Finished House of Leaves a few hours ago. I don't really have anything insightful to say about it right now, but I'm just in the mood to gloat about finishing the damn thing. I will add that the index is funny (particularly the "DNE" items) and that I felt like an idiot for not noticing the Ash Tree Lane address until the very last page. I did have a creepy dream about a large yellow spider last night, and I'm going to try and believe that was just a coincidence.

Now back to Club Dumas.

The Club Dumas was interrupted because I went to Border's yesterday. I just wanted the new REM album, honest. But then they had their remainder racks, damn them, and there was a copy of The Dreams Our Stuff is Made Of a "keenly perceptive account of the impact science fiction has had on American culture," by Tomas Disch. And that looked interesting. And the Dogma screenplay seemed like it was worth $2, and by then I was browsing, and everything went to hell.

So I picked up a copy of House of Leaves. And ended up buying it, and stayed up until, oh, past six this morning reading it. Putting me about halfway through. Jesus. I was tired, too, but by the time it got to be 4 I knew it was better to just keep reading, because if I went to bed at that point, I'd sleep through a meeting I had at work. I ended up napping on the couch for about 2 hours, and then waking in a panic and rushing to work.

That's a fucked up book. I'm vaguely aware that it made a stir when it came out -- I think it got lots of raves, sold well, but then lots of people never actually read it because, well, it's a fucked-up book. Johanna had started reading it a while ago and told me about it, which is the only reason I knew the title, though. The books that cause a stir usually slip under my radar; not out of snobbery, but just because usually they don't sound like things I'd like. I only read Angela's Ashes and Bridget Jones' Diary because Johanna lent them to me.

Anyway. I also knew of House of Leaves because Poe (the author's sister) did an album inspired by the book, called "Haunted", and I love Poe. So those two things convinced me to buy it, and that's why I spent about eight hours reading it last night. Yargh.

Okay, given that the book did sell well, maybe everyone but me knows about it already. If not, it's... can I say fucked-up again? First there's the description of a movie documenting a haunted house. There's a certain Blair Witch feel to the innermost layer, but there's a lot more going on. Then there's a critical analysis of that movie by a man named Zampano, who cites all sorts of references and interviews about it and the people involved. Then there's the story of the primary editor, Johnny Truant, who seems to be going mad through a combination of reading the analysis and his own issues. Truant is well aware that the movie, and Zampano's sources, are invented -- there is no such house, no such movie. That doesn't help him much. Then there's another layer of commentary from the editors of Truant's book. All of this is jumbled together in layers and layers of footnotes in different fonts, appendices, and all kinds of postmodern wackiness. Lewis Caroll meets Joyce. Kinda. I read an article today that said the book took about ten years to write, which makes me feel a bit better since every time I stop to imagine what it was like to plan all of this out, more of my brain melts.

And I'm only halfway through. It's a hard book to even talk about -- the layered footnotes mimic the deepest level of plot. When residents of the house get lost in a maze within the house, the footnotes become so extensive and cross-referenced that they're a maze for a reader. When the action speeds up, so does the prose, so that there's only a few words per page.

Oh, and it's scary. At least, it is if you read half of it in one sitting in the middle of the night. Maybe scary is the wrong word -- it's not Stephen King horror. There's just a feeling of dread that builds... and because one of the plots is the description of a movie, you tend to picture how it would look on the screen. Or at least I do. And that makes some of the imagery stand out more. I was talking to Johanna about it today -- she stopped reading partly because she thought it would start to scare her, and partly I think out of understandable frustration with the style. So I mentioned one part, where the young daughter of one of the people lost in the maze stands in a doorway, mysterious cuts on her arms, chanting, "daaa-deee, daaa-deee." Brrr. I think Johanna agreed that that's just damned disturbing. Stuff like that has kept me reading, and caused me to forget (until I started writing this) that I had a new REM album to listen to. So I'm gonna do that now. And maybe read a bit more, although I really don't want to stay up all night again.

At the library yesterday I got a book called Test Your Cultural Literacy. It's got 14 sets of 50 multiple choice questions on various topics. So that filled a few hours nicely. Oddly enough, I did best on the "Myth and Religion" section (two wrong), then the science sections, and then the literature sections. Worst section: music. Not a surprise, although I was impressed that I did better than I expected in geography. Although the questions are pretty darn basic, as you'd expect. Um, anyway, it was fun, if you like quizzes. And like being reassured that you're not completely ignorant. Oh, and I guess, if you're not completely ignorant. But I can't imagine why anyone would buy such a book -- once you've taken the quizzes, who's gonna reread the book? Maybe teachers would like it.

I've mostly been re-reading random books as I'm in the mood, so there's not much else to add. I picked up The Club Dumas at the library, too. Monty has mentioned it a couple of times and, since I watched The Ninth Gate (which is based on the book) over the weekend, I thought I'd give the book a try. But I'm only a couple of chapters into it, so I can't say much about it yet.

I'm catching up, really.

I snagged copies of The Glass Teat and The Other Glass Teat on eBay a few weeks ago. These are collected columns by Harlan Ellison written between 1968 and 1972. They're frequently about television, but sometimes the real world intrudes. And when I "sometimes," I mean, "often." Particularly in the second volume, which I'm about halfway through now. Now, we never covered the 1960's & 70's in much depth in school because, of course, by the time we got through World War 2 the semester was over. So I think a lot of people my age only know what we've picked up from pop culture about that time. Whenever it came up with my folks, my mom would usually make a brief comment about what a scary time it was, and I'd understand, but I wouldn't really understand.

Sure, it's amusing (yet creepy) to realize that Aaron Spelling has been a blight on entertainment for thirty years. But it's when Ellison talks about current events that the books get chilling. I don't know. These books bring it home, because the columns were written as it happened. So Ellison talks about CBS revealing a "soldier of the year" had stabbed and killed a captured Viet Cong prisoner while an American adviser watched. He talks about creepy jingoistic variety shows -- can you imagine a variety show in which a little girl sings "It's Only a Paper Moon," accompanied by dancers? And one of the dancers is wearing a giant papier-mâché Nixon head? And it's not ironic? Geeah.

But at least that one's sort of amusing to imagine, in a sick way. Most of it isn't. Most of it's just scary. Quotes from contemporary news articles & interviews, in which people say things like, "If I would have been shooting, I'd be shooting more than they did," about the murders at Kent State. Hell, just read the introduction, in which Ellison talks about how despite good sales on the coasts, bookstores began sending back copies of the first volume after Agnew noticed that Ellison said some unflattering things about him. (And that's why copies are still hard to come by.) Ellison isn't giving the hippies & protesters any leeway, either; he criticizes them whenever "political protest" becomes an excuse to complain that "I didn't get my way." For the most part, the right wing comes off far worse than the left, but well, I think there were reasons for that. It really is scary stuff, which is why the second volume is taking me more time to get through than the first one did.

I also got a copy of The Tale of One Bad Rat recently. I liked it, but in a half-hearted way. I suspect I've read too much of Andrew Vachss' stuff to find the subject matter surprising. And I was never that into Beatrix Potter (the other story hook). Maybe it all seemed to be resolved to cleanly for me -- it wasn't bad, it just wasn't to my taste. Pretty, though.