House of Leaves is a novel written by Mark Z. Danielewski. Released in 2000, it tells of various visitors and residents of a mysterious house which may be alive. House of Leaves uses an extremely unique prose style to signify plot threads - with convoluted page layouts and unique arrangements of text showing agoraphobia and claustrophobia. The main narrative of House of Leaves is made up writings on a documentary film called The Navidson Record.
Characters[]
- Johnny Truant - the editor of Zampanò's study
- Zampanò - the author of The Navidson Record, a mysterious figure
- Pelafina H. Lièvre - Johnny's mother, who also appears in The Whalestoe Letters
- Will Navidson - a documentary filmmaker
- Karen Green - Will's partner for many years
- Tom Navidson - Will's twin
- Billy Reston - Will's paraplegic friend
- Holloway Roberts - an explorer hired by Will to explore the house
- Lude - Johnny's friend, who might actually be a stripper named Thumper that Johnny mentions in his Introduction
- Thumper - a stripper Johnny lusts for
rest to be added
Publisher's summary[]
A young family moves into a small home on Ash Tree Lane where they discover something is terribly wrong: their house is bigger on the inside than it is on the outside.
Of course, neither Pulitzer Prize-winning photojournalist Will Navidson nor his companion Karen Green was prepared to face the consequences of that impossibility, until the day their two little children wandered off and their voices eerily began to return another story—of creature darkness, of an ever-growing abyss behind a closet door, and of that unholy growl which soon enough would tear through their walls and consume all their dreams.
Plot[]
Introduction[]
Before presenting the reader with the Navidson Record, Johnny Truant presents the reader the story of how he found it. After being evicted from his apartment, Johnny was told by his friend Lude about an old man named Zampanò who lived in the same building as him. Nearly a year later, Zampanò died mysteriously and was found by Lude. Though the police found nothing amiss with the scene, Lude and Johnny found scratch marks on the floor while examining the room. They also discovered that Zampanò was a hoarder and found a mysterious manuscript on a non-existent documentary film called "The Navidson Record" that Zampanò wrote. Though Zampanò was blind, he wrote religiously. While discussing this, Johnny reveals that finding the manuscript and reading it did something to him - causing him to lose track of time and become extremely paranoid about his own house. Once he finishes discussing this, he warns the reader that Zampanò's manuscript will completely upend their perception of the world.
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Chapter I[]
Zampanò begins his discussion of The Navidson Record by discussing the short films that served as preludes to it. Both of these films were at least partially filmed by a photographer and documentary filmmaker named Will Navidson (who is the namesake of the Record) and include him and his family.
First came a short film called The Five and a Half Minute Hallway, showcasing an anomalous non-Euclidian hallway attached to Will's house in a way that should be impossible. Though Will does not actually walk down the hallway, he does film the inside of the hallway and comments that its "freezing in there". Next came a more disjointed film called Exploration #4. This film shows various shots of the house's interior but also shows a U. Mass student named Holloway Roberts filming himself after wandering through the house for days while being stalked by something in the shadows. These movies preceded The Navidson Record (which according to Zampanò, has become one of the most well-known documentary films) by around three years.
Chapter II and Chapter III[]
Having examined what came before The Navidson Record, Zampanò next examines the first moments of the Record. According to him, when the somewhat famous documentary filmmaker Will Navidson moved into a new house with his girlfriend Karen Green and their two children, he set up a series of motion-activated cameras throughout the house to capture various intimate moments. Though future critics of The Navidson Record called these sections poorly-acted, Zampanò defends them. Zampanò also briefly discusses the history of the house - which is said to have been built in 1720 - and the trauma (from a distant mother and a turbulent father) that eventually led Will Navidson towards the house and primed him to make The Navidson Record.
This chapter is also the first appearance of one of Johnny Truant's long footnotes. In it, Johnny talks about how the hot water heater in his apartment isn't working and how, while out with Lude, he told several girls a fake story about how he was involved with two boxing scammers and managed to get the last laugh on them.
Chapter IV[]
After returning to their house, the Navidsons discover a new door leading to a strange closet-like room between the master bedroom and the children's room. This led to Will getting the plans to his new house and discovering it was around a fourth of a foot bigger on the inside than on the outside. Disturbed by this, Will called his brother Tom and got tools from a disabled veteran named Billy Reston that Will photographed. Upon returning, Will and Tom seemingly found no more discrepancy between the inside and the outside.
In one footnote, Johnny Truant recounts how - after reading a passage of Heidegger that Zampanò included in his work - he was stalked by an unseen force while working at a tattoo parlor. In another, Johnny Truant recounts how, shortly after the events of the first footnote, he contacted a woman known to Zampanò named Amber Rightacre and did drugs with her. In this second footnote, Johnny Truant also hints that his father died in a hideous accident that also scarred him.
Chapter V[]
While Zampanò discusses echoes and the various books that he knows that discuss it, Johnny Truant discusses how he met a stripper named Thumper (who was mentioned in his introduction) and became entranced by her - along with the fact that he was experiencing strange visions of illusory events even before he found Zampanò's record. Once these two narrators finish their two-fold distractions, we return to the Record.
