#Maeve's House of Leaves Readalong

[maeve-is-annoying-about-books]

House of Leaves, Chapter 7

Holloway Roberts, the big fuck-off manly man. That's at least his impression in this chapter.

Chapter 7 here deems to deal heavily in manliness and infidelity and threat. I can't really speak to machismo, I don't really get it. When I see Navidson and Holloway beefing over their perceived roles or alpha-fights or whatever you wanna call them it strikes me the same as any other time I see it. Like, why? You hired the man to explore your hell-hole expanse of literary symbolism, let him. Johhny has interludes here, though, and you can bet he's in thematically similar situations. This one¹ here about his relationship with his father and his bully troubles almost perfectly reflects Will and Holloway, but even more pressingly, Chad. Fighting in school, getting caught in the lines of battle of machismo, with authority. Of course it's just like the book. My man Johnny is becoming the damn book.

It's... really distressing to see what's happening to the kids² while all this focus and effort goes into that hole in the house. Daisy having scabs on her wrists is highly concerning at best and heartbreaking at worst. Though the turn of phrase, "Chad turns out to be the most problematic." was to reading what sticking a fork in my toaster is to my nervous system. Fuck. Not only does it perfectly, insidiously sweep these tiny quiet scabs under the rug, it paints Chad as a problem. An ongoing issue that needs to be solved. And everyone is so damn obsessed with the mystery that both of these fall off to the side.

The book loves doing this. While the house grows, Daisy, Chad, and Karen's literary presence shrinks. It's surreal how little notice goes to them. In writing, in the world of the story, in the literal number of words attributed to them. I find no shock at all in how this final revelation about Karen happens at the end of this chapter, written as thought it were already said and done. Like I'm watching from Will's editing room.

Karen's... yeah let's just call it infidelity for now. It's strange and striking. I feel like I'm getting gaslit a tiny bit. While earlier in the book she was mildly defended from other critics' opinions on her³, and although she was all too thrilled to see Will again⁴, now the promiscuity of a make-out session is such a large focus? Maybe I'm going mad, I fully admit I may have had an erroneous image and that these passages are the real intent. But I sure feel... Like I'm watching an author change this character's role. Shift her being a bit for better drama. And worse still is I think this is entirely intentional. The house... is warping her. The grander house. The bigger, more labyrinthine... house.

Also yeah yeah, we know you fuck, Johnny. His interlude here⁵ deals with infidelity too. That of Kyrie and a few passionate, drug-laden moments. He is once again the mirror by which we better understand the Navidson/Green family. Thrill, danger, mastery, the allure of it all. The entire chapter's rank with it like some kind of musk. No wonder the house and the formatting are both staying polite. We're prepared for it and we're sitting in this stewing tension instead.

Well, now I'm just waiting to see what becomes of Exploration 4 and this gun Holloway—

Is this fucker's name HALLWAY ROBBER?

#live reading #house of leaves #Maeve's House of Leaves Readalong #footnotes #1 - p. 92-93 #2 - p. 91 #3 - p. 16 #4 - p. 12 #5 - p. 87-90

[maeve-is-annoying-about-books]

House of Leaves, Chapter 8

Every

Fucking

Passage.

Is set to this rhythm. There are breaks where there shouldn't be and then three long, undisturbed passages broken at odd points with a sudden break

mid-sentence. The author is clearly an insane man, it's so obvious a trick but actually putting in the work to format the entire chapter in the rhythm is a bitch. It must have taken a month to work out the cadence.

Which is to say it's really impressive. It's symbolic, perfectly in tune with what's happening with the house. It's omnipresent signaling that has worked its way into the foundations.

And the

knocking

continues.

Anyway. Zampanò can write "fuck."¹ Like he went through every word to describe intercourse and settled on this one with great pain, clearly. Why is this important? Because it's so out of character for him? Because it's the first sign of his clinical tone really breaking down?

It's because Johnny thinks its important, of course. He makes it far more important than it need be the sex maniac. He goes wild over the word, how much it can mean, the breadth of expression. It's almost a cool little dissertation, I love the word, myself, for the same reasons. It's really flexible and such a curious bit of English. Of course

that means agreeing with Johnny. Ugh. Anyway, this interlude is also important because I think it's spelling out something different in morse than this chapter's usual cadence. At least, I don't think so. It'd be funny if it were "house", wouldn't it?

It's ultimately the only focus of this chapter though.

The SOS, I mean.

It's only when we see "SO?" written that it breaks.

And that makes sense. An SOS on repeat with the wrong cadence will just be SOSOSOSOSOSOSO. The little bit I do know tells me that much. Either way Thumper is unequivocally right, Johnny needs to get out of the house more. Out of his house, out of the house of leaves, both. His condition is rapidly deteriorating and—

I only kinda get it after last night. I kept reading on and thought I'd do two chapters in review when I woke up again but... Well let's just save it for the next post. I feel like this one is a bit washed out even because of the next.

I've got a lot to talk about there.

