Reading: House of Leaves

Drew — Fri, 16 Feb 2007 14:10:08 +0000

A couple friends and I are working our way through House of Leaves by Mark Z. Danielewski. This is the predecessor of ONLY REVOLUTIONS, which I attempted to read a couple books back and failed to finish. House of Leaves is, itself, a difficult book, but it is an engrossing story very deftly told.

DINNER 331: Tuesday, November 28, 2006

Drew — Wed, 29 Nov 2006 01:34:59 +0000

Tonight was Wendy’s early night off of work, so she got home around 7:00pm. I’d been home since about 5:30, reading over the Only Revolutions website & forums. Mark Z. Danielewski is one tripped-out author — he’s the same guy that wrote the mammoth House of Leaves, a 700+ page horror story told on many levels. It was described by the San Francisco Examiner and Chronicle as: “A rollicking Pynchonesque oddity, a Nabokovian linguistic obsession, and a Borgesian unreality, House of Leaves jumps and skips and plays with genre-wrecking abandon, postmodern panache, and an obsessively imaginative scope that absolutely shames most books on the market today”.

Only Revolutions carries on in the same twisted tradition as House of Leaves – they are both a books that are very aware of the fact that they are books, forcing you to consider not just what you’re reading but how you’re reading it as well. In each book, there are pages that are formatted in such a way to make you spin the book or read backward (or through a mirror). “It is a great mix of pop culture, intelligence, sex, angst, and a great story in a world so detailed that it must be real. At times, it is a play within a play within a play and sometimes you’re not quite sure how many layers there are. The layout of the book itself is also amazing.” (M. Keisler “PhilosophyMusicMan”) And, even 6 years after the original publication of House of Leaves, people are still finding things ‘hidden’ in the footnotes, or putting together pieces of the puzzle. If the television show LOST had a decent story (that went anywhere) and was a book, it might be a lot like the work of Danielewski.

Wendy & I had dinner this evening at Outback Steakhouse — not the type of place we’d normally dine, but I was given a gift certificate, so we wanted to use it up. Their steaks are seasoned to within an inch of their lives — no tasting the beef there — but they’re tender and cooked appropriately. I had a fillet, Wendy had the tilapia, and we split an onion appetizer.

DrewVogel.COM » danielewski

Reading: House of Leaves

DINNER 331: Tuesday, November 28, 2006