What’s So Great About That?: Episode 10 House of Leaves: The Horror of Fiction
House of Leaves by Mark Z. Danielewski encompasses many genres - postmodernism, romance, satire - but my personal catagorisation would be horror. So how does the book use the specific conventions of fiction, specifically written fiction, to explore this?
tbh if my friend told me about some old dude in his apartment complex who died in his apartment and no one noticed for a few days bc he didn’t really have anyone, and then proceeded to take me to the old man’s apartment and we broke in and looked through his stuff and it mostly was just weird useless shit except for his unfinished manuscript, which I pieced together from the chunks that were scattered about the apartment, and I took it home just for the hell of it but then I started reading it and it appeared to be an extremely detailed and well-researched academic analysis of a documentary made by a pulitzer prize winning photojournalist, which followed said photojournalist and his family who, after moving into a new house, discover that the interior layout of the house keeps changing, expanding beyond the laws of physics, pitch black corridors that stretch on for what seem like miles appearing in their home overnight and disappearing at an instance and oh god there’s something in there but then I looked it up and the film that the old man’s book went into excruciating detail about didn’t exist and neither did the photojournalist and his family, as far as I could find anywhere, and the majority of the old man’s sources and extensive footnotes seemed to be nonexistent as well. I’d just be normal about it
tbh if my friend told me about some old dude in his apartment complex who died in his apartment and no one noticed for a few days bc he didn’t really have anyone, and then proceeded to take me to the old man’s apartment and we broke in and looked through his stuff and it mostly was just weird useless shit except for his unfinished manuscript, which I pieced together from the chunks that were scattered about the apartment, and I took it home just for the hell of it but then I started reading it and it appeared to be an extremely detailed and well-researched academic analysis of a documentary made by a pulitzer prize winning photojournalist, which followed said photojournalist and his family who, after moving into a new house, discover that the interior layout of the house keeps changing, expanding beyond the laws of physics, pitch black corridors that stretch on for what seem like miles appearing in their home overnight and disappearing at an instance and oh god there’s something in there but then I looked it up and the film that the old man’s book went into excruciating detail about didn’t exist and neither did the photojournalist and his family, as far as I could find anywhere, and the majority of the old man’s sources and extensive footnotes seemed to be nonexistent as well. I’d just be normal about it
Myth makes Echo the subject of longing and desire. Physics makes Echo the subject of distance and design. Where emotion and reason are concerned both claims are accurate.
And where there is no Echo there is no description of space or love.
tbh if my friend told me about some old dude in his apartment complex who died in his apartment and no one noticed for a few days bc he didn’t really have anyone, and then proceeded to take me to the old man’s apartment and we broke in and looked through his stuff and it mostly was just weird useless shit except for his unfinished manuscript, which I pieced together from the chunks that were scattered about the apartment, and I took it home just for the hell of it but then I started reading it and it appeared to be an extremely detailed and well-researched academic analysis of a documentary made by a pulitzer prize winning photojournalist, which followed said photojournalist and his family who, after moving into a new house, discover that the interior layout of the house keeps changing, expanding beyond the laws of physics, pitch black corridors that stretch on for what seem like miles appearing in their home overnight and disappearing at an instance and oh god there’s something in there but then I looked it up and the film that the old man’s book went into excruciating detail about didn’t exist and neither did the photojournalist and his family, as far as I could find anywhere, and the majority of the old man’s sources and extensive footnotes seemed to be nonexistent as well. I’d just be normal about it
