5. House of Leaves

By Mark Z. Danielewski

I requested Hubs to get me House of Leaves last Xmas and got the Remastered Full Color Edition (2000).  Apparently, the Remastered edition gives a “fuller” experience and adds another layer of meaning.   

 

In Remastered Full Color Edition edition:

• Any iteration of the word "house" appears in blue, even in the blurbs section and the publication page where it mentions “Random House, Inc."
• The word "minotaur" and all crossed-out passages appear in red.
• There is one line written in purple, which is important because of what the color implies for the story.
• The pictures in the appendices are full color.
• There's a bit in the book written in braille with a translation in the footnotes.

 

In the two-color edition (with the doorknob cover):

• EITHER "house" appears in blue OR "minotaur"/crossed out passages appear in red. One or the other, not both. It's a gamble which you'll get.
• The line that is purple in the full color is not written in purple.
• The braille bit doesn't appear.
• The pictures in the appendices might be color or they might be black and white. Again, it's a gamble.

 

I’ve been curious about House of Leaves for some years, but its ambitious density and heft had seemed somewhat daunting.  As I delved more into horror fiction over the past few years, it was becoming apparent that House of Leaves was required reading if I was to be a true fan of the genre.  It’s got a bit of everything:  a 'haunted' house, super-natural horror, mystery, psychological thriller, unreliable narrator(s), survival labyrinth horror(?)… there’s even a love story.

 

If you get past the multi-layered experimental meta-fiction and epistolary complexity, there’s a very simple story at heart.  Johnny Truant, a disaffected 25 yr old in LA, discovers a chest full of scribbled notes and an unfinished manuscript left by his friend’s blind and elderly neighbour, Zampanò, who died of mysterious circumstances.  The manuscript focuses on "The Navidson Record", a documentary film directed by acclaimed photojournalist, Will Navidson.

 

"The Navidson Record" documents how Navidson and his family move into their new home in the Virginia suburbs.  They soon discover that their house is not normal, at least physically.  It started off as a puzzle - why was there a discrepancy of 3/4 of an inch between the inside and outside measurements of the house?  This seemingly small difference triggers Navidson's obsessive tendencies to find an explanation for these spatial discrepancies and sets in motion a series of increasingly unsettling events. The house then exhibits further anomalies, like a closet appearing where there was previously a blank wall.  A door appears in the living room revealing a dark and vast liminal space that is not physically possible if you stand outside the house.  When the house reveals itself to contain a seemingly endless labyrinth, Navidson contacts his estranged brother Tom and an old friend Reson to mount an exploration of its hidden dimensions. Navidson's obsession with the labyrinth leads him and his family into increasingly terrifying situations.

 

Navidson, Tom and Reston soon realize they are way in over their heads when the walls of the labyrinth start to shift and they barely find their way back “home” inside the “normal” confines of the house.  They hire a professional explorer, Holloway Roberts, and his two assistants, Kirby “Wax” Hook and Jed Leeder to mount a proper expedition armed with gear and camera equipment.  Needless to say, the expedition goes awry as the men get lost and Holloway goes crazy, a la Jack Torrance and goes on a bit of a rampage. 

 

House of Leaves is a bit of a sausage fest, but there are some sections devoted to Navidson’s long-time partner Karen and their strained relationship.

 

Zampanò's claims that "The Navidson Record" :

became an American cultural phenomenon upon its theatrical release in 1993, generating volumes of multidisciplinary academic literature, as well as extensive media coverage in popular culture. In support, Zampanò cites or quotes articles, journals, symposia, books, magazines, TV programs, and interviews, many supposedly dedicated to this film. Zampanò discusses not only Navidson's filmmaking techniques, but also segues into topics such as photography, architecture, Biblical studies, and radiometric dating, often interspersing overwhelmingly esoteric tangents, several of which devolve into nonsensical, page-long lists of only superficially relevant items. Though many of the academic works Zampanò cites appear to analyze The Navidson Record purely as a work of found-footage horror fiction, Zampanò's writing remains adamant as to its authenticity.

(from Wikipedia)

It should be noted that in the flyleaf, House of Leaves is authored by Zampanò with the Introduction and Notes by Johnny Truant.  There’s a contrast in mood and style between the Navidson and Johnny Truant sections.  There are the obvious tonal differences between the strained domesticity inside the house on Ash Tree Lane Virginia (portrayed via various media) versus Zampanò's dry academic writing style versus the slacker lifestyle of an assistant tattooist in an urban metropolis. 

