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2019 Resolution #5
I am going to start and finish reading House of Leaves.
This will be the third time I've attempted to read the damn book, but now I have a game plan:
First, I will read the main text, ignoring everything else.
Second, I will read the footnotes, ignoring everything else.
Third, I won't even look at the appendices until I finish reading everything else, and then I'll only read them if I decide that I want to.
I actually admire the structural concept of House of Leaves. One of the main reasons (tbh probably the only reason) I went to grad school and got a PhD is because I genuinely enjoy reading academic writing, and I wish more people structured their fiction like academic writing - or rather, wrote academic books and articles that are entirely fiction.
(One day I will do this myself. I think about it all the time when I'm writing articles and book chapters. Like, what if I just started making things up and went from there? Also, when someone drags me to a museum, I always get an irrational urge to give a "guided tour" based on facts that I invent on the spot, and one of these days I will find a museum friend who doesn't immediately stop me after they figure out what I'm doing.)
(People don't appreciate this about professors, by the way. I could make up literally any garbage I wanted to, put it on a PowerPoint slideshow, give a lecture about it, and then write an actual exam testing students on it. Now that I'm on the other side of the desk, I'm beginning to suspect that a lot of professors do this without thinking, and no one catches them partially because they're considered to be "experts" but mostly because there's very little oversight in most American universities. I don't teach things things that I make up because I have a healthy sense of professional ethics, but sometimes the temptation is strong.)
Anyway, the problem with House of Leaves is that it takes an interesting concept and runs it into the ground in the most obnoxious way possible. I therefore want to finish the book not just because I want to see how it ends but also because I want to study a cautionary example so I won't fuck up the sort of story I want to write.
This will be the third time I've attempted to read the damn book, but now I have a game plan:
First, I will read the main text, ignoring everything else.
Second, I will read the footnotes, ignoring everything else.
Third, I won't even look at the appendices until I finish reading everything else, and then I'll only read them if I decide that I want to.
I actually admire the structural concept of House of Leaves. One of the main reasons (tbh probably the only reason) I went to grad school and got a PhD is because I genuinely enjoy reading academic writing, and I wish more people structured their fiction like academic writing - or rather, wrote academic books and articles that are entirely fiction.
(One day I will do this myself. I think about it all the time when I'm writing articles and book chapters. Like, what if I just started making things up and went from there? Also, when someone drags me to a museum, I always get an irrational urge to give a "guided tour" based on facts that I invent on the spot, and one of these days I will find a museum friend who doesn't immediately stop me after they figure out what I'm doing.)
(People don't appreciate this about professors, by the way. I could make up literally any garbage I wanted to, put it on a PowerPoint slideshow, give a lecture about it, and then write an actual exam testing students on it. Now that I'm on the other side of the desk, I'm beginning to suspect that a lot of professors do this without thinking, and no one catches them partially because they're considered to be "experts" but mostly because there's very little oversight in most American universities. I don't teach things things that I make up because I have a healthy sense of professional ethics, but sometimes the temptation is strong.)
Anyway, the problem with House of Leaves is that it takes an interesting concept and runs it into the ground in the most obnoxious way possible. I therefore want to finish the book not just because I want to see how it ends but also because I want to study a cautionary example so I won't fuck up the sort of story I want to write.
no subject
At the same time, I love all the typesetting and formatting. It's a damn work of art. And I love how each page's presentation is taken into consideration for maximize the tone in the narrative. Like no other book has scared the shit out of me more than House of Leaves, strictly because the text itself literally evokes that horror and dread and it's beautiful.
And it makes me upset that a gorgeous horror story is lost in some jerk's ramblings. I still love the concept of House of Leaves, but I could never love House of Leaves, if that makes sense. Regardless, godspeed with finishing it! I'm super curious to hear your thoughts on it, even more so with your insight as an academic.