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Originally Posted by chumdawg
I, too, have read Portrait. But from what I understand, there's no one who has actually read FW. I gave it a bit of try once...but I found it absolutely beyond my abilities.
Sometimes you have to know which battles to fight! I'll have to give House of Leaves some consideration. I recently saw another recommendation of it, and now yours. It may not be my cup o' tea, though. The strangest books I remember liking are The Unconsoled by Kazuo Ishiguro--which I liked a hell of a lot--and Wittgenstein's Mistress and Reader's Block by David Markson. I suspect those rate not even mild in comparison to your oddity.
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I usually have to pick my spots for post-modernist works, just like I do with post-modernist philosophy. I remember trying to go back to Kant and Schopenhauer after studying Jacques Derrida... let's just say that didn't go well.
Reader's Block is yet another in the growing list of must-reads that are bouncing around in my brain. It seems to be right up my alley.
Leaves definitely takes you places. From the actual way the book is laid out, to the imagery conveyed through the story, an architecture is created that strikes me as being fractal in nature. You are taken from states of claustrophobia to agoraphobia like a yo-yo, and then the string disappears and you are left wondering what the hell just happened. It was marketed as a horror story, but it really isn't. I hope that the very general descriptions I have given aren't spoilers for anyone considering taking it on. I don't think they are. I would imagine that it will probably have a very personalized feel for anyone who reads it.