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Mark Z. Danielewski - House of Leaves

Spoiler:

This is definitely one of the more complex books that I’ve read in the past months. The various layers of the narrative (the Navidson documentary, the academic discussion of the documentary, Zampano’s interpretation, Truant’s interpretation, the editors’ version and finally the author’s story) make it way too difficult to explain what is going on in the book, I tried to summarize it, but failed. The complexity is one of the things that made me enjoy the book, but also one of the things that annoyed me the most. The strongest point of House of Leaves is ironically the only one that never existed, the Navidson documentary. The story of the house and the darkness inside is well written, and the academic discussion that was created around it kept me interested until the end. It is well written, has some memorable passages (Navy burning the book as he reads it, the analysis of Navy’s decision to return to the house).

Unfortunately, the book doesn’t stop here, and ends up being too complex. The main flaw is Johnny Truant’s story. The writing style here is annoying, the character speaks in long sentences that fail to keep your attention (especially if you compare it to Jose Saramago or Oe Kenzaburo, who manage to create complex page-long sentences that are just begging to be reread for their beauty and structure) needlessly distracts, and is in general uninteresting if you take away the growing madness. I had no interest in his family, so the inclusion of the letters written by his crazy mother served no purpose. Another aspect that gets annoying is the typography. Again, there are some nice finds like the scène where Navy climbs a ladder and the layout follows this process, but most of the time it feels too random, and it interrupts the flow of the story (you have to read parts of the book in front of a mirror, other moments you end up constantly turning the book around to keep up with the typographic structure).

The Navidson Record was an enjoyable read, but the rest of the book, the other layers of the story, the countless footnotes and especially the appendices that only add to the confusing atmosphere, taking the fun of reading out of it. This is the only novel by Danielewski that I’ve read, but it was interesting enough to check out his later books, hoping that he strays from making his books to complex.

I pretty much just skipped over the the whole Truant fiasco and ended up enjoying this book quite a bit. I did find the bit with the letters from his mother to be very good, independent of anything else in the book. But hey, I'm a sucker for some good tragedy. I also enjoyed many of the poems in the back.

What kind of toxic man-thing is happening now?

I just finished Grossman's Soon I will be Invincible. Loved it. It abounds with cliches, but works with them in such a way that makes the whole story original, and hilarious to boot. It makes the comic book lover in me laugh and cringe at the same time.

Right after I finished that, I moved onto Max Brooks' The Zombie Survival Guide, which will be following by his World War Z novel. I've heard amazing things about that book, and I cant wait to crack into it.

FELIPE NO

Well, I finished The Winter of Our Discontent and, true to my love of Steinbeck, I enjoyed the book a whole hell of a lot. It isn't nearly as epic as East of Eden - my all-time favorite book - or The Grapes of Wrath, but it managed to seat itself as my third-favorite Steinbeck, preceded by the aforementioned two.

Today, I picked up a used copy of Jonathan Franzen's The Corrections, which, from the buzz surrounding it online and amongst people around me, is supposed to be pretty damn good. I read the first chapter on the bus and I like it, although it is a small taste of the book. I've heard Franzen's name mentioned alongside Michael Chabon, whose The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay is a personal favorite of mine.

What, you don't want my bikini-clad body?

Originally Posted by Kyndig

I pretty much just skipped over the the whole Truant fiasco and ended up enjoying this book quite a bit. I did find the bit with the letters from his mother to be very good, independent of anything else in the book. But hey, I'm a sucker for some good tragedy. I also enjoyed many of the poems in the back.

The writing style of the letters was ok, but I didn't really care for her story,since you already knew how it would end from the main book. I read through most of the Truant part, since his descent into madness was quite interesting at some points, but when he would go on rambling again about god knows what, I'd just skip it all together.

How ya doing, buddy?

I just finished reading a few short stories from Kim Edward's "The Secrets of a Fire King," and I absolutely loved "The Story of My Life." I totally wanted more, and I completely horrified when I flipped the page and realized that it was over :P

There's nowhere I can't reach.

Right now I am reading this horrible play called Othello, The Moor of Venice. Its required for a lit class I have.

This thing is sticky, and I don't like it. I don't appreciate it.

Originally Posted by Shively

Right now I am reading this horrible play called Othello, The Moor of Venice. Its required for a lit class I have.

This is sarcasm, yeah?

I am a dolphin, do you want me on your body?

