Read for the first time in November 2012.
My favorite thing about “House of Leaves” is the conceit, which is extraordinarily clever. An old guy having written a criticism of a supposed documentary about a strange house dies. The writing is discovered by an aspiring tattoo artist who adds his own journalistic thoughts to the proceedings.
One aspect of this that I don’t like is how it can make it difficult for me to level certain criticisms. This gets difficult to talk about, for there are conceits within conceits operating in this novel. But to try, for example, the notion that Zampano’s purported work is a commentary on “The Navidson Project” completely falls apart due to his excessive summarizing of the on-screen events. This is acknowledged within the novel, but even still, it is too much. Second how long does this “Navidson Project” purport to be? 20 hours? 40 hours? It’s obvious that there is no film at all, but that Zampano is merely telling the fictional Navidson story through the use of a creative conceit.
And of course, by saying this, I’m criticizing Zampano, but I don’t know if I’m criticizing Danielewski. We know outright that even within the fictional world that Zampano and Johnny Truant live in, that this film does not exist. Danielewski creates a character who creates a successful but not entirely convincing conceit. I just feel like the whole thing would have worked even better if every element of the conceit within a conceit was believable in every way. If we really could believe that Zampano’s work was in fact the commentary it purports to be.
I don't know if a third person is capable of untangling those preceding two paragraphs. But I give up on it.
Nonetheless, Zampano’s description of what happens in that film is the best part of the book. This is basically a very good Stephen King story, and I think it’s interesting that we care more about this fake family and what happens in this fake story than we do about the purportedly “real” characters, like Johnny Truant and Zampano. And of course this is absurd because they aren’t any more real than the Navidsons just a step removed. I also especially enjoyed reading Johnny Truant’s letters from his mother. Those were a highlight for me.
The structure is something I have some ambivalence about. There are times when I think putting three lines of text on a whole page enhances the experience of reading that novel. It enhances the suspense of some of the most suspenseful moments. Some of the details about crossing things out or words or pages lost to ink splots or whatever enhances a kind of fake authenticity, as well. And I think it also does a good job of reflecting structurally the mental deterioration of both Zampano and Johnny Truant. But it also is annoying at times, especially all of the footnote games around the most boring part of this thing and also, basically all of exploration number five.
I also don’t know how I feel about Johnny Truant as a character. I don’t know that I ever fully bought into him. Except to say, he’s made to be an exceptionally good liar/story-teller and that creates another layer of question for this thing in my mind. Also the portrayal of his mental deterioration was some goddamned good writing in my opinion. But outside of that, he lacked charisma to me, and I don’t know how to take his lack of education on one hand and his sometimes exceptional vocabulary on the other. I definitely feel like the Navidson’s story is the one that draws our affinities and creates suspense.
One other neat trick, I thought was how everyone goes crazy. Zampano says in his work, people who thought about and wrote about the Navidson project developed mental problems. He apparently develops them himself. Johnny Truant starts to read Zampano’s work and writes about it himself. Then we see him go crazy, too. And of course, here we are reading it ourselves, book in hand. Do we take the admonition not to think about it? Do we dare write about it? Shall we start down that spiral staircase or turn back?
It’s a cool trick. This is a pretty cool book. Like I said, it’s like a good Stephen King novel, but with experimental flourishes. I don’t call it a gimmick. But I am curious as to where in terms of writing Danielewski’s passions lie.
No comments:
Post a Comment