House of Leaves
House of Leaves is a horror novel by Mark Z. Danielewski about a house that nobody can leave. But it's really more like a story within a story within a story?.
The main character Johnny Truant finds a weird manuscript in his dead neighbor Zampanò's apartment. It contains a scholarly review of a movie called The Navidson Record, which according to Zampanò is critically acclaimed and famous worldwide, but Johnny is unable to find any evidence that it actually exists. In addition, many of the sources cited by the manuscript do not exist either, and Zampanò was completely blind, suggesting that the movie was just a figment of his imagination. Or is it?
As described by Zampanò, The Navidson Record is a film by Will Navidson about how his family moved into a new house. However, they soon realize that this house is alive - and bigger on the inside. As they try to explore and escape the labyrinth of their changing house, Navidson's family must deal with their own psychological issues. The Navidson Record was presented as a documentary, and critics love it, but they are not entirely sure what to think of it. All evidence suggests that the events of the film really did happen, but a house like this couldn't have actually existed, right?
As Johnny attempts to edit and annotate The Navidson Record, he gradually becomes more and more mentally unstable. In the margins he infodumps about his own life story, which is just as unusual and fascinating as Zampanò's.
House of Leaves is famous for its bizarre nonlinear formatting. I've described it before as "spooky Homestuck", but it has about as much in common with Homestuck as it does with an academic paper.
There's a Wikipedia page for the book here, a TvTropes page here, and a subreddit here. Be careful, and watch out for the minotaur!
My Thoughts?
This is the kind of book that sticks with you after you read it, and I wanted to be able to get out all of my thoughts on it somewhere. In fact, that's kind of why I made a page for House of Leaves on my website in the first place.
WARNING: This whole section contains spoilers for House of Leaves, and fan theories that don't make any sense unless you've already read the book. I want people to be able to read the entire book on their own first and come up with their own thoughts about it, instead of letting my stupider thoughts color their perception while they're reading it. I can't tell you what to do, but I'd prefer if you didn't click on these until you've finished House of Leaves yourself.
What I think happened:
- My boring obvious interpretation is that I don't think The Navidson Record was ever a real movie. The author Jorge Luis Borges wrote short stories that were reviews of imaginary books. Like Zampanò, he also became blind later in his life. I think that Zampanò was inspired by Borges and wanted to create a similar work of fiction, so he made up The Navidson Record.
- If The Navidson Record was a real movie, why couldn't Johnny find any evidence of its existence? Why did none of the real-life critics quoted on it have no memory of ever saying those things? This is why I think Zampanò made it up.
- It's also possible that the movie is real, but only in a parallel universe. Maybe Zampanò is a traveller from that other universe, who came to Johnny's universe to get away from the multidimensional house. Or maybe Zampanò's blindness gave him some sort of psychic "sixth sense" which let him peek into the other universe. This is fun to speculate about.
- Or it’s real, and it existed in this universe, but somehow everyone who ever knew about forgot about it existed, and so did all the physical evidence of it. Maybe the house doesn’t like people knowing about its existence, and so it used its vanishing powers to make everyone’s memories of The Navidson Record gradually disappear. Zampanò was one of the few people who remembered it, and tried to write it all down so it wouldn't be forgotten for good.
Hence why he died, and why Johnny thought something was out to get him. They were both being hunted by the minotaur. This is also fun to speculate about, but I don’t think it’s very likely.
- Obviously, this would also mean that the house doesn't really exist
, and the minotaur probably isn't real either. Johnny went insane because of his family history of mental illness. The only thing out to get him was his own mind. This is probably part of why the book implies that Johnny is the minotaur.
- A slightly different theory which I think makes less sense is that Zampanò was mentally ill and hallucinated The Navidson Record. I don't think this makes sense. I’ve never had hallucinations before, but my dreams are generally full of plot holes and logical inconsistencies. And when Johnny describes his own hallucinations, he describes it like, "Suddenly, I was hit by a car! But actually it was a tree. But there wasn't a tree, and I was fine". Zampanò's manuscript doesn't have any of that. It's too internally consistent to be hallucinated.
- Maybe it was partially inspired by Zampanò's hallucinations and/or dreams, but he was still lucid enough to be able to adapt it into a consistent story.
- Appendix III in the remastered version of House of Leaves contains a frame from “Exploration 4”. Some claim this is evidence that The Navidson Record really did exist at some point. However, there is a scene in the book where Johnny discovers that his in-universe publication of Zampanò's manuscript has gained its own fandom, with one fan having written a song based off of it. I believe that the “Exploration 4” frame is a fan-made recreation, and that the other pieces in Appendix III are also in-universe fanart.
- My less boring (but still kinda obvious) interpretation is that the house is real, and The Navidson Record is a documentary and not a work of fiction. (By which I mean that The Navidson Record is a true story within the fictional universe of Zampanò's manuscript, and not a hoax created by Will Navidson.)
- If it wasn’t real, how did Holloway Roberts, Jed Leeder, and Tom Navidson die? How did Will Navidson lose his arm and the skin on his face? Did all those people just somehow happen to be involved in a terrible accident right after they were done filming? Why didn’t anyone else involved with the film eventually come forward to say that it was all a hoax?
- The house is real, but what is it? Historical and geological data suggests that it is as old as the planet itself. Navidson comes to believe that the house is God. Does that mean that God is evil?
- Sometimes the house takes on an antagonistic role, forcing the people in it to become lost in its labyrinth. But sometimes it also seems to be trying to help them find each other again. I mean, what are the odds that Navidson ended up finding Wax and Jed, and Karen ended up finding Navidson? Maybe the house has two personalities, one that is “good” and one that is “evil”. Or maybe it just likes fucking with people.
