Now that the dust has settled, was it actually good?
>>25302254I'm getting through all the doomer essentials this year and this is coming up, I'm looking forward to reading it.
>>25302254No
Idk ask preddit
>house of redditkys
Going through this one at the moment. I'm not a native speaker, but I find the author's prose a bit lacking (for literary fiction standards). It doesn't really feel like I'm reading a modern classic work of literature.
I thought this novel was written by a former redditor so i never paid attention to it, it didn't help that it was full of formatting gimmick and i'm not a fan of that personally. Why are you even making a thread about this instead of discussing philosophy? Are you a pedophile or something?
>>25302304It's mostly written styled as an academic work so it reads very dry.
>>25302262But it's not dooomer it's a love story
>>25302254This is like 10th House of Leaves thread this month, who's shilling this slop?
>>25302254It reminds me of Outlast in how insufferably adolescent the voice of the character[s] can be and how much that gets in the way of an otherwise genuinely interesting horror experience.Johnny Truant is a downright mentally retarded narrator and going through his thoughts, his actions, his experiences and generally just the way he is makes me wanna kill myself. His little bukowski-lite, Bojack Horseman affectations that every mid-20s faggot with no personality thinks makes them edgy are tolerable if it weren't for the terrible writing, his actual voice is insufferable, and reminds me of how you record something in Outlast, in this dark, greenish filter, men smearing walls with shit and mumbling to themselves, maddened and violently insane, and the notes that the character writes in his notebook are so "rick and morty-esque" that it seems to come from another game.House of Leaves has a cool marriage of an interesting experiment of form and medium, and is definitely one that is interesting and worth pursuing, but its ideas and conclusions are trash. Its characters are definitely trash. In a book about insanity, about the labyrinthine experience of losing one's mind, the least interesting character to the general audience, as far as I've seen in many reviews seems to be Johnny's mother Pelafina, the craziest character in the book. And given the "higher" levels of the story may be entirely inventing the lower levels, as in, Johnny is likely inventing Zampano who's inventing the Navidsons who may have invented the labyrinth as a coping mechanic, it is entirely possible that Pelafina has created the version of Johnny Truant we read, as in the entire book is not Johnny's creation, but Pelafina's and he is just a character in it People straight up ignore that since the characters are so shit.You can see the level of abstraction that goes in the mind of the american horror writer. In the story The House of Asterion which obviously influences HoL, the perspective of the Minotaur is made so subjective and relative that he perceives himself as a prince in seclusion, contemplates possible immortality, thinks of solitude and hungers for death so that he can escape his limbo-like existence. The reveal of who he is falls impactfully on the reader, as all pieces come to make sense. It's like a layered metaphor allowing itself to be quickly ripped apart, like an unfolded paper flower.The story was inspired by the painting The Minotaur by George Frederic Watts, who painted it inspired by an article on child prostitution, as the beast observes the horizon waiting for more victims to be sacrificed to him, the core symbolism being the human sacrifice of innocents. In this case it's almost like shitty conceptual art where one needs to explain the meaning for the totem in front of you to become a vessel of meaning, but in itself it is a great aesthetic exercise, apparently painted in one morning. (cont.d)
>>25302640(continuing) In House of Leaves you have a scene where someone either dreams or portrays the death of the Minotaur as being a murder commited by a retarded frat boy, in this case Theseus, with a very basic, concrete interpretation of the myth, brought to a very basic and concrete allegory of things that are [one-dimensionally and very blatantly] bad in the modern world. Then again some can argue that this is a subjective view by a character within the story, but just about everything else, from Johnny Truant's hot topic cringe self, to the Navidson's basic family drama stuck in a haunted house [with only here and there interesting character tidbits] to the sexual shenanigans Johnny gets in with his buddies that he tells us about all the time for some fucking reason, that the book tries to lace contemporary issues that are either portrayed in ways too cliché and hamfisted or fails to connect the modern world to the story through anything not idiotic and disposable.But this book is like that. A lot of its ideas are very blatant and very forced and a lot of the ones that seem more lingering and nuanced are left very abstract. The door that appears out of nowhere and leads to a corridor could be labored more and made into something discovered bit by bit with new spaces in the house, while the origins of the labyrinth don't need full explanation but could be played with some more for a sense of mystery, mayhaps. Either way, could be, should be, who knows?House of Leaves is at best interesting. There's a lot to be interested in, but underneath that it's a lot like any dumbass american horror story.
>>25302254It's not gonna change your life but it's cool.Some people hate the wacky formatting but it's super fun imo, not enough people playing with formatting as far as I know. I'd say check it out just for that if nothing else, it is unique in that regard
>>25302254very cool series of gimmicks, but fundamentally a series of gimmicks
Are there any books that are like House of Leaves but just the Johnny Truant parts?
>>25302667Bret Easton Ellis' Less than Zero for non-supernatural manchild shenanigans.But on the same vibe, unironically, American Psycho.
>>25302254Would've worked better as just the Navidson Report without the faggot hipster bits.
>>25302254Companion album is better.
>>25302659You are just as long winded and annoying as Mr. Truant. -- Ed.
>>25302313but there was a doom wad for it, so it's as doomer as you get
>700 pages of jingling keysgamers, alcoholics and porn addicts will probably love it
>>25303863>gamersit literally is a remastered edition lmao
>>25302313One story has a happy ending, another story has an unhappy ending.
>>25302254Yes, but I think it's very misunderstood. People get so swept up in the liminal stuff and the formatting that they miss the quality of the character writing. I think Tom's Crossing is definitely Danielewski's peak though and deserves just as much attention as HOL gets.
>>25302659Yeah, the Navidson record was definitely stimulating but the footnotes were remarkably tedious overall. This book did make me want to read The Poetics of Space and a couple other books at some point though. Have you read the former, and if so, is it worth it?
I always get this shit confused with House of Sand and Fog.
>>25304340No, you're thinking of House of Earth and Blood, by Sarah J. Maas. This is a House of the Spirits thread.
>>25303782that wad is about gay people dying of aids
