Afterthoughts: House of Leaves

One of the strangest books I have ever read, House of Leaves by Mark Z. Danielewski is twisted, confusing and may require rereads to follow the story well. Actually, I should say "stories" because not only are there several narrators telling a story at once, there are also several references to other tales. The way I understand it is that the novel is itself a labyrinth with a clever use of typography to tell underlying messages and show "passages" in the story as if you're wandering in a maze created by text.

But I'll tell a little about the story before going on about labyrinths. At it's center House of Leaves is about a family and their strange house. Will Navidson and Karen Green move into a Virginia house with their two kids and soon find out that the house bigger on the inside than it is on the outside. In other words, the actual measurements of the house defy the laws of physics. Not only does the house defy these laws but it soon completely ignores them and a terrible space starts to grow and consume the people who investigate that house.

One day, Navidson and Green return to a house with new doors and passages leading into dark hallways which should not exist. The house shifts and the dark areas get massively larger. Reading about it is a mindbender.

Now the thing about the Navidson house is that it was documented on video. The book is actually a transcription and analysis of that video by a man named Zampano. This man does an insane amount of research to study every scene, every image, every word, and each character in the video to write his book. Unfortunately, Zampano is somewhat unreliable being that he cites resources that do not exist and meanders in his explanations and footnotes throughout the novel. Not to mention that he is also blind which makes one wonder how he is able to write so much about a video.

But House of Leaves is not narrated (at least in the immediate sense) by Zampano but by another man named Johnny Truant. Truant is the one who puts together Zampano's unfinished manuscript which had been left behind when the old man passed away. As the story unfolds, Truant becomes increasingly obsessed with completing the book and quickly ignores all other parts of his life to do it.

So what we have is the story of a troubled young man finishing a book started by an old man which analyzes and discusses the contents of a documentary film (which doesn't exist) about a group of people affected by a dark space appearing in their house (which shouldn't exist). As you can see, even an attempt at an explanation resembles a maze as well.

But that's what makes this book so interesting! So far, this may be enough to entice someone into reading the book. But what makes this better (or insanely original if you will) is the way that these stories are told. It is the reason I purchased this book in the first place. House of Leaves has been described as an experimental novel for a reason. The three stories intertwine and correlate with each other, sometimes on the same pages. Footnotes will have their own footnotes and lead the reader down branching paths. Some pages will have one or two words while others will continue the story vertically on the margins of the page. It's hard to explain and you'd probably have a better understanding of what I'm talking about if you go to the bookstore and flip through it instead.

I purchased this book in August of 2007 and have today finally reached the end of it after months of slowly working my way through its labyrinthine form. I haven't read anything like this book (although I suspect there have been others like it before) and will undoubtedly read it again to try to understand it and hope to make it make sense. Plus there's secret messages hidden throughout the whole thing. The end leaves many unanswered questions but that's probably done on purpose. There are times when I just had to keep reading to see what would happen. Other times I needed three bookmarks to find my way back to where I was after following footnotes and indexes and appendixes to other parts of the novel. This being once again another reference to leaving a length of fishing line to find one's way out of a labyrinth. Certainly one of the most fun and strange books I have read, I'd recommend this to anyone who is into horror and is looking for something interesting and truly unconventional.

Stimulate this

I'm not too clear on the tax return situation that is happening this year but this article by Naomi Klein got me thinking about it. It's an interesting read on the Bush administration's history of capitalizing on disasters.

Now, from what I understand, if one fulfills certain requirements, he or she is eligible for a larger tax return this year. And this is all part of the "economic stimulus package" mentioned in the article. But how is a couple hundred dollars extra this year going to "stimulate the economy"? I mean is this being done under the assumption that people are going to run out and buy stuff they don't need? I'm pretty sure that, with the way things are now, a lot of people are going to be using their tax return to pay bills and debts. You know how much debts I owe?


By the way, Naomi Klein is a great author. Read her first book, No Logo, for an insightful analysis of multinational corporations and the anti-globalization movement. Yeah, it may take you a while to finish but if you can read the Lord of the Rings then you can read this.

Cloverfield afterthoughts

It's been a few days since I watched Cloverfield and I thought I'd write another post about it now that the whole experience has sunk in and passed. A review of sorts. This of course means that if you haven't gone to see it, stop reading. I will spoil it for you.

First off, I like that the actors are all no-names. I didn't recognize anyone in the film and that just adds to the realism. Had the movie featured the kids in Transformers or one of the dorks from Superbad, that effect would have been diminished. Duh.

The documentary style of the film is what really sells it and emphasizes the realistic aspect. Yes, some of the "amateur" qualities are probably digitally added (like the out of focus shots) to make it look more non-professional. You can see the production values and the slickness of it. But the point is Cloverfield pulls off the look and feel of four kids filming a disaster on their video camera, making it easier for the suspension of disbelief.

