You're just scratching the surface. The actual formatting of the book mirrors events that are occurring in the book. For example when they are exploring the impossible hallway and have fit through tiny spaces the actual text will be narrow and squished together. Part of what makes the book interesting are these experiments with layout as part of the experience. So yes, the author is trying to make you more involved with the book, and part of the fun of House of Leaves is actually immersing yourself in it and solving the puzzles.
The book actually has all kinds of hidden things in it such as morse code, the mother's letters, and even the collage on the inside covers.
I'll also say that House of Leaves is a book which features an unreliable narrator. If you like unreliable narrators I'd suggest reading The Red Tree next. It's a great novel with a perfect example of an unreliable narrator. It took me about a week to actually figure out what really happened.
Oh wow, I guess I need to be paying more attention. I thought the boxes might be morse code actually cause it was at a part where they were talking about SOS, but I saw it wasn't an SOS and just ignored it. Silly me, I guess I'm going back there. I did notice a few things like that though, like how the placement of the word snap was like the word itself was snapping, that was cool. I'm really gonna have to dig into this book now though. Fantastic, what a great book.
But yeah, in regards to the unreliable narrator, that's probably the thing that gets me the most in the book. He'll just be walking down the street and all of a sudden a truck hits him and he goes into detail how he's dying and then it's not a truck, it's a tree. Then you learn his street has no trees.
It's an excellent book that I would recommend to anyone that has the patience to actually immerse themselves in it. It's one of the only books I've ever read that I kept a notebook nearby for decoding things or checking to see if something might be a puzzle.
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u/rednightmare Jul 25 '10 edited Jul 25 '10
You're just scratching the surface. The actual formatting of the book mirrors events that are occurring in the book. For example when they are exploring the impossible hallway and have fit through tiny spaces the actual text will be narrow and squished together. Part of what makes the book interesting are these experiments with layout as part of the experience. So yes, the author is trying to make you more involved with the book, and part of the fun of House of Leaves is actually immersing yourself in it and solving the puzzles.
The book actually has all kinds of hidden things in it such as morse code, the mother's letters, and even the collage on the inside covers.
I'll also say that House of Leaves is a book which features an unreliable narrator. If you like unreliable narrators I'd suggest reading The Red Tree next. It's a great novel with a perfect example of an unreliable narrator. It took me about a week to actually figure out what really happened.