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From: Sleeves
Category: Books
Date: 26 September 2003
The House of Leaves by Marc Z. Danielewski
Within The House of Leaves, contained by its pages and formed by its use of language, is a definition of the word ‘space’ unlike any you would be likely to come across in a dictionary or textbook. I use the word ‘space’ as a sort of description of the author, in terms of his thoughts, experiences and relationship with all he knows or doesn’t know about. Sorry, I’m trying not to sound like too much of an a******e. What I mean is his presence and its relationship with absolutely everything.
Not only has Danielewski, like other authors used text as a means of expressing his ‘space’, but he has also used the text to describe itself through its page arrangement. The placement and manipulation of text, be it in normal format, back to front, in a box, upside down, or a single word on a page, renders the words more than mere words. They become objects. Danielewski has enabled the book to be more than a book, with its character, movement and shape reflecting moods, material things and references within the narrative. The book has become its own ‘space’.
The book is incredibly detailed, with footnotes featuring heavily throughout, directing the reader to appendices, illustrations, poems and other texts, which are all carefully recorded in its back pages, some of which are real, and others that appear to be false. The complexity of the story and the books construction are incredible, making them basically one and the same thing. The book as a result, like its text, becomes an object, an art object.
This is an almost incomprehensibly deep book about…………well, everything.
Sleeves
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