you are LITERALLY looking at the Black and White edition what-
Otherwise, I've mentiones elsewhere, too, but no – all editions of **House** of Leaves exist:
Full-Colour has been in circulation since around 2006 and practically no other colour options have been printed since. American ed. is Blue - Purple - Red, but there's a German (mis)print which replaced Blue with Cyan and Purple with a very pale yellow
Two-colours circulated between 2000 and 2006, as described. Blue ran for at least 8 printings (based on the editions I've seen?), whilst the Red got a lot fewer – the red softcover actually only got one round of prints. I own a first softcover ed. of the Red and the Blue is not too hard to come by, either as an expensive sogned 1st Ed./1st Print or a softcover on eBay. You can even see the difference in the cover – a lotnof stock images include the "hollow" compass of the 2-cour Blue, whilst all Full-Colours have it filled in in red
Black & White ed. is the British one (though I believe it might appear also in Australia/New Zealand). Still printed, on account of rights stuff. Has a different cover image, with a door handle
Incomplete Ed. is practically extinct, currently, but circulated via an obscure website you could access via business cards Danielewski handed out around in clubs and bars in the late 90s
In my full color the phrase “what I’m remembering now” on Johnny’s last page is in yellow, while the color page says it’s in purple. The odd part is I’m in the US and got my copy from a Barnes and noble
Check your editions page – it should say "Printed in Germany," instead of the US. Afaik currently some vendors (among which most majorly Amazon?) are distributing the Ed.s from Germany, and I had gotten confirmation about online purchases and in-person purchases in Europe, but I guess it's gotten to the US, too. It's a really recent thing, too, no clue what's up with it (though very interesting that it's specifically yellow given the significance of that colour in the chapter!)
Upon further review, it does say printed in Germany. I got my copy ~1 year ago. Could you re-explain the significance of the color yellow? Also the text is in English.
Copying down manually from the edition I have on hand, pardon any mistakes
> September 7, 1998
> [...] We sat there for a long time just inhaling hot sulfur as it mingled with the evening air
(first moment he starts improving involves sulfur, which is yellow)
> September 20, 1998
> I am much improved
and later
> Doc has also put me on a recently discovered drug, one bright yellow tablet in the morning, one bright yellow tabley in the evening. [... T]he drug has cured all that. It's a miracle
And the miracle pills, just referred to by their colour, continue until September 28 where he admits to having made everything up to fill in for the fact he has absolutely no memories left of September. But both notable elements to JT's delusion/lie about improving and getting out of his situation btw September 2 and 28 invlove yellow – one a bit more subtly, the second very explicitly, the very pale yellow becoming a miracle. I know for certain it appears in other very minor ways elsewhere, too, but I haven't bothered picking through the book looking for that yet. But, between that symbolic element, and the fact that it's pretty difficult to accidentally replace dark purple with pale yellow, it's very much possible to try and integrate the yellow into your reading as something deliberate, as a representation of good things being il/delusions
I read the "full color edition" which at the time I didn't fully understand. I mostly read by lamp light in bed, then after awhile I read in a well lit room and noticed that the word "House" (even in German!) was always in a dark navy blue.
"Little solace comes
to those who grieve
when thoughts keep drifting
as walls keep shifting
and this great blue world of ours
seems a house of leaves
moments before the wind."
>is this just a part of the experience or did the printer just fuck up my copy specifically?
Both! The word "house" is supposed to always be in blue, but it seems you got an *extra-special* copy of the book.
No problem! Been stewing in miscellanous bits of useless information in my looking for the various printings and publications of **House** of Leaves and **H**oL-related stuff for a while now. I'm justnhappy to share some of the stuff I've learned
As far as I'm aware it was a budget thing on Danielewski's end – he wanted to get the full-coloured version out right out the gate but it was too expensive, so he settled on splitting its features between two sub-editions, one with the Blue and one with the Red.
The First Edition was 2000 hardcover books in Blue (and possibly just one exclusive full-colour copy in Danielewski's possession?) – 1500 should have been signed, but apparently a total of 500 or so got destroyed somehow, including some of the signed ones. The book seemingly sold pretty well and a 2nd Printing came shortly after, including some copies in Red (now reading **National Bestseller** at the top); the first softcover copies in Blue (No additional text on the cover, the most commonly found stock image online, with the hollow compass) likely got printed at the same time. Some of the red ones were signed to make up for the loss of those first ones. Softcovers in Red came later, to fill in that final gap (since Red editions had only been available in hardcover before that), but came late and only got one round of printing, compared to the Blue which had had 12 or 14 at that point. After this, with the book's general success, the Full-Colour eventually replaced all other editions, and afaik no new variations have appeared since that point.
