LAYERS OF UNRELIABLE NARRATION AND LABYRINTHINE LAYOUT IN DANIELEWSKI’S HOUSE OF LEAVES

Abstract

Mark Z. Danielewski’s House of Leaves is a multilayered story that employs the unreliable narrator in several ways. Not only does the narrator in the story break the fourth wall, but the novel, as an object, exceeds its function with its labyrinthine format, bridging the gap and crossing over from fiction into the reader’s own reality. Through its complex, layered narrative, the novel is described as belonging to several genres, including horror, tragedy, and even romance. It crosses the boundaries of a work of fiction through the relatability of the authorship through the unfolding of the object of the book. The authorship becomes a co-authorship with the reader themselves, involving them as active participants in the narrative rather than distant observers. Additionally, the layout of the novel serves as part of the narrative, taking a more visual and typographical form, in a step away from traditional forms of (unillustrated) fiction novels. This analysis presents a close reading of House of Leaves to examine the reliability of the narrator(s) and the ways the novel attempts to cross over from being a literary work to the reader's reality as an object in the reality of the reader and in the way the reader becomes an active participant in the novel rather than a passive observer.