 

Johnny Truant reminded me of the protagonist in The Cipher.  Within Nicholas, there already existed an existential emptiness when he came upon The Funhole in the dingey basement of his apartment building.  Nicholas hopelessly pined after the cold-hearted Nakota while Truant kept hooking up with Zampanò’s former readers and they all happen to be physically attractive.  Johnny became obsessed with Zampanò’s manuscript soon after he discovered the box full of his notebooks.  As he immersed himself in Zampanò’s world, it was akin to going down a rabbit hole, or the Funhole for Nicholas.  Both characters began to change (for the worse) as their obsession started taking over their lives, exerting a destructive toll on their mental and physically health.  

 

The book interweaves the text written by Zampanò and Truant.  There's also a third party, the “Editors”.  Visually and structurally, there's intertextual playfulness and cleverness aplenty.  It also plays heavily with footnotes.  Sometimes the footnotes take over the pages and there are even footnotes for the footnotes.

 

With an ever-present tension between what was supposed to real or fabricated, it seemed a given that the author must create a book where the text reflected this interplay, as well as the impossibility of the house on Ash Tree Lane.  At certain points, the text became moving pieces.  Some pages had only a few sentences while a page was completely blank except for one innocuous word.  When the labyrinth suddenly expanded, the text expanded with it, or contracted, etc.  At another point, you had to read the text backwards.  It was pretty neat.

In terms of conventional genres, there were elements of horror, mystery, and psychological thriller.  Most of that narrative was found in "The Navidson Record" (the text by Zampanò).  For me, those sections about the house on Ash Tree Lane were the most riveting parts from House of Leaves.  

 

I don’t think I’m alone in that the Truant sections were the least-liked in House of Leaves.  In one forum, a reader asked if they could skip over some of the more indulgent passages and someone else said that you should really try to stick through it and read everything. 

 

The narrative that was woven through "The Navidson Record" was a mixed bag.  The horror wasn’t really all that scary, though there were sections that were definitely peculiar or uncanny.  The love story was meh.  Some say, at its heart, House of Leaves was a love story.  But narrative mostly portrayed the strained relationship between Will and Karen, the typical famous artist/intrepid adventurer who cannot stay within the confines of domesticity for stretches of time. I really thought Navidson was going to fulfill his death-wish and be lost inside the house forever, but Karen finds Navidson in the end, his body weak and broken.  It made me think of Rochester in Jane Eyre.  The only way Karen & Navidson could be together was if Navidson was so crippled, he could not on any more adventures.

 

The mystery was the most gripping part for me, at least in the beginning, as I was wondered what the fuck was up with that house?  But I quickly realized the mystery of the house was the mystery of human nature externalized as a familiar structure.  And how the author was toying with his reader right from the start.

About a quarter into the book (not counting the appendices and index which also takes up a quarter of the book’s thickness), Navidson mentioned someone in his past named Delial.  The reader soon learns that Navidson became famous for a photo he took called “The Vulture and the Little Girl”.
Serendipitously, a couple of days before, I had learned about this very photo in my FB feed, a “real” photo taken by real-life photojournalist, Kevin Carter.  I even googled him so his story was fresh on my mind.
 
So right away I knew Navidson was based on Kevin Carter who had won the Pulitzer Prize for his a photo of a skeletal child stopping to rest while a vulture watched nearby, taken while he was documenting the 1993 famine in Sudan.  Even though the photo was known as “TheVulture and the Little Girl”, the child was later revealed to be a boy. In House of Leaves, the child was always a girl.
 
Four months after being awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Feature Photography, Carter died by carbon monoxide poisoning in 1994 at age 33.  Apparently, Carter received a lot of criticism about that award-winning photograph, but it seemed like PTSD, poverty and despair were also contributing factors to his suicide. His suicide note read:

I'm really, really sorry. The pain of life overrides the joy to the point that joy does not exist. …depressed … without phone … money for rent … money for child support … money for debts … money!!! … I am haunted by the vivid memories of killings & corpses & anger & pain … of starving or wounded children, of trigger-happy madmen, often police, of killer executioners … I have gone to join Ken (a deceased colleague) if I am that lucky.

Although the text reveals that Navidson was based on a real-life person (another “proof” that Zampano had fabricated "The Navidson Record"), I found the Kevin Carter reference to be rather heavy-handed and almost in poor taste, as it exploited someone’s real-life tragedy.  There was a letter that Navidson wrote to Karen in Chapter XVII that made reference to Delial and tried to capture the deep pain he must have felt being complacent in the face of human suffering.  It echoed Carter's suicide note, felt phony and was the only big misstep (though I was only half-way through) in my immersion into House of Leaves.

