Mark Z. Danielewski, House of Leaves

Katharine Cox (Bournemouth University)

The Literary Encyclopedia. Volume 3.2.4: American (US) Writing and Culture: Postwar and Contemporary, 1945-present.
Vol. editors: Sofia Ahlberg (Uppsala University), Patrick Chura (University of Akron), Emory Elliott (University of California, Riverside), Dale Enggass (University of Utah), Christopher Hugh Gair (University of Glasgow), Matthew Hofer (University of New Mexico), Stephen E. Meats (Pittsburg State University), Kerry Myler (Birmingham Newman University), Justin Parks (UiT - The Arctic University of Norway), Nick Selby (University of East Anglia)

Dates

First circulation or publication 2000

Places

Canada (Country of Origin)

Genres and Modes

Metafiction
Novel

Resources

Save to Bookshelf

Danielewski’s debut novel has been lauded for its panache, scope and audacity; praise which climaxed in Brett Easton Ellis’s effusive review that elevated Danielewski’s work above the achievements of Pynchon, Ballard, King and Foster Wallace. The text creates an excess of authorial and editorial comment that results in a pastiche of narrative authority. Footnotes dance

through

pages, are reversed and inverted, in a manner which serves to undermine the intended clarity and accessibility such academic mechanisms traditionally revere. The narrative play between different voices is intricately managed by the typesetting. Major characters, like Zampanò, Johnny Truant, the editors and Pelafina, are each allocated different font styles both as a way of differentiating between their…

Please log in to consult the article in its entirety. If you are a member (student of staff) of a subscribing institution (see List), you should be able to access the LE on campus directly (without the need to log in), and off-campus either via the institutional log in we offer, or via your institution's remote access facilities, or by creating a personal user account with your institutional email address. If you are not a member of a subscribing institution, you will need to purchase a personal subscription. For more information on how to subscribe as an individual user, please see under Individual Subcriptions.

1376 words

Citation: Cox, Katharine. "House of Leaves". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 16 April 2007 [https://www.litencyc.com/php/sworks.php?rec=true&UID=21636, accessed 23 November 2024.]

Mark Z. Danielewski, House of Leaves

Dates

Places

Genres and Modes

Resources

Save this article

Leave Feedback