Shirley Jackson - Tumblr Posts
book covers redesigned | the haunting of hill house by shirley jackson
Hill House, not sane, stood by itself against its hills, holding darkness within; it had stood so for eighty years and might stand for eighty more. Within, walls continued upright, bricks met neatly, floors were firm, and doors were sensibly shut; silence lay steadily against the wood and stone of Hill House, and whatever walked there, walked alone.
"It's spring, you're young, you're lovely, you have a right to be happy. Come back into the world."
— Shirley Jackson, We Have Always Lived in the Castle (1962)
"Nessun organismo vivente può mantenersi a lungo sano di mente in condizioni di assoluta realtà..."Shirley Jackson, "L'incubo di Hill House"
Shirley Jackson’s Sublime First Graf in ‘Hill House’, Annotated
We’ve noticed that Random House copy chief Benjamin Dreyer can work into almost any conversation, no matter the topic, his affection for the first paragraph of Shirley Jackson’s The Haunting of Hill House, and we were finally moved to ask him if he could explain and justify that affection. [x]
“No live organism can continue for long to exist sanely under conditions of absolute reality;[*] even larks and katydids[†] are supposed, by some, to dream. Hill House, not sane,[‡] stood by itself against the hills,[§] holding darkness within; it had stood so for eighty years and might stand for eighty more. Within, walls continued upright, bricks met neatly, floors were firm, and doors were sensibly shut; silence lay steadily[**] against the wood and stone of Hill House, and whatever walked there,[††] walked alone.”
[*] First, let’s hear it for that semicolon, the first of three in this paragraph. Any number of celebrated writers who ought to know better—I’ll name no names—have said any number of foolish, disparaging things about semicolons. Jackson uses them, beautifully, to hold her sentences tightly together. Commas, semicolons, periods: This is how the prose breathes.
[†] I wonder how many combinations of fauna Jackson experimented with before she landed on “larks and katydids.” The two k’s are a particularly nice touch. You are reading this paragraph aloud, are you not? You ought.
[‡] I love the contrast of the deferential “by some” and the blunt “not sane.” The paragraph marches along in stately fashion, but Jackson’s beginning to tilt you off-balance. Hold on.
[§] If there’s any bit of the paragraph I’m not 100 percent sold on, it’s the Hill/hills repetition right here. It just doesn’t sing to me. Had I been SJ’s Hill House copy editor, I might have asked her whether she’d consider deleting “against the hills.” (And I’ll bet she’d have declined to do so.)
[**] SJ’s marvelous with adverbs, don’t you think? (Don’t let anyone poison your mind against adverbs. Adverbs are great.) “Neatly,” “sensibly,” “steadily”: It’s all so civil and civilized. Until…
[††] This may well be my favorite comma in all of literature. It’s not grammatically necessary; you might, if you were so inclined (I’m not), argue that it’s incorrect. But here it is, the last breath of the paragraph, and I like to think that it’s SJ’s way of saying, “This is your last chance to set this book down and go do something else, like work in your garden or stroll down the street for an ice cream cone. Because from this point on it’s just you, and me, and whatever it is that walks, and walks alone, in Hill House.”
I don’t think that anyone’s going anywhere. Right?
Great classic Books under 200 pages
1. The turn of the screw by Henry James (108 pages)
One of the must read gothic horror tales: The story begins when a governess arrives at an English country estate to look two young children, Miles and Flora. At first, everything appears normal then one night a ghost appears before the governess.
2. Letters to a young poet by Rilke (80 pages)
A must read for everyone who loves poetry and writing: In 1903, a student at a military academy sent some of his verses to a well-known Austrian poet, requesting an assessment of their value. The older artist, Rainer Maria Rilke, replied to the novice in this series of letters
3. The Aleph and other stories by Borges (200 pages)
A great collectio of magical storys full of phlosophical puzzles and supernatural surprises: "The Aleph is a point in space that contains all other points. Anyone who gazes into it can see everything in the universe from every angle simultaneously, without distortion, overlapping, or confusion."
4. Hunger by Knut Hamsun (180 pages)
Hunger has been hailed as the literary opening of the 20th century and an outstanding example of psychology-driven literature. Set in late 19th-century Kristiania, the novel recounts the adventures of a starving young man whose sense of reality is slowly fading away.
5. The Sandman by E.T.A Hoffmann (40 pages)
A classic short story for every gothic horror lover. Read it and be prepared to get your mind blown.
6. Chess Story by Stefan Zweig (120 pages)
Driven to mental anguish as the result of total isolation by the Nazis, Dr B, a securities expert hiding valuable assets of the nobility from the new regime, maintains his sanity only through the theft of a book of past masters' chess games which he plays endlessly, voraciously learning each one until they overwhelm his imagination to such an extent that he becomes consumed by chess. Chess Story is Zweig's final achievement, completed in Brazilian exile and sent off to his American publisher only days before his suicide in 1942.
7. Bartleby, the scrivener by Herman Melville (70 pages)
Another great short story that will really make you think about capitalism and a man's free will: Set in the mid-19th century on New York City's Wall Street, it is, perhaps, Herman Melville's most prescient story: what if a young man caught up in the rat race of commerce and overworking finally just said, "I would prefer not to"?
8. Giovanni's Room by James Baldwin (160 pages)
This haunting and controversial novel is Baldwin's most sustained treatment of sexuality, and a classic of gay literature. In a 1950s Paris an American finds himself unable to repress his impulses: After proposing to a young woman, he falls into an affair with an Italian bartender and is confounded and tortured by his sexual identity as he oscillates between the two.
9. The Stranger by Albert Camus (123 pages)
Through the story of an ordinary man unwittingly drawn into a senseless murder on an Algerian beach, Camus explored what he termed "the nakedness of man faced with the absurd."
10. We have always lived in the castle by Shirley Jackson (160 pages)
Living in the Blackwood family home with only her sister Constance and her Uncle Julian for company, Merricat just wants to preserve their delicate way of life. But ever since Constance was acquitted of murdering the rest of the family, the world isn't leaving the Blackwoods alone. 'Her greatest book ... ... the deeper we sink, the deeper we want to go' - Donna Tartt