This is not for you
A review of Zampanò’s Johnny Truant’s Mark Z. Danielewski’s House of Leaves
By Anonymous
Having finished Mark Z. Danielewki’s House of Leaves earlier today and having given it a few hours to stir in my mind, I find myself in a weird place regarding writing a review, for two completely separate reasons.
First comes the question of spoilers. How much I can talk about without potentially ruining the experience is an interesting question to delve into, and sadly it’s one I cannot delve into without simultaneously going into spoilers. What I will say, however, is that I do not believe House of Leaves is best read completely spoiler free. I am unable to recommend this book without first establishing some things about it, because this is not a book I can recommend to everyone, or even to most.
I myself had been spoiled several times, though “spoiled” might not even be the best word to use. Most of what I knew I would have found out anyway right before beginning to read, by just looking at the book. On the sleeve there is a note from the author about how the story came about, which includes the following passage:
“The story remains unchanged, focusing on a young family that moves into a small home on Ash Tree Lane where they discover something terribly wrong: their house is bigger on the inside than it is on the outside.”
This core concept I had already known, and I don’t think I would have enjoyed the book more if I hadn’t known it. In fact, strange things begin happening in the house before the family decides to measure it, which, in turns, makes them measure it.
A much more substantial piece of information was revealed to me, something quite shocking which happens towards the very end of the book. Interestingly, I was still equally as surprised when it happened, largely because of the calmness and matter-of-factness with which it is introduced.
What I hadn’t been spoiled but am going to spoil here is the metatextual levels of the book. This book is presented as follows:
- Some old blind man called Zampanò wrote an extensive analysis of a seemingly non-existent documentary film - The Navidson Record
- A man called Johnny Truant found the manuscript after Zampanò died and edited the whole thing, adding footnotes of almost diary-like entries about the effect this has had on him.
- Some unnamed “editors” revised some of the footnotes and included not one, not two, but three appendixes worth of additional information.
The last thing to note about spoilers is that this book is extremely avant-garde in both plot and presentation (in case you couldn’t tell). The word house always appears blue. The word minotaur and all struck through passages appear red. The layout of text on the page often mimics whatever is happening in the narrative: Some pages have merely a single paragraph of text or just a single word. Some pages have so much text flowing parallel it is impossible not to get lost. Some pages you have to read upside down, one footnote only appears mirrored.
On top of that, the book is 700 pages long, though this does not mean much. With how inconsistent the density of text per page and the effort required to read it is, the length to read a single page ranges from literally 0 seconds (some pages are completely empty) to easily 15 minutes. It did take me 6 days to read in total, and I am inclined to say that it is less threateningly 700 pages than it might seem, but I’m not sure. I think this is the type of book you either read in a single week or over the span of years, with very little inbetween. All of this is to say: Really consider if you want to read this book. A lot of it is actual analysis of a documentary film which likely does not even exist in the universe of the book itself, with footnotes upon footnotes quoting papers that were never written by people who have never heard of the documentary film they are supposedly writing about.
Which brings me to the second reason writing a review for House of Leaves is so strange. In general, a review talks about whether something is worth your money, or, due to the rise of streaming services, time. With House of leaves, the question I feel a need to address instead is whether reading this book is worth the mental strain. I will leave you then with a warning, written very beautifully in a “to whoever finds this” by Zampanò, included by Johnny Truant in the introduction:
“They say truth stands the test of time. I can think of no greater comfort than knowing this document failed such a test.”
Don’t take what Truant says in the introduction lightly. This book does weird things.
Unsurprisingly, I am far from the first to have written something about this book, though I have yet only glanced at said texts. One thing I have to wonder about is how much, if any, of the analysis focused on The Navidson Record itself. Naturally, Zampanò’s analysis itself is not only extremely extensive, but also the only actual source anyone could have on the Navidson Record. We have to take his word for what happened in the film, at the same time even in universe the most sensible explanation (it seems to me) is that he came up with everything what happens in The Navidson Record, therefore whatever he writes about *is* what happens in the film, at least in a way.
What does then happen in the Navidson Record, a documentary film which must have been many hours long to include everything Zampanò claims it does in as much detail as Zampanò claims it does? Well, it begins with the titular Will Navidson moving into a new house with his wife Karen and their two children. Wanting to make a documentary about how a family settles into a new place and sets down roots, he installs cameras around the house and documents their day to day life. Until the house starts changing.
I won’t go into the details of the changes, that’s Zampanò’s job. But eventually, there opens a passageway leading deep into the house, kilometres upon kilometres of ever-changing hallways and rooms and a staircase of indefinite length. Any attempts at exploration cannot end well, and they don’t.
One chapter that particularly stood out to me (though this is a sentence which I might truthfully say about every single chapter in the book) is one where Zampanò analysed echoes. It ends with a beautiful line which I will only allude to rather than spoil, about how “always slightly mispronounces hallways. It also echoes it.”
