It seems like a stupid question at first, doesn't it?

[ThomasJ]

It may be interesting to note:
The title of the French version translates to "house of sheets," as in sheets of paper.

[fatwoul]

ThomasJ - Its just a context thing.

"leaves" can mean "leaves of paper" - hence "sheets of paper" - "leaves" therefore can mean "sheets" in english too.

Similarly, "Feuille", dependent on context, can mean leaf, sheet, page etc.

I always imagined that the letter on page 564 was written in french because of the fact that french and english share this ambiguity around their word for leaf/sheet.

Its a shame that "feuille" does not also mean depart, because then the ambiguity would be equal and complete.

[Xenorph]

I have never been convinced about the whole leaves=pages theory. I'm not exactly convinced about the World Tree theory either, but that's the one I'm leaning towards for the mo.

[fatwoul]

Hey I was just watching a programme about the Eden Project in Cornwall (UK). For those of you who don't live here:
http://www.edenproject.com/

Its an arrangement of huge bubble-shaped greenhouses. I'm not sure what the stats are, whether its the biggest in the UK or Europe or whatever.

Anyway, the point that I am getting to is that it is a big greenhouse. A house containing lots of plants. A house of leaves.

What do greenhouses do? They help things to grow.

So, a house of leaves is also a place where things (such as ideas) can grow.

Could MZD have thought of any other title so full of varied meanings? I think not.

[ThomasJ]

Posted by fatwoul:
Similarly, "Feuille", dependent on context, can mean leaf, sheet, page etc.

Thank you, I did not know this. I asked someone who I thought knew French very well, and they said that "feuille" connotated only "sheet" as in "a sheet of paper."

Next time, I will swallow my pride, and ask board members of such things before I trust anyone else. The majority of you are, after all, some of the brightest and most creative people that I have ever come in contact with.

Rock on with your bad selves.

[bmod]

Hello?

The translation Het Kaartenhuis is Dutch.
(I just read the book for the first time)
Kaarten translated into english would be Cards.

Sorry to drop in like this, but I thought you might want to know.

[girl2]

house of sheets?

like pale blue sheets?

like the sheets johnny slept in?

like the sheet pelafina used to hang herself?

AAAAH!

[fatwoul]

Here's another "leaf" reference I hadn't thought of.

The very thin bits of metal in a camera aperture are called leaves. In particular, medium format cameras often have "leaf shutters" where the aperture effectively doubles as the shutter too. But all cameras with a moving aperture have these leaves.

I know this is really grabbing at straws, but I liked the photographic connection - a house of leaves could be a camera. Whether that camera is a mechanical one or just the mental process of memory is another thing altogether.

[SSJRakasha]

Ive always felt that the line "seems a House of leaves/ moments before the wind" is referring to the changing nature of the House. If you think of it literally, a literal House made of leaves, when the wind blows, it scatters, never to be the same again. the phrase "walls keep shifting" in the same poem seems to uphold this.

BUT...

it says "moments before the wind" thus suggesting the feeling of certain doom, destruction, that in a moment, nothing will be the same ever again.

Armaggedon.

[AtLarge]

I haven't seen this idea posted yet, could House of Leaves be like House of Usher in EAPoe's The Fall of the House of Usher? One dictionary defines house as "A family line including ancestors and descendants, especially a royal or noble family."

What I was thinking was House of Lievre's? The Whalestoe letters say some names were changed, and I've heard other people try to discuss what the six letter last name of Truant and others might really be, Leaves has 6 letters. Maybe Pelafina's name was changed by Johnny.

I've heard people say Truant isn't Johnny's last name, and Zampano has no last name, and Johnny's father's last name is ommitted, only Pelafina remains. Is House of Leaves a history, or a scrap book, of Pelafina's family?

Just a thought.

[ November 25, 2002: Message edited by: AtLarge ]

[floorshw]

it sounds to me like one of the truely (many) possibly intented meanings. (does it sound english ? does it mean anything ? i 'm sorry)

[AlvinBlah]

Little solace comes
to those who grieve
When thoughts keep drifting
as walls keep shifting
and this great blue world of ours
seems a house of leaves

moments before the wind

To me, poetry always seemed more about the whole, not just the meanings of specific lines. Poetry is about artfully expressing human passions (emotions, conflicts, destinies, choices, ect...) that the idea was to express something in feeling rather than straight description. I think that this is the intention of this specific poem. It'd be good to know which came first. The poem or the book title.

On a personal note, I knew nothing about the book when I bought it. I flipped open to the dedication
"This is not for you"
and I had to have the book. On top of all that the title itself had a feel to it. It was a rather grand sounding phrase while in no way giving away anything about the book itself.
House of Leaves sounds important and mysterious all at once, it uses rather common words too, so many meanings can be drawn.
"House of Leaves" is a loaded title. Maybe that's the soul reason that it was chosen. It seems Mr. Danielwelski likes hidden meanings and private jokes. maybe the joke here is that there really isn't much of a meaning, that it is simply something that souds way sweet, that plenty of people will dicuss....That or his reasons for choosing the title are so absurdly simple to him its just entertaining to listen to all the speculation without shedding any light....

I don't know, those are my 14 cents.

Later SWEETUMS!

[Ra-ra]

I like this thread.

