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11/23/2005: "House of Leaves + MPR Interview"
Hi All,
Just finished reading Mark Z. Danielewski's HOUSE OF LEAVES. Mind blowing, is about all I can say. Well, no, I can say plenty more, and will.
Perhaps some of you have read, or at least heard of, this book. It came out in 2000, and while it did very well it was sort of overshadowed by A HEARTBREAKING WORK OF STAGGERING GENUIS, which came out around the same time. I admit I was sucked into reading Eggers' book by the hype, whereas Danielewski's was more my speed---what can I say? I'm swayed by hype. Eggers' book was fine, but I wasn't, and still am not, sure what all the fooferaw was about. But good for Eggers, as he does a lot of good work with the money and acclaim that book brought him, getting new edgy writers out there through his McSweeney's mag (unlike me, who, if I ever hit it big, plan to build a giant gold castle with all my royalties and toss water balloons at the shambling plebs from high atop my golden parapet). But anyway, I think HOUSE OF LEAVES will end up having an overall greater impact, because it's the type of book that accomplishes what it sets out to do so perfectly that people will be reading it decades from now. I first heard about if from my buddy Neil when we were on a rafting trip years ago, and I kept hearing about it, authors I love kept saying it rocked hard and consitently, until basically the acclaim built up to a point where I had to buy the damn thing.
The main idea of the novel is simple: this family moves into a house that is bigger on the inside than on the outside. I don't know if that strikes you as silly, but for me, before even reading the book I thought, "That's some creepy shit, there." Some scary ideas, like for THE RING and its killer video tape, seem silly but end up being pretty freaky (at least it freaked ME out, and the three other people I saw that movie with; haven't been that freaked by a flick since THE EXCORCIST, or maybe JAWS); the idea for HOUSE OF LEAVES seemed freaky right off the bat. I don't know what it is that struck me as so terrifying: probably just the idea that all the laws governing our world---spatial laws, concrete laws---are being screwed with somehow. But anyway, that's the idea: the house is bigger inside than out.
I don't figure it's fair to give away the plot any further than to say that this family investigates the house and certain things are revealed about its physical makeup that are...well, pretty goddamn scary. I mean, I haven't been freaked by a book since maybe Pet Semetary or IT (Stephen King's best book, for my money). And I read those when I was in my early teens, when I was scared by just about anything: I wandered around in a terrified daze for weeks after seeing those giant dogs chase Rick Moranis through downtown Manhattan in GHOSTBUSTERS. Even SLIMER scared me a bit. Hell, I got freaked out when Lance Guest got attacked by that inter-stellar assassin with tentacle crawling out of its face in THE LAST STARFIGHTER. That's not to hack King: I could've read Pet Semetary last month and it may've still scared me. But I'm so cynical now, such a critical bastard, that it's tough to scare me. Well, HOUSE OF LEAVES did.
But it's more than just a freak-out book. So much more. I'm not going to get into its post-modern aspects other than to say they abound: footnotes and pictures and photos and pages with only one word printed on them, or words in boxes, or words printed upside-down or backwards so you have to find a mirror to read them. In fact, if there was one element I could've done without, it was that: mostly all those structural acrobatics just gave me a headache.
The one thing I've found is integral to a horror novel...well, there are two things. One, you need to find a subject that reaches out to some primal fear in all of us. HOUSE OF LEAVES does that. Two, you need to populate the book with characters you care for, who are strong and empathetic (or hateful) enough that you will follow them through their trials, and will care what happens to them good or bad---in a horror novel, usually bad. That's where a lot of horror novelists come up short: cardboard characters suffer aggregiously, but you don't really care because no time or effort has been taken to shape them. So they get their heads bitten off or their entrails strewn about and you're like, "That's a pity." That's what King is so good at: he crafts characters you care about. I know some people hack King, but man, if you know of a book more strongly evocative of childhood, of the passions and fears and beauty of that age, than IT, well, I'd like to hear about it. Anyway, I wasn't sure if HOUSE OF LEAVES would deliver on that, but over the course of the novel it did. Will Navidson, his wife Karen, brother Tom, intrepid adventurer Holloway---they're all drawn poignantly, you care for them, and most importantly you understand why they act the way they do. That's also important in a horror novel, where often characters need to act the opposite of any rational person---they need to climb that dark staircase and open that door---to move the plot forward. That's where some writers just go, "Ah, well, this needs to happen so it's going to happen and be damned with it." I've done it myself, more times than I care to admit. But in HOUSE OF LEAVES the characters act according to how they've been drawn: Will is motivated by the guilt he feels over past events and is pictured as a man who can't help but force himself into perilous situations; his wife, Karen, spends the whole novel avoiding what she fears yet at the end confronts it. And the ending was a happy one---at least for me---because it was, cliched as it may be to say, a "triumph of the human spirit" sort of thing. And I'm a sucker for happy endings. (there is a parallel story line dealing with Johhny Truant, a sort of narrator, but I won't get into it except to say it is also very well done).
Anyway, I'll end by giving the book the highest praise I am able, and praise I've only heaped upon a very few of the hundreds or thousands of books I've ever read: every time I had to set it aside (this wasn't very often; a 700 page book, I finished it in 2 days once I really got into it), I did so with regret. I couldn't WAIT to get back to it, and was somewhat enraged when I had to leave it to do day-to-day shit: work out, grocery shopping, etc. There are those books that you are excited to read, in that whenever you have a free minute you'll dive in...then there are those that you MAKE time for: you call in sick, skip class, stay up until 3 in the morning, etc. This is one of those books. I can count on one finger the books that have had the effect: FILTH by Irvine Welsh, AMERICAN PSYCHO by Bret Easton Ellis, WHITE JAZZ by James Ellroy, recently CUTTER AND BONE by Newton Thornburg, a few more. It's a very, very short list.
I've read some reviews that said this book will change the way you look at the world around you. Well, I don't feel that way, in that I've never really felt that way about any book, but it is a blazingly original, truly scary, and completely compassionate book, the sort of book I wish other people of my acquaintance have read so we can sit around chatting about it.
Secondly, an NPR interview conducted by Euan Kerr for Minnesota Public Radio. He was a good bloke, and asked great questions. You can hear me "uh" and "sort of" my way through them.
In case anyone who has bought the Canadian version of the book is wondering: yes, that is the dustjacket photo in the US edition. Trying to make me look like a tough guy, tat and all. I look much more the sunny Canadian lad in the Penguin ed.
And another thing: I told a lie during this interview. A was never a whale trainer at Marineland. I've been everything at that blasted park from garbage picker to rides operator to security dude to protester sympathizer, and while I've been in the water with the whale and dolphins, my paycheck never read, "Trainer." I suppose I could've been one, or maybe not. I have no real excuse other than to say when someone jams a microphone in your face there is sometimes the urge to embelish the facts of what you may see as your hum-drum life, especially in my case when it helps explain a story. That said, there were a bunch of lotharios on the training staff, and I DID get the idea while guarding the glass of the show pool from finger-tapping tourists, it was hot out and I'm sweating buckets thinking, "What if one of those trainers got his legs chomped by a whale?" I'm not proud of those thoughts, but they were swimming around for sure.
Anyway, give it a listen if you'd like. Some thoughts on Canadian literature, my comparisons to Chuck Palahniuk, and other riveting bits of info. A sure collector's item!
Hopefully the link works. If not, a brief google search will find it.
http://news.minnesota.publicradio.org/features/2005/11/18_kerre_davidson/?rsssource=1
All best, Craig.