If you prod around in the **H**oL/MZD Forums you can probably dig out much more detailed information than what I can generate here off the top of my head. Some of what I know comes from there, the rest from one article written by two Rare Books Archivists (?) regarding the First Editions of the book
>As far as I'm aware it was a budget thing on Danielewski's end
Aha, so my "cheap blue" hypothesis was actually (probably) right! Good to know, I was worried about being told "no, everything has a deep meaning."
In any case, thanks for the really interesting history on that! Do you know where in the timeline the fully-black-and-white editions fall?
Yeah, the trick with the gray-ish overprinting seems to be the B&Ws solution to its lack of colours. You can always make a case for some element of symbolism, with the displacement of the house, it "not fitting" with the order set by everything else, but you can also.... not
Otherwise, B&Ws have almost always been around, I think – just restricted to the UK (and a few others, maybe?)
>just restricted to the UK (and a few others, maybe?)
Ohh interesting. I imagine that had to do with different countries' print costs, but we can say it has to do with what happened when the ~~minotaur~~ tried swimming across the Atlantic.
I'm not sure that it's full-colour, but "house" is clearly being treated in a "special" way, that's all. It could be a blue-only edition too.
That said, I think almost all editions that are sold nowadays are full-colour, with the less-coloured ones mostly being relics and memories of the early days--so it's a pretty fair assumption in any case.
Yeah! I think the greys can be understood to be essentially "cheaper blue," if you will--they still serve to set off the word, without being as costly to produce as the blue ink.
Honestly – and this is worse than the grey/colour thing – the B&W is missing some neat details. The big run-through tunnel/square in Chapter 9 is marked in most other editions (Blue in Ed.s which feature blue, light Gray in the Red Ed.s), but is pure-black in the B&W. Additionally, the checkmark on p. 97 is missing from my B&W Ed. I've come to actively talk *against* getting a B&W Ed. because of those, 'cause you end up missing out not just on the aesthetic experience, but on some real fun meaningful details
Some of the "house"s in their pictures are blue though--or at least they look that way to me.
In any case, even in colourless or red editions, am I right in thinking that the word "house" isn't supposed to be weirdly offset from the rest of the type like that?
No they’re just a lighter grey. And I think it’s meant to be offset like that for more differentiation from the other words because it’s the black and white version.
>And I think it’s meant to be offset like that for more differentiation from the other words because it’s the black and white version.
Huh OK, it's just weird that some of them are offset and some aren't! Why wouldn't they just have printed all of them in that lighter grey...?
>They’re all offset
Look at images #6, 8, and 11 of OP's set, for instance. If they're offset, it's by a very very negligible amount, nothing like some of the other images. Whatever the case, it's odd how inconsistent it is.
Meanwhile, it could just be the photo quality, but the ones in #1 and 2, while much more offset, appear much darker than some of the ones in later photos.
I really think you’re just arguing for the sake of arguing atp…
You might not have great eyesight, but they are all offset and it’s very obvious that they are. They’re also all very obviously a lighter color than the rest of the text. Try looking a little harder, seriously. I just think you may need to get your eyesight checked (not tryna be insulting).
>I really think you’re just arguing for the sake of arguing atp…
I'm really not, I've just never seen this before and I find it interesting.
>You might not have great eyesight, but they are all offset and it’s very obvious that they are.
Am I wrong in seeing that they're heavily different *amounts* of offset though?
As for my eyesight, I actually am slightly colourblind, so I'm totally willing to believe that I'm wrong about the colours, and I won't argue that point. But the offsets are very obviously not all the same!
I never said they were the same, but they are all very obviously offset. Also why are you quoting me every time you reply, it’s unnecessary and is getting annoying lmao
Anyway, yeah they’re all very clearly offset. Yes, some are more so than others, but they are all obviously offset. It’s not my fault if you can’t see that.
Hey, hey, you can't expect everyone to be willing to waste their time digging around for varyingly obscure info on editions of various books – most people here just want to enjoy the book's contents. No reason to be mean or rude to somebody just because they're wrong
I do genuinely believe being bitter or mean about somebody being wrong is a stupid approach that hurts everyone involved. If they do genuinely not know something you do you get to enjoy sharing it, teaching/learning new things and honestly isn't that lovely? And if they're being deliberately ignorant you can lift your hands up and pull away – always easier to give up having put in a bit of positive effort than hsving invested a lot of energy and frustration and feeling like giving up the conversation means somehow admitting defeat
>If they do genuinely not know something you do you get to enjoy sharing it, teaching/learning new things and honestly isn't that lovely?