I finished reading The Corrections earlier this week. I thought the book was way over-hyped. I was let down, horribly. That's not to say that I didn't like it, but it didn't come close to the expectation I had for it. I liked Denise's and Chip's story arcs, but (I guess this was the point) hated Gary's. As a friend of mine pointed out, Franzen has a knack for getting way too into describing mundane things, it almost detracts from the flow of the narrative. But anyway, I can say that I read it.

I started reading The Unbearable Lightness of Being by Milan Kundera. It's not long and pretty easy to get through, so I'm nearly finished with it already. It's more a book about life and one's observations of it, in a weird pseudo-philosopical sense. It's given me things to think about, which, if a book can do, gets a thumbs-up from me.

How ya doing, buddy?

Midway through Claudius the God. Not as tight as the predecessor, the whole Herod Agrippa subplot, depsite being interesting, also bogs down the narrative somewhat. The anecdote about the 'cult of Joshua ben Joseph' is pure class.

Still hacking through Rob Fisk's The Great War for Civilisation. Thing is a 1300-page BRICK and is reinforcing my own politics and prejudices more than challenging them. It's probably one of the best general primers on Middle Eastern politics around despite its bias.

Once Graves is finished (Fisk's going to last until Gulf War III) it's onto George Eliot's Middlemarch, as I do the whole masochist thing on occasion.

What kind of toxic man-thing is happening now?

I'm currently reading through Watchmen. Quite a fantastic graphic novel. I recently finished V for Vendetta. Though I'm probably going to reread that since I took several long breaks from it for some reason.

FELIPE NO

Finally got around to finishing American Psycho. Kind of a weird ending, if it can be called that. Sort of just quits on you.

Anyway, I've just started on Drawing of the Three. So far, it's pretty good.

What, you don't want my bikini-clad body?

I picked up Oscar Zeta Acosta's The Revolt of the Cockroach People (among a couple of others) for cheap the other day (3 books for the equivalent of US$5 meant that I was willing to take a bit of a gamble) and I decided that I'd start reading through it before I tackled any of the other books in my backlog. Not for the Hunter S. Thompson association (I'll admit, though, I bought it because of that), but because it seemed like a genuinely interesting book.

And, yes, I'm finding it quite interesting so far. No, he's not the greatest writer, but I'm enjoying it. I like the fact that the book's not just about the Chicano movement, but also about himself and his "personal saga," to quote the blurb at the back of the book. Adds something, I find. I'm not sure what exactly, but . . . yeah.

Jam it back in, in the dark.

Been having the itch to read lately so I've picked up a few books and knocking them out one by one.

Warcraft Archive Finished that the other day. I really enjoyed it with probably Lord of the Clans being amonst one of my favorites.

Metal Gear Solid Finished this yesterday and thought it to be exactly what I wanted when I wondered if they were going to make novels based on each game. It actually felt like I was reading the game. Which I know was the intent of the book, but the author did such a great job with that.

Don't know if I should start on Starcraft: Ghost - Nova or the second Warcraft Archive book War of the Ancients

There's nowhere I can't reach.

Quote:

It actually felt like I was reading the game.

That's funny, I felt that watching the movie was almost like playing it.

This thing is sticky, and I don't like it. I don't appreciate it.

I've finished Max Brooks' The Zombie Survival Guide and World War Z, both of which I enjoyed immensely. I've slacked on the book reviews, but I'll get them up in my journal eventually.

Right now, I'm in the middle of Kevin Brockmeier's The Brief History of the Dead. Its fascinating, and the attention to detail has me mesmerized in many places. I'm tearing through it, and should be finished with it by the end of the week.

I am a dolphin, do you want me on your body?

Finished Elementary Particles (Michel Houellebecq), see the spoiler and moved on to some more academic reading in preparation of next year's dissertation (I can be such a nerd) with Japan's Total Empire: Manchuria and the Culture of Wartime Imperialism (Louise Young), since I have no idea what to write about.

Spoiler:

Before a review, let me say that I’m a bit biased towards Houellebecq since I LOVED Possibilities of an Island. I read it a couple of years ago, and it completely blew me away, stayed in my head for months. Now I’ve finally found a copy of Elementary Particles, the book that made him famous and notorious in France, often labeled as homophobic and racist, and hated by everyone who considers himself a product of the seventies. Incidentally, it took me a while to find the book in french, you’d think that your average book store would offer novels in our two official languages, but nooooooo.