To me, the title always seemed to signify that leaves, whether they be the leaves of paper from Zampano's scribblings, Johnny's or the reader's, are all that is left of the house now, or perhaps, that are all that constituted it in the first place. That the house is only real in those pages and their respective writer's imaginations.

[ August 27, 2003: Message edited by: Ra-ra ]

[HeadlessSamurai]

I like the theory proposed about the leaves of a camera shutter. The story is told in snatches, fragments, and pieces, like photos strung together completing a scene, but leaving out spaces in between.
In some interview I read with MZD (it's linked around here somewhere, cause that's how I found it), he makes a comment that he likes to do things in threes, so maybe there is more than one "true" meaning to the title.....



PS All the other theories are good too.

[MLO]

"Little solace comes
to those who grieve
When thoughts keep drifting
as walls keep shifting
and this great blue world of ours
seems a of leaves

moments before the wind

I am in that place of grieving right now, for various huge things that I won't go into detail about here, and this poem has it right on the money. My thoughts drift in and out of the subject of grief and as I grieve it feels as though the very walls of my life are shifting.....making space for something new or removing space for that which is old.

And at times it does seem like my life as it is right now is nothing but a contruct made of the flimsiest of materials like leaves.

Thing is, it is also as though the wind is moments before blowing and blowing at the same time. Sometimes it seems as though everything is moving and shifting at once and the grief is unbearable and at other times its as though nothing is moving and there is calm and almost happiness.

I think this is the thinnest edge of what the book is about, but I have places to be right now and I'll have to finish processing and posting later.

[imaposeryo]

I agree that the meaning of " of Leaves" refers to a book. Leaves are symbolic of a book's pages, therefore a "house of pages" would be a book. Further evidence to this meaning is found in a line from "The Garden of Forking Paths" by Borges: "No one realized that the book and the labyrinth were one and the same." The house is the book, and the book is the house (which explains the great amount of interaction between the house and the book!) There is actually a direct reference to Borges' writing in footnote 167, found on pages 131-135 of of Leaves.

167 - In her elegantly executed piece entitled "Vertical Influence" reproduced in Origins of Faith (Cambridge Mass.: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1996) p. 261, Candida Hayashi writes, "For that matter, what of literary hauntings? Poe's The Fall of the of Usher, Shirley Jackson's The Haunting, ... many stories by Lovecraft, Pynchon's gator patrol in V., Borges' "The Garden of Forking Paths" in Ficciones, Conrad's Heart of Darkness, ...? To say nothing of ... Bill Viola's Room for St. John of the Cross or more words by Robert Venturi, Aldo van Eyck, James Joyce, Paolo Potoghesi, Herman Melville...? To all of it, I have only one carefully devised response: Ptoeey!

In essence, you are reading a book about itself. Interesting, no?

[fearful_syzygy]

In essence, you are reading a book about itself. Interesting, no?

Up to a point.

[Van der Houwen]

I also agree with the Leaves meaning Pages or Letters. My reasoning behind this is merely the fact that the book is a documentation basicly about the life of two different people: Navidson's life and his family, and Johnny's. Then there are also the letters from Johnny's mother to him. Another reason is that and the obvious joining of both Navidson's and Johnny's lives towards the very end where Navidson is reading the book of Leaves while he is falling which immediately leads back to Johnny's relation to the book in general. So...sort of like the memoirs of two men with the same story...

[modiFIed]

Johnny as the smoke or flame rising from the torch of Pelafina's words.

Did you just now come up with that? That's pretty good.

Oh, wait....Strider had it first.

Never mind, then. Sometimes I think there's something new under the sun. Then I research.

[weforgottenuno]

I tend towards agreement with interpreting the title through the poem, especially since the Dutch title translates to of Cards. This is a book about grief and paranoia (among many other things) and the instability symbolized by a house of leaves before the wind blows fits it perfectly. Although, I would think he chose the word "leaves" instead of "cards" so as to not bring about the connotations that come with it (royalty, games, gambling, etc.). Leaves simply refers to nature (Ash tree lane?) or paper (a book).

[roryharder]

so i went to the link about the torch and, following heavymetalmachine's instructions, read page 92.

im not sure if anyone else has pointed this out but on that page raymond calls Johnny a "beast".

this seems noteworthy to me because raymond sees a beast in Johhny the same way as holloway sees a beast in the house. this is also more interesting because they seem to have the same personality: commanda-marineish. . . i fyou know what i mean.


oh yeah and also about the meaning i get from the title. i totally agree with the house of leaves being the book and it makes sense that way because the book, like the house on ash tree lane, has almost 'infinite" meanings and ways to understand it.

[ManiKatt]

IT's also bigger on the inside than on the outside.

[roryharder]

also try rereading the "what some have thought" or whatever by karen except imagine it is mark talking to people about HoL.

quite interesting.

[Apung]

For what it's worth, when i started reading it, i initially thought that " of Leaves" was referring to the book itself being a house (which...is probably obvious. References in the book would be the 'windows', with regular words, then upon flipping the pages, one sees those words backwards. Like a mirror. Also, the door of words at the end of the book...anyways) ...i thought the 'leaves' referred to the numerous footnotes...the footnotes acting as the notes that Zampano made his book out of..

So...in that context, i thought maybe it would mean that the physical book (being the house) was composed of the leaves...the important things attached...what gives it color.

Hell...this has probably already been stated. I like the above arguments better than mine, though, so...