This is collection of shorts stories and essays by Shirley Jackson, compiled by her husband, is a dark gem. I've read most of her other collection, The Lottery and Other Stories, but in my opinion this volume is more penetrating. (Vague spoiler ahead) There is a story in this book called The Rock, so named by Jackson's husband who found the story untitled in one of her boxes of papers she never had published and presumably didn't plan to have published. And it is one of the most unsettling few pages I've read, and left me in a state of total bewilderment, the more so for the precise fact that it seems never to have been intended for the public to see. There's a ghost in this story, but it's hiding in such plain sight and in so mundane a setting that it crept up on me before I knew what I was actually reading, and I had to go back and find out at what point the situation began to warp, and what the figure's presence and behavior were supposed to mean. Again, as in many of Jackson's stories, the presence grows seamlessly out of the state of mind of the protagonist. Shirley Jackson's meticulous description of household objects, windows, tables, kitchens, living rooms, all strike me as becoming literally bent by the mind of the narrator who has a serious emotional problem. The dialogue then, while remaining so ordinary on the surface, begins to take on a sinister undertone of what I can only describe as a kind of paranoia. This is true of The Summer People, The Beautiful Stranger, The Bus, and Louisa, Please Come Home, among others. The Summer People, one of my favorite Shirley Jackson stories, is a perfect example of how Jackson swells the surface tension slowly but surely in the course of a few pages. In this case through a chant like, hypnotic repetition of a few comments and remarks from the local inhabitants of a small town, directed at a couple from the city who wish to prolong their stay past Labor Day. As in her legendary story The Lottery, she builds a very subtle atmosphere of oppression and menace at the root of which seems to lie her view of the small town mentality and its tacit sense of conspiracy toward outsiders. What I love about her stories is that the surface tension is never ruptured. She never shows you the horror, she is content to stretch your nerves to breaking point, but never raises the curtain, so to speak. Some readers might find this unfulfilling, but I come away from her stories with a sense of the mysterious which can never be dispelled, because she has effectively trapped the mystery whole within the pages of her story, so that it can never grow stale. This book is also extraordinary for its essays on writing (in the form of Jackson's letter of advice to her daughter for instance), on the fallout from The Lottery at the time of its publication and Jackson's steadfast refusal to explain the story away, and her essay on what moved her to research and write the legendary Haunting of Hill House. This latter essay gives the reader a stunning glimpse into how a writer of such powerful horror and mystery could actually be herself more frightened and impressionable than any of her readers. It is obvious that she was a highly sensitive person, and that her gift of storytelling was her channel and her saving grace, without which her anxiety would have been overwhelming. Being able to turn an affliction like hers into art is, for me, the best example of alchemy there is.
If I had to pick a favorite short story from this book I'd say all of them. All of the short stories wedged their creepy little fingers way back into my head and seem to have gotten a pretty good hold back there. Like I said in my update... Ms Jackson has this things about houses that just makes me fear these structures now. She makes me believe that houses are alive, breathing, and sometimes sinister things. I look for changes in my house. I listen to what it says. When I leave my house I lock the front gate so it doesn't run off.Now my favorite part of the book are the lectures. In particular the one about her short story 'The Lottery'. I loved reading the correspondence this one little story generated. It shows how far we've come as a culture since 1948 where today we can write about almost anything and not shock the masses. This kind of scares me too... to a degree. I find people like Glenn Beck and stations like Fox news more disturbing than stoning a villager once a year.I'm gonna finish Neil's book now and another book of short stories I started but have put off... then I'll move on to Borges. But Shirley Jackson will be sitting by me in spirit.
What do You think about Come Along With Me (1995)?
To center a collection around posthumous work is always dodgy territory, as its either going to really excite or really alienate fans of that particular author. Here, the lead piece is not really a strong lead. "Come Along With Me" is more of an unfinished character study than anything else, but it is only the beginnings of a novel-in-progress left incomplete upon Jackson's death. While it has some seance goodness in it, it is just simply too short to get a real handle on where the story would have gone. The rest of the collection includes some really great stories, "The Stranger" and "The Summer People" amongst them. The collection is rounded out by lectures and essays on writing, which I think are quite good if you are interested in writing / are a writer.
—Craig
This book contains the first thirty pages of the novel Shirley Jackson was working on when she died, a collection of short stories (some nonfiction), and three lectures on writing. It is a great sampling of her work and her ability to successfully switch gears from spooky to clever to funny.The standout stories for me were “Come Along with Me” (the unfinished novel about a widow who leaves home to invent a new life for herself), “The Summer People” (a New York couple decides to stay past summer at their lake house in the country), “Louisa, Please Come Home” (a tale about a runaway with an interesting twist), and the three lectures on writing. It was amazing to me in one of her lectures to learn about the backlash she received from writing “The Lottery”, and her response to an ax murderer’s fan mail made me laugh out loud.
—Becky
Like pretty much every other reader of English language books on the planet, I'd already read and enjoyed Jackson's story "The Lottery." Reading this book I'm almost positive I've read most or all of these stories before, but I wouldn't be surprised if they just felt that way. Jackson's writing is crisp and eerie, uncanny and unsettling. The stories all feel like highly-crafted ghost stories, though not all involve ghosts. I enjoyed the unfinished novel excerpt the book starts with. The main character is so lovingly rendered and realized, and the seance scene is pretty hilarious and amazing. My favorite story in the collection, "The Beautiful Stranger," could be interpreted in so many different ways, all of them troubled and intriguing. I picked this up instead of one of her novels, thinking the novel was for younger audiences. Jackson's style does lend itself to younger readers - the language is straightforward, and the sentences move very easily - though I think older readers get more from the implications and tropes she uses. (SPOILER: How many children would understand that the house guest in The Rock might be the devil?) If there's any fault to these stories it's that the characters sometimes feel like caricatures. I also like it when a story or novel seems to have a wide, inexplicable diversion in it. To me, that makes the world of the story seem larger. Jackson preaches against such diversions in one of her essays on writing included at the end of the book.
—Kevin
