Thread 24639951

Just finished it. Not even really sure what the point of the book was. The only feeling I have upon closure is confusion.

I'm about halfway through and it's gotten pretty boring. I don't give a single shit about what's happening to Johnny, and Zampano has the cadence of a redditor.

>>24640089
I'd say finish it for the experience but don't expect a satisfying ending

I truly think the intention of the book is just to leave you super uncertain about everything you've read

>>24640206
No. That's a brainlet take, rub your 3 brain cells together and apply yourself.

>>24639951 (OP)
Did you find the secret messages between Zampano and Pelafina?

>he read the whole thing
you're not supposed to finish it, you get lost in the labyrinth then spun out like Johnny and give up

>>24639951 (OP)
well the author was a canadian so........

>>24639951 (OP)
I don't think you're confused.
The book is purposefully hostile to the reader. That's the entire point of the book and the stories don't matter one iota.

Read it 10 years ago, I remember really liking it but it is essentially YA.

>side story is about a guy reading the main story and going insane
>read main story
>I don't go insane

>>24639951 (OP)
unlike the pale fires its ripping off, theres no meaningful hidden answer

>>24639951 (OP)
This book is trying to have fun with meta-horror fiction. Getting disappointed because you took it too seriously is on you desu.

The only chapter I didn't get was the science experiments on the house samples

>>24640631
>>24639951 (OP)
>>24640206
>>24640607
This is not my experience, from what I remember, at all. If you've "finished" it, surely that means you should have made your way out of the labyrinth, because how else do you know that you've "finished" it? I thought it was not really meant to be an endless nihilistic postmodern labyrinth although it purports to be. From what I recall the labyrinth *does* have an answer, because at its bottom its a love story between Will and Karen. That is an overly simple and sentimental answer, but that's kind of the point, the complexity and infinitude and mystery of the house in the end is mostly a satirical wild-goose chase, and love is always the way out of labyrinths (Theseus is helped out by Ariadne's thread, etc.). Unfortunately I don't have the book with me to provide quotations to prove my point and I can't recall the book well enough to argue that point in more detail but I remember that was my clear impression upon finishing it myself. It's also supported by a quote from Danielewski on the Wikipedia page:
>I had one woman come up to me in a bookstore and say, 'You know, everyone told me it was a horror book, but when I finished it, I realized that it was a love story.' And she's absolutely right.

>>24641176
Yeah you could definitely interpret it as a love story. My post is more so about the explicit premises of the book and how they never really come to a satisfying conclusion.

Everything is left completely ambiguous.

We don't know if the film is real. We don't know if the house is real. We don't know what the house actually is or where it came from. We don't know where Johnny ends up or what happens to him at the end of the book. We don't know if the stuff about his parents and Raymond are even real or just figments of his paranoia. We don't even know if any of Zampano's writing is real or reliable because it's all being relayed to us through Johnny who openly admits that he is adulterating things as he goes.

My only confident interpretation of this book is that it's a giant question mark, and we are essentially free to decide which aspects of it are grounded or imaginary.

>>24641176
it's certainly not a love story either as the book isn't even about the fucking house or even Will
as the text repeatedly tells you, the text is wrong and fiction and not real and you're an idiot for reading it or even showing suspension of disbelief when reading any sub-story
The point of House of Leaves is smugness.

>>24641176
i would like to see what you mean, because that reading has always felt like a non sequitur. its just very awkward to come away from the book with that. even if it was somehow intended, it feels like an afterthought that renders so much of the book useless. actually most of the book feels like an afterthought without enough planning and intent behind it. the "satire" is not interesting. there are no concrete answers to be found. the fact that its a love story isnt really an answer to a mystery is it? in fact im not sure if there are interesting mysteries in the first place. the who wrote who thing is a red herring in pale fire that people stopped chasing because they knew it would be too inconsequential an answer.

even as the story of a guy who goes insane after reading something but its actually a love story is just "the repairer of reputations", and even that was kind of an unplanned out mess.

>>24641829
The only point in the book where I felt the metafiction element went too far is when Navidson starts reading pages of House of Leaves inside the black void and burning pages as he goes.

I think I physically winced at that part. It bordered on self parody.

>>24641893
It makes perfect sense. I'd tell you to read it again and to mark every instance of the writer breaking the fourth wall to tell you the book isn't real, but I doubt anyone would want to do that.
But that's what this passage and many others do.

>>24641909
Obviously Mark breaks the fourth wall intentionally, but to me it was kind of predictable.

As if the layers of uncertainty and nebulousness in the story already established weren't enough, no we needed ANOTHER one.

>>24641814
we also don't know if Johnny is real or just part of a story Pelafina made up to deal with her dead child

>>24642268
Yes. The ultimate conclusion of the book is entirely metafictional, meaning:
>I wrote this story but did you know it's not true ;)
Complete reddit faggotry and if I met Mark I would beat him into a coma.

>>24641877
I think in retrospect I agree, I think the conclusion that one has to take away is that it's not a very good book and is very gimmicky. Which is a little sad because there was something about the epiphany about it being a love story that felt quite real to me at the time, that the infinite darkness of endless interpretation and paranoia could be traversed by the simplicity of the act of love, or that the paranoid descent of the reader and endless academic analysis were just convoluted distractions that paralleled the complex barriers and breakdown of communication between Will and Grace which after all was the human, "realist" and non-metafictional story to be found right in front of the reader's nose all along. But that reading does render the rest of the novel into just a funhouse maze that could only be experienced once, and yes, the reader seemingly a complete idiot for wanting to engage with the deeper mysteries of the sub-plots or metafiction further. The kind of shaggy-dog story elements of postmodern fiction are inevitable, but other postmodern novels have handled this in a way that still makes the novel endlessly revisitable and still meaningful, and I don't think Danielewski achieved this because, as you say, the mysteries aren't very compelling -- and in my interpretation the mysteries are not the point of the book anyway, and in any case the experience ends up ultimately facile.

Real or fake it really did hurt when Johnny faked his recovery