(Special thanks to Sean and Lena for once-overs and ideas. For best results, read in a browser.)
Ba da ba ba
I'm haunted
By the hallways in this tiny room
The echo there of me and you
The voices that are carrying this tune
Ba da ba ba¹
House Of Leaves is a book about a manuscript about an essay about a movie about a house. Multiple narratives and essays are nested together in this messy maze, and they are frequently in conflict and dialogue with each other. The West Coast tattoo artist, Johnny Truant, has discovered reams of pages from a dead blind man named Zampano. They are a critical exegesis of academia regarding a 90's horror film called The Navidson Record, in which a photojournalist and his family discover that their house is bigger on the inside, and opening a portal to a strange jet black labyrinth of infinity, where darkness reigns and the shadows keep on changing. As Johnny discovers, The Navidson Record does not exist... but he also discovers, as he insists on intruding upon the essay, that the madness is spreading off of the page and back onto him. That is as concise a summary as I can muster, but what makes this book special is its form. Its nested narrative state takes the form of an academic essay with cited sources and footnotes³, and it is within these footnotes where the narrative argues with itself.⁴ Johnny Truant will interrupt to tell his story for pages at a time within them⁵, sometimes tying back to whatever point was being made in the essay, sometimes to just tell stories of his lurid sexual escapades, most of the time to express his deteriorating mental state. Something about perceiving The Navidson Record and this essay on is driving him mad.
The Navidson Record is a fascinating tale in and of itself, when once considers other influences. The titular Will Navidson discovers that his new house on Ash Tree Lane is bigger on the inside, by a quarter of an inch. Whereas other works treat such dimensional transcendence with awe and wonder⁸, the house being an impossibility boggles the mind. That's before the labyrinth opens up in the house, and as said it's a further impossibility. Like the winding dusty halls of Daedalus's master work, the labyrinth of Ash Tree Lane mirrors the legend and may also contain something, Minotaur or otherwise.⁹ We learn very little about it, as brave people venture into its inky blackness to explore its depths, but what we do learn is chilling. Its depths are wider than the circumference of the Earth, and its walls are made of material older than the Earth or perhaps even the known universe. It is an ancient and terrifying thing, and it may even be the World Tree Yggdrasil itself.🌕 This labyrinth is madness itself, and that madness extends outward into the very book itself.
The roots spread, breaking across the nested narratives. Johnny Truant's madness we've covered, but this labyrinth's walls extend to the very book itself. It's time to talk about the big gimmick of House Of Leaves: how fucking crazy it gets with the printed word. It starts small, with nested footnotes and long-winded tangents in other fonts.¹³ Before long, the very act of reading the book becomes its own struggle. The erudition of citing academic sources becomes a pretentious parody of itself, listing all sorts of things that don't make sense, just endless lists of things related to academia that add nothing to the understanding of the text. As the labyrinth expands and things get crazy, so too does the very layout of the book itself change. Footnotes will appear upside-down, or mirrored. The text itself will go absolutely wonky, sometimes spacing itself out and other times bunching itself it. There is a method to this madness, and it is a marvel of one. In discussing Unflattening we mused on the form and function of the comic book, the way it combines the sequential power of words and images separately to form something greater than either alone. House Of Leaves manages to get close to that plateau of unflattening, using only words themselves: in lieu of images, it is how the words are arranged on the page which dictate the mood of the piece. When one is down low and looking up, the words are bunched at the bottom of the page. When one is high and gazing down into a yawning abyss, the words are at the top.¹⁸ Image and power are invoked, using nothing but the written word, a labyrinth of them building together to a deeper microcosmic meaning.
House Of Leaves is a labyrinth, on every level. A labyrinth of words arranged on the page, in your hand. A labyrinth of becoming unglued from reality, as Johnny Truant continues to lose himself while arranging the words of an old dead man into something resembling rationality. A labyrinth of disorientating and intrusive thoughts, an Eleanor Vance¹⁹ for the turn of the millennium. A labyrinth of academia and erudition, all in the name of a film which does not exist and for which no peer review can be given. A labyrinth of PTSD, trauma, and grief as the Navidson family, Tom and Will and Will's partner Karen and their children Chad and Stacy feel the effects of this ever growing infinity which lurks within the walls of what should have been their happy home. Even House Of Leaves itself lays within House Of Leaves, the serpent eating its own tail. Multitudes are abound in this book, and those multitudes contain multitudes of their own. House Of Leaves is bigger on the inside. House Of Leaves is darker, wilder, and scarier than you ever could imagine. Even in attempting to critique it for this marathon, I have become lost in a labyrinth of my own pretention. Can I ever find the exit? Can you?