It's definitely not a review though.

I didn't even finish it.

#live reading #house of leaves #Maeve's House of Leaves Readalong #footnotes #1 - p. 99

[maeve-is-annoying-about-books]

House of Leaves, Miscellany

Who made the dark?

This book is consistently the dark, and it constantly teases you as to who is its maker. Navidson, Zampanò, Johnny... There are endless scraps of poetry, quotes, and pictures here, and all are quite interesting. I'm sure they hold tons of clues about who the author is, promising answers if only you'd dive a little deeper into it.

I choose, however, to exit the maze. I have zero doubt that the inclusion of all these fragments at the end, over 100 pages worth, is really good food for the people who want more. But ultimately my feeling of House of Leaves is that you must, eventually, draw your own conclusion on what reality is. Bearing your light in the darkness of infinite possibility.

So all of these pages. Fragments, poems, letters, pictures, quotes... All of the get folded into this one review at the end. Am I a poor reader if I said I get the same feeling out of them all? It's...

Have you ever seen a leveled house? There are floorboards and shards of a door and a fragment of what might be the sink all around you. Nails poke out everywhere and you could never hope to tell what its little job was in the structure that was. That's the feeling I get reading through these passages and bits. It's all fragments and leftovers of a whole that'll never really be that. It's that big sadness when you find a scrap of cloth, and you wonder if it were the child's dress, the kitchen curtain, or a doll's Sunday best. Or maybe it was just a bit of a lost handkerchief covered in sneezes. Bereft of their context, the only meaning we have is the one we can pull out of the aether and attach it to.

Karen was right, the house really did dissolve. And became this.

At least we know where Johnny gets his purple prose, and maybe his madness, from. It's... heartbreaking to see someone lose touch with reality. I say that from experience but won't relate that experience here. Pelafina, Johnny's mother, clearly adores her son. Vastly so. Almost scarily so, he can do no wrong but the crime of not coming to see her. There is more... I feel something potentially terrible being insinuated here behind it all. But I have to admit to skipping through these a bit.

I'd rather not revisit this difficulty, just yet, please excuse me.

What I will say, though, concerns that fairness I talked about last time. The Navidson Record is alluring because it is fair, it has cadence. Then this is the opposite. This bill for cremation, but with very special offers for just 3000 or 1000 dollars more. Way to go, capitalism, you've done it again. You've cheapened death down to what you can sell to the aggrieved in need. It is an abrupt, pale end. It's not a grand sendoff in a mahogany room with fine carpet and beautiful music playing. It's the county morgue with its buzzing florescent lights that reeks of industrial cleaner.

And with that, as I close the last cover, I find I have to do it with some mindfulness. that I have to choose to let go of the scraps and mysteries. That I have my conclusions and have to hold to them. The house will always be here for me to revisit, after all. It really was the incredible experience my dear friends recommended to me. I'd love to see more like it, this amount of passion and deliberate choice, all to say something you can just barely get a grasp on.

I'm glad I read this book. What more could I say about it? What did I take away from it?

I think my answer is creativity. I think it's a story about facing infinite choice and carrying on. Putting faith in what you mean to do rather than get lost wandering.

But, as Zampanò said, this story has a way of slipping the bounds of any label or answer you put to it. Rather than say that I have the ultimate solution to it, I think instead I'll say...

I got the photos I want, finally.

#live reading #house of leaves #maeve's house of leaves readalong

[maeve-is-annoying-about-books]

House of Leaves, Chapter 21

What the FUCK, Johnny!?

What is this clusterfuck of a chapter? He's bouncing around timelines like a pro wrestler does off the ropes. I cannot tell in the slightest what he is actually trying to say with all this. What's real and what isn't. There's so much self-contradiction, so many pokes of him admitting his own lying...

I feel like it's counterproductive to examine this chapter directly. I think the more important question is: "What is Johnny to the story?" The answer to that can inform our views on this chapter and help pick, or maybe apply one truth to him. Ive had a few thoughts about what he is where the story is concerned so... let's go over them one by one.

Johnny as Johnny

Let's assume that Johnny is exactly what he's presented as, just a party guy who was given the Navidson Record. It does paint a rather Victorian sort of horror, no? I mean Johnny kind of is like a Victorian Gothic protag, he speaks in long, purple prose unbefitting his supposed station and goes mad about a house. He cleaves to the story, it overwhelms and consumes him until nothing is left. No wonder his entries get ever more unhinged. I mean it's neat, it's almost like a warning to me, the reader, to not take the Navidson Record as anything more than a scary story, lest I end up like Mr. Truant. It's also the explanation I think I like the least, it doesn't feel quite right. Like a note played outside its chord.

