Sadly, that book was (probably) not written by me. But if you'd check out my book, Cloud Atlas, you'd know that I could have written it if I just wanted to. Look back at the book...
[image]
...and now back up. Who's that?
[image]
That's me, the author of Cloud Atlas, which is the book you could have been reading. What's in your hand?
[image]
It's Cloud Atlas, which is a historical novel about a pacific voyage all the way back in the 1800's. Back at me.
[image]
Now back at Cloud Atlas. Look, it's now a thriller.
[image]
And look again. Cloud Atlas is now science fiction.
[image]
Anything is possible when a book contains several stories inside...
[image]
...and I am the author.
[image]
Cloud Atlas is arguably David Mitchell's (all right, I'll stop pretending - that's him in the pictures) most famous novel - and if it isn't, it certailnly will be after the Wachowskis will turn it into a big budged movie - the trailer is not that bad looking. The novel itself is critically acclaimed - it won the British Book Awards Literary Fiction Award, and was shortlisted for the Booker Prize and even nominated for two of the prestigious awards given to works of science fiction - the Nebula and Arthur C. Clarke award.
So what should we, the readers, make of Cloud Atlas? By now, probably everyone interested in reading it has heard that it's composed of six different storylines, all of which interact with each other in some way. The single most impressive thing about the novel is the fact that the author adapts a unique narrative voice for each of these sections, making Cloud Atlas a feat of literary ventriloquism. The six storylines are also different in structure, setting and timelines.
The Pacific Journal of Adam Ewing opens the novel: set around 1850, the journal is a first person account of a south Pacific journey of the naive Adam Ewing, who finds himself ashore on the Chattam Islands near New Zealand. He falls sick, and seeks help from a suspicious doctor who looks at his money with hungry eyes, and also learns a bit of the native history: the enslavement of the Moriori by the Maori.
Letters from Zedelghem is the next sequence, and as the title suggests it's epistolary. The titular letters are written by Robert Frobisher to Rufus Sixmith. Frobisher is a completely broke English musician who buys his daily bread by being a hired hand for a Belgian composer - Ayrs. Despite the implications that Sixmith is his lover, Frobisher starts an affair with Ayr's wife and it does not help that Ayrs also has a young daughter.
Half-Lives: The First Luisa Rey Mystery is the next section which tells the tale of Louisa Rey, a journalist who follows the lead that some nuclear plants are unsafe and can blow up the world: of course there are people who do not wish for this information to be made public. Dressed up as a thriller, it is definitely the most fast paced section of the novel and does a convincig job at passing as a grocery store rack paperback novel.
The Ghastly Ordeal of Timothy Cavendish is probably my favorite section: 65 year old Timothy Cavendish is a vanity publisher who gets himself into trouble with one of his clients (who happens to be a gangster) and has to lay low for a while; His brother arranges a safe place for him to go to. Only when he arrives he discovers that the hideaway is a nursing home; Cavendish is an extremely likeable old codger and lots of hilarity ensues as he attempts to break free. It gets downhill from here.
An Orison of Sonmi~451 is the least inspired section: a derivative dystopian fare, totally by the book. Overused dystopian tropes abound: Far future, immensely opressive totalitarian society, corporate overlords, genetically engingered slaves (cannibalism!), neologisms and simple spelling changes such as "xcitement, xpendable, xtra". etc. To top the cake it is set in futuristic Korea, complete with "the Beloved Chairman" who is in control of All Things. Not very, um, subtle, you know.
Sloosha's Crossin' an' Ev'rythin' After or Trainspotting in Space continues with the science fiction theme, and is set in post-apocalyptic Hawaii. Humanity has been almost completely wiped out during "The Fall". Zachry, the protagonist, is an old man recounting his teenage years, when he met Meronym, a member of a former advanced civilization. The section overuses apostrophes to an almost ridiculous extent, making me regret ever complaining about the simplicity of spelling changes in the Somni section. The style hangs over the content unmercifully, like a sharp sword, ready to drop at any moment to cut your reading enjoyment - and does exactly that, all the time.
After Slosha we return to the preceding stories yet again, this time in the reverse order, going back in time: Beginning with futuristic tale of Somni and ending with the concluding entries of the journal of Adam Ewing, in the 1850's.
