The Decade's Best Typography
Though "House of Leaves'" multiple typefaces violate a cornerstone of Typography 101, they actually serve to make it easier to keep track of the book's multiple points of view and varying levels of narration. What's more, as author Mark Z. Danielewski explained in an interview, each typeface was chosen for a reason.
The font used for the character who allegedly began Danielewski's narrative is Times, while that used for Johnny Truant, a twentysomething drifter who readies the manuscript for publication and adds in his own story, is Courier. The book's subsequent editors use Bookman and the title page is done in Dante, whose aptness is apparent to anyone reading the book.
But Danielewski's storytelling innovations go beyond those of simple type selection. The author uses myriad devices including vertical footnotes, backward type and footnotes within footnotes. He also widely varies the number of words on a page in attempt to keep the reader turning pages at the speed of what's happening in the novel. Chapter 9, with two vertical footnotes and a blue box with backward type, takes place when a group of characters are lost in a maze.
When the action really gets moving in the next chapter, the text is presented with only a few words on a page. As Danielewski says, "You could probably read the whole thing in, like, 10 minutes."
— Eric Wittmershaus (ericw at flakmag dot com)
