Ho l summary
- 1. { Mark Z. Danielewski’s 2000 House of Leaves is a complex labyrinth-like novel which knots together myth, gothic pastiche, overlapping strands of symbolism, and multiple narrative threads.
- 2. The The Navidson Navidson Record Record Film Text Johnny’s Johnny’s Editing of life story the text Narrative Threads
- 3. Imbedded within House of Leaves there are two primary narratives which bleed into each other to an uncanny and unnerving effect. The Navidson Record is the text-within- the-text, which, supposedly, documents a family’s arrival in a haunted house built on top of a mysterious labyrinth and a spiral staircase of infinite depth inhabited by an intangible, threatening presence. It’s a Blair Witch Project--esque documentary film. All we get to see of this film is a single frame from the book’s appendix. Polaroid of the House:
- 4. The Navidson Record is narrated to us by an obscure blind poet called Zampanò in an unfinished academic monograph which describes the series of strange events which take place within this house. Johnny Truant, a young LA resident, by chance, inherits the unfinished manuscript, assembling scraps of narrative into a (somewhat) coherent document. The act of editing the manuscript leads Johnny into a delusionary underworld of paranoia and panic attacks, where he eventually descends to confront the psychic scars of his past. At the height of these delusions, Johnny feels as if he is being stalked by the creature said to haunt The Navidson Record.
- 5. In each narrativestrand, characters descend into hell…