Welcome to the House of Leaves
Apr. 1st, 2007 12:33 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
gwaevalarinDoes anyone of you know "House of Leaves" by Mark Z. Danielewski? I found the book through his sister's CD (Poe - Haunted), which seemingly is sort of a soundtrack for House of Leaves. I was fascinated by this book after flipping through it for the first time, finding pages with just one word on it or the text upside down or pages containing small squares with text in mirror writing.
I just started reading and after the Introduction I'm already hooked.
[...]
This much I'm certain of: it doesn't happen immediately. You'll finish and that will be that, until a moment will come, maybe in a month, maybe a year, maybe even several years. You'll be sick or feeling troubled or deeply in love or quietly uncertain or even content for the first time in your life. It won't matter. Out of the blue, beyond any cause you can trace, you'll suddenly realize things are not how you perceived them to be at all. For some reason, you will no longer be the person you believed you once were. You'll detect slow and subtle shifts going on all around you, more importantly shifts in you. Worse, you'll realize it's always been shifting, like a shimmer of sorts, a vast shimmer, only dark like a room. But you won't understand why or how.
You'll have forgotten what granted you this awareness in the first place.
Old shelters - television, magazines, movies - won't protect you anymore. You might try scribbling in a journal, on a napkin, maybe even in the margins of this book. That's when you'll discover you no longer trust the the very walls you always took for granted. Even the hallways you've walked a hundred times will feel longer, much longer, and the shadows, any shadows at all, will suddenly feel deeper, much, much, deeper.
You might try then, as I did, to find a sky so full of stars it will blind you again. Only no sky can blind you now. Even with all that iridescent magic up there, your eyes will no longer linger on the light, it will no longer trace constellations. You'll care only about the darkness and you'll watch it for hours, for days, maybe even for years, trying in vain to believe you're some kind of indispensable, universe-appointed sentinel, as if just by looking you could actually keep it all at bay. It will get so bad you'll be afraid to look away, you'll be afraid to sleep.
Then no matter where you are, in a crowded restaurant or on some desolated street or even in the comforts of your own home, you'll watch yourself dismantle every assurance you ever lived by. You'll stand aside as a great complexity intrudes, tearing apart, piece by piece, all of your carefully conceived denials, whether deliberate or unconscious. And then for better or worse you'll turn, unable to resist, though try to resist you still will, fighting with everything you've got not to face the thing you most dread, what is now, what will be, what has always come before, the creature you truly are, the creature we all are, buried in the nameless black of a name.
And then the nightmares will begin.
So, I guess if you never hear from me again I got lost somewhere in the 5 1/2 minute hallway. ;)
Edit: Gah! I have to stop reading, cause reading this book in the light of the day feels about as wrong as watching Supernatural in broad daylight. *waits for the night*
I just started reading and after the Introduction I'm already hooked.
[...]
This much I'm certain of: it doesn't happen immediately. You'll finish and that will be that, until a moment will come, maybe in a month, maybe a year, maybe even several years. You'll be sick or feeling troubled or deeply in love or quietly uncertain or even content for the first time in your life. It won't matter. Out of the blue, beyond any cause you can trace, you'll suddenly realize things are not how you perceived them to be at all. For some reason, you will no longer be the person you believed you once were. You'll detect slow and subtle shifts going on all around you, more importantly shifts in you. Worse, you'll realize it's always been shifting, like a shimmer of sorts, a vast shimmer, only dark like a room. But you won't understand why or how.
You'll have forgotten what granted you this awareness in the first place.
Old shelters - television, magazines, movies - won't protect you anymore. You might try scribbling in a journal, on a napkin, maybe even in the margins of this book. That's when you'll discover you no longer trust the the very walls you always took for granted. Even the hallways you've walked a hundred times will feel longer, much longer, and the shadows, any shadows at all, will suddenly feel deeper, much, much, deeper.
You might try then, as I did, to find a sky so full of stars it will blind you again. Only no sky can blind you now. Even with all that iridescent magic up there, your eyes will no longer linger on the light, it will no longer trace constellations. You'll care only about the darkness and you'll watch it for hours, for days, maybe even for years, trying in vain to believe you're some kind of indispensable, universe-appointed sentinel, as if just by looking you could actually keep it all at bay. It will get so bad you'll be afraid to look away, you'll be afraid to sleep.
Then no matter where you are, in a crowded restaurant or on some desolated street or even in the comforts of your own home, you'll watch yourself dismantle every assurance you ever lived by. You'll stand aside as a great complexity intrudes, tearing apart, piece by piece, all of your carefully conceived denials, whether deliberate or unconscious. And then for better or worse you'll turn, unable to resist, though try to resist you still will, fighting with everything you've got not to face the thing you most dread, what is now, what will be, what has always come before, the creature you truly are, the creature we all are, buried in the nameless black of a name.
And then the nightmares will begin.
So, I guess if you never hear from me again I got lost somewhere in the 5 1/2 minute hallway. ;)
Edit: Gah! I have to stop reading, cause reading this book in the light of the day feels about as wrong as watching Supernatural in broad daylight. *waits for the night*
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no subject
Date: 2007-04-01 12:15 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-04-01 01:49 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-04-01 02:33 pm (UTC)Rate mal, was bei mir mittlerweile im Regal steht und darauf wartet gelesen zu werden? Richtig! Ich konnte mich nicht beherrschen. Ich fand das Buch bei dir so faszinierend, dass ich es mir einfach kaufen musste.
Freu mich schon jetzt drauf es zu lesen ... auch wenn ich irgendwie befürchte, die Hälfte nicht zu verstehen. Aber wozu hab ich denn dich (also außer um über alles mögliche zu quatschen und gemeinsam rumzusabbern *gg*).
no subject
Date: 2007-04-01 02:42 pm (UTC)Das Buch scheint auch irgendwas mit dem Unterbewusstsein anzustellen, so ähnlich wie Supernatural. Es ruft und man kann ihm einfach nicht widerstehen.
Irgendwie fast gruselig.
no subject
Date: 2007-04-01 02:46 pm (UTC)