I got to finish the book this week, which was great-although I think this is definitely a book I will have to read and reread, and then do it again, to pick up stuff I missed. Reading Johnny Truant’s mother’s letters was really a revelation-I think it makes a lot of sense to put those in the back of the book, because it made me sort of rethink the way I was approaching JT’s character. He’s pretty easy to write off in the first parts of the book, until it become apparent that however much of a screw-up he may be, he’s pretty smart and talented. His mother’s letters make it clear that her character is incredibly intelligent and well-read (despite being batshit insane). Though I have to say I’m getting weary of this trope of sticking every disaffected and underestimated character in a tattoo parlor (what says screw-up but ultimately talented antihero? I know-make him work in a tattoo parlor!). It would make more sense to have made him a hedge-fund manager. Also, I think I found a Thomas Pynchon reference on page 110, “Playwright Taggert Chiclitz.” I think that was the name of a minor character in Lot 49. (Coupled with Charles Huston’s reference to Genghis Cohen-is it a rule that postmodern writers have to include a Pynchon reference somewhere in their book?)
Anyway, I’ve been poking around the forums on the House of Leaves website, and looking at the entries here, the question that keeps popping up seems to be, so what? What is the purpose, and does it matter? Obviously I have no answer, but I think it’s interesting that that seems to be the source of a good deal of underlying frustration with this work.
I found an interesting link (actually, several) on YouTube for a trailer for a nonexistent movie of House of Leaves (sound familiar?). This one in particular is pretty well-done: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gyug0q9eyqw&NR=1
It’s generated some discussion on how people feel about turning the book into a movie. There’s also a bunch of links to interviews or readings by MZD (and even some trailers people made for the book itself-has youtube made genre obsolete?).
I think the most interesting thing about encountering this book for me has been the vast amount of stuff on the Web about it. I normally don’t do much background digging when I read a book, particularly a fiction one, but I started to when I began reading China Mieville’s stuff (there’s so much background knowledge that plays into his work linguistically that I needed a much larger vocabulary) and now with MZD. Particularly with MZD, there’s an incredible amount of interplay between different media forms regarding this book-the YouTube trailers, discussion forums, even a band called House of Leaves (myspace.com/houseofleaves) (I think they kind of suck but whatever) and it has made me really start redefining the concept of reading a book, because this isn’t a book you can really just read, which I think may have been exactly what MZD was going for-maybe that’s the answer to the so what? question.
Oh, and the book generates its own peanut butter-several pages in mine are stuck together with it, and I don’t eat peanut butter.