Post of Leaves
Mark Z. Danielewski's House of Leaves is a tour de force achievement in postmodern narrative deconstruction. While marketed as a horror novel, its true appeal comes from its multilayered story, which, Russian doll-style, compacts no fewer than five layers of narrative. [1] At the center is the story of Will Navidson, a Pulitzer Prize-winning
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b) See, I loved that. Because of course it was absurd. You didn't appreciate the satire? I mean, the media saturation this thing apparently had was just off the charts of sensibility. Yet, pretending it was real made me attempt to think it was real, how it would really work, which was fun. I do think it would have made a good horror story in and of itself, but I found this approach to it absolutely fascinating. I mean, I never would have thought that a description of a film I've never seen would be such a good read. (Unless it's a TWoP recap, right? Heh.) And I especially loved the way the typesetting mimicked the story, like with the labyrinth chapter: when that light bulb went off in my head, it was so cool. (And that chapter is stupid hilarious because the way he pulls it off is to fill up all the space with pointlessly long lists.) And then in scenes where text goes up and down and all around and gets compressed, it all helped me get into the scene and feel like I was there with them. As for the point, I think I covered some of what I thought was the point in my review.
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I guess, no? It was the kind of book where I could see someone who's had to read a lot literary analysis appreciating, but personally I just found it annoying. I know that some of the tricks were meant to pull people in, but I thought it was just dumb and ended up obscuring the actual story.
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Like, for instance, an English major? ;-}
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