r/houseofleaves

Just some thoughts, a quick follow up to my previous POET article. I have a lot more to lay out and analyze, i will probably continue this week. I hope that everyone is crushing it.

I'm big on the Pattern of The Chronicles of r/Amber, but also fond of the movie r/labyrinth (which doesn't have an actual, literal labyrinth in it), and the book r/houseofleaves , which uses labyrinth and Minotaur symbolism. The mythic Cretan labyrinth is quite the tale as well, with gods, bestiality, human sacrifice, and thread!

There are others out there, for sure! I'm not aware of many of the contemplative, meditative walking labyrinths in stories and media, but I'd be curious if you knew any!

Anything counts that you think counts, pedantic definitions and such are a cool discussion for another time!

Hello, first-time reader and first-time poster here (if the flair is wrong, my bad). Currently exactly on page 500 and enjoying the book alot, but an idea i got in the middle of reading stuck with me.

It feels half baked, but i got the impression that Delial and the Pekingese dog felt like somewhat parallels on Navy's and Johnny's story.

Both had very little time spent with their respective characters, but left an attachment past their deaths to their narrators, with Will comparing her to Daisy and rambling that "she was just a little girl" until her death in his letter of drunken sorrow, being haunted by the guilt to the point of bringing her back during his low points by mentioning her, and the Pekingese being elusively alluded to a handful of times by Truant until he eventually felt like sharing the story, describing how immediately attached he felt to it (as he felt to things that were abandoned, like himself), and his following hollowness on seeing its death, though he's left undeniably shaken, another weight in his tormented mind.

Beyond that, i think the matter of culpability upon their respective deaths is the more relevant part.

Navidson, in his own view, left her to die, prioritizing his life of photography over her immediate condition and doing too little too late, not to mention the constant comparisons between the shot of a camera and a gunshot, the photojournalist and the hunter, reducing life to a simple frame or a corpse, and more other ways that were put more eloquently in the book compared to this rant.

Truant did not directly kill the Pekingese, just as Navy left Delial to natural death, but being convinced into giving the dog to the woman he met at the bar could be a point towards his habit of sleeping around and thrills as a replacement for genuine connection, considering her role as an adult film star, metaphorically handing a life to a personification of his own life. Of course, many others have compared Johnnie to a possible personification of Johnny himself as his mind making a separate individual for what he really did that night, to which i think the ambiguity of guilt in this scenario specifically helps connect it to Navidson's case.

I don't think i worded my thoughts perfectly and the text is more rambling than writing and rather messy, but i felt like i had to put this out. Reading this far and thoughts are very much appreciated.

(editing for mispellings and some weird lines, english is my second language so bear with me)

So I have began rereading House of Leaves. I’ve never finished it. First time around, I just got caught up with other things and put it down. Didn’t get too far in, maybe just the beginning of the Navidson Record.

The second time around was when I really had to put the book down. I spent a few summer weeks reading through the book a couple of years ago. I got about halfway through the book. It was reeling me in, but then kept pulling me out. This was maybe around when the book formatting started to get crazy, and Truant’s ramblings were just as crazy. I kept having to flip back and forth different pages from footnotes and such. However, the wall of text at some parts really had me lose interest. I think it was a mixture of these ramblings and too much text (I was also undiagnosed ADHD at the time).

I’m getting back into it now, planning on taking it one piece at a time. I finished the first part with Johnny and am now getting into the Navidson Record. I remember there being some “mindfuck” kinda puzzle-like scenarios and trying to decipher what it all means. But I’ve been told to just go in blind and read it all the way through and put the magnifying lens away. Not sure. Probably a common question asked on this sub, but what’s the best way to digest this textbook of a novel for a new reader?