Johnny as Zampanò's Character

Y'know it's not like we have any proof Johnny's real or anything. I had this thought as I was going through some odds and ends that Johnny's interludes might just be another part of Zampanò;s work. There was no Truant who received a trunk full of papers, it's just another character the old man made up in order to frame the story correctly. I mean Johnny is a good framing tool, the Navidson Record itself isn't terribly scary until you notice the maddening effect it has on its supposed caretaker. The idea that the house is crawling out of the pages. All of a sudden a reading of Chapter 21 is that of an author trying to write a fitting end to his Victorian creation before finally admitting he can't. However, this reading is also closely tied to another one...

Johnny as the author

There's a phrase here that paints Johnny as the author of House of Leaves. He goes to a bar, buys a band a beer, he notices his book with them. Of course, another moment of delusion, maybe, but Johnny does have the scent of an author about him. Especially in this chapter. The writing, the rewriting, the struggles to make something meaningful at the end and hating all your outcomes. Suddenly all his struggles in the margins and interludes are more about a weary, worn writer being overtaken by his own work because that's what the job demands of him. He sees this thing in his mind and must make it, no matter how deleterious the effects.

Johnny as the child

This last story Johnny tells, about the child, made me wonder briefly if he was that child. It was an errant thought but it was one that stuck. that he became a miracle, living through this severe birth defect. Maybe it made his reality shaky. Maybe it makes him an unreliable narrator in some regards. And maybe this story at the end is him wondering if it would have been a mercy if he had just let go back then. Maybe he's not even the child in a literal sense, either the story is embellished or its all a metaphor, but this last musing really stings of a man asking why he is there. Wishing anyone would tell him it's okay not to be.

That was my final reading when I went to bed last night. But this morning I had a new one that I feel is right by virtue of theme.

Johnny as the Minotaur

For all the work the Navidson Record does to paint Holloway as the Minotaur, I don't think he's the intended target. No, there's someone else lost in the maze here. I can almost feel Danielewski's, not Zampanò's, hand making up Johnny and sticking him here in these winding passages. Johnny is utterly trapped in the book on like, three different levels. It was made for him. He's the bull-faced man who was denied his father's love for being what he is. I see it in how the Navidson Record swallows him whole. I see it in how trapped within his own mind Johnny is. I see that reading in the figurative sense, being strung and bogged down with the task of creation, how your own mind can become a maze of choice.

All routes lead to the same conclusions, Johnny is in the labyrinth and he isn't meant to get out. And the real thing tat gets me is that I don't know if he belongs there, or if it was built for him, or what have you. But I think this is the interpretation of Johnny's role I'm most interested in, at the time of writing.

#live reading #house of leaves #maeve's house of leaves readalong

[maeve-is-annoying-about-books]

House of Leaves, Chapter 17

Why does Navidson go back to the house?

Y'know, in this media-savvy world, I think this is a fair question. I mean if you just saw your house expand out into the infinite, eat your food, and munch your brother to death, I think you and I would have the same general reaction.

"No fucking way am I going back there."

It's just asking the horror movie killer to come back. It's going back to the lake to make sure the slasher's body is still there like, why? Why are you willfully putting yourself in danger like this dude? But like... of course he has to. It doesn't matter what these theories say, Navidson has to go because otherwise there is no story. He craves that understanding I talked about last time¹, and he's the only vehicle we have for resolution. I really don't think there's anything beyond this first part than that. It's the author saying "look he has all these motivations! Now can we go back so I can show you this cool ending I thought of?"

And I fucking love it. I fucking love this book and its dualistic world. One where the house on Ash Tree Lane is a mystery to be cracked and one where the house is the book in your hands and the characters are going across it. I don't think Navidson's that wrog about calling the house God.² In essence it is just that. Or, the book is. It's his entire world, it's the summation of his being. It's everything that has come before and after. It knows his life at all times while he has to progress one letter at a time.

Navidson is just Navidson.

It's almost like those old creepypastas where a game character becomes sentient. But not quite. Not plaed up, no camera turns, I'm not addressed as the reader at all. It's all at once self-contained and 4th-wall-shattering. What an amazing stroke of writing.

I'll sing the full praises later. I feel a little hyper today and it's undoubtedly bleeding into the readability of my little review here. I hope you'll bear with me and—

Oh fuck it's Johnny. Is it... weird like I feel examining this portion will somehow be stating the obvious? Even though that's what I've ostensibly been doing this entire time?

It seems he's having nightmares, his sense of self is breaking down. Which is fair since he's being redefined by the narrative he's rapidly becoming a part of. His footnotes put him on the same ground as Navidson, after all. I don't know, I just feel like I've nothing meaningful to add to his bit so... let's call it there. We're going to 18, I read a big batch while incapacitated yesterday.

#live reading #house of leaves #maeve's house of leaves readalong #footnotes #1 - see my review of Chapter 16 #2 - p. 390

[maeve-is-annoying-about-books]

House of Leaves, Chapter 9; P. 107-120

This chapter has no signs of stopping anytime soon so let's break it down into sections. I'll call this first part of this labyrinthine chapter "The Approach".

