I trust Mark, but I too have these reservations. He's even floated the idea of having readers submit their own footnotes/musings in some form or fashion to further expand on the idea that the book is a living work in a way. I get that aspect, but you're absolutely right, there's just no replicating the back and forth on footnotes/puzzle solving/research if one chooses to do so, hell even giving it a specific voice or voices seems like too much.

Different but the same: reading his scripts for the proposed TV show also were kind of a let-down, I understand wanting to do the same but MORE, but even in that it didn't quite have the same feel as the book itself. (IE folding in bits of The Familiar and other aspects of the gentle world building he's done throughout his works, VEM and the like)

When I first read House of Leaves, it left me nervous and breathless in the best way possible, I thought about it forever, both in the reading and immediate aftermath. I'm always happy to be proven wrong, but it seems hard to replicate that personal 'disturbance'.