Darkness in the House of Leaves


This is not for you, says Mark Z. Danielewski at the beginning of the book. Oh, but it is. When I was a kid I was afraid of the dark. I used to think that if I can't see anything, I could be anywhere. Perhaps during the night when the blinds were drawn too tightly and I couldn't see anything, I wasn't in my room. Perhaps I was somewhere else, or nowhere. I still don't like darkness. It unnerves me. And I don't like silence and cold. The scariest part of House of Leaves is darkness and what it can do to a person. Or what a person can do to him-or-herself while thinking too much about things. It's always us, isn't it?

In the centre of the book is The Navidson Record, a short film, which doesn't exist, as we are told in the foreword. Will Navidson and his family recently moved in the house on Ash Tree Lane. Soon they discover their house in bigger on the inside as it is on the outside. Later, a hallway appears where nothing but a solid wall was. Will starts to explore the hallway, which changes and expands as he goes along. There's darkness, silence and cold and all sorts of ugly things start happening. The next layer is an analysis of Navidson record, written by an old blind man Zampano. He recently died and his neighbour Lude's friend Johnny Truant takes Zampano's trunk containing notes about The Navidson Record. Johnny starts to read and sort them out. His fears and paranoia cripple his days, so his life starts to fall apart as he goes along. It's similar to what happens in the hallways of Navidson's house. The farther they go, the weirder their experience becomes. In the last part of the book there are letters written to Johnny by his mother, while she was in a mental institution.

I liked the structure of this book. In the Navidson's story there are lots of footnotes written by Zampano and the ones added by Johnny. His are in a different font, so we know whose footnotes we read. Zampano's are bordering on academic (explaining e.g. echoes, labyrinths and Minotaur), while Johnnies are mostly stories of his sex, drugs and alcohol exploits. When the explorations of the hallways begin, the layout of the text changes and becomes more and more confusing, labyrinthine, mirroring the story. The footnotes refer to each other, so the reader has to flip forward and back again, turn the book and read from different angles. There are endless lists of names, houses, parts of buildings. The word house in always written in blue type, no matter what language it is in.

House of Leaves is classified as a horror novel. I don't know if it is. It's more like ... I don't know ... a postmodern escapade. Some people say this book is a love story. I think it could be read in this way, but I didn't. I think readers can choose any interpretation they want and it would be correct. In Jungian meaning of dreams a house symbolises a personality of a dreamer, the space he/she occupies. I was thinking about the house in the book as a representation of its occupants, the Navidsons and other people exploring the dark hallways. The hallways change according to the person entering them and their attitude towards the house. Johnny experiences a similar thing. He starts reading Zampano's notes searching for a mysterious and weird story and in the end, he gets one. 

This book played with me while I was reading it. It's fragmented, demanding concentration and at times hard to put down. I read the book from beginning to the end, however Johnny's story could be read separately. The way he interrupts Zampano's story with his footnotes, which are totally unrelated to The Navidson Record, sometimes annoyed me. The narrators are unreliable and weird, the story is dark and messed up. What more could I want?


*

To ni zate, na prvi strani pravi Mark Z. Danielewski. Pa je. Ko sem bila majhna, me je bilo strah teme. Mislila sem, da sem lahko, če ničesar ne vidim, kjer koli. Morda takrat, ko so bile rolete spuščene do konca in nisem mogla videti niti dlani pred obrazom, sploh nisem bila v svoji sobi. Morda sem bila drugje, ali pa nikjer. Še vedno ne maram teme. Dela me živčno. Niti tišine ne maram in mraza tudi ne. Morda se mi je zato zdela v knjigi najgrozljivejša ravno tema in kaj lahko naredi ljudem. Ali kaj lahko ljudje povzročijo sami sebi. Vedno smo mi tisti, ne?

