House Of Leaves
posted by Tim Walters @ 8:47 PM I've been busy with music and such, so it took me quite a while to read Mark Z. Danielewski's House Of Leaves (a Christmas present from Todd). It's famous as a typographical tour de force, with some justice. Interestingly, it's done almost entirely in the most generic (and ugly) possible fonts--Times for the main text (a critical analysis of a clearly fictional film) and Courier for the fictional executor's footnotes (which tell a parallel story to that of the film). I assume that Times was chosen to reflect the (explicitly stated) resemblance of the main text to a freshman paper (and Courier, of course, recalls a typewriter), but I found myself wondering if the real reason was that people would recognize the names, which are also mentioned explicitly.So, um, oh yeah... the book. It's a bit first-novelish in places--there are some mawkish and/or cliched descriptions, and I found it hard to believe that the footnoter would have the vocabulary he did and still type "alot" and "should of"--but the horror stor(ies) are gripping, and the typographical tricks and metafictional aspects don't feel tacked on. Not quite Pale Fire, but very enjoyable. And my lunch waitress caught a look at the inside and said "What the heck is that?"
Plenty of opinions and speculations about the book at houseofleaves.com.
2 Comments:
Glad you found it to be worth reading. I wonder if Times New Roman was chosen because it seems to be the default in so much office software, and thus reminds one of memos and business letters.
Or freshman papers--the central text is explicitly compared to one at a few points (good way to get yourself off the hook for any stylistic infelicities, too!).
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