Hyper Meta Textuality & its Discontents

I'll begin with what is becoming an all too often repeated personal reflection. I started reading House of Leaves (notice the refusal to use blue) several years back, but had to put it down because I got too scared. Quite seriously. The reason I ascribe to that particular fear is that the concerns (or dangers) the book describes are a result of obsessive interest, in many of the cases with reader itself. This is nothing new, neither as a means of talking about this book or in the history of literature, but what it is--or at least was for me--is a potent manifestation of readerly engagement.

Now, my question to the book is: is there anything new in this hyper-self-referential system or is this just the extreme case? My sense is the latter and that the latter anticipates the former and includes it. I envision myself asking "Is there anything new? Is there an outside to this text?" and the text responding (in some fashion) that asking that question is the point and of course "no," there is no outside, just more turns into the labyrinth, the spiral. Great.

My follow up question is then: does taking it to a limit or extreme offer anything new or elsewise why should I care? And this is something I'm still pondering in my head and here right now. It seems like House of Leaves might be doing synthesis work between postmodern literature and poststructuralist theory in a way that hasn't ever been done. Maybe this synthesis makes clear some of the differences between theory and literature. Maybe my affective fear response was always something inherent in Lacan or Derrida's theories that only literature could make me feel.

But I suppose my real question remains: did this book have to be written or could you have simply told me it existed and have achieved the same effect? (Or like so many people, like me so recently, could the book's full effect be had sitting on a shelf and occasionally being leaved through?) I'll tentatively answer my own question: no. Like all books, no matter how they construct your readerly engagement, it is this engagement that is unique, interesting and worth gaining a better understanding of. And off I go to write my paper...