House of Leaves by Mark Z. Danielewski
“Forward – The first edition of House of Leaves was privately distributed and did not contain Chapter 21, Appendix II, Appendix III, or the index. Every effort has been made to provide appropriate translations and accurately credit all sources. If we have failed in this endeavor, we apologize in advance and will gladly correct in subsequent printings all errors or omissions brought to our attention. -The Editors”
If you are human being by this point, if you aren’t a total snob you’ve probably read a Stephen King novel. (If you are a total snob you have probably at least read his introduction to Best American Short Stories.) They are an exploitation of those creepy things in the dark, those monsters from your nightmares. And don’t get me wrong I think Stephen King is a good writer (you try to write his books at the productive level he does) but their easy. Slimy creepy things aren’t exactly new and not that distant from what we can imagine. They’re scary but fun for that reason.
Mark Z. Danielewski’s novel is a horror novel but it’s something different entirely. It’s not concerned with the monster in the dark. He’s concerned with the dark, with the empty space, with the loneliness of those moments before the monster jumps out and eats us. He’s concerned with what really makes us scared and that’s why this is an actually horrifying horror novel.
If you can get your hands on a copy of House of Leaves, and I really suggest that you do, first just flip through it. Soon as you’ve done that you might be scared just to read it. It’s dauntingly footnoted, spaced out, stricken through, underlined, and I won’t even go into chapter VIII. That’s not to mention that the above editors from the forward aren’t even the real editors, but fictional editors who are editing the book which is about a fictional documentary, after being totally revised and written into with a completely different story by another main character.
Yes it is confusing but that’s part of the horror. It’s about confusion.
It’s also about space. The documentary, The Navidson Record, that this book inside a book follows is about a family as they move into a new home and find that the inside is beginning to change. Suddenly a hallway opens in the living room that seems to keep going into nothingness. Soon the father is leading a team of adventurers deep into miles of empty rooms, hallways, and one very large staircase.
But remember we aren’t getting that documentary, we’re seeing the book written about that documentary which is written as if it was essay about that documentary. This is the War of the Worlds style radio program. It makes believe that it is real. Before long you forget that these multi-fictional-layers weren’t there all along. Soon you are just completely and utterly freaked the heck out.
If this all sounds pretty vague it is because what makes House of Leaves so interesting is that I don’t even know what I’m so scared of. Just like when you look down the dark hallway and you imagine the monster staring at you, teeth dripping with saliva, eyes burning red, there really isn’t anything there. There is just a dark hallway and Danielewski is somehow able to make the reader both realize that the monster isn’t there and make us realize how incredibly frightening that realization is. There is just a dark hallway and we are scared to death of it.