House of Leaves (was Re: NP: James McElroy's Women and Men)

[Spencer Thiel]

At 02:40 PM 5/15/00 -0400, Peter Giordano wrote:
>It does have two strikes against it though [snip] it looks and feels a 
>lot, A LOT, like INFINITE JEST

and then Terrance wrote:

>I picked it up and set it back down, looked kinda maddening.
>Why with all those scraps and internet cuts pasted, some in
>living color. And are some of the pages total and absolute
>blanks?

Sheesh what's with this group.  Whatever happened to not judging books by 
their cover.  Do you know how close I came to _not_ reading my first 
Pynchon, COL49, because the cover looked like a Fillmore poster for Moby 
Grape (you know, the one with the woman dancing and the drummer 
drumming)?  Who would have known that the pages contained therein would 
change my world forever? Sure House of Leaves is gimmicky beyond belief and 
it's got footnotes and a bunch of other annoying things.  But it's 
fun.  And I must admit that unlike IJ, the footnotes actually improve the book.