Alex Weller’s Reviews > House of Leaves > Status Update

Two days after Navidson called Tom, Tom arrives from Massachusetts. The two have not spoken in eight years because of Tom's jealousy at Navidson's success. And now Navidson is gonna show him ... this.

To Karen's chagrin, Navidson obsesses over this physical impossibility. The children are scared by their parents' bickering. Navidson calls his brother Tom and tells him about the thing. Meanwhile, Johnny comments on some of Zampanò's wording that could be edited out, but decides to leave it intact because it's all that's left to remember the old guy by.

A new closet connecting the master and children's bedrooms has appeared, despite it not being there before. Nobody knows how it got there or who installed it, though the blueprints do include a crawlspace between both bedrooms. The blueprints also reveal what's really uncanny. The length of both bedrooms and the closet combined is 1/4 inch longer inside the house than it is on the outside. What the hell?

Zampanò points out that Heidegger failed to point out in his analysis of the phrase "unheimlich" that it also means a lot of something. This makes sense because what's uncanny tends to be overwhelming, which is exactly what the change in the Navidsons' house turned out to be.

Johnny goes back into the shop and receives a call from Lude about something important at a bar he wants to invite Johnny to. Johnny suddenly realizes he has forgotten something. He believes he may have been trying to remember a girl and hopes it doesn't matter but is afraid it will. Now I'm confused.

Johnny is feeling some more bizarre effects, despite not feeling sick or going through withdrawal. He was unable to do his job at the tattoo shop because he couldn't stop staring at the equipment for some reason, and he had trouble breathing. When he left for a glass of water, he suddenly saw things get darker and noticed a gross smell behind him. What the hell is going on with Johnny?

Just started reading Chapter 4. When the Navidsons left on a four-day trip to Seattle, something changed inside the house, described as an uncanny spatial violation. This leads into a German explanation of the definition of uncanny, which Johnny translates into English but describes as nonsensical. However, the translation seems to have some effect on Johnny, who's now feeling uncanny himself.

Finished Chapter 3! It's believed that the reason why Navidson took up photography is to give permanence to fleeting moments, to make up for the abandonment he faced as a child. This is why he became so hell-bent to photograph everything he could. And that may have been why he was brought to that creepy house. Overall, great chapter!

Navidson's horrible experiences in the house may have been shaped by his deadbeat parents. His father was an alcoholic who would get drunk and disappear for weeks at a time, and his mother was a narcissist who left Navidson and his brother to become an actress. Navidson and his brother grew up alone, which emotionally damaged them to the point where they stopped getting attached to anything. Damn.

Many people believe that the horrors Navidson faced in the house were manifestations of his troubled psyche. His psyche did not, however, manifest the house. It was built in the 1700s and traumatized all the people living there over the centuries, eventually becoming a collective product of all its inhabitants' fears. Yikes!