Blasphemy.

For anybody who has read this twisted book, please come out and explain what you think happened in it.

When I finished the book, I honestly thought I understood it, but then I went on the book's website, and most of the major things I thought flew out the window.

sgn43

Would it be possible to get a brief overview for those of us who haven't read it? Or would that ruin anything? I'm asking because a good friend of mine recommended the book to me before summer and said it was amazing, but I'm so backed up trying to read what seems like a million other books I've been meaning to read.

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To be great is to be misunderstood. -Emerson

Redlemon

I just finished my second reading of the book last week. I'm not sure that understanding what happened is the point of the book.

For sgn43, think of a movie documentary that is a combination of Blair Witch and Lovecraft's Cthulu mythos. Then imagine a person writing a dissertation about that movie, citing as many references as possible. Then imagine the person who was writing the dissertation dies, and a loser tattoo shop assistant is reading and assembling the dissertation into a book. Oh, and the author had been blind for many years, and couldn't have seen the movie. And the tattoo guy is adding footnotes about how his life is falling apart as he obsesses over the book. And the editors add their own comments regarding what the tattoo artist is writing.

That's the book. Plus appendicies. And I haven't given anything away that you wouldn't pick up from the first two chapters or so.

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I can't read your signature. Sorry.

Blasphemy.

If you check out the forums for the book http://www.houseofleaves.com/forums/

you notice people trying to pick apart every single chapter pretty much and find an alternate meaning to the book. I have this feeling that there isn't any and the readers are just thinking far too in-depth towards the book.

What are you thoughts on the book?

sgn43

Hahah...I'll go ahead and leave this one towards the bottom of my reading list. I'll save it for a rainy day...where I feel like punching myself in the temples while reading and re-reading a book.

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To be great is to be misunderstood. -Emerson

PulpMind

I would do the opposite and move it to the top. It sounds scattered and kitchy, but it's an incredibly well written book.

An interesting side-note... Poe's "Haunted" album is based around House of Leaves... reading the book makes that album a hundred times more interesting..

Redlemon

And, Mark and Poe are brother and sister. Are they Chad and Daisy?

I heard about the book first on the NPR program Studio 360. Follow the link to get the RealAudio of the interview. It was enough to sell me on the book.

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Antikarma

Heh check out my sig, its been the same for two years. This book is incredible and I absolutely suggest it to ANYONE that can read. The first time you read this book it will creep you out and you have to read it twice to figure out what the hell you just read.

Simply a masterpiece, I say.

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"Whoever you are, go out into the evening,
leaving your room, of which you know each bit;
your house is the last before the infinite,
whoever you are."

Redlemon

And xkcd covered it quite nicely today. I didn't know the book was geeky enough to be in xkcd...

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Jinn

that would explain why I saw today's XKCD and didn't understand it at all..

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"I'm typing on a computer of science, which is being sent by science wires to a little science server where you can access it. I'm not typing on a computer of philosophy or religion or whatever other thing you think can be used to understand the universe because they're a poor substitute in the role of understanding the universe which exists independent from ourselves." - Willravel

highdro69

that's friggin hilarious Redlemon, where'd u find that?

edit: how did you guys go about reading it? did you read the two stories separately at a time or did u read them simultaneously?

personally, i read them simultaneously the first time, then read them separately for my second read.

roachboy

i don't understand why house of leaves is understood as difficult.
it is not a conventional narrative---do you have to have those trappings to enjoy interacting with a book?
if the narrator dissolves as the story unfolds, does it not follow that things would become confused past a certain point?

personally, i thought the book interesting, but quickly found the voice in the footnotes irritating because the writing was, to my mind, sloppy. whether you see that as a device or not is maybe interesting--i haven't read any other stuff by danielewski, though. has anyone else checked out what he's put out since?

redlemon: that piece is great.

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a gramophone its corrugated trumpet silver handle
spinning dog. such faithfulness it hear

it make you sick.

-kamau brathwaite

Redlemon

xkcd - A webcomic of romance, sarcasm, math, and language - By Randall Munroe. It's a must-read.

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ratbastid

Wow, guys. I just finished this--like literally just put the book down 90 seconds ago.

It's intense. Or... it has moments of intensity. I felt like the sister-narrative provided by Johnny Truant undercut the intensity, and I found I didn't care for him much, and I wasn't all that interested in his descent. Although his discovery of the first edition of the book on his journey is a nice echo of the "voyage into the dark, coming back with yourself" thing that Navidson experienced.

This thing really invites an absurd level of textual analysis. I don't think I'm going to put the energy into it that some have (that the book's web site's forum is RIDICULOUS). I think it stands on its own fairly nicely.