Tell It Again: My Favorite Retelling-“House of Leaves” as Daedalus’ Labyrinth

Welcome to “Tell It Again.” In this series, we’re reviewing our favorite retellings of myths and legends as we prepare for the publication of our next micro-anthology, “Tales That Survived the Fire.”

In preparation for Miracle Monocle’s next micro-anthology, Tales That Survived the Fire, I wanted to contribute to the Tell It Again blog series, where we write about our favorite retelling of an old myth or legend. At first, I couldn’t think of anything. And then I realized that my favorite book of all time is a retelling of the myth of Daedalus’s Labyrinth (albeit quite an unconventional one).

Minor spoilers for Mark Z. Danielewski’s House of Leaves ahead!

House of Leaves is my favorite book of all time, and there is no question about it. I sometimes forget, though, that House of Leaves is about the Labyrinth. For those unfamiliar, this book is an unnerving tangle of words, full of footnotes and mind-bending prose. The book itself is a labyrinth, one that the reader finds themselves having to escape. 

The basic tagline is this: “A young family moves into a small home on Ash Tree Lane where they discover something is terribly wrong: their house is bigger on the inside than it is on the outside.” It sounds simple, but there is so much to it. It’s a work of epistolary fiction—the book follows Johnny Truant, a man who finds a trunk full of manuscripts in his dead neighbor Zampanò’s apartment. These documents include loose leaves that make up an academic paper about “The Navidson Record,” a series of stories, interviews, and VHS tapes detailing the horrors that unfold on Ash Tree Lane. 

First, there’s a new door. Then, a pitch-black hallway that takes five-and-a-half minutes to traverse. Then, infinite passageways, impossible staircases, and a menacing growl that vibrates the entire house, threatening to take the family forever, lest they become too curious. It’s a work of metafiction—a satire of academia and the rabbit holes people find themselves in, both literary ones and physical ones. It’s also a piece of ergodic literature—passages upside down, spanning right to left, different colors, blue when the word “house” is used, and red when the minotaur is mentioned…

In House of Leaves, the “minotaur” is trauma itself—Danielewski said it himself in multiple interviews. From an interview with The Guardian: “In 1993, my father died and it was shortly after that that I had this idea about a house that was a quarter of an inch shorter on the inside than the outside…” In an interview with Borders Vision: “He was a very powerful man, and an enormous influence.” The interviewer asks him if he was terrified of his father. He responds, “yeah.” This presence, just like in Danielewski’s life, is extremely pervasive in the book. It lurks around every corner, and he doesn’t let you forget it. Just as Daedalus and Icarus lived in fear of the minotaur, so too do the Navidsons live in fear of the enigma that is their house.

The minotaur is everywhere, and yet you never see it. The existence of the minotaur is never confirmed because it’s ever-present. It’s in the mind. Everyone in the story is haunted by something–it’s always around every corner, looming, growling, leaving claw marks in the hardwood by Zampanò’s dead body… but the real minotaur is loss, and the fear of loss. The Navidsons on Ash Tree Lane fear they will lose their family, Johnny Truant fears he is losing his mind, and Zampanò loses his life to the house. Every single word in House of Leaves is another brick in the stark, black walls of the labyrinth.

If this blog post sparked any interest in you, I heavily encourage you to read House of Leaves. If this blog post turned you off in any way, I still encourage you to read it because it’s just that good. It takes effort, but it’s the most rewarding thing I’ve ever read. And it might just get you ready to hear some more retellings in MM’s next micro-anthology, Tales That Survived the Fire.

Bonus: Danielewski’s sister, the musical artist known as Poe, wrote a companion album called Haunted that weaves itself into House of Leaves in beautiful ways. It’s a wonderful album, and I recommend it! Also, I just like em-dashes, and did not use artificial intelligence in any way while writing this blog post—Depp, Senior Editor <3 

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