So what is the big deal? The structure. On the back cover is Michael Chabon's appraisal of the novel as "series of nested dolls or Chinese boxes, a puzzle-book" and as the Wachowski's boldly emphasize in all caps in the trailer for the upcoming film, "EVERYTHING IS CONNECTED". However, I found these connections to be sketchy at best: For example, Ewing's journal is conveniently found by Frobisher at a bookshelf of his Belgian employer; Rufus Sixmith, the addressee of Frobisher's letters just happens to be a whistleblower collaborating with Louisa Rey; Louisa Rey's story is a manuscript that Cavendish is offered for publication; Cavendish's goofy adventure is a Disney romp watched by Somni in the far future, and Somni herself is a goddess worshipped by Zachry, who knows her story from a futuristic recording device. There are further attempts to stitch these stories together - a recurring birthmark, one character seemingly remembering a piece of music from another time, the recurrence of the number six - six stories, a character named...Sixmith who is...66 years old, etc. If the "nested dolls" analogy passed you by, the author has Isaac Sachs, an engineer (how appropriate!) explain the magic:
"“One model of time: an infinite matryoshka doll of painted moments, each ‘shell’ (the present) encased inside a nest of ‘shells’ (previous presents) I call the actual past but which we perceive as the virtual past. The doll of ‘now’ likewise encases a nest of presents yet to be, which I call the actual future but which we perceive as the virtual future.”"
But that is not all. Frobisher's musical masterpiece to be is called The Cloud Atlas Sextet, which he describes as:
"a 'sextet for overlapping soloists': piano, clarinet, 'cello, flute, oboe, and violin, each in its own language of key, scale, and color. In the first set, each solo is interrupted by its successor; in the second, each interruption is recontinued, in order."
...which is obviously how Cloud Atlas, the novel, is structured. It seems to me as if the author did not trust his readers and had to spell out his game in fear of being misunderstood, or worse: the trick going unnoticed. He also seems to see critics coming, and in the next sentence Frobisher thinks about his work: "Revolutionary or gimmicky? Shan't know until it's finished, and by then it'll be too late.”" The concept is laid out for the reader in its entirety at one moment: (view spoiler)[when the author namecalls the reincarnation, having Timothy Cavendish discount the notion of Louisa Rey being Robert Frobisher reincarnated - he has the same birthmark as them both. (hide spoiler)]. Sometimes it's done in an almost humorous way: Timothy Cavendish mutters that "Soylent Green is people", and that some geeks must be "Cloning humans for shady Koreans" - which is exactly what happens in the Somni section.
Revolutionary or Gimmicky? For this jury Cloud Atlas does not have what it takes to be revolutionary, meaning something...well, revolutionary. The structure of the novel appears to be complex at the first glance, but during actual reading shows itself as not overly complex, and the author makes sure that the reader will understand it. The stories themselves are not strong enough to stand on their own: the Louisa Rey mystery is intentionally bland, but the Orison of Somni 451 is formulaic to the bone, where all characters are reduced to familiar stereotypes: The tyranical Big Brother regime and the opressed sentient beings who should not be capable of complex thought but are, which dates back to Yevgeny Zamyatin's brillian novel We, which has been written in...1921, going through more famous examples - Brave New World, 1984, movies such as the original Planet of the Apes, THX1138, etc etc etc. To give the author credit the dystopian formula has been firmly estabilished (and exploited - currently especially on the young adult market) and it's quite difficult (if not downright impossible) to come up with any innovations: especially if there's a set limit on the lenght of the piece which hardly allows for any worldbuilding, forcing the author to work with the barest minimum.
The recurring theme ofCloud Atlas is enslavement and exploitation of human beings. Ewing is exposed to enslavement of one tribe by another and is forced to decide the fate of a person; penniless Frobisher is forced to leave England for Belgium, where he is drawn into a net cast by an aging composer, who wants to exploit his talent; Louisa Rey is fighting the capitalist ubermench who do not care about the dangers of a nuclear reactor. Tinmothy Cavendish has to escape from dangerous people and literally becomes enslaved in a home for the elderly; Sonmi is a genetically enginereed fabricant who was made to be used. Throughout the ages, the weaker are controlled, abused and exploited by the stronger, who want even more riches and strenght.