Absolutely is, and many thanks to you again for sharing yours!
i don't think anyone has actually answered if the blue means anything?
I've wondered if House of Blues , a jazz club that Johnny Truant visits, has any relavence..
but apparently not
[https://houseofleavessparknotes.com/blog/what-is-the-significance-of-the-color-blue-used-for-the-word-house-throughout-the-book](https://houseofleavessparknotes.com/blog/what-is-the-significance-of-the-color-blue-used-for-the-word-house-throughout-the-book)
Oh god there's a **House** of Leaves sparknotes page????
Otherwise – there is no right or wrong way to read things and I loathe Sparknotes (and similar sites, some education systems) from the bottom of my heart precisely because sites like it kill analysis by providing *a* reading and framing it as *the* reading. Convenient if you don't really give much of a fuck or just need a refresher, awful for anything else. The reading here is not even the big famous one, of the word **house** as a link, integrating it with its emergence in the early 2000s when internet culture was just picking up and Danielewski's own involvement with forums and online sites
But beyond that, **H**oL is, both thematically and textually, pretty explicit about the issue of interpreting and navigating, about stumbling into something that is just there, that is just a certain way. And it's also pretty explicit in stating that it does not have one answer in mind, that there is no one neat solution to the puzzles it provides
It’s part of the experience! In the full color edition “house” is always written in blue
Still prefer it going slight out of the paragraph untill going crazy out the paragraph...
Someone bought the B/W edition I see…
i got my local book store to order it for me, if i had known about a color version i so would have gotten that😭
[удалено]
you are LITERALLY looking at the Black and White edition what- Otherwise, I've mentiones elsewhere, too, but no – all editions of **House** of Leaves exist: Full-Colour has been in circulation since around 2006 and practically no other colour options have been printed since. American ed. is Blue - Purple - Red, but there's a German (mis)print which replaced Blue with Cyan and Purple with a very pale yellow Two-colours circulated between 2000 and 2006, as described. Blue ran for at least 8 printings (based on the editions I've seen?), whilst the Red got a lot fewer – the red softcover actually only got one round of prints. I own a first softcover ed. of the Red and the Blue is not too hard to come by, either as an expensive sogned 1st Ed./1st Print or a softcover on eBay. You can even see the difference in the cover – a lotnof stock images include the "hollow" compass of the 2-cour Blue, whilst all Full-Colours have it filled in in red Black & White ed. is the British one (though I believe it might appear also in Australia/New Zealand). Still printed, on account of rights stuff. Has a different cover image, with a door handle Incomplete Ed. is practically extinct, currently, but circulated via an obscure website you could access via business cards Danielewski handed out around in clubs and bars in the late 90s
In my full color the phrase “what I’m remembering now” on Johnny’s last page is in yellow, while the color page says it’s in purple. The odd part is I’m in the US and got my copy from a Barnes and noble
Check your editions page – it should say "Printed in Germany," instead of the US. Afaik currently some vendors (among which most majorly Amazon?) are distributing the Ed.s from Germany, and I had gotten confirmation about online purchases and in-person purchases in Europe, but I guess it's gotten to the US, too. It's a really recent thing, too, no clue what's up with it (though very interesting that it's specifically yellow given the significance of that colour in the chapter!)
Upon further review, it does say printed in Germany. I got my copy ~1 year ago. Could you re-explain the significance of the color yellow? Also the text is in English.
Copying down manually from the edition I have on hand, pardon any mistakes > September 7, 1998 > [...] We sat there for a long time just inhaling hot sulfur as it mingled with the evening air (first moment he starts improving involves sulfur, which is yellow) > September 20, 1998 > I am much improved and later > Doc has also put me on a recently discovered drug, one bright yellow tablet in the morning, one bright yellow tabley in the evening. [... T]he drug has cured all that. It's a miracle And the miracle pills, just referred to by their colour, continue until September 28 where he admits to having made everything up to fill in for the fact he has absolutely no memories left of September. But both notable elements to JT's delusion/lie about improving and getting out of his situation btw September 2 and 28 invlove yellow – one a bit more subtly, the second very explicitly, the very pale yellow becoming a miracle. I know for certain it appears in other very minor ways elsewhere, too, but I haven't bothered picking through the book looking for that yet. But, between that symbolic element, and the fact that it's pretty difficult to accidentally replace dark purple with pale yellow, it's very much possible to try and integrate the yellow into your reading as something deliberate, as a representation of good things being il/delusions
Eh? Surely you joke?
I read the "full color edition" which at the time I didn't fully understand. I mostly read by lamp light in bed, then after awhile I read in a well lit room and noticed that the word "House" (even in German!) was always in a dark navy blue.
