Sharing this here in case it lands for anyone. I'm a mythologist and depth-psychology teacher with the International Society of Mythology, and I'm running a four-week course in May reading five haunted house novels through Jung's model of the psyche as a vertical house. House of Leaves is one of the five and gets a full session of its own, with companion reading from Bachelard's Poetics of Space, Anthony Vidler's Architectural Uncanny, and Clare Cooper's House as Symbol of Self.
The argument I keep coming back to with Danielewski is that he's being entirely literal about something Jackson and Morrison are also doing. The hallway grows. The stairwell descends past anything the architecture should allow. What earlier Gothic writers leave implicit, Danielewski builds. The session works through the typography and the formal apparatus carefully, but with the goal of arguing that the formal play is in service of a recognizable Gothic operation rather than a postmodern stunt that happens to use a haunted house as its frame.
Logistics. Four Thursdays, May 7 through May 28, 2026, 6 to 7:30 pm Mountain on Zoom. All sessions recorded so you can join late or catch up later. Reading list and registration at ismythology.com/courses.
If anyone here wants to argue the reading, I'd genuinely welcome it. The thing I'm least sure about is whether the Navidson house belongs alongside Jackson and Morrison as a continuous tradition or whether Danielewski is doing something formally distinct enough that the comparison flattens what's actually happening. Curious how this community sees it. I will also be leaning heavily of Bachelard's The Poetics of Space, which Danielewski wrote the foreword.