My Girl Shirl (or, The Disturbing, Magical World of Shirley Jackson)

To christen my brand new blog (but don't think I've forgotten you, Shadows on the Wall!), I'd like to dedicate this post to Shirley Jackson, the most influential, inspirational writer I have ever encountered.  Stephen King led me to her the spring of my freshman year of high school; while browsing through Danse Macabre, and hungering for more haunted house stories in lieu of re-reading The Shining for the umpteenth time, I decided to pay closer attention to King's analysis of seminal works in the horror genre.  I recalled that opening paragraph of Jackson's The Haunting of Hill House that King used as an epigraph for 'Salem's Lot (my favorite of all his works) and, intrigued, closely read his dissection.  I soon discovered that the Hellgate High School library held three copies and I eagerly grabbed one for myself.  I fell in love with Jackson's syntax, soon appropriated her usage of the semicolon, and, one gloomy, thundery morning in early June, actually dropped the book as I read it before school; fans of Ms. Jackson can probably guess the very scene.

That summer I found a cache of Jackson paperback-cana in a tiny hole-in-the-wall bookstore in Sidney (The Book Basket, for the curious among you; I wonder if Mary is still the proprietor?  I wonder if it's even open at all?).  I dined on We Have Always Lived in the Castle (the little blue paperback with Merricat lurking, werewolf-like, behind the broken board fence), followed that up with a repast of The Sundial, and went hunting through local libraries for short story dessert, fare such as The Little House and Strangers in Town I discovered in children's (!) horror anthologies from the 1960s.

Soon after, I managed to locate Robert Wise's The Haunting on video, and screamed aloud at what pops out at Eleanor from the trapdoor waiting for her at the top of the stairs.

Shirley Jackson is my favorite author; I collect her books in all their varying editions; I am lucky to have a very dear friend who is as big a fan as I am, and supplies my habit from time to time.  Angie darlin', this post is for you!  (We are both thrilled that a new collection of Jackson's work is being released this summer; the months cannot fly fast enough!)

This blog will probably be mostly photos I post from time to time; occasional meanderings or connections or thoughts or what I shall laughingly call insight into the various worlds spanning my brain; these worlds are, of course, made up of the horror/fantasy/scifi/comic book/queer queer queer literature that has populated my life and thus influenced me a great deal.  From time to time I may also post writing of my own. Look for items related to vampires, witches, werewolves, and ghosts; Batman, Bewitched, I Dream of Jeannie; Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Stephen King; Tales from the Crypt and its sister mags, The Vault of Horror and The Haunt of Fear; guest appearances from Count Dracula and Mr. Barlow; and occasionally the particularly pretty face of some Hollywood hunk.  I'm as weak as the next guy.

For starters, however, I'd like to welcome the uninitiated among you to the world of Shirley Jackson, ladies and gentlecreatures.  Enjoy.

  Now, Eleanor thought, perceiving that she was lying sideways on the bed in the black darkness, holding with both hands to Theodora's hand, holding so tight she could feel the fine bones of Theodora's fingers, now, I will not endure this.  They think to scare me.  Well, they have.  I am scared, but more than that, I am a person, I am human, I am a walking reasoning humorous human being and I will take a lot from this lunatic filthy house but I will not go along with hurting a child, no I will not; I will by God get my mouth to open right now and I will yell I will I will I will yell "STOP IT," she shouted, and the lights were on the way they had left them and Theodora was sitting up in bed, startled and disheveled.
  "What?" Theodora was saying.  "What, Nell?  What?"
  "God God," Eleanor said, flinging herself out of bed and across the room to stand shuddering in a corner, "God God - whose hand was I holding?"
       (The Haunting of Hill House, 1959)

The first edition of THofHH I purchased for myself.

 

These Popular Library editions are my favorite; they usually overplay the horror aspects (if any) within her novels, and the blubs on the back and inside the front covers don't often match Jackson's actual content.  Plus, there aren't enough characters behind that fence. 

  "The experiment with humanity is at an end," Aunt Fanny said.

  "Splendid," Mrs. Halloran said.  "I was getting very tired of all of them."

  "The imbalance of the universe is being corrected.  Dislocations have been adjusted.  Harmony is to be restored, inperfections erased."

  "I wonder if anything has been done about the hedges," Mrs. Halloran said.  "Essex, did you speak to the gardeners?"

               (The Sundial, 1958)

 

The unsettling cover painting for a paperback edition of The Sundial.  

A heretofore unpublished Jackson short story, offered recently by The New Yorker.

 

 

   "I don't think they've estimated us correctly," Natalie said.  "They seem to think we're weaker than we really are.  I personally feel that I have talents for resistance they don't even suspect."

  "Perhaps," Tony said dryly, "they have antagonists you have not yet encountered."

                                  (Hangsaman, 1951)

  My name is Mary Katherine Blackwood.  I am eighteen years old, and I live with my sister Constance.  I have often thought that with any luck at all I could have been born a werewolf, because the two middle fingers on both my hands are the same length, but I have had to be content with what I had.  I dislike washing myself, and dogs, and noise.  I like my sister Constance, and Richard Plantagenet, and Amanita phalloides, the death-cup mushroom.  Everyone else in my family is dead.
                      (We Have Always Lived in the Castle, 1962)
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This is just hilarious.  And disturbing.  And a lovely way to close this entry.