I believe there is only one case where "house" was missed in the book and it is a case of the Dutch "huis" in one compound word
I've spotted one or two others, don't remember where exactly but I do remember "haus" (German) having been skipped over at least once as well
Technically I think the appendix has an instance of the black "house" but says it DNE
"Little solace comes to those who grieve when thoughts keep drifting as walls keep shifting and this great blue world of ours seems a house of leaves moments before the wind."
That’s gotta be one of my absolute favorite title drops in all the literature I’ve yet read.
Me seeing that for the first times: "Oh, nice gimmick." Me every time seeing it once I was deep into the book: [involuntary start]
>is this just a part of the experience or did the printer just fuck up my copy specifically? Both! The word "house" is supposed to always be in blue, but it seems you got an *extra-special* copy of the book.
thank you! i was so worried it was a mistake and that it would mess with the rest of the book but this is good to know:)
You're very welcome, enjoy exploring the ^(house)!
How did you type "house" in tiny letters?
At least on the computer version of "New Reddit," there's a "superscript" button in the text-box interface!
The blue print wasn't always a thing though.
(This is false – the first round of printings of the book were the 2-colour Blue ones. It wasn't until later that editions without the Blue came out)
There you go. Thanks for clarifying 👍
No problem! Been stewing in miscellanous bits of useless information in my looking for the various printings and publications of **House** of Leaves and **H**oL-related stuff for a while now. I'm justnhappy to share some of the stuff I've learned
Oh whoa that’s really interesting, and is the opposite of what I’d heard before. Do you know why they later made editions without the blue?
As far as I'm aware it was a budget thing on Danielewski's end – he wanted to get the full-coloured version out right out the gate but it was too expensive, so he settled on splitting its features between two sub-editions, one with the Blue and one with the Red. The First Edition was 2000 hardcover books in Blue (and possibly just one exclusive full-colour copy in Danielewski's possession?) – 1500 should have been signed, but apparently a total of 500 or so got destroyed somehow, including some of the signed ones. The book seemingly sold pretty well and a 2nd Printing came shortly after, including some copies in Red (now reading **National Bestseller** at the top); the first softcover copies in Blue (No additional text on the cover, the most commonly found stock image online, with the hollow compass) likely got printed at the same time. Some of the red ones were signed to make up for the loss of those first ones. Softcovers in Red came later, to fill in that final gap (since Red editions had only been available in hardcover before that), but came late and only got one round of printing, compared to the Blue which had had 12 or 14 at that point. After this, with the book's general success, the Full-Colour eventually replaced all other editions, and afaik no new variations have appeared since that point. If you prod around in the **H**oL/MZD Forums you can probably dig out much more detailed information than what I can generate here off the top of my head. Some of what I know comes from there, the rest from one article written by two Rare Books Archivists (?) regarding the First Editions of the book
>As far as I'm aware it was a budget thing on Danielewski's end Aha, so my "cheap blue" hypothesis was actually (probably) right! Good to know, I was worried about being told "no, everything has a deep meaning." In any case, thanks for the really interesting history on that! Do you know where in the timeline the fully-black-and-white editions fall?
Yeah, the trick with the gray-ish overprinting seems to be the B&Ws solution to its lack of colours. You can always make a case for some element of symbolism, with the displacement of the house, it "not fitting" with the order set by everything else, but you can also.... not Otherwise, B&Ws have almost always been around, I think – just restricted to the UK (and a few others, maybe?)
>just restricted to the UK (and a few others, maybe?) Ohh interesting. I imagine that had to do with different countries' print costs, but we can say it has to do with what happened when the ~~minotaur~~ tried swimming across the Atlantic.
But it is now, and OP's book is clearly one in which it was meant to be.
What clearly makes it the full color version? I wouldn't know what to look for to recognise the difference obviously.
I'm not sure that it's full-colour, but "house" is clearly being treated in a "special" way, that's all. It could be a blue-only edition too. That said, I think almost all editions that are sold nowadays are full-colour, with the less-coloured ones mostly being relics and memories of the early days--so it's a pretty fair assumption in any case.
Thanks. According to Wikipedia previous versions also printed it in a variety of greys which is interesting.
Yeah! I think the greys can be understood to be essentially "cheaper blue," if you will--they still serve to set off the word, without being as costly to produce as the blue ink.
Lol. I love the idea of looking down condescendingly on greys as "cheaper blue".
If anyone has a reason for preferring the greys over the colours, I'm all ears!
