The body of a house in Mark Z. Danielewski’s House of Leaves

Abstract

Mark Z. Danielewski’s House of Leaves (2000) is a tour de force of a debut novel that makes maximum use of the strengths of the novel as a medium. Its groundbreaking format, as well as the way it showcases the power of the written word has generated a lot of critical attention over the two decades since its publication. But at the crux of any analysis of House of Leaves run into the issue of the House on Ash Tree Lane. It is central to the novel, yet it very deliberately escapes interpretation. Any meaningful engagement with the House must deliberately avoid flattening it into a purely textual entity. In that vein, this dissertation provides a reading of the body of the House on Ash Tree Lane by engaging with the intensities that move through it. I employ affect theory and hauntology to read around the House to examine the way the nuclear family itself carries a haunting in its structure and the way the House serves as a conduit for that haunting.