House Of Leaves Analysis

House of Leaves Mark Z. Danielewski
(a brief analysis)

Summarizing this remarkable book in two pages seems to be a futile effort as soon as I begin to type. So instead of trying to achieve such a lofty goal, which is better attained by reading online book reviews and commentary, I shall use this chance to explain my experience with House of Leaves and my relationship with the text. House of Leaves has had a profound effect on me, even in the short time that has elapsed since I began reading it, and even given the little time for reflection that I have found since that first page. I have formed a personal relationship with the physical artifact itself - by that I mean my paperback copy of the 2nd edition of the House of Leaves.
The outside
Not of the mundane kind that you find printed in newspapers and magazines, but the kind that require some exploration by the imagination rather than number crunching or looking up words in a dictionary. The House of Leaves is a puzzle, many puzzles, riddles, scraps of information, begging to be traced out and explored by an inquisitive mind. Without knowing it, I was quickly drawn into the quirks and eccentricities of the text, and it began to be more important for me to figure out the little riddles in the printed words than simply reading the text as it first appears to the closed mind. I began to dwell on the footnotes, the authenticity of the authors, the symbols and special characters placed strategically in the main body of the story or sometimes hidden in the frames of the pages.
I still cannot claim to have solved any one of the riddles. They require further exploration, and an investment of time to piece together the twisted trail of clues that will surely bring greater understanding when decoded. This is my task. I am completely fascinated by the challenge that this text has presented me with. Danielewski's work is so multi-layered, that it requires us to constantly revisit previous pages, looking for clues to explain what we just read, hints of future outcomes, and to provide additional background on the characters. This 'experimental novel' has something for
Many quotes and text fragments are printed in other languages - everything from German to Ancient Greek to Latin to Hebrew. Sentences range from the absurdly short to the monstrously long; grammatical constructions spanning the full spectrum from the elementary to the extraordinary. For the mathematician or physicist, there are matrices, patterns of numbers, and the occasional equation (mostly fictional). For the musician, there are even some bars of music printed on select pages, and for any curious mind that revels in the mysterious, the book is a veritable candy store of delights.
To explain this in a little more detail, I will first describe the novel's structure - as I have experienced it thus far. This last comment is quite deliberate, because it is clear the book has many possible structures, each of which is open to interpretation, exploration, reconstruction and possibly even denial by the reader. However, the structure that the individual reader finds in the book, and the way that they choose to read House of Leaves, is a reflection of their own personal decisions, and will be different for every