This "arch" of quoted Latin is almost undoubtedly an analogue to the massive arch inside the house itself. Or maybe really doubtedly and my sense of place is off. Even though the next section gets crazier I really can't understate how lost I am already. I'm rapidly filing through this text trying to find the main narrative once again in this sea of passages and references. I feel as lost as Hallway¹ must be down here. I was glad— No, relieved. I was relieved when Johnny shows up to talk about his fucking prostate orgasm, if only because it was a stable narrative to stand in.

Speaking of, why are Johnny's interludes so full of sex? I feel like there are thematic and narrative reasons. I doubt writing this miserable asshole having his back blown out was actually fun after a certain point. But I can't figure out the thematic purpose just yet. Maybe the point is that he isn't actually doing any of it, just writing fake stories in the margins of a review for a fake movie.

I wanna talk about the red strikethrough text for a moment, though. Purportedly it's text from Zampanò that he tried to get rid of and Johnny brought back.² Immediately the accuracy of any one passage should be brought into question, but there's something else about it that's been on my mind. I'm wondering if the choice of red lettering is a biblical reference. It might not be but I had the thought, so I might as well explain myself.

Red letters in the bible seem to be reserved for the Word of God or Christ. Who is also God in that... way that works. I'm afraid I'm a pagan woman, all my experience with the finer points of interpretation will always be from an outsider's view.

Oh I'm getting lost like this chapter. Focus, Maeve.

Red text, reserved for God and Christ. I wonder here if Zampanò is being painted into the role of both in relation to the house. Maybe the whole Trinity since he is also a guiding spirit. These passages have a different cadence from the remainder of the text. They feel more personal from the otherwise clinical tone of the film review we're ostensibly reading. The words of the creator of the text, so to speak. The house. And if it is indeed a marker of Zampanò's direct words, then what does it say for the narrative that he removed himself from his own house of leaves?

I'm not dead-set on this interpretation yet, though. This text is also all entirely related to the Labyrinth and the Minotaur that dwells therein, and I don't know why The Father, The Son, or the Holy Ghost would be so well-versed in Minoan myth. The words might still be "Godly", insofar as they all speak the truth about the nature of the house as a maze. But not every word about labyrinths or mazes is in red strikethrough.

I'll need more info for this analysis, I've clearly spent too much time here and I haven't even talked about the way the Approach winds around and keeps sending me off hither or tither.³ Just finding the narrative again is a chore. I wasn't lying when I said I was relieved to see Johnny. Almost relieved, he's still being a sex pest.⁴

I could probably go around in circles forever about themes, but the answers are deeper inside. And oh look someone busted a hole in the text.⁵ Let's follow it deeper into the house and get our answers.

#live reading #house of leaves #maeve's house of leaves readalong #footnotes #1 - See my review of chapter 7 for the reasoning of Holloway's nickname #2 - p. 109-111 for examples and Johnny's admission #3 - p. 114 footnote 138 #4 - p. 115-118 #5 - p. 119

[maeve-is-annoying-about-books]

House of Leaves, Chapter STOP STOP STOP STOP

I know I play around with the formatting a lot and stuff but please don't let that detract from the fact that I had a severe panic attack late last night.

This isn't a bit, this isn't "the house is coming to get me it's real I'm in it!" I just... got really fucking spooked. The worst part is that I can barely understand why it got to me now, in what equates to my early morning. I feel very silly and very foolish now. I'm a nocturnal writer and editor, and a book and the dark had me whimpering like a bitch. It got so bad my girlfriend noticed and came over.

A proper examination of this clusterfuck of a chapter can be done later, I just wanna vent because... I don't know, it's been so long since I've been fucking scared of the dark. Not since I was a little girl.

I wonder if it's because of the state of my own home right now. A major remodel is being done on part of it and there's shit everywhere and it's fucking with my sense of space. And the bathroom is just a plane of exposed hardware. It feels uncanny as hell.

That's what I'm guessing it behind it. A lot of odd coincidences. When the knocking started last chapter some assholes started setting off these fireworks or something that sound a lot like knocking with the walls partly undone. Just as I start getting into the maze a cat starts yowling outside. Just as I start laughing at getting fucking lost in the formatting one of the tools out in the living room falls over.

Of course, a large part of that is masterful execution on the author's behalf. I didn't even realize what I was being set up for until it all hit at once. I mean, bravo! It felt like I got completely played. Or like some trigger had been set into me without knowing just to be fired now.

I'm... both happy and ashamed for this experience, I think. I definitely wasn't having having fun last night, and I'm embarrassed as a grown-ass woman that I needed company and help last night. At the same time it's the perfect set of circumstances. It literally couldn't have been more finely tuned for drawing me into the horror of it all. I'll never forget this experience.

#live reading #house of leaves #maeve's house of leaves readalong

[maeve-is-annoying-about-books]

House of Leaves, Chapter 2

So Navidson's original attempt was a home video project about moving into a new house and watching the timelapse of making it into a home. And here I sit, on my throne made of irony, knowing it's only going to get to be more house from here on out. I really like this sort of take, actually. It's not only an innocuous take that explains why the film exists, it's also a sweet sort of thought that sets the tone for Navidson.

