Enjoying the ride for its own sake.
Do you often find yourself rushing to finish a book, impatient for the ending?
Slow down and examine the scenery. Mark Z. Danielewski’s fantastic debut, House of Leaves, has something to remind readers of. In the words of Johnny Truant, annotator to The Navidson Record:
“…one sinking ship after another, in fact that was the conclusion to every single story he told, so that we, his strange audience learned not to wonder about the end but paid more attention to the tale preceding the end…”
House of Leaves is blithely unaware of its own labyrinthine character for the majority of the novel; this little passage provides an exception. We, the readers, are reminded that the soul of a book is in the journey it takes us on, not the destination we arrive at.
Posted in Language, Literature, Philosophy, Psychotic, Writing