- It’s an eldritch abomination. As if calling something incomprehensible is an “eldritch abomination” actually explains anything.
If the house is real, is the minotaur real? If it is, it isn’t a physical creature. Holloway thought that there was a physical monster inside the house, and his obsession with it made him insane and violent, ironically becoming the monster himself. I don’t think the minotaur exists as something independent from the house. I think the minotaur is the house.
Or maybe people who go inside the house become the minotaurs?
What I don't think happened:
- There’s a theory that Johnny isn’t even real, and is just the imagination of Pelafina.
The story that Johnny remembers about the baby who died in the hospital, is actually about him. Pelafina couldn’t accept that her son had died, and came up with House of Leaves as a way to imagine what he would have grown up to be like if he survived. I think this is fun to speculate about, but it doesn’t really make sense.
- House of Leaves starts with Johnny explaining how he discovered Zampanò's manuscript, and doesn’t get into the details of his childhood until later on. The entirety of Zampanò's manuscript would also have to be part of Pelafina’s imagination. Pelafina must be very easily distracted for half of her fantasy about Johnny to end up being some random unrelated shit about the Navidsons and their spooky house.
- Maybe Pelafina is Johnny, and she was the one who found the manuscript in Zampanò's apartment and edited it. Did Pelafina also work in a tattoo parlor and have a friend named Lude, before she got evicted from her apartment and had to move to the Whalestoe institute?
- Johnny has lots of sex with women. Does this mean Pelafina is a lesbian?
- Or Johnny is transgender, and “Pelafina” is his deadname. He named himself after his own dead baby, and then when he went insane, he started believing he was his own dead baby.
- Or Pelafina is a system and Johnny is her alter.
- Maybe the Navidsons are also an allegory for the family Pelafina wishes she could have had, and the house represents her mental illness and how trapped the Whalestoe institute makes her feel.
- From what we find out about Johnny’s life, he doesn’t seem to have it very good. He has one friend, no hobbies, is addicted to drugs, and becomes homeless halfway through the book. He also claims to have a lot of sex, and describes his sex life in very graphic detail. If I was Pelafina, I would want to imagine a better life for my son than that. And I would definitely not be fantasizing about my dead baby’s imaginary sex life in such detail.
- Maybe Pelafina is just a very pessimistic person, and her mental illness causes her to to focus on only the worst possible outcomes of situations.
- A slightly different theory which I think makes more sense is that Johnny is actually some sort of sentient ghost/tulpa that Pelafina brought to life with the power of her imagination. I know this theory sounds way crazier, but at least it’s more internally consistent than the other one.
- After Pelafina died, he had nobody to imagine him, so he gradually began to run out of “spirit energy” or whatever was keeping him alive. This emptiness inside him is what caused him to fall into drug addiction and mental illness. After publishing The Navidson Record, he finally ceased to exist.
We know that Johnny is implied to be the minotaur, and the minotaur is implied to not be a physical being. So if Johnny is some sort of magical spirit being that Pelafina created, did Pelafina just take the minotaur and turn it into Johnny? Or maybe after Johnny went insane, instead of ceasing to exist, he became the minotaur.- Maybe Johnny is the same kind of being that Lain is in Serial Experiments Lain, but instead of being “God of the Wired”, he’s a god of books and academia.
- There’s another theory that Will Navidson died in the house during Exploration #5 in Zampanò's original manuscript. The ending where Karen rescues Navidson and the house dissolves around them was written by Johnny. After having made up the story about his two doctor friends and the yellow pills, he was disappointed that he couldn’t give himself a happy ending, so he gave Navidson one. When I first heard this theory, it really stuck with me, but after thinking about it for more than two seconds I realized that it doesn’t make any sense. Because if Navidson died in the house, who made The Navidson Record?
- Maybe Navidson had already finished most of The Navidson Record before Exploration #5, but Karen and Billy Reston put the final touches together after he died.
- It says earlier in the book that exactly three people died in the house: Holloway, Wax, and Tom. If Will Navidson had died, that would have been four people. Johnny would have had to go back and edit this part of the manuscript, as well as every other part that implied his death.
- There’s another other theory that Zampanò is Johnny’s dad. If this is real, then Zampanò is a fucking dick for faking his death and abandoning his son. I’m not even going to entertain this theory. Fuck you.
What happened to Johnny:
- I really want Johnny to be okay after he finally finished editing and publishing his book. I cried near the end because I felt so bad for him. I wanted to hold him and make everything all right.
- House of Leaves is a bestselling book, making my decision to mention it on a “nonexistent fandom” website seems frivolous. If it made anywhere near as much money in Johnny’s universe as it did in real life, he was probably able to get his life back on track, make some new friends, see a therapist, and even buy his own house. At least, this is what I’m choosing to believe.
- One of the editors’ notes in House of Leaves suggests that he mysteriously disappeared after the book was published. Where did he go?
- He didn’t go anywhere, he just decided to retire into obscurity like Bill Watterson. “Johnny Truant” was just a pen name he used for publishing House of Leaves. After the book was published, he didn’t need to use that name anymore, so “Johnny Truant” disappeared.
- His mental health got worse and worse until he couldn’t take it anymore and committed suicide. His dedication to finishing the book was his only reason to keep living, so once it was over, so was he.
- He went missing, but only temporarily, like Kanye West.
- He went back to wandering the streets of Virginia, until he finally found the house (or did the house find him?). He went inside and disappeared.
The minotaur got him.
