One may ask: “Where have you been?” Or perhaps: “What have you been doing” Maybe even: “Are you dead?” I’ll answer these in reverse order.

I can say for pretty sure that I’m not dead, not a zombie, not some other kind of undead creature. And as for doing? Well, I’ve been reading a hell of a lot lately. In my last post I mentioned a project-book I’ve been working on reading, one that I was near completion on. Finished that son of a gun, and really enjoyed it too. The big mystery book was not “Infinite Jest” or “War and Peace” or even “Jerusalem”. I’ve tried tackling “Jerusalem” a few times in print, digitally, and even as an audio book. I have never made it more than half way before deciding to give up. Haven’t even tried the others.

No, the book I was working on reading and understanding was none other than “House of Leaves” by Mark Z. Danielewski. I know it’s a classic at this point, maybe even vintage, and I could have read it any time in the past 25 years or so. But this was the right time for me to tackle it. And boy howdy did I ever enjoy it.

I have not done any research on it, I just read the damn thing through cover to cover. Paperback. I had it sitting on my shelf long enough for it to start to smell like an old book. It was also next to some other old books and they probably contributed to the smell.

Some of the things I liked best about it are (in no real order) that it contains itself: the book exists in the reality of the story within the pages. It comes up at least a few times. Characters read it or have read it and some have annotated. Also, the footnote system to tell the story of the compiler (Truant) was very smartly done. The pages where the typesetting was not just a standard left justify were particularly interesting to me as well. The reason for that being my background in printmaking and book arts and how I like to do the same thing or something similar with my personal work. I used to write in a spiral in my notebooks in high school and still do sometimes today. When I’m feeling frisky or deranged. It also reminded me of the shape poetry that started during the beat generation and continues today.

The type made me feel like the book had control and I did not. True, I could close the cover and put it down for any length of time I deemed appropriate but, at the same time, I could not. The horror-mystery of it all kept me turning pages. Sometimes quickly, sometimes I had to go back and reread a passage to make sure of something. It kept me thinking and guessing and horrified. A thoroughly enjoyable experience for me. Also the footnotes that cite sources that don’t exist. Maybe the publishers and periodicals do, but the books and articles do not.

I think the whole work is genius.

This book owned almost all of my free time for a few months, not like I have a hell of a lot to begin with. Could I have finished it faster than I did? Absolutely, but I wanted to enjoy and savor it. Try to figure the damn thing out. Take my time. Gain whatever it is I could from the work.

As far as the story goes (and here come the real spoilers): I feel like its absolutely about addiction. Every character, except the children, is addicted to something. Weather it’s their job/work, adventure, drugs and alcohol, sex and love, attention. I could go on.

The house starts off as a normal house in Virginia. But when it opens up and become something else entirely is when the real story begins. But, really, it begins before that in the footnotes. The book is a book about a guy who acquires a trunk of notes written by a blind man about a movie that he’s watched, allegedly, thirty-eight times. Or more. The footnotes contain the story of the guy who found the trunk, the main body of the work is made from the notes he found. It’s a very interesting way to tell two stories at once. Every character has an addiction come up at some point and the extended house is the physical representation of the addiction. It changes to fit each person. Sometimes they experience it as a group, sometimes they end up solo. Eventually alone. The house consumes each character in one way or another, as it does whatever is left there by the characters. Holloway shoots his two employees and eventually himself. Tom is consumed by the abyss below. Navidson is the only real escapee, though a badly damaged one at that.

We all have our addictions to whatever we are addicted to, from I.V. drugs to must-see TV.

The house is like addiction in that ultimately it wants us. It wants us suffering as long as possible and then it wants us dead. The work is about suffering and addiction. On the surface it’s a horror story about a house that’s bigger on the inside with annotations by a party animal who suffers the consequences. Every character suffers greatly. Intensely. They’re all after something that doesn’t exist and will go beyond the ends of the Earth to find it, damning themselves in the process.

I don’t want to say much more, but this book really messed with me on a personal level.

I probably will never again read this book, but maybe I will. What is going to happen to me next is that I’m going to read something else and move on with my life. I’ll get back to making time for art without the excuse of a massive project to read. I’ll get back to making in general. I really miss it. I need it in my life. I’m also going to do some research on “House of Leaves” and come up with a more informed opinion of it. I know I could have done that already but I wanted to have a raw response to it, did, and now it’s time for other opinions to add to my own.

But really going to make a bunch of projects I’ve put on the shelf for way too long.