more house of leaves narny narny nar.

i'm about halfway through this house of leaves, and it has asserted itself as being rightfully on the Top Novels list.

my only complaintive observation at this half-point is:

i find myself skipping over the guy's novel about himself. everything down to his name (johnny) just smacks of chuck palahniuk. do i have qualms with palahniuk? since lullaby, yes. but previously, no. choke is one of my favourite novels, actually, and i enjoy the style here and there–but when the 'here' is interrupting the story about the hallway? i get prickly. listening to his dark and needy rampages; his spastic encounters with himself and the darkness; even his fantasies of the sexual nature are starting to pitch off into obnoxious. it reads more and more like some kind of "oh my god i'm peeing my pants with darkness!" (sometimes, literaly).

and it is only because the story interrupts the one with contrastingly mature characters who are concerned with the physical and not always going off on how much darkness they have inside themselves. if the hallway says that about them, it's a nice diffusion of angst. if it doesn't, all the better.

i skim over his hallucinations, his freakouts, and insert random, mental "yeah yeah, narnynarnynar"s. not because it isn't good writing. it is. but the character's issues are ones i feel i could get from a number of other sources.

we'll see how i feel at the end of this...