Reincarnation of himself Edgar Allan Poe. Only by sifting his taste for fears made into literature. Because probably Shirley jackson it could bring a more sociological point of view, a more disturbing intention from a more complex point of view.
Neither better nor worse, simply differences that separate Poe, the mythical author of the purest horror with touches between the blackest policeman and the gothic, from a writer like Shirley also fascinated by horrors as narrative support.
Although as I conclude, she seemed more liberated from the need to download gloomy inner worlds and focused her "more generalist ideas of fear" from the outside in, of the threats that we can pose to our neighbors as humans who live among the intention of good and the sinister drives of evil. Nothing better than approaching it from the wicked projection of the phantasmagoric, of the hidden dimensions where the worst secrets, the fiercest hatreds are contained...
In fact, in six novels by Shirley JacksonWith the exception of "The Curse of Hill House" (much more gothic), we enjoy that exploration of threatening environments, the siege of the protagonists from that threat that lurks for the mere fact of existing. A certain neurotic point can be understood, no doubt. But also the shadow of the harsh reality looms from its plots.
In the end, terror is also a distorting mirror of the reality that the narrator experiences. Shirley Jackson inhabited a world peeking out from cold wars, to quarrels pending a red button that would turn off the world forever from the nuclear detonation of the moment. It was not a question of delving for atavistic fears. It was rather to contemplate the state of things and focus the demons towards a field of fiction that in the end could be even kinder ...
Shirley Jackson's Top 3 Recommended Novels
The curse of Hill House
The horror narrative is full of unhappy encounters, of dates in the haunting vastness of the dark. This novel is one of the most emblematic ...
Four characters arrive at an old and labyrinthine house known as Hill House. They are Dr. Montague, an occult scholar looking for evidence of psychic phenomena in haunted houses, and three people whom the doctor has recruited to carry out an experiment. Despite her family's reluctance, Eleanor, a somewhat tormented young woman with an unhappy past, will end up being part of the unique entourage. The others are Theodora, with whom Eleanor establishes a strong initial bond, and Luke, the heir to the house.
Soon everyone will have to face situations that are beyond their understanding. Hill House seems to be preparing to choose one of them and make it his forever. Made twice into a movie and the inspiration for a recent television series, "The Curse of Hill House" is one of Shirley Jackson's most famous novels and one of the major horror works of the XNUMXth century.
We have always lived in the castle
In a kind of mix between the script of The Others of Amenabar and the most sinister version of the Adams family house, this novel prior to the aforementioned, established those references of domestic horror, of mansions as multidimensional spaces.
Home, spooky home… “My name is Mary Katherine Blackwood. I am eighteen years old and I live with my sister Constance. I often think that with a bit of luck I could have been a werewolf, because my middle and ring fingers are just as long, but I've had to be content with who I am. I do not like to wash, nor the dogs, nor the noise. I like my sister Constance, and Ricardo Plantagenet, and the Amanita phalloides, the deadly oronja. The rest of my family has died.
With these words appears Merricat, the protagonist of We have always lived in the castle, who leads a lonely life in a large house away from the town. There she spends hours in seclusion with her beautiful older sister and her elderly uncle Julian, who is in a wheelchair and writes and rewrites her memoirs. Good cooking, gardening, and Jonas the cat attract the attention of young women. At the Blackwood home, the days would run smoothly if it weren't for something happening, right there in the dining room, six years ago.
Chosen stories
Since Poe, any self-respecting horror writer must undertake the brief. The overflowing imagination (more than overflowing) of this type of authors besieged by their own creations ends up finding in the flashes of the story or story, flashing flashes of terror, gleams of madness and fear.
One woman spends her wedding day frantically searching for her future husband, another makes a strange night bus trip, a bookseller satisfies a seemingly harmless customer request. And, in Shirley Jackson's most celebrated tale, the villagers come together to perform an eerie ritual. "The Lottery," one of the most disturbing stories ever written and an icon in the history of American literature, sparked controversy when it was first published in The New Yorker magazine.
This volume presents a selection of Shirley Jackson's stories and includes three lectures by the author, one of which is dedicated precisely to the scandal that led to the publication of her best-known text.