is it a new topic? No. Does Cloud Atlas offer a new look at it? alas, the answer also has to be no. The book opposes the notion of survival of the fittest, where "the weak are the meat that the strong eat" - and this is obviously wrong. But in the year 2004 (when it was published) did we not know that already? The dangers of capitalism and the money-oriented western civilization, its contemporary face being the Louisa Rey sections and the gloomy vision of the future shown in the Orison of Somni; the post-colonial white guilt for which the vessel is the character of Adam Ewing. Adam Ewing seems to exist to only espouse this notion; after being rescued by a Noble Savage he is told about the bloodthirst of the White Race by the Doctor (who is the Evil character since this is how he was estabilished to be). The morality play hits home and Ewing decides that the way the world is is Wrong and there is worth in striving for a seemingly impossible Change where everyone is Free. This storyline is not bad by default, but it is hardly original and there is hardly any place for ambiguity; I was surprised at the comparisons with Benito Cereno, which is probably my favorite work by Melville (along with the brilliant Bartleby, the Scrivener - which is also about individualism and freedom, but in a completely different manner). The genius of Melville's work lies in its ambiguity: it has been praised and criticized because of it, as various readers read it either as a racist work in support of slavery, while other readers read it as an anti-slavery text in support of abolition. There is little if any of this in Adam Ewing's journal; of course it's wrong to own another human being as property, and most of the humanity came to agree on this...after we stole land from one another and replaced their people with ours, colonized and governed them against their will and exploited them in slave labor. Melville's work was written in 1856, when abolition was a controversial (and dangerous) issue; even though Adam Ewing's journal is set in that time period, we can't forget that it was created in the 2000's. There is not enough originality or exceptionality to it, and solely by attempting to stress the human freedom it borders dangerously on the banal repetition of something done earlier and better.
The author is at his best in the narratives of Frobisher and Cavendish, where he handles two drastically different characters with skill and verve. Both are Englishmen, though of different times and of different age and profession: Frobisher is young, cynical, cunning, brash and unapologetic; Cavendish is elderly, sheepish, slow and silly. It is in these two narratives where the author's talent really shines; he writes with panache and flamboyance, and his whimsical humor is contrasted with rawness and emotion. Frobisher's egoism and frustration are off-putting, and yet the reader cannot help but feel some sympathy for his character and wish him good in creating the work of his life; Cavendish's geriatric adventure is surprisingly rollicking and full of charm. It is their stories which work the best in this book, and are the most affecting and memorable.
On the whole, Cloud Atlas reads more as an exercise in trying to write stories in different genres and styles, and then weaving them together; ultimately, it does not really work. The majority of the stories are not strong enough to stand on their own, and there is not enough to bind them together; even the two stories I enjoyed suffer from being just a part of the whole which doesn't really work. It lacks the profundity and depth it needs to be an important work; a more vicious critic would say that the author arranged his stories like matryoshkas to hide his inability to offer meaningful and perceptive insights into the human nature. I doubt that Cloud Atlas is such a case, and because of this I can't wish it would have been all that it was said to be, profound and meaningful, offering a fresh approach to the subject which is so important. But what can you say about things on which so many said so much over the centuries? Like clouds, Cloud Atlas eventually disperses, leaving in memory snapshots of its elements, and not the whole....more
Everything has been said but not everyone has said it yet.
- Rep. Morris Udall at the 1988 Democratic convention
I've put in so many enigmas andEverything has been said but not everyone has said it yet.
- Rep. Morris Udall at the 1988 Democratic convention
I've put in so many enigmas and puzzles that it will keep the professors busy for centuries arguing over what I meant, and that's the only way of insuring one's immortality.
- James Joyce in a reply reply for a request for a plan of Ulysses
The thoroughly well-informed man--that is the modern ideal. And the mind of the thoroughly well-informed man is a dreadful thing. It is like a bric-a-brac shop, all monsters and dust, with everything priced above its proper value.
- Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray
Reading House of Leaves reminded me of an essay I've read by David Foster Wallace, who was quoting someone on the output of the ever prolific John Updike (may both rest in peace): "Has the son of a bitch ever had one unpublished thought?". This is a reaction one might have when first exposed to House of Leaves (of course sans the "son of a bitch" part). This is Mark Z. Danielewski's first novel, and he devoted 10 years (that's like 10 whole years!) to write it - and like so many first novels it is full of what the author wanted to show off about his knowledge: House of Leaves is the book which will jump up to you and scream in your face, "look at me! Hey, would you look at me? Do you have an X number of hours to spare to decode me, boy?". Many might find that they do not wish to spare the hours required by this tome; to them the book issues a warning right at its beginning, stating that "this is not for you.". However, as we know such warnings are like catnip for curious cats - I mean, seriously, who would have stopped reading right there? Have we all forgotten about all these horror movies where protagonists go exactly where they should not go, ignoring all the warning sings, because they want to "check things out"? I see what you did there, House of Leaves.
