Read Online House of Leaves by Mark Z. Danielewski - Free Book Online
Authors: Mark Z. Danielewski
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time I saw it, I mean when I discovered what was inside, it appalled me. Like I was staring at the old guy’s corpse. Now it’s just a trunk. Of course, I also remember thinking I was going to toss it by the end of the week. That was before I started reading. Long before I began putting it all together.
You know this is still the simple answer.
I guess the complicated one I don’t feel like getting into.]
Homer’s rival calls him a coward and orders him to get moving because the powers above have taken a personal interest in his salvation.
For hell’s cartographer, the answer is mildly satisfying. For Navidson, however, there is no answer at all. During “ Exploration #4 ” he even asks aloud, “How the fuck did I end up here?” The house responds with resounding silence. No divine attention. Not even an amaurotic guide.
Some have suggested that the horrors Navidson encountered in that house were merely manifestations of his own troubled psyche. Dr. Iben Van Pollit in his book The incident claims the entire house is a physical incarnation of Navidson’s psychological pain: “I often wonder how things might have turned out if Will Navidson had, how shall we say, done a little bit of house cleaning.” [26—Regrettably, Pollit’s proclivity to pun and write jokes frequently detracts from his otherwise lucid analysis. The Incident (Chicago: Adlai Publishing, 1995), p. 108, is a remarkable example of brilliant scholarship and exemplary synthesis of research and thought. There are also some pretty good illustrations. Unfortunately almost everything he concludes is wrong.]
While Pollit is not alone in asserting that Navidson’s psychology profoundly influenced the nature of those rooms and hallways, few believe it conjured up that place. The reason is simple: Navidson was not the first to live in the house and encounter its peril. As the Navidsons’ real estate agent Alicia Rosenbaum eventually revealed, the house on Ash Tree Lane has had more than a few occupants, approximately . 37 owners every year, most of whom were traumatized in some way. Considering the house was supposedly built back in 1720, quite a few people have slept and suffered within those walls. If the house were indeed the product of psychological agonies, it would have to be the collective product of every inhabitant’s agonies.
It is no great coincidence then that eventually someone with a camera and a zest for the dangerous would show up at this Mead Hall and confront the terror at the door. Fortunately for audiences everywhere, that someone possessed extraordinary visual talents.
Navidson’s troubles may not have created the house but they did ultimately shape the way he faced it, Navidson’s childhood was fairly bleak. His father was a St. Louis salesman who worked for a string of large electronics corporations, shuttling his family around the mid-west every two or three years. He was also an alcoholic and prone toward violent outbursts or disappearing for long periods of time. [27—Michelle Nadine Goetz recalls how on one occasion Navidson’s father climbed onto the hood of the family’s recently purchased car, used a thermos to crack up the windshield, then marched back into the kitchen, picked up a pan full of sizzling pork chops and threw it against the wall. (See the Goetz interview published in The Denver Post, May 14. 1986, B-4). Terry Borowska, who used to babysit both brothers, remembers how every so often Navidson’s father would vanish, sometimes for up to five weeks at a time, without telling his family where he was going or when he might return. Inevitably when he did come back—typically after midnight, or early in the morning, sitting in his truck, waiting for them to wake up since he had either left his key or lost it—there would be a few days of warmth and reconciliation. Eventually though, Tony Navidson would return to his own moods and his own needs, forcing Will and
You know this is still the simple answer.
I guess the complicated one I don’t feel like getting into.]
Homer’s rival calls him a coward and orders him to get moving because the powers above have taken a personal interest in his salvation.
For hell’s cartographer, the answer is mildly satisfying. For Navidson, however, there is no answer at all. During “ Exploration #4 ” he even asks aloud, “How the fuck did I end up here?” The house responds with resounding silence. No divine attention. Not even an amaurotic guide.
Some have suggested that the horrors Navidson encountered in that house were merely manifestations of his own troubled psyche. Dr. Iben Van Pollit in his book The incident claims the entire house is a physical incarnation of Navidson’s psychological pain: “I often wonder how things might have turned out if Will Navidson had, how shall we say, done a little bit of house cleaning.” [26—Regrettably, Pollit’s proclivity to pun and write jokes frequently detracts from his otherwise lucid analysis. The Incident (Chicago: Adlai Publishing, 1995), p. 108, is a remarkable example of brilliant scholarship and exemplary synthesis of research and thought. There are also some pretty good illustrations. Unfortunately almost everything he concludes is wrong.]
While Pollit is not alone in asserting that Navidson’s psychology profoundly influenced the nature of those rooms and hallways, few believe it conjured up that place. The reason is simple: Navidson was not the first to live in the house and encounter its peril. As the Navidsons’ real estate agent Alicia Rosenbaum eventually revealed, the house on Ash Tree Lane has had more than a few occupants, approximately . 37 owners every year, most of whom were traumatized in some way. Considering the house was supposedly built back in 1720, quite a few people have slept and suffered within those walls. If the house were indeed the product of psychological agonies, it would have to be the collective product of every inhabitant’s agonies.
It is no great coincidence then that eventually someone with a camera and a zest for the dangerous would show up at this Mead Hall and confront the terror at the door. Fortunately for audiences everywhere, that someone possessed extraordinary visual talents.
Navidson’s troubles may not have created the house but they did ultimately shape the way he faced it, Navidson’s childhood was fairly bleak. His father was a St. Louis salesman who worked for a string of large electronics corporations, shuttling his family around the mid-west every two or three years. He was also an alcoholic and prone toward violent outbursts or disappearing for long periods of time. [27—Michelle Nadine Goetz recalls how on one occasion Navidson’s father climbed onto the hood of the family’s recently purchased car, used a thermos to crack up the windshield, then marched back into the kitchen, picked up a pan full of sizzling pork chops and threw it against the wall. (See the Goetz interview published in The Denver Post, May 14. 1986, B-4). Terry Borowska, who used to babysit both brothers, remembers how every so often Navidson’s father would vanish, sometimes for up to five weeks at a time, without telling his family where he was going or when he might return. Inevitably when he did come back—typically after midnight, or early in the morning, sitting in his truck, waiting for them to wake up since he had either left his key or lost it—there would be a few days of warmth and reconciliation. Eventually though, Tony Navidson would return to his own moods and his own needs, forcing Will and
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