 

Apparently, it took Danielewski a good ten years to write House of Leaves, and it shows in the denseness and complexity of the text.  But with such an ambitious scope, it was also uneven and unwieldy in parts.  

 

When I was close to finishing H of L, I was also looking at the colour printed end paper of the book and read the note apparently written by Zampano:

Appendix C:

Perhaps I will alter the whole thing. Kill both children. Murder is a better word. Chad is scrambling to escape, almost making it to the front door where Karen waits, until a barrier in the foyer suddenly leaps forward and hews the boy in half. At the same time Navidson, by the kitchen reaches for Daisy only to arrive a fraction of a second too late, his fingers finding air, his eyes scratching after Daisy as she falls to her death. Let both parents experience. Let their narcissism find a new object to wither by. Douse them in infanticide. Drown them in blood.

Apparently, this is another clue that "The Navidson Record" was fabricated by Zampano/Danielewski.

Another head-slapping moment for me was on p.465 when Navidson was on his last Exploration #5.  His batteries and flares were dwindling and he had only one book with him to pass the time.  Guess which book it was. Fucking House of Leaves!  OMG.  When Navidson had no more light source, he started lighting matches so he could keep reading.  Before his last match burned out, he lit the pages from the book he had just finished reading...  You can’t get any more meta than this.  It's beyond meta - it’s the snake eating itself.  And it confirmed for me that House of Leaves was not only an elaborate exercise in meta-ness, but also an elaborate gimmick.

 

Overall, HoL was still a wonderfully layered and immersive book. It was clever, even brilliant in its playfulness and experimentation.  Without a doubt, it pushed the boundaries of print, text, structure, time, space, and fictional meta-ness.  The book itself was about the nature of our perceptions.  What was also brilliant was that House of Leaves itself, like "The Navidson Record", had generated its own amount of “multidisciplinary academic literature, as well as extensive media coverage in popular culture.”

 

There’s a reddit forum for House of Leaves fans.  One person has even compiled a list of all work, real and fake, referenced in House of Leaves.

 

My only disappointment was at some of the content, which was not as original as its format and execution.  Using Kevin Carter’s story and his photograph kind of cheapened the experience for me.  Johnny Truant reminded me too much of Nicholas in The Cipher. Kathe Koja's novel was published in 1991, so it's very possible that Danielewski would’ve been inspired by it when he was working on House of Leaves.

 

I even asked Google: Did The Cipher influence House of Leaves?

AI Overview:  The Cipher by Kathe Koja and House of Leaves by Mark Z. Danielewski share thematic similarities, particularly in their exploration of "malicious non-space". Both novels feature uncanny spaces that are not easily explained by traditional horror tropes of violation or wrongdoing. House of Leaves incorporates ciphers and codes, both within the text and in in the physical layout, mirroring the coded messages in Koja's The Cipher. 

 

Although I wouldn’t call myself a fan, I was without a doubt glad I got to experience House of Leaves.  It only took me two months and one week to finish it. 

 

9. Yellowface

By R.F. Kuang

20. Persuasion

By Jane Austen

15. China Rich Girlfriend

 By Kevin Kwan

Found a pristine hard copy in the free book nook on Clark and Villeneuve, which was installed earlier this year and quite handy as it’s en route to my kid’s school.  This was the first and only book I found there so far. 

 

The plot of China Rich Girlfriend was a little odd.  Crazy Rich Asians was a straightforward romantic comedy of manners featuring an ordinary ABC woman meeting her prince charming-in-hiding with Singaporean high society as colourful backdrop.

 

CRG started off in London with a drag race gone horribly wrong.  Carlton was one of the drivers, and his uber rich Chinese mom managed to cover up the accident with a small team of “experts” and a shit ton of money, not only keeping it from the public but her own husband as well, a high-ranking PRC official.

 

Early on in CRG, Nick was tricked into having lunch with an old family friend, Jacqueline Ling, which involved a pep talk about how much he’d lose by marrying Rachel.  It's not just the inheritance but his entire identity as a Young, etc. Jacqueline cautioned Nick to delay his wedding while his nonagenarian grandmother's still breathing.  Meanwhile Rachel’s been unable to locate her biological father, who rescued her mom from her abusive marriage and helped her flee from China to the USA.  It seemed that this was going to set the tone for the rest of the novel. 

 

Despite it looking like Nick’s mother Eleanor may spectacularly sabotage the wedding, it turned out Nick and Rachel had their wedding after all.  Eleanor was able to find out who Rachel’s father was, and guess what, he’s Bao Gaoliang, a high-ranking Chinese minister who has scads of money thanks in part to marrying into a wealthy family.  And guess who his wife and son are? 