On a side note, I can't help but think of the documentary style described about the Navidson Record of the impossible labyrinth in House of Leaves. Yeah, I'm in the middle of reading it. But the similarities between this film and the book jumped out at me. Surprisingly, I found a much more concrete connection between Cloverfield and House of Leaves. The character Lily Ford actually has an interest in the book as explained by the Cloverfield Despoiler Wiki and as seen on her Myspace profile.

The unveiling of the monster itself also drives the movie along. I love that you only see bits and glimpses of the monster as the characters attempt their rescue mission. The brief shot of the monster's face as the four antagonists escape into the subway was startling! The limited camera angles and the lack of a long, cinematic view of the monster increases your desire to see what in the world New York is up against. I kept wanting the camera to move slightly to the side or to take at least two more seconds with a shot of the colossus. When you finally see a steady view of the thing towering over Hud, it becomes a great payoff for the audience. Very effective.

Now, there are some questions remaining. This doesn't mean that the films plot line is bad or lacking. Quite the opposite, it makes you want to delve deeper into the whole incident that occurs in Cloverfield.

• What, exactly, is the Cloverfield monster? An alien? A deep sea beast that lay dormant in the ocean? A weapon engineered by clandestine organizations with far-flung idealistic motives?
• What is the object that falls from the sky into the water in the Coney Island scene? Is that some missile to wake it up? Is that the monster itself? The monster egg? Does that mean it's an alien? Or was it dropped there on purpose?
  
• Since the events occur at "INCIDENT SITE U.S. 447" and the monster is still alive by the end of the film, does that mean other sites had attacks? By other monsters? Or this one monster that went on a rampage? By the way, who whispers "its still alive"?
  
• Are the tiny creatures baby monsters? Are they parasites on the Cloverfield monster? A separate species? Why do they make people explode? What happens after someone explodes?
  
• This question has really been bugging me: What happened to Lily? She got on a separate helicopter so did she survive? Did she make it out of New York? What's her story? Is she gonna be the basis for the sequel?

The good: Cloverfield is a great action/disaster film told in a convincing fashion that makes you want to keep watching until the monster is right in your face!
The bad: Having anyone spoil the movie for you.
The warning in theater ticket booths: This film may cause motion sickness.

I remember this!

I watched the episode of the 1940s alien baseball player in Roswell, the carnivorous subterranean fungus, and the hillbilly kid with the lightning bolt power (with appearance by Jack Black). It made me remember a time during the 90s when I was really into UFOs and aliens. I read books, I watched the documentaries, I watched the films based on actual events and I watched the X Files.

One film that really scared me was "Fire in the Sky". I ended up watching it by myself which, at that young an age, wasn't the best idea. The realistic probability of the film, the horrible experiments, and the look of the freakin aliens messed up my head. The endless tunnel was also horrible to watch. I think I imagined myself confined to it and couldn't sleep. What freaked me out even more was the fact that, according to the film, it was based on actual events.

Of course, now I like the film and have researched the backstory that it is based on. Man, I have a book that outlines the steps to do IN CASE one experiences an encounter of the first, second, and third kind. I still keep in mind the tips I read in case I ever happen to film a ufo or extraterrestrial being. I can remember the various hotspots in the US for alien and ufo activity.

I remember how excited I was when, on a return trip to Mexico with my family, we stopped at Roswell, NM. The very town where, during the 1940s, a ufo is said to have crashed at and left one surviving alien. All of which was reportedly covered up and "explained" by the US government. I went to the museum, got a book, and a t-shirt. It's kind of weird that the incident has been commercialized but I guess the small town has to cash in somehow.

It's a strange turn of events that I now reside right next to Area 51. The place that doesn't exist but if you step past a certain boundary you'll be shot on site. It is now reported that this military installation is a testing site for new and classified technology. Of course, others believe that it holds deeper secrets and has something to do with reverse engineering alien technology. Others say actual alien beings work and/or live there.

Anyway, all this remembering of my past interests got me thinking about a general sense of a comeback. I mean, a lot of things are being remade or reimagined or sequel-ized or remixed. These are really the years of the comebacks. The Spiderman films are based on a comic from the 70s. So are the X-men films and the other Marvel films. The Lord of the Rings films are based on an old series of fiction. Street Fighter IV is development, which brings back memories of quarters spent at the arcade. Battlestar Galactica has been reimagined. Led Zeppelin just performed their first show since years ago. Even the X Files is getting another shot. Of course, these are just examples of some of the good comebacks. The other cash-ins on nostalgia are just that: cash-ins.

Which makes me think that this phenomenon is probably not limited to just this decade. I mean, things come back all the time. Street Fighter IV is the third sequel to an old arcade fighting game (which still has some old arcade cabinets still taking quarters). The comics have several stories reimagined and updates are made constantly. And most big bands or musicians always attempt a "reunion" or "comeback" at some point in their careers.