Author: elizavictoria

The hottest thing right now is the social networking site. YouTube and Facebook were founded by twentysomethings messing around with technology and a vision in their college dorm rooms – and now they’re billionaires. Never mind that YouTube contains the stupidest video clips mankind has ever made; never mind that Facebook may very well turn into Friendster (remember Friendster?) in a few years or so. Who cares? There’s money in the dot.com universe.

Back in the mid-90’s, internet retailing is the shiz. Amazon stocks are selling at more than $100 per. And fortysomething businessman named Craig Winn has an idea: what if one created an inventoryless Internet superstore, wherein customers can get their goods delivered straight from the manufacturers? He gathers his friends and jets around for investors (he is Craig Winn; if he wants to sell something, boy will he sell) and receives enough money and promises to jumpstart Value America. Who cares if the founder is in his 40s and hates the Internet? Who cares if they’re selling more over the phone than over the company website? (Wait. What?) Who cares if they’re generating little profit, and that customers are complaining about missing or incomplete merchandise, or that the company website’s home page is taking five minutes to load? (Even in 1995 that kinda sucks.) Also, who cares if Craig Winn’s last company – Dynasty – crashed and burned under his leadership? But really, who cares – Value America stock is selling nicely. It will make even its janitors billionaires.

Right smack in the middle of all this chaos and excitement is author J. David Kuo, who so loved Winn and the company that he was able to entice his bride-to-be to leave AOL to become a Value American.

Of course, we can glean from the title what happens in the end.

This is a fast, easy read, thanks to Kuo’s engaging style. I read somewhere that he worked for the Bush White House. God, this guy can’t get a break. Wonder how he’s doing now.

In 2000, author Mark Danielewski was asked to tell “a bit” about his book in an interview. “A bit”? Hoboy. How to tell “a bit” about a book that you have to literally see in order to fully appreciate, a massive, insane story that plays with typography (there are moments where you’ll have to turn the book upside-down in order to read it, or use a mirror, or write down the first letter of every word to read the hidden message – no, seriously) and refers to itself (house of leaves = house of pages = a book, get it)?

Here’s what the author said:

House of Leaves is about a family who move into a small house in Virginia. One day they go away for a wedding and when they come back discover that a space has appeared between the master bedroom and the children’s bedroom. The walls that appear are black and perfectly smooth. Will Navidson (the protagonist) begins to measure the inside of the house and soon discovers that the inside is larger than the outside by a quarter of an inch and that’s where it all begins to happen. What it comes down to is how this family deals with a house that is larger on the inside than the outside and how it begins to influence those who live there and those who hear about it and those who write about it and maybe even those who read about it.

That doesn’t even begin to describe it.

But yes, in its simplest, the House of Leaves has three characters: Johnny Truant, who writes the introduction to this book, finds an old manuscript in the apartment of a blind, old man. The man, named Zampaño, lived alone and was found dead in his own apartment earlier.

Zampaño’s manuscript is an analysis of a film called The Navidson Record. The Record is a documentary shot by Will Navidson, which deals with several explorations of their house on Ash Tree Lane.

And yes, the house on Ash Tree Lane indeed is bigger on the inside than on the outside. Much bigger. Much, much bigger. So big you can get lost for days, run out of food and water, and go mad in the darkness.

And here I thought no novel can ever terrify me.

It was such an experience to read this book. I bow before Danielewski’s patience (it took him 10 years to write this), imagination, and inventiveness. I’ve never read anything quite like it.

(And that’s all I can say, really. In order to fully discuss this book’s use of intertextuality, deconstruction, chaos, self-reflexivity and obscurity, we’ll have to sit down talking and  drinking beer for hours on end. My head hurts just thinking about it.)