It's also another little nod to a sense of space, going from empty to lived-in. Maybe I'm stretching farther than a five-and-a-half minute hall but whatever. If I had a mind to, I would almost say that the house resents this action, being defined into a home. As much as this narrative despises being constrained to a page.

Look at this shit.¹ Johnny is the most asshole-ish narrator/story caretaker/literary analyst I've ever seen. He just splooged an entirely unrelated story in the footnotes of the work. And then he admitted he changed "heater" to "water heater" to go along with his dumb sob story. Now I have a film that doesn't exist, reviewed by a blind man, and edited by a jackass. And the worst part of it is that I just know these interludes by Johnny are going to be important. Like here² we have a moment of Karen Green stifling her own joy at Will's return just as we have an interlude of Johnny recounting his time telling a bullshit tale to women at the bar. All I have to say about it is that both are striking in how absurd they are, in a sense. How much they hide, through silence and loudness, respectively. And how loud Johnny is, taking up four pages, surrounding this tiny moment of Karen's.

I feel like the book is daring me to decipher it instead of just read it. Like I have to be critical of everything.

#live reading #house of leaves #Maeve's House of Leaves Readalong #footnotes #1 - p. 12-16 footnote #2 - p. 12 once again. main text this time.

[maeve-is-annoying-about-books]

Live Read Thread: House of Leaves

What I know and Foreword:

I only first heard of this book because of that one video about the really impressive DOOM wad. It was mentioned a few times offhand and then some pictures of the page layouts were put up and I was intrigued. But like a week later it slipped from my mind, until a friend who's a literature fan told me she had been reading it due to a totally unrelated incident. At that same time my partner had just seen the video I had and also encouraged me to give it a look, so I went down to the bookstore my next chance.

All I knew going into it was that it was a spooky book with inventive formatting, I really thought it'd be just that, but I'm five chapters in and it brought me here to record my thoughts without disturbing the other poor dears in my life. So without further ado I'll start posting my thoughts chapter by chapter, starting with what I've read so far.

Ugh, get that clinical analysis tone outta your blog, Maeve.

The foreword here by Johnny Truant is the most enticing warning to a book I think I've read. He's an absolute trainwreck of a man who just started to get something arguably good in his life when this old man just drops his House of Leaves on him. Like I know it's too early to have a title drop pun but what else do you call this complete mess of papers and napkins Zampanò has?

Anyway, it's this long and rambling piece about how curiosity devolved into obsession, and how strange things have been costing Johnny here his sleep. Strange marks on Zampanò's floor, the endless random stuff arranged around him, his curious habit of writing a book on filmography when he is very blind. And of course, Johnny's paroxysms of panic around this life work. It's almost... trite? Trite, like he's saying "oh it's a spooky book with a spooky monster oh it's gonna getcha if you read it!" I swear I nearly put it down.

Then these last few passages hit differently. And suddenly I wasn't looking at Johnny the loser drifter, suddenly I was painfully inside this man's soul. This like... fear or change in him that's so fundamentally different from his usual griping self. It was all at this line that I got pulled back in:

"You might try then, as I did, to find a sky so full of stars it will blind you again. Only no sky can blind you now. Even with all that iridescent magic up there, your eye will no longer linger on the light, it will no longer trace the constellations. You'll only care about the darkness and you'll watch it for hours, for days, maybe even for years, trying in vain to believe you're some kind of indispensable, universe-appointed sentinel., as if just by looking you could actually keep it all at bay."

Reading this at one o'clock at night in an empty, dark house wasn't so great for my mental state. This passage and the ones leading directly too it are just so... drawing, so latently terrifying in a way I don't know if I can describe. And this nebulous sort of fear of... Of what, the dark? The expanse? Nothingness? Nonexistence? played me like a damned cello. I think my spine hit a high C and I knew I had to read the book. I know exactly how it's going to ruin me and it's so different from getting jumpscared in another slasher movie.

So, let's take a look. What's the worst that could happen?

#live reading #house of leaves #Maeve's House of Leaves Readalong

[maeve-is-annoying-about-books]

House of Leaves, The End

I'll do the miscellany a bit later, for now let's just focus on the end of The Navidson Record.

It's uh... short.

Cunning commentary, Maeve, truly cleaving to the heart of the text.

The Navidson Records ends like any corny horror movie would. Karen and Will find one another again, their differences are settled and they get married. This is the second time I've felt this was more movie than record, the first being the house directly attacking its inhabitants.¹ There's something so cinematic about these two scenes, and both follow leaving the house. It's a big, cap-off climactic moment and it feels... Out of step. It feels strange.

But it also doesn't feel strange at all. The Navidson Record isn't real. It is a movie, at least in the cinema of Zampanò's mind. It's right that it ends on these notes, far more so than the discordant sound of Johnny's last interlude. It's almost welcoming, in a way, asking you to draw yourself into the maze one more time. To believe not that something so fantastic could happen, but that something so fair could be true.

