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Fridge Brilliance

  • How the physical book looks in Real Life. Most editions have the cover being just slightly too narrow to fully cover the pages. In other words, the book is bigger on the inside.
    • Due to Johnny spilling ink on some 40 pages of Zampano's manuscript and being forced to omit them, the complete book would be longer than the one you are reading.
    • When Navidson reads House of Leaves at the end, he says that the book is 736 pages long. The hardcover in Real Life is only 709 pages. But Navidson has already read 26 pages; take that as you will. Then again, the total page count (of the paperback full-colour edition anyway) is 736, when one includes a page of reviews, the title page, the copyright information, the Contents page, the Foreword, Johnny's Introduction and the other side of the "Yggdrasil" poem.
    • Over-filled and spilling things are a theme through the book. E.g. Navy putting too much coffee on his cup. The coffee is a clever allusion to the problem he is facing at that point in the book: the fact that his house appears to be bigger than its exterior. Navidson fills the coffee all the way to the very top, where surface tension allows the level of liquid to rise ever so slightly above the edge of the cup. Like the house, the coffee takes up more volume than its container suggests.
    • On top of that, much of the story is told within the footnotes by Johnny. At many points these footnotes will go on for paragraphs and pages, taking up more space than the text above it which it originally referred to. Another instance of things being bigger on the inside.
  • This exchange, which is more like Fridge Irony. Really, really painful irony:
    Tom: At least when you're drunk, you've always got the floor for your best friend. Know why?
    Navy: It's always there for you.
  • At one point, the editors mention that they are not sure who originally put in the bizarre formatting. It is very similar to the formatting Johnny's mother's letters had, which suggests it was Johnny that put in that formatting.
  • The text-formatting shows the mental state of the main characters of each chapter. In a chapter comparing Will and Tom Navidson to Jacob and Esau, the text is arranged into two columns per page (regarding two pairs of brothers); in Holloway's Exploration #4, footnotes containing long and meaningless lists gradually take up more and more of the pages, going along with Holloway's growing insanity and claustrophobia; in Navidson's explorations of the labyrinth the text is arranged into a few lines per page with the rest blank, giving a sense of openness, purpose, and clarity. The text even reflects events in the book - such as during the final exploration when the ceiling rises, the text does so, and vice versa.
  • At the books close, Navidson begins to burn a book so he has light to read by, reducing it to one page. Once he finishes, the house around him vanishes, leaving him plummeting into the dark. What book did he just burn? House of Leaves.
  • The untitled poem by Zampano suggests "...this great blue world of ours, seems a house of leaves, moments before the wind." Our great blue world, seems a house... is the house in blue a reference to our world made based on this poem?
  • At least three of the fake interviews are with authors who have a Self-Insert character in their work: Stephen King, Douglas Hofstadter and Hunter S. Thompson.
  • When Navidson states that the house is God, he's not just speaking from delusion. Aside from its defiance of the laws of physics, impossible age and size, and apparent sentience, there's also the fact that the house, like the Christian God, seems to exist in triplicate; as the house, as the labyrinth, and as the Minotaur.

Fridge Horror

  • So if Pelafina lied when she said she had tried to strangle Johnny...where the hell did the scars in Johnny's neck that his boss also sees come from?
  • Exactly how long was it after Johnnie saw the poor starving little Pekinese that she decided she'd throw it out of the moving car with enough force to crush its skull on the pavement?
  • Tucked away in the footnotes for a discussion on the nature of the House is an odd claim that one popular theory (that the location of Navidson's House is only important insofar as it is a singular place) has since been disproven, and a reference to something contained in the book's many indices. If the reader chooses to flip there, it's still easy to miss what it links to. In a photo of the original pages written by Zampanó, there's a scrap of paper that was left out of the final book for some reason or another. Its block of typewritten text describes a house built in Washington state, on a site where explorers found a mysterious set of stairs leading into the ground, similar to the stairs found by hunters from the Jamestown Colony. The implication is pretty clear, even if it's never directly commented on again: there are other sites like Navidson's House. Although the one in Virginia has been walled off, and its counterpart in Washington was apparently destroyed by the eruption of Mt. Saint Helens, it's likely that there are others just waiting for someone to stumble into them. Another photograph in the "Contrary Evidence" appendix also seems to make reference to this second House. A book on the history of the Northwest Coast has dark walls, doors, and stairways scribbled all over its title page.
    • It's likely also worth noting that, in Truant's journal, he mentions traveling to Washington, but never gives an accurate account of why or what happens to him there. In fact, he seems to lose track of it entirely. Given that the existence of the book mentioned above suggests that the Washington house exists in his reality, the implications here are disturbing.

Fridge Logic

  • Those cameras Will uses for his documentary? They run on pure plot device, the most powerful fuel known to man.
    • However, one would think a highly accomplished photographer would remember spare batteries...
      • Outside of the house, maybe. Inside, all bets are off.
    • Exactly how long is The Navidson Record? There's no way everything that was shown in that documentary fit into a film even as long as the Director's Cut of The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King.
      • Possible Fridge Brilliance: What else is too big for its own dimensions?
      • I read that and immediately thought about the dimensions of a picture, until I saw the blue.
    • Also, some newer versions of the book include a page of The Navidson Comic in the appendix. If Zampàno is blind and The Navidson Record doesn't really exist, who drew that page?
      • EXACTLY. That chapter is entitled "contrary evidence" and it's filled with evidence that it does in fact exist.
      • In addition to what the above comment notes (that section of the book seems dedicated to odd discoveries that suggest the Navidson Record is not purely Zampanó's invention), Zampanó had people transcribe some of his writing. Although its caption and its placement in "contrary evidence" suggests that the comic was found by someone other than Truant and predates the publication of his book, it could have been produced for Zampanó by one of his readers, or made by one of them after working with him but before his death. This, along with the other images in that section, are by their very nature pretty ambiguous.
  • In the part where Tom and Navidson are compared to Jacob and Esau, Zampano complains about Jacob decieving his blind father. He remarks that, in Deuteronomy, it is written that “Cursed is anyone who leads the blind astray on the road.”. The Fridge Logic kicks in when one realises that the Jewish laws weren't written yet when Jacob and Esau were around.
    • Zampano is remarking on how Jacob leading his father astray was a scumbag move and cites Deuteronomy to emphasize it, in a "see, you know it's bad because they made a law against it later!" sort of way.

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