What starts out as a vicious rant against the sexual revolution, that Houellebecq sees as the beginning of the end of humanity, turns into a portrait of our society falling apart. The story focuses on the two children of a hippy mother, the symbol of everything that went wrong since the 60s and 70s. Bruno became a sex addict, an obsessed pervert who desperately tries to find a place within an even more perverted world by hanging around in sleezy brothels, new age communes and Cap d’Agde. His brother, Michel, is the opposite, as he has no sex drive at all, he doesn’t care, he isn’t capable of love, he just displays complete apathy towards the world, and spends his days in a laboratory until even that starts to bore him.

Houellebecq is quite possibly one of the most pessimistic and nihilistic contemporary French writers. You can sense from his reading that he is bored by everything that he describes, that he despises our society. The There isn’t one word that gives you a good feeling in the entire book (which is quite the achievement if you think about it). He paints a picture of a society that is on the verge of a major transition, comparable to the spread of Christianity, or the rise of modern science. Houellebecq is such a misanthrope that the only outcome of this transition is the death of humanity, the extinction of our species (how much more depressing can you get).

Just like Possibilities of an Island, this novel was a thrilling ride, I couldn’t put it down (finished it in two days). You know where it’s going, the outcome is clear from the first page, but you continue to be fascinated by the incredibly dark vibe that you get from the way Houellebecq describes everything, from the apathy of Michel towards everything to the large number of sex scenes. As I said, you know how it will end, but the final pages still came as a huge shock to me, when Houellebecq finally puts all his cards on the table, and reveals how far his misogyny goes.

I was speaking idiomatically.

Bringing this thread back from the dead.

I've read a few books since my last post, including Islands in the Stream, A Moveable Feast, and (for the first time, believe it or not) The Old Man and the Sea by Hemingway; Watchmen (for the I-lost-count time) by Alan Moore; The Dark Knight Returns and The Dark Knight Strikes Again by Frank Miller; Seize the Day by Saul Bellow.

Now, I'm currently reading a giant biography of Steinbeck entitled John Steinbeck, Writer by Jackson J. Benson. As of now, I'm about 200 pages into it and, although it is the first real biography I've read in quite a long time, I'm enjoying it. For as long as I've loved Steinbeck, I've never read anything truly about him. This book is fantastic for not only learning about his life, but also the things that he thought, the backround of his writing, his philosophy, and the ways he was so concentrated and fixated on his writing.

Simultaneously, I'm reading God is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything by Charles Hitchens. I am a Christian, but not one so narrow-minded as to stay away from anything that criticizes the faith. To be honest, the book has given me much to think about and research. A friend lent the book to me along with The Portable Atheist, a collection of writings selected by Hitchens, that is next on my agenda to read.

What kind of toxic man-thing is happening now?

Originally Posted by Agent Marty

Simultaneously, I'm reading God is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything by Charles Hitchens.

Christopher Hitchens. Are you reading a paperback or hardcover copy? This book is right at the top of my list but I'm waiting for paperback.

How ya doing, buddy?

I'm reading a hardcover copy that a friend lent to me. I'm not sure if it's out on paperback yet.

What, you don't want my bikini-clad body?

Just finished The Waste Lands and started on Wizard and Glass, by Stephen King. This is the first series I've ever torn through like this. I'll have to get the box set with the rest of the books pretty soon.

In between those two, I also read The Alphabet of Manliness by Maddox. Delightfully chauvinistic, and a hilarious read.

Jam it back in, in the dark.

Wizard and Glass could prove to be the gigantic speed bump in your progress, Wolf. I tore through The Gunslinger, Drawing of the Three, and The Wastelands in 2 days during a summer and then it took me a good week just to finish Wizard and Glass.

There's nowhere I can't reach.

Yes, it seems pretty long, especially since it's part of that four-piece box set with the first 4 volumes. The books are quite small. Smaller than any Stephen King print I've seen.

Most amazing jew boots

I've been reading Neal Stephenson's newest book, Anathem.
The book is fantastic. Stephenson literally creates a whole new world, called Arbre, and an entire backstory is provided in appendices, even a time line is included.

I'm also reading What I Talk About When I Talk About Running by Haruki Murakami. It's part memoir and part training diary.

I am a dolphin, do you want me on your body?

Originally Posted by WolfDemon

Yes, it seems pretty long, especially since it's part of that four-piece box set with the first 4 volumes. The books are quite small. Smaller than any Stephen King print I've seen.

It's not really the length, it's the way the story reads. It's very much attrition compared to the high points the first three books can hit at near breakneck speed.

I was speaking idiomatically.

murder at the vicarage and murder on the orient express by agatha chrisitie.
The catcher in the Rye is one of my most favourite books.

What kind of toxic man-thing is happening now?