This is the ending we traversed the maze for, why shouldn't I enjoy it for what it is?

To speak of the fairness from earlier, that doesn't just apply to the marriage of Will and Karen. On the last page² we're told about the final shot of The Navidson Record. That of a flickering streetlight, winking on and off until it finally fails, and dark dominates the scene once more. It's the cadence that Johnny's story lacks. It's the promise that it's still there, in one form or another. It has to be, it needs to be, it's the truth of the entire Record. That, is literary fairness.

Without Johnny's endless notes , though, it would have been half the story it was. Literally and figuratively. The juxtaposition between the two ongoing tales makes each one bit more. It's like putting a little salt in a cookie to bring out the sweeter flavors more. To say this book was incredible is to understate it. You can really feel like you've been on a journey, the way it sucks you in. The way it makes you a character of a sorts. And now I've done most of my part in adding to the story. I've looked into the darkness and told you all what I've seen.

Doing my part to hold the dark back by looking at it, so to say,

#live reading #house of leaves #maeve's house of leaves readalong #footnotes #1 - p.346 #2 - p. 528

[maeve-is-annoying-about-books]

House of Leaves, C

Have I ever talked about how uncomfortable this book is? As in the actual physical sense. This paperback edition I have is downright unwieldy. It's a floppy mess to hold up. The pages are so thin you can see through them. The extra horizontal space make it seem like less pages than it actually is. When I first picked it up I thought it was in the 300~400 range, definitely not over 700. But it has the weight on a 700 page book, that's for damn sure. I know because I spent the finer part of last night twisting it in every direction just to read.

And what a read it is. Navidson enters the house with his trusty bicycle and supplies. I don't know why I find it so humorous that his grand plan is to bring a bike, but I sure do. It's like the ultimate common sense answer to traversing the huge distances of the house.

Perhaps that's why it's so large, though. And always downhill. Navy's being invited in and it shows. He wants the depth, the core, the soul of it all.

There'll never be an answer though, will there? Just an ever-increasing expanse that dares you to assign it meaning, just to pull the rug out from under you each and every time.

Everything of substance is reduced to the formatting. We only know where Navidson is by way of where the text lies. Imagine me at midnight, nearly claustrophobic from the small text that keeps squishing tighter and lower. The panicked flip of the pages to keep reading at an even pace. There's this piece of me that wonders if I had it wrong the first time. I said the formatting follows the characters' space. But now I wonder if the space is like that because they're following the formatting? Like as in another nod to the fact that the house on Ash Tree Lane is synonymous with the House of Leaves in my hands.

Really, it's incredible how much moving around I did to follow Navidson on his journey. And how enjoyable I found it. I found myself laughing at the twists and turns, each page was a new puzzle to solve just to read it.

2 times now Ive been really impressed by the use of negative space in Navy's explorations. It feels so lonely and distant, not like Holloway's exploration where everything was a claustrophobic nonsense pile. You could almost say that it''s because Navy alone can see the house for what it is. Like he's almost there, just on the cusp of it.

0 chances of me giving up reading it now, though. Not when we've just found something.

...What? Did that zero jar you? Look back and maybe you'll see another pattern emerge.

There are no rules where the house is concerned.

In that way it is freeing.

I

almost

see

the

sheer

joy

of

it.

Not as a blank te rror. But as a joyf ul canvas. The auth or must'v e had fun.

Maybe I'm on the outs for this one but seeing these pages, as horrific as their contents are, fills me with a kind of satisfaction. Like I've seen something I can't put

into

words...

But it's fun.

#live reading #house of leaves #maeve's house of leaves readalong #there are no footnotes there is only the house

[maeve-is-annoying-about-books]

House of Leaves, Chapter 19

The artistry of photojournalism is often understated.

I'm one of those people who've seen the difference between someone taking pictures and a photographer. You can tell when someone's composed a picture, it's really beautiful. As a matter of fact I've felt lately that artistry in general is underrated. As I'm writing this the SAG-AFTRA writer's strike is ongoing, media consumption is high and yet the pay for creators is low, and AI is on the horizon. It's really easy to feel undervalued in such a world, So I can't help but sympathize with Navy when the core essence of his work goes unnoticed. I sympathize with him, as a creator, when he's going mad trying to capture something so particular and just can't do it without a revisit. A rewrite.

It's frustrating to be so close and so far to that thing you've wanted to do for so long, just to have it not come together.

There I go again about the anxieties of creation. I can't help it though, it's been the most on my mind. I guess it is true that the house changes depending on your perceptions of it.

In this way I feel more melancholy than scared, right now.

#live reading #house of leaves #maeve's house of leaves readalong

[maeve-is-annoying-about-books]

House of Leaves, Chapter 18

While Navidson was off learning about rocks, Karen decided to visit the history of the house for her answers. And, y'know, I don't know how I feel about it.