The story is this: A man named Will Navidson moves with his family into a new home on Ash Tree Lane, somewhere in Virginia (just next to West Virginia where they set all these hilbilly horror movies). Navidson, a recognized photographer (a documentarist of war) is accompanied by his wife, Karen - a former fashion model - and two children, Daisy and Chad. Some stress has been plaguing the family of the Navidsons, so they decide to change environment in hope of restoring family dynamics (Remember The Shining? Remember how it ended?). Only when they move in they discover that the house has changed: it appears bigger on the inside than the outside, by a fraction of an inch. But that's not it! Soon a mysterious new hallway appears. What does Navidson do? Take the kids and run out of this scary house like normal people do? No, of course they stay - I mean, if they didn't we wouldn't exactly have much to read about. Like a good horror protagonist, Navidson does exactly what the genre demands of him. He goes exploring. now, that can possibly go wrong...or can it?
[image]
While this might not sound like the most original or compelling thing on the planet, you have to understand that House of Leaves is all about the execution as opposed to content. Althought the novel has everything and the kitchen sink in it, it's all about how these things are put together.
See, House of Leaves is a narrative which does absolutely everything to be as unconventional as possible - the story of Navidson, his family and explorations of the house are not narrated by him or the traditional third person omniscient narrator - that would be much, much too simple. The narrative is reminiscent of a Russian matryoshka doll: all we know about Navidson comes from The Navidson Record, which is the name of the documentary film Navidson has made about the house, consisting of the tapes he filmed there. Now, since we are dealing with a recorded narrative, there must be somebody who put it together for us - and there is. We never get to see the actual Navidson Record - what we get is an academic analysis of it, made by a man named Zampano. Zampano did an impressive amount of research and created a definite analysis of The Navidson Record - analyzing every scene in great detail, offering every possible interpretation, and making footnotes, lots and lots and lots and lots of footnotes. Another reviewer called the amount of footnotes in this book "retarded" and I can't really disagree. Even footnotes have footnotes. So, this Zampano feller must be really proud of what possibly is his life's worh, right?
Well, he can't really be - he's dead. What he wrote about The Navidson Record is discovered in his apartment by a man named Johnny Truant who was out of housing and out of luck, and with nothing better to do went to see the dead man's apartment. Here's the kicker - Truant knows that the decribed film cannot possibly exist, as he finds not even a mention of it anywhere outside Zampano's notes - and Zampano could not even see the film; he was "blind as a bat". Zampano himself described the Record in his analysis as having been classified as a hoax by most experts. Nevertheless, Johnny is drawn to Zampano's analysis and begins filling the blanks he left behind - a process which starts messing with his head (that and all the drugs he does). Johhny also inserts lenghty footnotes into the text, footnoting Zampano's footnotes and producing his own - many of which are unrelated to The Navidson Record (or are they?) and are concerned mostly with his cruising around L.A. and reminiscences of trips around the world, working junk jobs and sexual relations with at least a thousand hot babes. Now, although Johnny is the closest of what this book has to a protagonist, he is not the narrator either - the whole text has been put together by anonymous Editors, of whom we know nothing, and who claim to have never even seen or met Johnny - all matters concerning the text have been discussed via correspondence or in rare instances on the telephone. Thank God all of these at least have their own font!
Can it get any better? Yes, it can. The important aspect of this novel is how the text is arranged on the page. Well, at least that's what we're supposed to think when we're reading it. At first the text appears like any other academic journal, but as it progresses...footnotes appear upside down, words are posed to reflect what's occuring in the narrative (you know, when someone climbs the text is in the upper portion of the page, when someone goes down it's in the lower portion, when there's little space it's all crammed up, when there's lots of space it's all spread out, etc, etc, etc.). And is House of Leaves the book which will make you use the mirror to decipher it? Oh yes. Oh yes, dear reader, you are holding that book.
XKCD, a popular webcomic, does a pretty accurate impression of th structure of House of Leaves - with pancakes. Here's how it looks like.
