Live tweeting House of Leaves ITT. Spoilers. https://twitter.com/Moonsoother/status/1249068647949012992

We have liftoff. A footnote about a water heater written by someone other than the primary author just took over for 4 pages.

I am wondering if the director of Paranormal Activity read this.

Frankly so far this is reading like a proto-SCP article and I'm here for it

This is how the foreshadowing feels so far. https://twitter.com/puppetmotel/status/1249199170700918784?s=20

Might be encountering some "Seinfeld isnt funny" syndrome noticing all these common elements with other m, later works, that were probably partially made popular by this work to begin with

I took a break to eat dinner after getting through the introduction. During the meal the power went off for a quarter second, then everything returned to normal. I'm sure it's nothing.

If this whole chapter talks about echos without touching on the subject of doppelgangers I'm going to be bummed

Just as the dense exploration of echolocation goes on so long that you start to trust the earlier footnote about the curator expecting you to skim sometimes, they start dropping in multi-page non-digetic footnotes next to the lecture that up the insanity considerably.

Useful fact if you're ever lost in the pitch dark!

Footnote 65 there is about how the curator of the text fell in love with a stripper named "thumper" 4 months ago, though they've barely spoken. 4 pages that end with the footnote itself suggesting it's all been "another hopeless digression".

The final sentence of the footnote being "perhaps when I'm finished I'll remember what I hoped to say in the first place" which to me implies this entire work is an act of digression while circling around something unsayable. Feeling the elephant. This could go Gnomon on me.

"The Navidson Record"

Just finished appendix 2 section e (pages 586-644). and I'm gonna recap for a bit before I go to bed. I am only at the start of chapter 6 but was directed to section e if I wanted to read the letters sent by the curator's mother during her stay in a mental institution.

Section E difficult for me personally because I also have a at times mentally unwell mother who at turns tries to burden me with the weight of her own unhappiness/madness, and who I in return I chose not to burden with details of my life because shes incapable meaningful sympathy

I related to having the bond of motherhood used as a cudgel to try to beat information or correspondence out of an unwilling party. I chafe when all my mother wants to talk about is when I was a child and more dependent on her and easily controlled

She used to read "I'll like you for always" growing up and the final line of the poem the mother reads to her son in that book is "as long as im living my baby you'll be" which at a young age sounded like a sweet sentiment but now sounds like a threat of long hell as unseen adult

Other clues to be gained from today's reading: that very first 4 page footnote digression I mentioned played a best trick st the end that revealed that the curator leaving the footnote had altered the body text itself to allow himself the excuse to do it

This tells us that the curator is making unmarked changes to the document in service of himself, a detail I took note of and have been keeping an eye out for.

So what does it mean that both Karen from the body text and the mother both share a historical anecdote about teaching themselves to smile in the mirror when they were younger?

What does it mean that the "5 min" video, first sign of Davidson, appears one year after her death?

I can see why the curator would be drawn to a story about a house that keeps growing in size and contains endless frightening hollowness, might strike a cord with him as he very apparently containes some of his own hollowness. But to what extent is he doctoring the story?

GN

(I am predicting and eagerly awaiting some sort of "fourth voice" to appear, probably in the footnotes)

(The idea of a cursed expanding house fits the wandering, digressive, loquacious style of the work so far. At times reminding me of The Gone Away World's long digressions.)

(But in the case of house of leaves I doubt these are "true" digressions and I'm just being fed pieces of a whole that has yet to come together)

(Because when a author goes out of his way to explicitly tell you a long digression doesn't mean anything, he is lying to you do not trust him)

(Bjork's ditty about how the TV is a million screens instead of one and that confuses the mind into not paying attention to the whole is perhaps applicable to this as yet fractured narrative. But you shouldn't let poets lie to you)

I'm early on in the book but before I continue I want to point out two works I love that its reminding me of, so far. Partial spoilers ahead for THE BEGINNERS GUIDE and GNOMON, both of which I feel are better enjoyed going in knowing as little as possible.

THE BEGGINERS GUIDE walks in the footsteps of metaliterature before it. Davey shares the unpublished, unfinished work of an acquaintance, coda, for (reason). Absent any commentary of coda, Davey takes us on a tour of codas work and tells us what codas work means to him.

Over time in becomes clear that davey doesn't actually know coda and may be reading something into the work that coda didnt intend, making assumptions about coda themselves. More concerningly, davey begins making more and more overt edits to codas work in order to show us things

Coda meant to be hidden or to make us play codas game Davey's way instead of the way coda intended (breaking infinite loops to add an "ending" for example). how much, exactly, of this experience has davey edited, and how does coda feel about those changes?

Ultimately coda matters little, the crux of GUIDE is watching Davey foist his assumptions on the artwork and then transgress the art to try to learn more about the artist, and to seek something that that was never meant to be there. Codas unfinished work is a vehicle for Davey.

GNOMON appears to be 5 wildly disparate stories but it becomes clear that each story is connected and echos. the work offers the idea that if you hold all 5 in your mind together it will point you to a separate 6th thing/idea: GNOMON. All real. None real. Recursive self-support.

Previous thoughts on BEGGINER'S GUIDE. This concludes your scheduled interruption.

https://twitter.com/Moonsoother/status/1225318512270270464?s=20

I read through like 3/4ths of People Of Paper once because a girl I liked gave it to me but I gave up on it.

You look tired. Find a way to watch "Land of Books —Nothing Is Written!" Kinos journey episode.

It took me this long to realize this this thread is a PERFECT project for this book because I get to write my OWN insane marginalia and footnotes! Its practically an exercise! #houseofleaves