Shirley Jackson - Thoughts?

blacknorth said:

I recently picked up a copy of The Masterpieces of Shirley Jackson. It comprises The Lottery, The Haunting of Hill House, and We Have Always Lived at the Castle. I'll probably dip into The Lottery in the near future.

Usual idiotic comment by Stephen King on the back cover, claiming that Haunting and Turn of the Screw are the only two great supernatural novels written in the last 100 years. Yawn, Mr King, Wrong, Mr King.

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Like King or not, probability is, he gets something right once in a while. I certainly agree with his assessment of The Haunting of Hill House. And I would agree with King that THoHH and The Turn of the Screw are at the pinacle though maybe not the only great ones. I'm curious what other books you have in mind, though.

Randy M.

Looks like these new titles got delayed but they are coming out soon...

Well, since I last posted here I have read and enjoyed "The Sundial" (very much) and "The Road through the Wall" (not quite as much) and now am re-reading "We have always live in the Castle" and am enjoying it even more than I did the first time. What a wonderful novel that I think I failed to fully appreciate the first time around...

People who like Shirley Jackson might like the English author Phyllis Paul, who excels in psychological suspense, eeriness, etc. Most of her books will be impossible for Americans to get hold of, I fear -- I have read three, have one on hand, and that might be as many as I'll ever be able to read, though I'm hopeful about at least a couple more -- if the Library of Congress is willing to lend.

It shouldn't be too hard for Americans to get hold of Twice Lost, and one or two others published here by Norton may be available. I've just read one of these, A Little Treachery, and have my own copy of the other in a Lancer paperback, Echo of Guilt (Norton title Pulled Down). Under the Literary Fiction area of Chrons I have started a place for information on Paul's books and, if possible, discussion.

Phyllis Paul: Twice Lost, Pulled Down, Invisible Darkness, A Little Treachery, more

She seems to me a Nay-sayer (in which group I place Jackson). I gravitate to Yea-sayers, but Paul is impressive.

Yea-Sayers and Nay-Sayers

I've only read The Haunting of Hill House, which I thought was too arch and refined for its own good. Although this

blacknorth said:

Usual idiotic comment by Stephen King on the back cover, claiming that Haunting and Turn of the Screw are the only two great supernatural novels written in the last 100 years. Yawn, Mr King, Wrong, Mr King.

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makes me suspect that Stephen King probably had a good point when he praised it so highly. Anyway, my thoughts on it are here:

The Haunting of Hill House - Shirley Jackson

I'm aware that I am very much in a minority about this.

Jackson was a New Yorker writer and I think they do tend to try to be urbane, etc. -- unless they are, say, Isaac Bashevis Singer, who was very good and who may have been permitted more freedom from the "house style" because of his old European roots and so on; whatever it was, I'm glad for it. Perhaps I'm insinuating a little more about the magazine than I should but from quite a bit of familiarity with it since the 1980s or so, I don't think I'm being grossly unfair.

I think Phyllis Paul was a better writer, but then I have read only a few short things and Haunting of Hill House by Jackson. Really, if you're interested in a subtle, intelligent eerie novel, see if you can't get hold of Paul's Twice Lost. It has some "sophisticated" characters, but then that's their milieu. Or try for A Little Treachery, a suspenseful story of madness and guilt that deserves to be better known. (Somebody, please reprint it....) I say this though its bleak outlook is different from my own understanding of the way things really are.

---
When eight-year-old Laurence asked his mother [Shirley Jackson] how

he ought to spend a dime, she suggested that he give it

to the birch tree in front of their house. He promptly went

outside and asked the tree for a dime's worth of wind.

To Shirley's amusement, a massive hurricane struck that night.

"All we could figure was that wind must be very cheap indeed

for him to get that much for a dime" she wrote.

-- from a recent biog of SJ

She turned small town life into a paranoid nightmarescape.

Phyllis Paul sounds interesting; shame her work is so hard to get hold of.

I recently read 'Dark Tales', another short story collection by Jackson and was very impressed. I had assumed that all her stories were worth reading would have been included in 'The Lottery and Other stories' but this is certainly is not the case. I can whole heartedly recommend it.