Open the door to that five and a half minute hallway, and find out.²⁰
______________________________________________________________________
²See Frezno's Comics Challenge: January 2024 (Of Thunder And Lightning) (Frezno's Raving Rants, 2024)
³Like this, for instance.
⁴No it doesn't.
⁵So as you're reading this, I'm in the capital of Newfoundland for Canadian Thanksgiving. Yes, that's a thing we have here. I am speaking to you across temporal lines, as well as being emboited in this space, caught in a footnote like a fly in amber. At least my journey across the Newfoundland landscape to get here was faster than Alvin Straight's.⁶ It's nice down here, though. A little basement I can call my own. As you know, I'm fond of basements. The way they keep you cool in summer and warm in winter, and the way they let you isolate and be an introvert while other things happen upstairs. Your own private little space to just vibe. I once took House Of Leaves to a basement in Grand Bank. I don't remember if I read it there, but it was present. This narrative keeps on shifting. I don't know what will become of this post.
⁶For further reading, see Frezno's Comics Challenge Debrief Podcast (Jan. 20XXXX or Sean Dillon and Lena MactÃre's About Space 3: The Unauthorized Guide to Star Trek 1995-1999 (Arcbeatle Press, 20XXXX⁷
⁷Portions of this footnote were smudged by ink and unreadable.
⁸See Doctor Who (BBC, 1963-1989, 1996-1996, 2005-2022, 2023-present)
⁹See A Reflection On Greek Mythology Volume 2: Minos And Mirrors, Kagami Publishing House, by Brett S. and JXXXXXXXXXX¹⁰
¹⁰The remainder of this footnote is also lost, but curiously instead of ink, it appears to have been censored by a smudge of gravy and dried cheese.
🌕 See Lena MactÃre's The Ash Tree and the Bad Wolf (Arcbeatle Press, 20XXXXXXXX¹²
¹²The remainder of this footnote has been lost due to a spill of tea, Earl Grey, hot.
¹³Did you know that this is the closest I've gotten to matching the energy of the old Nintendo Project? That thing was born of a bit of play-acting. I tried to be an alchemist like my inspiration, but I failed to imbue much meaning from it. I made up things and they had a power to me, but they lacked that power for the average reader. Do you know what the fuck a Valya is? I still don't. It's really just the Valeyard¹⁴ with part of the name lopped off like some hack amateur amputation. Look, the damn thing's bleeding to death, alchemize a fucking tourniquet or something. All I'm doing is using the structure of the book with its rambling footnotes and combining it with my own unique ability to bullshit about anything. Am I even making meaning any more? Is this alchemy resulting in anything resembling a rational thought? Or am I just a XXXXXXXX¹⁶
¹⁴See Doctor Who (BBC, 1963-1989, 1996-1996, 2005-2022, 2023-present). And now I'm mirroring footnote #8. Fuck.¹⁵
¹⁵The previous footnote has bigenerated into Ncuti Gatwa.
¹⁶The remainder of this footnote is lost due to a stain of what appears to be liquid mercury.
¹⁷See Frezno's Comics Challenge: May 2024 (Unflattening) (Frezno's Raving Rants, 2024)
¹⁸When the horizon is in the middle, it's boring as shit.
¹⁹See Shirley Jackson's The Haunting Of Hill House (Viking Press, 1959), or 31 Days, 31 Screams: Resurrection- Day 11 (The Haunting Of Hill House) (Frezno's Raving Rants, 2019)
²⁰For further reading, please consult the works of Mark Z. Danielewski, Stephen King, H.P. Lovecraft, Edgar Allen Poe, Shirley Jackson, Clive Barker, George A. Romero, Wes Craven, John Carpenter, Dario Argento, David Lynch, Jordan Peele, David Cronenberg, Jane Schoenbrun, Gene Roddenberry, Ronald D. Moore, Brannon Braga, Steven Moffat, Donald P. Bellisario, Michael Mann, Dick Wolf, Hayao Miyazaki, Naoko Takeuchi, Gen Urobuchi, Akifumi Kaneko, Shigeru Murakoshi, Rumiko Takahashi, Aki Hamaji, Spider Lily, Akitoshi Kawazu, Nobuo Uematsu, Kazutaka Kodaka, Elizabeth Sandifer, Sean Dillon, L.I. Underhill, Lena MactÃre, Cynthia Savannah, the Doctor Who Reviews Podcast, the Kamen Rider Reviews Podcast, Monday Night Frezno, Frezno's Raving Rants--∞
∞This is the song that doesn't end, yes it goes on and on my friends, some people started singing it not knowing what it was, and they'll continue singing it forever just because²¹
²¹See ∞.
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