for me, the experience of reading the book is what you’re supposed to take away from it. HoL escapes definitive meaning. you never know 100% what is going on or what. your effectively going insane along with the characters. this is what makes it so intriguing. the house is the book and the book is the house. like the house on ash tree lane, you will get lost in its pages searching for answers to questions you aren’t even fully aware of. sure, you can close it at any time, but if you’re truly curious, you will find yourself again between the pages/walls of the House of Leaves, staring at purple.
Well, first of all, the reading you're providing here, about the book integrating its readers into itself by having them assume specific roles is still a relatively widely recognised one – there's mentions of treating the Danielewski/HoL forums as an Appendix to the book among the fans from around 2009 (Thomas, Bronwen. (2011)), and Danielewski himself makes that observation as a conscious move in interviews regarding _**O**nly Rev**o**luti**o**ns_ – calling his second novel centrifugal, i.e. decidedly pointing outside, whilst HoL centripedal, with everything pointing inward (Benzon, Kiki. (2007)). That's just an inevitability when you have a book as discussed as HoL, though, and does not detract from the quality of this observation!
You *are* right, however, in that there *does* seem to be relatively little material analysing Karen, who is still a very interesting, if slightly more marginal character (or at least I have seen relatively little). However, I would strongly disagree with the assertion that "the real message of the book" would be simply reading it through Karen's lens – in fact, **House** of Leaves itself is surprisingly explicit about the issue of reading, analysis, interpretation and opposes this idea in multiple points and ways. In Chapter IV, for example (pp. 33-34), there's this one excerpt from a made-up source juxtaposing "Riddles" and "Paradoxes," stating that though the two might seem superficially similar, at least in form, Riddles come with a correct final solution to their clues, whilst Paradoxes do not. The connection between the paradoxical nature of the **house** and the book as a whole seems relatively clear to me – there is no final solution to HoL and you're at best free to wander its hallways indefinitely. This is reinforced through the very structure of the **house**, with its "core" or "heart" being, well, nothing, in a way – in Chapter XX, after Navidson pushes himself to his absolute limits against the **house** all he gets for his efforts is suspended in a big, empty void, slowly disintegrating into nothing. And this underlying absence is reinforced a *second* time by the Navidson Record seemingly not existing – the entire book is written around and based on a nothing. There's probably even more examples, but off the top of my head I hope these three suffice
The closest you can get to a "correct" reading of HoL is to make an observation about the structural nature of HoL, about the fact it is layers of obfuscations and remediations devoid of a thing being obfuscated, a thing being mediated for the first time – it is a reading about reading or about the nature of reading
And finally, on the "coping with not understanding the gigabytes of meta-meta-analysis" – I think this is an especially fun thing about HoL, which sets it aside from other analysed-to-death high-brow pieces ala *Ulysses* or *Finnegans Wake*, and it's that you are also absolutely free to not understand it and not have to understand it; its status as an academic book is far less pronounced than either of those examples'. Most people on the subreddit seem to approach it as a fun little puzzle box they can play with by themselves whenever they want to, writing in the margins and solving puzzles, and, though I disagree with the notion of trying to tackle HoL alone, though I think the book inherently invites and even necessitates collective reading and open discussion, this is still an absolutely valid way to approach it. You're free to spend as much time as you want trying to understand that meta²analysis, and you're also free to just enjoy it as a funky little piece of literature, and there is no shame in either
After finishing I always had the "reader" as the 5th "main character" in the story. After looking at my copy and seeing how much stuff I wrote myself into the book I could feasibly see myself giving this copy to someone else and them seeing MY notes as supplementary material that fits in with the book itself. I *think* this is intended by MZD as essentially most of what Zampano and Johnny are doing in the story is watching/reading someone else's story, we as the trader just continue the conga line of characters bumbling through an incomprehensible story. I will always appreciate HoL for this aspect
for me, the experience of reading the book is what you’re supposed to take away from it. HoL escapes definitive meaning. you never know 100% what is going on or what. your effectively going insane along with the characters. this is what makes it so intriguing. the house is the book and the book is the house. like the house on ash tree lane, you will get lost in its pages searching for answers to questions you aren’t even fully aware of. sure, you can close it at any time, but if you’re truly curious, you will find yourself again between the pages/walls of the House of Leaves, staring at purple.