What is never analysed, however, is the names of the characters in this view. This makes sense, Zampanò is very much claiming that the Navidson record actually exists and that the events really happened, hence it makes little sense to attempt to analyse the names of the people. Yet, an echo of Zampanò is “no,” as if to give us one last warning as we shout his name in terror at what the book has done to us. Holloway Roberts, an explorer who explores the house in depth, has a first name which also resembles “hallways”. Navidson and his best friend Billy Reston, who also plays a major role in the story, have a sort of opposite echo effect, where their names can be shortened and still retain some meaning (I am sure that there is an actual term for this but the analysis of echoes has too firm a place in my mind to think of this as anything else). Navidson to Navy, which is almost exclusively how he is referred to by people close to him, and Reston to Rest, which as far as I can tell he is only referred to by a single time. I have no deep analysis of this, but with a book like House of Leaves I’m not sure it is possible to “read too much into it”.
As captivating as the plot of The Navidson Record is, it is constantly interrupted by pages upon pages and footnotes upon footnotes of analysis, as well as stories from the effect working on House of Leaves has had on Johnny Truant. Within the universe of the book, reading about The Navidson Record seems to have inevitable negative effects on the psyche. Within The Navidson Record itself, physical changes to the house are influenced by the psyche of those exploring it, and the text on the pages along with it. For me personally, it will be impossible forever to shake the feeling that this is true even in our reality. For Johnny Truant, it was him slowly losing his mind, his ability to function, to eat properly, to do anything, until he’s near completely gone. For me, the mental effect was thankfully much lesser (something I likely have my much healthier childhood to thank for, see Appendix II-E). Additionally though, it seemed as if the book affected reality in some way.
I want to make it clear that I am cognitively aware that reading a book cannot affect metaphysical reality (though it trivially can affect the psyche). I am also aware (and find great comfort in) that most people will not have a similar experience to mine. But what I do know is that on my second day of reading House of Leaves, a very mentally taxing sequence of events began to happen - concerning potential information about a friend who my last interaction with had been their suicide note. A sequence of events which included hearing some shuffling and then a full minute of nothing on a phone call with their number and a mutual friend who believes in dark magic “opening herself up” to visions. No matter how aware I may be that mine reading a book could not possibly have had any effect on triggering this, the experience felt like it did exactly that. I think this is important to mention because of how strongly my experience of reading this book was shaped by said events. Whilst I really like the view of House of Leaves as “a love story camouflaging as horror,” that “horror” is what you will be experiencing for most of your time reading the book - and being terrified that the book had an effect on reality plays a substantial role in that for me.
I want to quickly return to how elegantly the layout of the text parallels the narrative. In a chapter where characters are getting lost in the maze-like inside of the house, the text itself is arranged like a maze, with footnotes layered into the text, some upside down or on their side, some mirrored, going from page to page, referencing old footnotes or going out of chronological order. Other times, when someone is rushing, there is much less text per page and you actually do rush through the text. At one point the ceiling and floor disappear, and the text too is left as if floating towards the bottom of the page. My favourite bit of this is when Navidson is crawling through a tunnel which keeps getting smaller. The words on the page then are arranged into a neat square, beginning on one line or even page and ending on the next even without usage of the “-”, and the box keeps getting smaller. Then suddenly, there is only one word, and now I feel agoraphobic rather than claustrophobic - and who would have guessed, this happens when the small tunnel is exited.
And the book is full of this. On one page, there was text written in braille, and I must have spent 20 minutes poking into the page to make it actual braille. Scarcely half an hour later, I found myself turning on my (thankfully electric and hence headphones-compatible) keyboard and playing out a piece of sheet music written in the book, probably some time around 1AM.
This, then, brings me back to the question I asked at the start: Is this book worth the mental strain it will likely have on you. Parts of my writing may have made it sound like I did not really enjoy reading House of Leaves. To some extent that’s true. It’s mentally taxing, difficult, and in parts even boring to read. But if I was asked to rate it on a scale of one to ten, I’d give it a ten. If I could remove all information about this book and read it for the first time again, I’d do so in a single heartbeat - if you warned me that some similarly mentally taxing event would occur again, I’d do so in two. More than anything, I have never read another book that has made me feel this way. On its own, this is not strictly a compliment; American Psycho is a book that made me feel unlike anything else, yet there the emotion was one of pure disgust and hatred at having to read further, and I do not remember reading it at all fondly. But the emotional impact of House of Leaves is so substantial, so layered and complex, that I think I will be looking back at my time with it fondly forever.
But is it worth it? For me it was, but I cannot in good conscience make that same claim about anyone else. Hopefully this review will have given you enough warning to allow you to decide for yourself whether this is something you are interested in reading or not, without spoiling so much that the experience is ruined. But, as the first words you see in the book point out, and as I have written down on a piece of paper I first burned sometime around midnight and then put on my wall,
This is not for you.
