What the hell even is this book? Sorry, let me rephrase:
Ŵ̸̻h̸̗̍a̶̫͑t̵̘̾ ǝɥʇ hell even is t h i s book?1
I’ve always been a big, big fan of creepypastas. I remember my first rabbit hole, 13 years of age, and my family went out for the night. In their absence, my dimly lit computer screen became my full focus, and everything else behind me, in the dark, became eerily, eerily, not in my centre of attention. I felt the skin crawl on the back of my neck as I read stories of stalkers and killers, and realised that I didn’t know what was behind me lurking in the dark.2
One of the problems I had was finding time to read it. I found myself going home after work and spending hours chronically online. I had a real problem with dopamine receptors where scrolling through Instagram reels was more rewarding then doing much else. I decided to combat it, I’d sit in a nice public space and read 3 times a week until I finished it. It was the dead of winter, so I looked for a nice café.
Obviously, when liminal spaces took the internet by storm a few years back – I lapped that shit up. So when I stumbled across a video essay that spoke about Mark Z. Danielewski’s book House of Leaves, I made a promise to myself to read it as soon as I had the chance. 6 years later, I finally pulled a finger out and read the damned thing. Of course, as always, as part of ✓ Project Bucket List.
I’ve spoken before about the death of the third space, those places that aren’t work, and aren’t home. Especially post covid, people seem to go from work to home, and spend less and less time elsewhere – third spaces. It’s leading to this big epidemic of loneliness, and it’s just so comfortable to not go out of your way. I thought it’d be nice and easy, I’d just go into a café after work and read there, but get this – all these cafes were closed, apart from Starbucks. Fucking a-game.
First off, let me say, reading House of Leaves was an amazing experience. I loved it. Second off, let me say, I think most of it went entirely over my head. The structure of the story in itself is crazy confusing. There’s like 4 stories happening at the same time, 6 if you read between the lines, and maybe 7 but I may be imagining it. Hell, you may be imagining it, that’s how this story goes. I adored the story of the Navidson Record, it’s the story of the house itself, or rather the people who unfortunately lived in it. The story of Johnny Truant wasn’t as fun, it was filled with quite detailed debauchery that didn’t feel necessary.
So screw it, I started going to Starbucks thrice a week, I got the loyalty app, and I racked up points. And something pretty nice happened. The staff started recognising me and having short conversations. One member of the team told me that she’d had 6 coffees and a monster one day. People who visited the café at similar times nodded at me. One evening, a drone pilot who was sat inside flying a drone around outside and I started a conversation, and he asked about good flying spots nearby.
The structure of the book is the most interesting part of it, let me show you one of the pages, here3:
The whole coolness of this isn’t just a nice literary gimmick though, because once you understand what’s so special about the house. It’s bigger than the space that it occupies, and it’s ever changing. New, dark hallways appear out of nowhere that take hours to walk down, which lead to staircases that takes days to walk down, which lead to rooms with impossible shapes that couldn’t possible exist. But as you read more, you realise that the house is antagonistic, it seems to want to hurt the inhabitants, or, I guess, it wants to do something and the people want to – I don’t know, this is what I mean, it’s hard to explain.4
It was nice, I got to sit and have a warm drink and feel like I was around other people. I lived alone at the time, and having the activity of going out to do something made the process more rewarding, and easier to focus on, and I’m sure it actually worked wonders for my mental health.
I want to read it again to understand it.
When I mentioned the creepy pastas, I remember feeling an odd sense of joy at how frightened I was feeling. It felt electric, again, difficult to explain if you’ve not felt it, I got a similar feeling reading House of Leaves, not the fear, but that joy and electric excitement, for sure. There’s a sense of joy at seeing Danielewski play with what a book is.
I really recommend, if you’re going to do something like this, turn it into a bit of a ritual, and while you’re at it, try and do it somewhere where there are other people. That’s a big deal, if you’re somebody who doesn’t have a third space, you need to find one, join a club, or become a regular somewhere close to home. It can feel uncomfortable at first, especially if you’re somebody who isn’t used to eating alone out in public, but literally nobody cares, and you’re doing something with your time as well!
All in all, this is a book that feels like it’s written for very smart people – and I don’t feel like I got it. So, I don’t know what that says about me, I’m not really smart enough to come up with the answer.5
- No I mean really?
- (As an aside here, the original Ted the Caver story is still available and hosted in it’s original place, which is a pure masterclass in horror storytelling!)
- Cool, right? And if you hadn’t read it by now, you’ll get why I’m doing the footnotes, I’m being cute. If you have it read, I hope you appreciate what I’ve done on this blog post, fucking with all the CSS like this. Honestly, I’m not a coder.
- And what does the minotaur mean? Anybody?
- Oh wait I guess it means I’m dumb.