Shortly after Reston visits the house and Tom left, Tom and Karen's children try to play in the tunnel and nearly become lost in its depths before Will is able to rescue them. Zampanò discusses Karen's claustrophobia and a footnote in this section reveals a psychological profile of her. Shortly after rescuing his children from the hallway, Will filmed the Five and a Half Minute Hallway (which showed a much shorter hallway than before) and then sealed the hallway between four different locks. Though Karen's claustrophobia made her extremely afraid of the hallway and the house as a whole, Will was entranced by the hallway. One night, Will's curiosity overwhelmed him and he decided to explore the depths of the hallway. While doing so, he discovered that the "hallway" was actually a sprawling labyrinth of various anomalous hallways that he nearly gets lost in. Upon exiting, Will was found by his daughter Daisy who asked if he wanted to play "always" (or, as Zampanò ominously claims, hallways).
In one long footnote, Johnny Truant discusses how he felt the presence of the creature that is seemingly stalking him while at the tattoo parlor again and fell down the stairs because of it. Though this seemingly left no traces, Johnny finds a long scratch on his neck.
Chapter VI and Chapter VII[]
Along with their children, Will and Karen brought a cat and a dog into the house. Shortly after Will's wanderings through the hallway-labyrinth, the dog and the cat ran into the hallway while chasing each other and ended up in the backyard. Thus it was revealed that the house's hallways did not allow animals to enter into them. This leads to an endnote (which is placed into a different section presumably due to the very short length of Chapter VI) in which a very inebriated Johnny Truant rambles about the cats that Zampanò fed before rambling about the creature he believes is stalking him.
Shortly after Will told him how he couldn't explore the labyrinth within his house, Billy Reston called upon a somewhat old friend and explorer named Holloway Roberts to explore the labyrinth. Holloway brought two other explorers by the name of Jed Leeder and Kirby "Wax" Hook. Though Will felt somewhat ashamed to have to rely on someone else to explore his own house and feared that Karen was becoming more than friends with Holloway, Will allowed the three explorers to delve into the labyrinth. During these explorations, the three explorers discover a massive staircase somewhat deep into the labyrinth that they plan to scale down. Along with these explorations, Wax begins "exploring" the affections of Karen. Meanwhile, in one of his footnotes, Johnny describes how he met a German polyglot named Kyrie through Lude and began sleeping with her. He also hints at abuse he suffered at the hands of a foster father named Raymond.
Chapter VIII[]
Having already successfully gone through three expeditions, Holloway, Wax, and Jed departed on a fourth expedition through the labyrinth of tunnels while Tom visited his brother. During the first day of this expedition, Navidson lost radio contact with Holloway. Several days later, Tom heard what sounded like banging coming from inside the walls of the house. Though Karen suggested calling the police, Navidson decided to go into the labyrinth with Tom to look for the lost explorers.
Before the reader can find out if the two brothers are able to find the lost expedition, Johnny Truant interrupts the narrative to discuss his time spent in Alaska as a kid - including one incident where Johnny nearly died in a sinking boat where another child drowned - and how he was able to get a date with Thumper. While on this date, Johnny mentioned Zampanò's narrative, something that fascinated Thumper.
Chapter IX[]
to be added
See also[]
| Title | Author | Release date | Significance |
|---|---|---|---|
| S. | J.J. Abrams and Doug Dorst | 2013 | A novel with similar metatextual attributes |
| Pale Fire | Vladimir Nabokov | 1955 | A novel with similar metatextual attributes |
| Infinite Jest | David Foster Wallace | 1996 | A maximalist novel with similar metatextual attributes, such as long footnotes |
| The Shining | Stephen King | 1977 | A novel with a similarly malevolent house |
| The Raw Shark Texts | Steven Hall | 2007 | A novel that similarly plays with the conventions of the novel |
| The Secret History of Twin Peaks | Mark Frost | 2016 | A novel with similar metatextual attributes |
| The Haunting of Hill House | Shirley Jackson | 1959 | A somewhat similar ghost story |
| The King in Yellow | Robert W. Chambers | 1895 | A collection of stories with somewhat similar themes |
| The Case of Charles Dexter Ward | H.P. Lovecraft | 1941 | A novel with somewhat similar themes |
| 2666 | Roberto Bolaño | 2004 | A maximalist novel with somewhat similar themes |
| The Book of the War | Lawrence Miles, et al. | 2002 | A maximalist novel with a somewhat similar format and similar themes |
| The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman | Laurence Sterne | 1759-1767 | A maximalist novel with similar metatextual attributes |
| The Divine Comedy | Dante Alighieri | ~1320 | A maximalist poem with somewhat similar themes |
| Moby-Dick, or the Whale | Herman Melville | 1851 | A maximalist novel with somewhat similar themes |
| Campaign | Jim Mortimore | 2000 | A similarly experimental and ergodic novel |
Sources[]
- Goodreads