If you want to learn how to write academic criticism, forget academics, read House of Leaves. And if you want to learn how to pick academic criticism apart, read House of Leaves.  

In a fairly unusual structure, House of Leaves is set as a bundle of papers written by a recently deceased blind man called Zampano, found by a certain tattoo parlour employee called Johnny Truant. The bundle of papers turns out to be a manuscript of a book-length academic criticism of a film. The catch here is that the film does not exist (even in the world of House of Leaves). 

And yet, Zampano goes on for pages and pages, creating an intricately detailed story of photographer Navy and former model Karen who are documenting their own experiences in the film. Navy and Karen have moved to a new house in the countryside so that they can focus on themselves and their children. But they have no idea that the house has a will of its own. 

Through most of the story the writer brings on several other academic researchers (some real, some made up), cites them, and pokes and prods them to find out the meaning of the said film. (As you read it, the academic in you grows and grows 

in confidence, and you realise that you can do this too, if this is what is required. Why didn’t your university professors explain it to you like this before?) 

Except that after a while, the criticism goes in circles, arriving nowhere—like most academic criticism, the writer seems to imply. “The writer is defensive,” I could say “and so that no one can poke fun at his academic criticism mumbo jumbo that passes as avant-garde style, he poked fun at himself.” Yes, I could say that, and fall right into his trap, where he pokes fun at exactly such people who look for hidden meanings, reflections of the writer’s personality, and patterns and motives that writers had probably never intended, in a work of fiction. 

And yet, this is one book that opens itself up so easily to exactly such varied interpretations, to layers and layers of meaning. Exactly the kind of thing Danielewskilaughs at (I imagine) are now all over the internet: book groups and discussion forums alive with the questions of “What does the frame story mean and how is it connected to the main story?”, “does Johnny Truant even exist, since the publishers have never seen him?”, “why are the chapters on Joseph and Esau erased, and is Navy Joseph or Esau?”, “who or what does the Minotaur symbolise (I, for one, am of the opinion that the frame-writer Johnny Truant is the Minotaur, since he was treated badly by his stepfather as the Minotaur was, but disagreed on this point with a very well read young man who believed the Minotaur is a red herring since it is all crossed out anyways. But then again, why cross out something so obviously, and then point to the crossing out, if it does not have meaning?).” 

Whatever Danielewski warns you against in the book, you become, even against your will. (Or maybe he warns nothing of that sort and the mockery in his tone is all my seeing). And that tells you something about the powerful attraction of the story, despite its problematic and often contradictory possible interpretations. The book is also problematic about its genre: some have called it horror, some have called it gothic, though it has very little of the actual blood and gore that usually characterise both these genres. Others have called this story a drama, which is perhaps the easiest classification since it can apply to most books. Still others have called it a love story; it is up to the reader to decide where to put it. For me, this story, for once, is the “complete book” that I have been looking for, though for the life of me I could not tell you why because it leaves so many questions unanswered and so many threads untied. Maybe because I believe this book finally does what experimental writers have been trying to do for ages: create a coherent, readable, exciting, story out of literary experiments. 

Which brings me to what some people would say is its most interesting part: its experiments with structure. Experimenters of an earlier generation, you felt, were experimenting just for the sake of experiments. One hardly reads old experimental classics these days since their structure seems to compromise on their content. But here you find that Danielewski creates meaning out of every experiment. When Navy and his gang climb stairs, the text ascends with them, when they get lost in a maze, you will be turning the pages to find out the right order of the text. And when they come across windows that suddenly transport them to a different place, you will find texts placed in little boxes across several pages. Reading these pages is almost a physical exercise as much as a visual one, and you will move along with the characters. Not to forget the footnotes, so long they could make an entire novel by themselves. Sometimes the main text and the footnotes stretch for pages in parallel, leaving you to make the difficult choice of which you want to read. 

You could say the house represents Navy’s inner tumults—it gets as dangerous as his mood, or you could say it reflects the relationship between Navy and Karen, it grows as they grow apart and shrinks as they get closer. You could even say the whole manuscript is a foil for the real story hidden in Johnny Truant’s rants that frame it—and you will find that it has all been said before in fan forums, which you are bound to trawl after you finish the book. You cannot help but admire the writer’s confidence as he creates all these tricks and leads the willing reader through the noose, and close the book with the verdict that it is nothing less than bewitching. 

As for me, I am still trying to figure out what exactly the tick on the bottom left corner is doing in the story of Navy and Karen, when it is meant to be a secret symbol between Johnny Truant and his mother, and what is the significance of the fact that the old man who wrote an entire book around the ideas of light and shadow was blind. And what’s with his damned cats anyways?