Wonderful pod! I loved the book!
Thank you! Cheers!
This book was recommended to me by my lifelong best friend who's opinion on literature I value wholeheartedly.
I purchased it a few years ago....working... Busy... Blah blah blah...
I passed my first copy to another avid reader.
He never mentioned it after that.
I purchased it again 6 months ago.
It sits on the bar in my home. I look at it every day. I've not read a word of this copy since it arrived on my doorstep.
It seems to me as a book you have to read continuously.
I want to be able to read it bit by bit as my life is very busy and I don't have much time to free my brain and open my imagination up for days on end.
Is this a waste of time? My trying?
So far, I've heard to try reading it one chapter a day.
@@angelvaquera2440 Sound advice. Try what you can when you can.
This is one of the funnest reads of all time (IMO OBVIOUSLY). It is funny, it’s loaded with satire and it its a one of a kind read that should you come to enjoy, you’ll be starving for something else like it. From the first time you meet Balyal, to the little dog, and the stories about King Minos and the Minotaur…. Well worth a read! Thanks for the video guys.
Really enjoyed this video! Would be into hearing about The Raw Shark Texts and see what you guys feel about that one (unless you already have.) But good shit regardless! Subscribed.
Cheers! Haven't gotten to The Raw Shark Texts (yet). Thanks for the subscription. Hope you find some more to enjoy.
Only book to ever scare mme. But I was little.
Or so I thought. Read it again and since I still have a very active imagination still got scared
It has a way of tricking the mind into imagining all sorts of things and nothings.
Great discussion and I really liked the excerpt on the atrocity
Thanks for listening. Cheers.
This is one of the funnest reads of all time (IMO OBVIOUSLY). It is funny, it’s loaded with satire and it its a one of a kind read that should you come to enjoy, you’ll be starving for something else like it. From the first time you meet Balyal, to the little dog, and the stories about King Minos and the Minotaur…. Well worth a read! Thanks for the video guys. There are many fantastic analogies that alone make it special. 17:51 what a beautiful point. Now I’m gonna have to subscribe and watch your other videos! Thanks boys o7
Such kind words. Thank you so very much. It is, absolutely, a one of a kind book. The humor is not something enough people discuss. Thank you for listening.
who is Balyal??
@@ThaKid14 Delial, the little Sudanese girl Navidson shot pictures of dying from malnutrition. He kept thinking about her after exploration 4 I believe and he went back because he thought she may be in there or he deserved to be punished for not just helping her.
The little Pomeranian dog really fucking hurt.
My grandmother finds Johnny hilarious.
this was a very nice video
↑this was a very kind comment
I think I had been hoping that I was going to end up watching Johnny be tied into the house more or that we were gonna find out the characters were different pieces of his personality and that he wrote the papers he found in the apartment and then it wasn’t and it was disappointing..
Would have made it less unique of a story if he did that. Would have been predictable
Enjoyed your review. Whem I tried to read it, the book struck me as a convoluted insult to the reader. Seems like the passage you read about lost love was the heart of the book and the writer spends the whole book trying to hide, obscure and protect it just as that character rums away from the girl he loves.
Thanks for the listen. It seems that quite a few people find it unnecessarily convoluted.
@@booksosubstance i just started this book and I'm already confused. Some of the authors citations don't even exist. Now im questioning if this is some encryption or why the author even bothered making fake citations.
man, you guys are a bummer.
so is this comment
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lol yeah I can see why you would have no idea what tf going on if you didnt even read the appendixes. It's clear you took zero care in reading this book so its odd to me to make a podcast about it. the audacity and self importance to think people should spend their time listening to your opinions about a book you havent even read............
If a book only becomes good when every part has been read, that might say more about the book itself