There'f thif enitre bit here about Jameftown.

I am not keeping up that schtick holy hell, just that one sentence set my spine on edge. Right, there are traces not of hauntings but of the settlement at Jamestown. The one that famously (in American history, anyway) disappeared with little trace. I think we have some answers today, but for now we see the first little tingle of the house. It's here in the last penciled journal entry.¹ The man has found stairs in the middle of nowhere.

Explanations but no answers. I do wonder if Danielewski was ever interviewed. I'm really curious if the Jamestown disappearance is what set the idea for House of Leaves in motion. It would be yet another cool piece of synchronicity between the house and the book.

And then Karen returns. Nothing is out of the ordinary except Navidson's disappearance. The shelves are flush to the wall, the hallway is a closet... The woman even starts living in the house again!² Like, can we talk about this for a moment? Navy goes searching for the strange expanse and finds it instantly, presumably. Meanwhile Karen is back here looking for a home and that's exactly what she's presented with. At least, at first. If the house has any trauma in its allegorical weight then this is it. This last paragraph at three in the morning had me looking at all my walls for a half hour, making sure they were all still there.³ You could almost call this a bit of a bait. The house has given her the hint of her husband. The whisper of a promise for a happy home life if she just accepts her place here.

But the truth is revealed almost instantly. It's a trap, and in moments she's swept back into the house. It's the last place she wants to be and yet also the one place she wanted to return to. This center spot of Navy's attention. She has to occupy the same spot.

Actually I find that Johnny's a little relevant here. He's going to look for answers too, on Ash Tree Lane.⁴ But Johnny, you won't find any there, will you? Because it doesn't exist. None of this exists anywhere but in your hands and head.

#live reading #house of leaves #maeve's house of leaves readalong #footnotes #1 - p. 414 #2 - p. 415 #3 - p. 417 #4 - p. 413

[maeve-is-annoying-about-books]

House of Leaves, Chapter 16

Wow. Geology.

I do actually like geology a lot. Or maybe it's more geologists. I can appreciate a person who can get so passionate about a flake of the earth's crust. Someone who can make a crystal even more beautiful than just seeing it can.

Navidson is spending his chapter trying to find out more about the structure of the house and for once I am glad that there are missing pages.¹ Because none of this stuff actually seriously matters. Yes it's an answer about the house but it doesn't tell us anything important in the slightest. Ah great it's older than the Earth itself² oh yep mhm that explains everything. But of course it doesn't. It's not the conclusion for which we yearn in this weird after-story.

Of course this chapter also talks about the other building block of the house. Words. Looking at the glossary³ we see linguistic terms settled along geological ones. The actual, literal stuff that the house is made of in both senses. The Navidson one is made of rock, the one we see is made of words. Ultimately I think this chapter's point is that as much as we examine the structures of either, what we want is beyond the literal stuff the story is made of. What we want is its... soul. Yeah that's a good word for it. I want to understand the truest essence of the thing but I'm limited in my sight to what can be physically presented. Of course there's only one answer to this predicament and I think Navidson is of the same mind. But honestly—

[2 paragraphs missing]

And then there's Johnny. This boy has finally lost it, He's absolutely been absorbed into the house in a sense, the Weatherby he buys is so obvious a tell.⁴ He's sinking into its world, manifesting it, attributing it more importance. I'd almost say he's desperate to be a part of it now, like it's the last thing that gives him definition. I get the distinct feeling of someone losing themselves in a bit of media in the most unhealthy way possible.

These next chapters are short so I'll keep along. I feel like we're at this point where most of what I have to say about the format and word choice has been said as well. So let's keep up a good clip on our return to the center of this narrative.

#live reading #house of leaves #maeve's house of leaves readalong #footnotes #1 - p. 377 #2 - p. 378 #3 - p. 383 #4 - p. 380

[maeve-is-annoying-about-books]