[image]
There is a fair amount of humor in House of Leaves. Danielewski really hams it up here: the whole book is a fictional analysis of a fictional document which is a fictional study of a fictional film. But that is not all. Danielewski hams it even further, making the only expert on the non-existent film blind (and dead), and gives the task of analyzing his work to the most unreliable of all characters, Johnny Truant, a Bret Easton Ellis-ish character whose junkie lifestyle is such that half the time he is not sure he is even there (get it? Truant?). The footnotes? Oh God, the footnotes. Footnotes in this book often have their own footnotes (often concerning material appearing hundreds of pages later) and are a giant sandbox for Danielewski to play in. Most of the material he cites...does not exist (is this even a surprise by now?) and he goes ham with being creative with that. The Feng Shui Guide to The Navidson Record is cited when describing the house's interior, and a dismissal of something as crap is quoted from an article titled..."Crap", from New Perspectives Quarterly. There's a ton of examples like these in the text, and I am completely sure that D's grocery list is there, too. He has his fun with those who read these scrupulously - at one point Zampano footnotes an abysmally long list of names, which goes on for absolutely forever...to which Johnny Truant supplies his own footnote and states that the list is entirely random and made just for the kick of it. At another point Zampano claims that the Weiner Brothers cut a whole sequence from the theatrical release of The Navidson Record because it was too self-referential...but don't worry, you'll get it in a DVD release! And this is in a book where half of it is a commentary on the other half. Near the end Johnny starts wondering that maybe he too does not exist, which drives the poor boy nuts - along with the readers. If there was a troll of the year award when this book was published, mr. D should definitely have won it. His aesthetic is that of excess; with all its immense superabundance of all things it is reminiscent of the Pierce Brosnan James Bond films, especially the first one - GoldenEye - where Brosnan engages in an unforgettable tank chase through St. Petersburg, undoubtedly the finest moment in the Bond franchise and arguably one of the finest scenes in contemporary cinema. The moment where he hits that statue and drives with it on top of the tank alone made it worthy of at least two Oscars.
[image]
Also, House of Leaves has a section with fake interviews with real people about The Navidson Record which is flat out funny and very well written, as the author manages to capture the personas of his interviewees: Hunter S. Thompson begins by stating that "it was a bad morning", Steve Wozniak is jolly and Stephen King wants to see the house. There's even America's most famous literature critic, Harold Bloom, who calls the interviewer "dear child" and quotes at lenght from his famous work The Anxiety of Influence (which is another joke inside a joke - Bloom's book is about the relationship poets have with their predecessors - it is a source of anxiety and troubles their originality - pretty spot on for a book which is a commentary on a commentary. More on it later).
Some readers wrote that this is the scariest book that they have ever read. Comparisons have been made between House of Leaves and The Blair Witch Project. Remember that movie? It's the one with a group of students who get lost somewhere in the woods of Maryland and can't find a way out. Of course they are in the woods because they're investigating a local legend of the Blair Witch - so lots of creepy stuff happens in that forest. Blair Witch has singlehandedly resurrected the genre of film known as the "found footage" - the viewer knows that these students have disappeared in these woods, and all that has been found of them is this video. The studios spend millions promoting it with the emphasis on the thin barrier betweeen reality and fiction, making many people wonder - is it real or not? Blair Witch has essentially brough back such filmmaking into the mainstream, allowing for movies such as Paranormal Activity to achieve success and become franchises; it has also aged quite badly, as now most kids with camcorders and Adobe programs can essentially film if again. Film lots of woods; rustle the leaves a lot; wait for the night to fall and make some scary noises. Voila! You've got your own movie. This approach did breed some interesting offspring, such as the intriguing YouTube series Marble Hornets - creepy and addictive!
House of Leaves takes the Blair Witch approach with the Navidson Record, but the constant footnotes and interruptions make it impossible to lose track of the fact that you're reading an analysis of an analysis of a film. It's like watching The Blair Witch Project with audio commentary, when the director and cast describe their experiences on set as the movie plays along. Imagine watching this suspenseful scene, where the heroine is all alone in a tent in these dark and creepy woods - at night - and she hears these creepy noises outside the tent which are getting nearer and nearer...and then you hear the crew speak: "so yeah, Hank was just running around this here tent to create the suspense, and then out of nowhere came this big moose which bit him right in the ass! Boy, you should have heard him yell. We had to cut the audio and redub it in the studio. Hank: yeah, I almost lost my balls." This is a pretty accurate feeling you get when you're reading House of Leaves - it never relaxes its grip on you, never fully allowing its reader to forget that they arereading and letting them start experiencing. You could say that Danielewski's is the biggest enemy of his own text: his analytical approach often kills the tension, as the reader is constantly aware that he/she is being toyed with. Many readers will feel that they are not experiencing the descent into madness; it's the writer who drives them mad with his big, if repetitive, bag of tricks.