 

And since Bao Gaoliang seems fond of Rachel, any tension with Eleanor or interference from Nick’s grandmother is now brushed aside, as Rachel is now part of a wealthy high status Chinese family. The plot then expands to include Bao Gaoliang’s son, Carlton and his China-rich “friend”, Collette Bing, an uber fashion influencer and a spoiled princess. 

 

Meanwhile, there are other subplots.  Kitty Pong, so determined to rise above her actress image and be welcomed by HK high society, that she outbid "the establishment" for a bunch of rare, ancient Chinese scrolls she knows nothing about.  Her relationship with Corinna Ko-Tung provided some of the more entertaining parts of the novel. 

 

Corinna’s from old money but she discreetly provides consultation services to status-seekers who are desperate to know the in's and out's of high society.  When Kitty retains her services, Corinna wastes no time in preparing a “Social Impact Assessment” that breaks down what Kitty needs to work on in all aspects of her life, such as her Appearance, Wardrobe, Jewelry, Lifestyle Transport Dining, Social Life, Travel, Philanthropic Affiliations, Spiritual Life, and Culture.  There’s even a Reading List at the end!  

 

Spiritual Life

 

When I feel you are ready, I will introduce you to Hong Kong’s more exclusive church, which you will being attending on a regular basis.  Before you protest, please note that this is one of the cornerstones to my methodology of social rehabilitation.  Your true spiritual affiliations do not concern me—it does not matter ot me if you Taoist, Daoist, Buddhist, or worhip Meryl Streep—but it is absolutely essential that you become a regular praying, tithing, communion-taking, hards-in-the-air-waving, Bible-study-fellowship-attending member of this church. (This has the added bonus of ensuring that you will be qualified for burial at the most coveted Christian cemetery on Hong Kong Island, rather than having to suffer the eternal humiliation of being interred at one of those lesser cemeteries on the Kowloon side.)

 

Astrid Leong was a little sadder.  She’s described as naturally gorgeous, discreet, and sophisticated with exquisite taste, but when it comes to her husband, Michael, she’s a bit of a doormat and a total doorknob .  It took her all of CRA and CRG to figure out what a douchebag asshole he’s been to her and her son, Cassian.  When you think about it, the books are full of absent and incompetent fathers and meddling, conniving mothers.   But the, what kind of soap opera would you have without damaged people?  The only person who seems to be completely honest with himself is financier, Edison Cheng.  He at least owns the fact that he's a self-centred ass-hole and his inner monologues are sharp and funny.

 

Still, there was something morally repugnant reading light-hearted fiction about the lifestyles of the filthy rich, even though it was mostly satirical.  The displays of wealth were so over the top, especially fpr those who’ve never witnessed the spoils of wealth firsthand.   There were fancy apartments, and then there were fancy apartments that come with car elevators and rotating floors to showcase your fancy car collection. There were private jets, and then there were jumbo jets with a spa and koi pond garden.

  

China Rich Girlfriend was not completely without a teensy bit of self-awareness.  Kwan made a couple of mild digs at uber rich families, but it was very subtle.  Part Three featured a quote from Balzac:   

Behind every fortune lies a great crime.  

For example, the novel mentioned how Astrid’s family wealth was built on generations of palm oil exploitation.  But Astrid and Nick don’t seem terribly concerned about how their lifestyle has been sustained by the destruction of huge tracts of Indonesian rainforest.  They get a pass because they aren’t spoiled or arrogant rich people.

 

An opportunity for a critique presented itself when Rachel expressed to Peik Lin about how astounded she was observing the insane amount of money that Collette et co. spent on their week-long shopping spree in Paris.

 

Peik Lin, who also comes from wealth, explains how it’s a way of “validating their success” and to make up for all the suffering their families endured in the past. Rachel still doesn’t understand and goes “when you’re spending more money on a couture dress than it takes to vaccinate a thousand children against measles or provide clean water to an entire town, that’s just unconscionable.”

Peik Lin gives her a thoughtful look.  “Isn’t it all relative though? To someone living in a mud hut somewhere, isn’t the $200 you paid for those Rag & Bone jeans you’re wearing considered obscene? The woman buying that couture dress could argue it took a team of twelve seamstresses three months to create the garment, and they are all supporting their families by doing this…   We all choose to spend our money in different ways, but at least we get to make that choice.  Just think—twenty years ago, these girls you went to Paris with would only have two choices: Do you want your Mao jacket in shit brown or shit gray?”

Not only did that argument not make much sense, it was a total cop out in fiscal irresponsibility.  Collette’s wealth is astronomically larger than the average person who can splurge on $200 jeans. If it was really a matter of degree, what $200 could do vs what $200,000 could do makes a HUGE difference - ask any charitable cause!    

