How To Read House Of Leaves

Question

Reading House of Leaves as a first-timer has me overwhelmed. Is there a recommended order or strategy for navigating its layered footnotes and parallel narratives?

Ralph Lopez · Answer

I chose to go with the physical copy of ‘House of Leaves’ instead of an e-reader as the footnotes, crossed-out text and format of the pages would not translate well. It’s a book that’s meant to be felt and experienced like a found manuscript, and a physical copy is the way to go. Another look at a very terrifying, very labyrinthine space is the web novel ‘House of Horrors Part 1’ (though it’s completed in only two parts). In this novel, a man inherits a house, and each floor is a completely self-contained nightmere world. But the real tension comes from the mundane details of contracts and keys, in opposition to the surreal horrors that he discovers on each floor.

Parker · Answer

I read ‘House of Leaves’ as if it were a nightmarish journey to explore. As one would expect, it requires an immense amount of patience to read this extremely complicated novel. First, there is the story of the Navidson family and their experience in a house that is slowly consuming them. Then there is the analysis provided by Zampanò in his academic tracts that get footnoted in Johnny Truant’s spewed out pages. The design of the book is like the Navidson house- it’s a mad-house and it means to confuse and disturb the reader in the same way that it does to the characters in the story. Reading ‘House of Leaves’ is an extremely unsettling experience.

It’s best to read this book in a quiet room with dim lighting to heighten the sense of unease. The Zampanò sections have a lot of very academic writing that can be skimmed through in most cases, but the writing of Johnny Truant is emotional and should not be skipped. Online forums are a great resource for looking up references and developing and debasing various theories as they are presented in the book. Mark up the book. Underline, highlight and even fold down corners of pages to help you keep track of important information. 'House of Leaves' is a book that is to be experienced, not read.

Noah · Answer

Approaching “House of Leaves” as a horror story, I went in with the knowledge it would trip me up at times. But the structure of the book is simply brilliant. Most of the footnotes are just empty space, leading to nothing and driving home the fact that we are really reading only a portion of what must be a massive tome. I read in short bursts of time, trying to allow the tension to build and reverberate. The Navidson Record is a wonderful, haunting story but the real terror, for me, was in the footnotes of Johnny Truant. His slow descent into madness mirrored the impossible and ever-shifting corridors of the house.

I think a good way to introduce new people to House of Leaves is to tell them to not worry too much about figuring it all out and let the confusion be disturbing. There are many layers to the book including a lot of academic critique of other texts, many unreliable narrators and even the formatting can be just really weird. I think this is a must read for fans of meta-fiction and psychological horror. Just don’t read it before bed.

Zoe · Answer

My memory of picking up House of Leaves in a bookstore is of being lost in a labyrinth. The book looked crazy – with footnotes, removed text, and many narrators. It is chaotic. My only advise is to attempt to read it physically, with all the color and strange formatting on the page that it contains. Take your time. The Navidson Record sections at the heart of the book are strange and occult, but the footnotes of Johnny Truant add to the growing sense of horror and dread. I treated House of Leaves like a puzzle – constantly flipping back and forth between sections, and I even took notes. It is not a book – it is an obsession.

farisyathira · Answer

Do not listen to people that claim there is a “correct” way to read through this book. Read it front to back. Read the appendices before they are referenced. Skip the footnotes. Read only the footnotes. Read the book upside down. Your way of reading through the book is your own unique path. The book is a maze with no center and no exit. The value that can be gleaned from reading through the book comes from getting lost in the book and discovering things by accident. Prescriptive guides are almost entirely without value, because they completely miss the point of the book.

Liz Herrera · Answer

Start with Johnny Truant, the narrator of the story. His voice is frantic and paranoid. The academic deconstruction of The Navidson Record is fascinating but the story of this man’s life is more compelling and it frames the ‘puzzle’ of the book perfectly. The endless footnotes of echoes and minotaurs can be skipped in favor of returning to Johnny’s story. The appendix contains his mother’s letters which are heartbreakingly sad. A ‘puzzle’ of a book but also a deeply human and emotional story of grief and madness.

Rogerio · Answer

I'm reading House of Leaves as an audiobook at my wife's behest. This will serve as a companion to the physical book, which was so brutal to read as a first for me. The physical book was just so much better at evoking terror. The book is very visually and spatially oriented. The way a sentence will spiral out into a black hole on a page, the way the footnotes and their own footnotes create a maze, the big blocks of white space where you expect text to be – all of this cannot be replicated by a narrator. The physical sensation of a book literally coming apart in your hands, both structurally and narratively, is just too much to hope to be transferred to the audiobook format.

Rona May Balangat Balean · Answer

Don't read this before bed. The ‘academic’ parts of the book are written in a very clinical and detached manner. At first this makes the book seem very safe. But then you get a footnote from Johnny that is raw and screaming with panic. Or you simply turn the page to find that the text has disappeared. This evokes a primeval, spatial panic that is not easily shaken off. You will start to measure up your hallways. This is a book that will change the atmosphere of the space where you keep it. Read it by day when you can try to shake off the unease that it inspires.

Scott Hunt · Answer

Note that the dedication and introduction of House of Leaves are not merely literary flourishes. They outlay the rules for this literary work and provide the framework for much of the material that follows, including the themes of authenticity, authorship and loss. And it begins to lie to you from the very start. You’re not reading House of Leaves. You’re reading Johnny Truant’s haphazardly compiled manuscript of Zampanò’s study of a film that likely does not exist. This layering of fiction upon fiction is at the heart of the horror that follows.

How To Read House Of Leaves

9 Answers

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