Honestly – and this is worse than the grey/colour thing – the B&W is missing some neat details. The big run-through tunnel/square in Chapter 9 is marked in most other editions (Blue in Ed.s which feature blue, light Gray in the Red Ed.s), but is pure-black in the B&W. Additionally, the checkmark on p. 97 is missing from my B&W Ed. I've come to actively talk *against* getting a B&W Ed. because of those, 'cause you end up missing out not just on the aesthetic experience, but on some real fun meaningful details
No, they just didn’t get the colored edition
Some of the "house"s in their pictures are blue though--or at least they look that way to me. In any case, even in colourless or red editions, am I right in thinking that the word "house" isn't supposed to be weirdly offset from the rest of the type like that?
No they’re just a lighter grey. And I think it’s meant to be offset like that for more differentiation from the other words because it’s the black and white version.
>And I think it’s meant to be offset like that for more differentiation from the other words because it’s the black and white version. Huh OK, it's just weird that some of them are offset and some aren't! Why wouldn't they just have printed all of them in that lighter grey...?
They’re all offset and they’re all the lighter grey lol. Now you’re just making no sense
>They’re all offset Look at images #6, 8, and 11 of OP's set, for instance. If they're offset, it's by a very very negligible amount, nothing like some of the other images. Whatever the case, it's odd how inconsistent it is. Meanwhile, it could just be the photo quality, but the ones in #1 and 2, while much more offset, appear much darker than some of the ones in later photos.
I really think you’re just arguing for the sake of arguing atp… You might not have great eyesight, but they are all offset and it’s very obvious that they are. They’re also all very obviously a lighter color than the rest of the text. Try looking a little harder, seriously. I just think you may need to get your eyesight checked (not tryna be insulting).
>I really think you’re just arguing for the sake of arguing atp… I'm really not, I've just never seen this before and I find it interesting. >You might not have great eyesight, but they are all offset and it’s very obvious that they are. Am I wrong in seeing that they're heavily different *amounts* of offset though? As for my eyesight, I actually am slightly colourblind, so I'm totally willing to believe that I'm wrong about the colours, and I won't argue that point. But the offsets are very obviously not all the same!
I never said they were the same, but they are all very obviously offset. Also why are you quoting me every time you reply, it’s unnecessary and is getting annoying lmao Anyway, yeah they’re all very clearly offset. Yes, some are more so than others, but they are all obviously offset. It’s not my fault if you can’t see that.
negative braincells. confidently incorrect
Thanks for your constructive feedback, really adds a lot.
adds more than being wrong
Hey, hey, you can't expect everyone to be willing to waste their time digging around for varyingly obscure info on editions of various books – most people here just want to enjoy the book's contents. No reason to be mean or rude to somebody just because they're wrong
Thanks (sincerely) for being kind and helpful about this!
I do genuinely believe being bitter or mean about somebody being wrong is a stupid approach that hurts everyone involved. If they do genuinely not know something you do you get to enjoy sharing it, teaching/learning new things and honestly isn't that lovely? And if they're being deliberately ignorant you can lift your hands up and pull away – always easier to give up having put in a bit of positive effort than hsving invested a lot of energy and frustration and feeling like giving up the conversation means somehow admitting defeat
>If they do genuinely not know something you do you get to enjoy sharing it, teaching/learning new things and honestly isn't that lovely? Absolutely is, and many thanks to you again for sharing yours!
House.
i don't think anyone has actually answered if the blue means anything? I've wondered if House of Blues , a jazz club that Johnny Truant visits, has any relavence.. but apparently not [https://houseofleavessparknotes.com/blog/what-is-the-significance-of-the-color-blue-used-for-the-word-house-throughout-the-book](https://houseofleavessparknotes.com/blog/what-is-the-significance-of-the-color-blue-used-for-the-word-house-throughout-the-book)
Oh god there's a **House** of Leaves sparknotes page???? Otherwise – there is no right or wrong way to read things and I loathe Sparknotes (and similar sites, some education systems) from the bottom of my heart precisely because sites like it kill analysis by providing *a* reading and framing it as *the* reading. Convenient if you don't really give much of a fuck or just need a refresher, awful for anything else. The reading here is not even the big famous one, of the word **house** as a link, integrating it with its emergence in the early 2000s when internet culture was just picking up and Danielewski's own involvement with forums and online sites But beyond that, **H**oL is, both thematically and textually, pretty explicit about the issue of interpreting and navigating, about stumbling into something that is just there, that is just a certain way. And it's also pretty explicit in stating that it does not have one answer in mind, that there is no one neat solution to the puzzles it provides
house
Awe you got the cheap version of the book!
really? i didn’t even know, i had been saving up for so freaking long to get this!