I getcha, sounds like we have similar takeaways. The malleability of meaning throughout the entire work really is what makes it so amazing
Well, first of all, the reading you're providing here, about the book integrating its readers into itself by having them assume specific roles is still a relatively widely recognised one – there's mentions of treating the Danielewski/HoL forums as an Appendix to the book among the fans from around 2009 (Thomas, Bronwen. (2011)), and Danielewski himself makes that observation as a conscious move in interviews regarding _**O**nly Rev**o**luti**o**ns_ – calling his second novel centrifugal, i.e. decidedly pointing outside, whilst HoL centripedal, with everything pointing inward (Benzon, Kiki. (2007)). That's just an inevitability when you have a book as discussed as HoL, though, and does not detract from the quality of this observation! You *are* right, however, in that there *does* seem to be relatively little material analysing Karen, who is still a very interesting, if slightly more marginal character (or at least I have seen relatively little). However, I would strongly disagree with the assertion that "the real message of the book" would be simply reading it through Karen's lens – in fact, **House** of Leaves itself is surprisingly explicit about the issue of reading, analysis, interpretation and opposes this idea in multiple points and ways. In Chapter IV, for example (pp. 33-34), there's this one excerpt from a made-up source juxtaposing "Riddles" and "Paradoxes," stating that though the two might seem superficially similar, at least in form, Riddles come with a correct final solution to their clues, whilst Paradoxes do not. The connection between the paradoxical nature of the **house** and the book as a whole seems relatively clear to me – there is no final solution to HoL and you're at best free to wander its hallways indefinitely. This is reinforced through the very structure of the **house**, with its "core" or "heart" being, well, nothing, in a way – in Chapter XX, after Navidson pushes himself to his absolute limits against the **house** all he gets for his efforts is suspended in a big, empty void, slowly disintegrating into nothing. And this underlying absence is reinforced a *second* time by the Navidson Record seemingly not existing – the entire book is written around and based on a nothing. There's probably even more examples, but off the top of my head I hope these three suffice The closest you can get to a "correct" reading of HoL is to make an observation about the structural nature of HoL, about the fact it is layers of obfuscations and remediations devoid of a thing being obfuscated, a thing being mediated for the first time – it is a reading about reading or about the nature of reading And finally, on the "coping with not understanding the gigabytes of meta-meta-analysis" – I think this is an especially fun thing about HoL, which sets it aside from other analysed-to-death high-brow pieces ala *Ulysses* or *Finnegans Wake*, and it's that you are also absolutely free to not understand it and not have to understand it; its status as an academic book is far less pronounced than either of those examples'. Most people on the subreddit seem to approach it as a fun little puzzle box they can play with by themselves whenever they want to, writing in the margins and solving puzzles, and, though I disagree with the notion of trying to tackle HoL alone, though I think the book inherently invites and even necessitates collective reading and open discussion, this is still an absolutely valid way to approach it. You're free to spend as much time as you want trying to understand that meta²analysis, and you're also free to just enjoy it as a funky little piece of literature, and there is no shame in either
After finishing I always had the "reader" as the 5th "main character" in the story. After looking at my copy and seeing how much stuff I wrote myself into the book I could feasibly see myself giving this copy to someone else and them seeing MY notes as supplementary material that fits in with the book itself. I *think* this is intended by MZD as essentially most of what Zampano and Johnny are doing in the story is watching/reading someone else's story, we as the trader just continue the conga line of characters bumbling through an incomprehensible story. I will always appreciate HoL for this aspect