‘House of Leaves’ (2000) as fleeting as, well, a house of leaves

Mark Z. Danielewski’s “House of Leaves” (2000) is a weird novel, but it’s not so weird you can’t enjoy a smooth reading experience (you just have to turn the book sideways sometimes). On the flip side, the weirdness doesn’t ultimately raise it to the level of genius. It’s filled with things that (purposely) don’t make logical sense, and while I do look forward to looking up some “‘House of Leaves’ Explained” analyses, I can’t say the story sticks the landing in my initial impression.

“House of Leaves” is written by Danielewski, but the interior book, “The Navidson Record,” is written by the character Zampano. This is essentially a novelization of the film (also titled “The Navidson Record,” made by Will Navidson) combined with scholarly analysis and references to other people’s analyses.

Michael Crichton’s 1969 novel “The Andromeda Strain” innovatively used fake footnotes to ground the story’s (made-up) technical aspects, but Danielewski goes so over the top that it seems like he’s winking at the reader. The 709-page book includes 450 footnotes. Is comedy among the genres “House of Leaves” could fall into, along with sci-fi and horror?

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A whole side story in the footnotes

Bulky footnotes are written by Johnny Truant, who goes off on tangents about his own life. Zampano and the editors of the book provide further footnotes. So there are three layers of footnotes, not to mention appendices. If this sounds intimidating, don’t worry, the presentation (for example, Johnny’s footnotes are in sizable Courier font) makes the reading experience easy.

“House of Leaves” is too smart for this to be a mistake, but it’s bizarre that Zampano, who is blind, analyzes the cinematography by Navidson. (People could describe the scenes to him, but still, it is odd.) He also writes out his “Navidson Record” on scraps of paper Johnny finds scattered throughout Zampano’s apartment upon his death. You’d think if he wants easier access to his writing, he’d take advantage of computer technology for the blind.

At any rate, “The Navidson Record” (the film) is somewhat like “The Blair Witch Project” (1999) – a found-footage faux-umentary. Some people believe “The Navidson Record” is a true documentary about a Virginia house that magically expands to include a living-room doorway leading to another dimension; others believe it’s a work of fiction.

I notice there’s a push by some people to rewrite history and say many people thought “Blair Witch” was a documentary upon its release. This was not the case. People knew it was fiction, but enjoyed the hype around it, including one of the first robust, interactive movie websites.

Internal inconsistencies, literally and figuratively

No one knows for sure about “The Navidson Record,” though. Another thing that doesn’t line up: Danielewski (via Zampano and Johnny) says it is a cult film, yet the footnotes refer to hundreds of analyses of it, from all kinds of magazines, talk shows and dissertations. So actually, it seems like a widely popular movie (and, as such, Zampano’s work is not as special as Johnny claims it to be). Practically the whole planet goes into the minutiae of whether or not Navidson and his family found a gateway to another dimension.

It’s kind of fun joining the world on this “what if” journey while also enjoying a science fiction novel in the vein of Arthur C. Clarke’s “Rendezvous with Rama” (1973), where explorers find a weird alien spaceship. Danielewski’s design tricks – for example, squishing the text a bit and including only a couple lines per page when Navidson finds the ceiling of a tunnel getting increasingly lower – are neatly effective.

And good ole fashion character creation is in place for the Navidson group, which also includes a wife, a brother, two kids and a friend, plus three hired explorers. But actually, the best character building is for troubled tattoo artist Johnny in the Courier font; he sometimes writes long sentences like Hemingway, sometimes goes stream-of-consciousness like a beat poet, and ultimately is a good teller of tales about his own life. With the somewhat absurd emphasis on womanizing and drinking, he reminds me of the narrator of “John Dies at the End” (2009).

But as for the sci-fi ideas and the narrative, I’m sorry to say there’s not much here that’s not done better elsewhere. All the window dressing may help “House of Leaves” as a page-by-page experience, but it hurts it in the end, because the illusion must inevitably fall by the wayside unless Danielewski has some amazing revelation up his sleeve. He doesn’t (unless you want to dig deeper into things like codes, which serious fans have enjoyed doing).

“House of Leaves” is a smart, weird novel, wildly idiosyncratic in its presentation. Certainly, it makes me realize books don’t all have to be presented in the traditional way, and perhaps Danielewski inspired future authors. A more recent non-traditionally formatted novel is “Illuminae” (2015). So it gets points for influence and the creation of buzz, but as for substance? It scatters like a house of leaves.