V središču pripovedi je Navidsonovo poročilo, kratki film, ki sploh ne obstaja, kar izvemo že v predgovoru. Will Navidson se z družino iz New Yorka preseli v hišo v manjšem kraju v Virginiji. Kmalu ugotovijo, da je hiša, če jo izmerijo od znotraj večja, kot od zunaj. Kasneje se tam, kjer je bil prej zid, pojavi hodnik. Will med raziskovanjem hodnika ugotovi, da se nenehno spreminja. V temi, tišini in mrazu se začnejo dogajati čudne reči. Naslednja raven knjige je analiza Navidsonovega poročila, ki jo je napisal slepi starec Zampano. Pred kratkim je umrl, njegov sosed Lude pa svojemu prijatelju Johnnyju Truantu omogoči, da iz starčevega stanovanja odnese zaboj poln zapiskov in materiala, ki se nanaša na Navidsonono poročilo. Johnny začne pregledovati zapiske in jih urejati, kar povzroči, da se v njim razrasteta strah in preganjavica, ki ohromita njegovo življenje. Dlje ko se poglablja v Zampanojeve zapiske, bolj razpada njegovo življenje. Podobno se dogaja Navidsonu med raziskovanjem hodnika: dlje ko gre, bolj čudne stvari se mu dogajajo. V zadnjem delu knjige so pisma, ki jih je Johnnyju pisala mama, ko je bila v psihiatrični bolnišnici.

Všeč mi je bila struktura te knjige. Analiza Navidsonovega poročila vsebuje številne opombe pod črto, ki jih ne napisal Zampano pa tudi tiste, ki jih je dodal Johnny. Slednje so v drugem fontu. Zampanojeve mejijo na akademske (ko na primer piše o odmevu, labirintu ali Minotavru), Johnnyjeve opombe pa so polne seksa, drog, alkohola in podobnih peripetij. Ko Will prične z raziskavo hodnikov, se spremeni postavitev besedila, ki s posnemanjem labirinta, krožnih stopnic in dezorientiranosti, odseva zgodbo. Opombe se sklicujejo druga na drugo, nas vodijo naprej in spet nazaj. Knjigo obračamo na glavo, beremo pod različnimi koti in celo pred ogledalom. Poleg običajnih pojasnil, ki jih je vedno manj pa se soočamo s seznami imen, hiš, delov stavb in podobno. Beseda hiša je vedno napisana modro, ne glede na to v katerem jeziku je.

Za House of Leaves pravijo, da je grozljivka. Nisem najbolj prepričana, da je res. Bolj se mi zdi podobna, recimo postmoderni eskapadi. Nekateri bralci so v njej našli ljubezensko zgodbo. Lahko jo tudi tako beremo, vendar je jaz nisem. Mislim, da lahko bralec izbere katero koli interpretacijo in bo najbrž imel prav. V Jungovi interpretaciji sanj je hiša simbol tistega, ki sanja, njegove osebnosti in prostora, ki ga obvladuje. Zdelo se me je, da hiša v knjigi predstavlja njene prebivalce, Navidsonove in druge ljudi, ki raziskujejo hodnike. Hodniki se spreminjajo skladno z ljudmi, ki vstopijo vanje, z njihovim odnosom do njih in do same hiše. Podobno je z Johnnyjem. V pregledovanje Zampanojevih zapiskov vstopi z mislijo na paranormalno zgodbo, kar navsezadnje tudi dobi.

Priznam, da se je ta knjiga poigravala z menoj ves čas, ko sem jo brala. Njena razdrobljena zgodba zahteva koncentracijo, na trenutke se je ne da odložiti. Brala sem jo konvencionalno, od začetka do konca, čeprav bil lahko Johnnyjevo zgodbo brala ločeno. Zampanojevo godbo je nenehno prekinjal z opombami, ki z Navidsonovim poročilom niso imele nič in to me je včasih motilo. Sicer pa … nezanesljivi in čudaški pripovedovalec, temačna zgodba … kaj pa še hočem.


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