But then, he is doing it consciously, and it works; it detracts the reader from noticing his weaknesses - The Navidson Record is really a pretty blank mish-mash of horror influences: shades of Poe's classic tales; A Descent into the Maelström is the one which immediately comes to mind, and of course Lovecraft; the whole book screams his name. Of more contemporary authors and their works Shirley Jackson and Stephen King come to mind: The Haunting of Hill House and The Shining can be seen as possible influences, particularly the latter with its genius loci/troubled family theme, and is perhaps its most famous example.
Zampano's analysis of The Navidson Record - which is an analysis of a nonexistent work - reminded me of Stanisław Lem's two volumes of similar topic. In Imaginary Magnitude (1973) he collected introductions for nonexistent books; A Perfect Vacuum (1971) is a collection of reviews and criticism of nonexistent works of literature. In Provocation (1984) and Library of the 21st Century (1986) are both collections of reviews of books which do not exist. Lovecraft (to whom this book oves an obviously great debt) invented whole universes and mythos, and Necronomicon is an account of their existence.Cat's Cradle, Kurt Vonnegut's famous satire quotes heavily from The Books of Bokonon, a sacred text of Bokononism. In The Blind Assasin, Margaret Atwood also employs a fictional text of the same name, which plays a crucial role. Jorge Luis Borges wrote of nonexistent works in his fiction: a good example is his short story Pierre Menard, Author of the Quixote. In 1988, Jerzy Kosinski wrote The Hermit of 69th Street, a fictional novel which is largely composed of quotations from real texts or utterances, all of which are sourced and credited to their respective authors - in no way a small feat, and it does make House of Leaves look a bit pale when you realize that mr. D is simply making up the vast majority of his referrences as he goes on.
Johnny Truant is awfully like a Brat Pack protagonist, straight out of novels by Bret Ellis or Jay McInerey. Of all the women Johnny interacts with, Danielewski has to commit the biggest cliche and make him be most devoted to a stripper - a whore with the heart of gold. A lot of this novel can be seen as autobiographical - Danielewski traveled to Paris, therefore Johnny has lived in Paris and traveled around Europe; sources are quoted in German and not always translated, and also in Latin and other languages; one can only imagine what the author must have felt when he was discovering LitCrit 101 and browsing academic journals. And he does include all that he can possibly think of: at the end of the novel the reader will find poetry (most of which is pretty bland) which is claimed to have been written in various European cities (dates are given, too) and illustrations/photographs. At the very end, the reader discovers a section devoted to Johnny's mother - letters she sent him from a mental hospital, sort of a reversed Flowers for Algernon. The damn thing even has an index! Ona can imagine Danielewski sitting in his chair, back to the reader, petting his cat and laughing devilishly, hiding behind his post-modern armor. You thought it was funny? Well, you don't know my art. What, you didn't thought it was funny? Well, shame on you, you missed my joke! He has cornered all the corners. He holds all the guns in a Mexican standoff. He cannot lose; he always wins. He's the Steven Seagal of writers.
[image]
Unlike Seagal's films (especially the latter ones), House of Leaves definitely shows the author's talent and devotion to the project. His sister also contributed - she's called Poe and her album is titled Haunted, drawing inspiration from this novel. Danielewski's work is opaque just enough; it's not translucent, making the reader see right through it, but allowing too see one's reflection; much of how this work will be read and understood depends on its reader, if not all of it. Some will see the most horrifying book of their lives; others will be bored; others will be genuinely interested, and some might even be fascinated. Who is right? Who is wrong? Does it even matter? Although House of Leaves does sound better than it actually is (but then what does not?) it still fulfills an important task: it provokes an emotional and intellectual response in the reader, making him think about literature, art, and life in general. Few of those who will read this book all the way through will be indifferent towards it. To talk about it, one has to expand and go beyond the book itself, towards one's outside knowledge and interests. Just like the book is not containted in itself, and is composed of quotations, other accounts and records. It is an excellent platform for discussion on influence, interpretation and meaning, and literary and structutal tradition. To think about what it means to track allusions in a novel. Literature as an art and history depends on us being able to do something with these allusions, have something to say about them - how we, as readers, make sense of them when we're looking at the evolution of the art form. This is why studies of literature consist also of historical and cultural studies, and students read from a historical range of works which represent major historical periods and movements, and have to learn, acknowledge and understand the literary tradition. Novels depend on novels written before them; this one is just a bit more virtuosic representation of this fact. And the funniest thing I left right for the end - because of its crazy layout the book is smaller on the inside than it appears from the outside. Get it? Hats off!
Meanwhile, you can check out the nice and condensed version and analysis at the same time: Torching Leaves
This is a long review.I declare that I have oficially ran out of words that Goodrea----...more
Loading...