House of Leaves, Chapter 15

Wow there are a lot of interviews this chapter. Well if Karen is going to give others the room to speak then I will as well. Without further ado, my own interview.

~~~

@vallenari, House of Leaves Enthusiast, Dear Friend to Maeve

I do feel we need a full disclaimer before I begin. I haven't properly sat down and read this work since I was in college, about mid-way through college so we are talking around 10 years ago and I'm approaching it once more with having only read this liveread type thing along with the singular chapter in which I was asked.

I have a deep love for this novel. It came to me by way of the kind of temporary friend that you make because you see them for so many hours a day in the same limited space; the kind where you learn just enough snippets about each others lives to feel some faint thread of loneliness when you think on them again years later.

Hello my once upon a time friend. I hope you're doing well. I hope life has been kind. Thank you for this gift you gave.

I remember once being annoyed with Karen.

It felt like she whined in some areas that she was more prominent in, that she was so overly cautious or not cautious enough, that she was a bit of an ill match for Navidson. This was college age me who did roll their eyes in an exaggerated fashion at classmates who swooned over the secondary roles of females in novels. How delicate they were. How sensible. How so very misunderstood.

You do a lot more growing up after college than during it.

Karen now?

I understand the delaying in giving into her mother's wishes, of selling the house, of moving on, of finishing this film. The house and the whole experience changed not only Navidson, but her as well, and if this is the way she can hold onto him just for that much longer than it's her choice to do just that. Sending out the seconds of film that were made, gathering responses, doing anything to make the whole event feel real. Trauma has this way over clouding over every second of your life and making you want to desperately show someone the murkier details of it and hoping they can see it too. You don't want to be left alone with whatever is lurking at the bottom.

Karen doesn't want to be left alone with what still resides in the house.

Hofstadter's explanation of Zeno's arrow feels the most apt at times, but also the most feeling of someone patting themselves on the back for having such a clever answer to the phenomenon of the halls that continued on and on then having the gall to call it simple. He's the kind of person I'd want to punch.

Baleworth that follows the infuriating clever answer is something I'm more readily able to accept. The house, and to some extent, Navidson's existence/nonexistence, Zampano's novel, and Johnny's overarching story do a spectacular job of resisting interpretation. It demands to be seen just as it is, the walls always moving just out of reach when a conclusion is so very close to being drawn upon it. Then we come around to Paglia who makes me want to roll my eyes again regarding this nonsense about women being content in leaving something at being unknowable, about not being afraid of the dark because they are darkness or whatever she ends on going with. I would have been just as keen as Navidson on trying to figure out what the hell is up with the house, fear of the dark or not, it's the kind of mystery that you couldn't very well leave alone.

The interviews start to interact with one another as I presume Karen plays back or paraphrases some of what prior interviewees have said to the current person she's speaking with. I think it a brilliant way to slowly bridge them all together even if they all start to spiral together and come to say the same thing or they go at each other's throats than really giving Karen a solid answer about what she's shown them.

Then the therapist speaks again and it's like coming up for a breath among all the jumbled words. Or that could very well be my chronic exhaustion speaking. A question rather than an tumbling answer is bound to catch the attention.

Of all the supposed footage of the house, of everything Navidson had compiled and sent to his wife.

Why just those certain shots, why only thirteen (eight) minutes?

The emptiness, the darkness, the distance.

Karen didn't fear the house and its unknown. She worried for its occupants, of what personal demons they each would find in the labyrinth, what Minotaur they would face.

~~~

As I've said, Karen allows the interviewers to speak, and so I will leave this interview as-is, offering no further content.

...Okay except it was really fucking funny when David Copperfield showed up and casually made the Statue of Liberty disappear.¹ I was actually factually rolling on the floor.

Aside from what I found to be the incredible humor from certain interviews, the remainder of this chapter concerns itself directly with Karen's short film.

If anything summarizes this chapter to me it's the feeling of viewpoints. How others see, how we see, how Karen sees. An infinity of viewpoints for an infinite house, held within an infinite world of possibility. I feel like I detect a little bit of anxiety over the process of creation itself, as well. There's a kind of quiet trepidation to Karen's work. I imagine she interviewed so many to make sure she had the "right take". The correct point of view with which to portray Navidson.

Part of that reading might be my own struggles with writing. The fear of the infinite present in the book reflects my own anxieties. Not to stroke my own ego, but I feel like I face an unreal amount of possibilities every time I put key to word document. Every action I bring my characters through is plucked out of a sea of infinite possibilities. I could do anything on a sheet of paper, how am I meant to find the right way?

Ultimately I think it's personal, like Karen. Like with Vallenari's interview in this exact post. They both have reduced infinite possibility to their feelings. Something very personally one's own. Not the vast cosmos of what could be but instead on what you see, and thusly, are not lost.

That's also why we get the close-up of Delial.² Karen finally has her answer, it's a made-up name for Navy's winning photo.

Ultimately, his feelings are his own. He didn't allow anyone else to name them.

#live reading #house of leaves #maeve's house of leaves readalong #footnotes #1 - p. 364 #2 - p. 368

[maeve-is-annoying-about-books]

House of Leaves, Chapter 14

This is a short chapter and frankly, I don't really have much to say about it. It's... really nothing to go on about, a transitory chapter to bring up the fact that Karen is now working on a project and Navidson is gone. Off learning about the house.

I do like what little happens, at least. This is the first time Karen has gotten herself involved in Will's life. His craft. She's taking steps to understand him, maybe his obsession. And now of course we have to wait for reciprocation from Will, but this is only the start. We have time. Like unless he gets eaten by obsession, that's always a possibility in this book.

But otherwise it's... complicated. Seeing Will as his own person for the first time in the story isn't inherently good or bad, I think. It's a shift. It's not like Navy or herself are better people for seeing their true selves. Arguably Navy is worse off cause he left his kids.

But it is truth. It is an answer. Both are rare things to find when it comes to the house.

Okay let's stop farting around, let's get to the real meaty chapter.

#live reading #house of leaves #maeve's house of leaves readalong