Literary Spotlight
On Friday I was going through my bookshelf (Yes I have a bookshelf and yes I can read. Do you really think I kidnap people and make them right down this shit for me? Well, I do do that, but not because I can't read) and realized that I would love to do a literary spotlight.
There are some books that I own that make me breathe differently. Stronger and deeper, and sometimes wetter depending on the emotions that they invoke.
This book made me breathe in with wonder.
I love this book.
It's one of my absolute favorites.
It's fucking brilliant and I wish I'd written it myself, or had it in me to write anything at all like it.
Oh, and it's scary.
House of Leaves by Mark Z Danielewski is one of the most original, visually breathtaking books that I have ever read.
Let me first start off with the actual premise of the book. The book follows (mainly, there are a lot of intricate subplots going on) mainly one family, a husband that works making documentaries, a wife sick of being left at home while her husband goes on location, and their child. The couple has reached a crisis in their marriage and the wife has issued an ultimatum, spend more time at home or we're through. So they buy a home and he tries to ignore his wanderlust.
It's not going too well.
He wants out and she wants to decorate.
Which is when they notice, through measuring for renovations, that the house is larger on the inside than it is on the outside.
Not only that, but the interior measurements change from day to day and moment to moment. A door appears where once there was no door, and before you know it the husband is creating a documentary exploring the basement his house doesn't have that never ends and posesses some strange monster that growls and growls.
When I first began reading this book I thought, Ha, now this isn't half as scary as I thought it would be. Until I put it down. At night. And then tried to walk around the house.
Yeah.
Big mistake.
But not only is the book extraordinarily good, it's creative as all hell.
Every single time the word house appears it is blue. That's right. Blue text amonst a sea of black.
On the pages where the man goes down the endless stairs into the bottomless basement the text goes down with him.
When he goes up, the text goes up.
There are manuscript pages (in the subplots) where the font changes.
There's a whole chapter where the paragraphs are in SOS format.
There's poetry about trees in the shape of a tree, and text boxes within text, words that go in circles and messages upside down.
It's a book that is a painting that is unlike anything else that I've ever read.
Just to make this clear. I don't read underground literature, anything self-published, etc. I like mainstream everything. Mainstream music, mainstream fiction, mainstream movies. Because, if it's not mainstream, then I'll probably think it sucks.
And also, I hate all those people who stop liking an artist once they go mainstream and call them a sellout. It's popular because people like it. Stupid.
So, maybe there's tons of great shit, just like this book out there that I'm missing out on. But the point is this. None of those books are at barnes n noble, so go piss off.
And, read this book. Seriously. It's great.
