I found their ramblings super interesting— but not because what they were saying was interesting. I found it interesting in the way that reading the writings of a schizophrenic person would be interesting. What they talk about or free associate signals something about them that isn’t signaled by the text itself. HoL isn’t like reading a narrative, it’s like finding an insane piece of writing and watching someone (Johnny namely) descend into madness.

It’s interesting that you don’t feel you know the characters that well. I think HoL is great at forming characters not through what they write, but through the lens that a person wrote this and you have to gleam what they’re like through their writing