So certainly the discussions of Freud and Nietzsche and Borges and Sartre were all part of what we discussed and fought about.'ĭanielewski’s firm grounding in the canon shows in House of Leaves. My father had been steeped in the 1950s, the literature of the modernists. My mother wasn’t as formally intellectual as he was, but they were always in favor of seeing movies, reading books, and always bringing those subjects into long discourses at the table. 'My father was an avant-garde filmmaker, very much an intellectual. 'I’ve been writing my whole life,' Danielewski says, on the phone from his home in California. Usually the appearance of a first novel is the public culmination of a long, silent apprenticeship.

Straightforward this book isn’t, but it is amusing, challenging, and terrifying. Danielewski’s,' with the title page following: ' House of Leaves, by Zampano, with Introduction and Notes by Johnny Truant.' And the whole thing is a commentary on a homemade film documentary by a man named Navidson. The author’s name doesn’t even appear on the title page it’s opposite it, reading 'Mark Z. For one thing, he invents several layers of narrators. Like Joyce and Proust, Danielewski isn’t rejecting narration as much as customizing and turbo-charging it. As it should be in such a nightmarish fantasy, what appears to be a barrier is actually a gateway. While these narrative games are all good fun, House of Leaves adds up to more than playfulness. The book ends with an alphabetical index to, apparently, every major word in the entire text.

Toward the back there is a collection of quotations, including a passage from Homer in five different languages. One page consists of three measures of music.

Remarks by various narrators and commentators appear in different typefaces there are hundreds of sly footnotes on some pages the text runs sideways or at an angle and occasionally there’s only a word or two on a page. At first glance, it seems to reject most precepts of narrative structure. It’s difficult to imagine a more original and distinctive novel than his House of Leaves. With so many competitors out there, an aspiring novelist needs a strong talent or an original slant to rise above the hoard.

Mark z danielewski