 

What Peik Lin seemed to being saying was that allowing some educated Europeans to send their kids to a good school because you employed them to build your vacation villa has the equivalent impact as vaccinating a thousand poor children against preventable diseases.  No, it’s not the same at all.  What you choose to do with your wealth can make a difference, and Kwan is saying that it's ok to be selfishly rich without any concern for how your wealth is interconnected with the world at large.

 

CRG was published in June 2015.  So it’s situated post-Occupy movement and right after the 2014 Hong Kong democracy protests, BUT the events of the narrative are set primarily in 2013.  This is too bad since protests had a pretty huge impact on HK society, dividing tight social groups, such family and friends.  So it was quite a convenient choice for Kwan, as he didn’t have to deal with all that in this book, and only had to concern himself with the superficial cultural differences between HK and China among the wealthy elites.

 

Imagine if China Rich GF was set during the HK protests, with Bao Gaoliang as a high-ranking minister in the PRC.  For him to reach such a high level, he must have absorbed much of the Communist party values.  Kwan made it clear that Bao was still a man of integrity, but he never explored the dichotomy very deeply– like how Gaoliang belonged to a party that drew a hard line against democratic values and would likely go against the American values of Rachel and Nick.  

 

That’s fine, I suppose.  Kwan had aimed for confectionary social satire for the masses, not great literature, and he succeeded.  CRG was an amusing page-turner, nothing more.  Everything ends happily for the most part, with everyone figuring out who or what they're happy with, etc.   

 

I still wonder though, if Kwan tackled some the socio-political aspects to his story would China RIch Girffriend attain more literary status?

 

17. Turn, Magic Wheel

By Dawn Powell 

Dawn Powell was a prolific and talented New York writer during the first half of the 20^th century who had never really received the recognition she deserved in her lifetime.  Nevertheless, she was part of the literary “in” crowd, a beloved friend and drinking companion of many luminaries of her time.  By the time she died, almost all her novels were out of print and she languished in obscurity until some contemporary authors brought about a revival during the 1990’s and some of her novels were reprinted.

I had only recently heard of Powell when I came across a Goodreads article in which author Kate Christensen named Powell as one of her favourite writers:  “Her sharp insight into human nature is never moralistic or sentimental. She shows people as they are, not as she wishes they were or thinks they ought to be—she is never judgmental, but her eyes are gimlet and her tongue is razor sharp."

Powell’s 1936 novel Turn, Magic Wheel, a social satire about the New York literary scene, became the first work that received both critical acclaim and reasonable commercial success.  Dennis Orphen is a young writer whose debut novel is a thinly veiled satire of the relationship between a Hemingway-like writer (Andrew Callingham) and Callingham’s first wife, Effie.  Dennis’ main motive for befriending Effie Callingham (nee Thorne) was to provide fodder for his writing material, but becomes conflicted when his novel is about to be released, as he realizes how much he has come to actually value his unique relationship with Effie Thorne.

Though it took me a little while to get into the novel at first, I ended up very much enjoying Turn, Magic Wheel.  There were some wonderfully brilliant moments of insight and there were times I felt like I was a part of that whole scene.  Take for example, the skewering of a rich but stingy patroness who loves to throw parties for “the freshest of public names”:

He recalled rumors that Mrs. Meigs prided herself on a perfectly delicious punch made of pure alcohol and grape juice, which she declared fooled everyone, and enabled her to entertain at very little expense. The result of this shrewd fooling was that guests were always prowling about the basement in a game she had never thought to invent but which was the life of her parties, namely the Scotch Hunt.  There was invariably some old family friend or an intuitive type who knew the hiding place and since her private stock was very good indeed little groups of guests were always clustered in the laundry leaning over the electric mangle or in the coal cellar or the cook’s bedroom, contentedly sharing a glass with no gaily embossed red rooster on its rim at all but more likely the plainest jelly glass or even a half-pint cream bottle.

Here is a wonderfully written 1936 NYT review of Turn, Magic Wheel:

...a barbed and immensely entertaining satire on a certain phase of New York's literary life. Read about the young publisher who discovered the possibilities of proletarian literature; read Miss Powell's analysis of how to write quaint little prosies for the "Manhattanite"; read her deliciously comic descriptions of night-club binges and literary teas. Miss Powell's wit, if somewhat overexuberant, has a peculiarly sharp and ruthless edge. She has some deadly things to say about the cormorant aspects of the intelligentsia, and though her actual story--despite its moving moments--is a little synthetic, her book as a whole rings savagely true.

And here is ablog with another insightful review.