“Like Mother Used to Make” (1949)

I’m starting to see where Shirley Jackson may have been done some disservice by editors and/or publishers. The Library of America edition edited by Joyce Carol Oates restores the full title to Jackson’s Lottery collection originally published in 1949: The Lottery; or, The Adventures of James Harris. It was simply The Lottery and Other Stories in most editions. The idea of James Harris, a literary figure who traces back at least to an English 17th-century murder ballad, may not have been fully developed across all of Jackson’s stories in the collection, but James Harris (or variations of the name) shows up frequently as a sinister demonic figure, notably in “The Daemon Lover” and “Like Mother Used to Make.” “Like Mother” is one of his best appearances. He seems to have unusual powers, or at least a preternatural, seductive confidence. David and Marcia are neighbors in an apartment building and have some kind of ill-defined relationship. Marcia would likely call it a friendship, no more. David has traits that suggest he could be gay. He’s fussy and fastidious and thinks a lot about things like decor and silverware patterns. Marcia is more of an ungainly mess, always late to everything. On this occasion, David is making her dinner at his place and we get well inside his head as he works on it. He doesn’t seem terribly attracted to Marcia. In many ways she annoys him. But they are friends and get along with mild friction. Just as they finish eating Marcia hears someone at her door across the way. It’s “Mr. Harris,” who says, “I just thought I’d stop by.” He completely takes over the social situation and seems to have designs on Marcia. Somehow, before long, David is excusing himself from his own place, leaving it and going over to Marcia’s. He can hear that Marcia and Mr. Harris have turned on his radio. “Wearily,” he begins to clean Marcia’s place. It’s a remarkable situation and unsettling to witness as a reader. Even if David is gay it’s still humiliating, forced (somehow) to leave his own place to them. Jackson may have intended, somewhat homophobically, to deepen David’s humiliation by making him gay and explicitly less manly and thus prone to the will of Harris, as opposed to gay and why would he care. Although, well, it’s 1949 and likely at best he is closeted—and he abandons his own place to them, that’s the fine point, bowing to Harris. Presumably Harris could have David too if he wanted.

Shirley Jackson, Novels and Stories
Listen to story online.

We Have Always Lived in the Castle (1962)

Shirley Jackson’s last novel is often called a masterpiece and that’s fair enough, except I’m more inclined to think of Jackson as a short-story writer and “The Lottery” as her masterpiece. ISFDB relegates this short novel to “non-genre” and Wikipedia classifies it as a mystery. No one seems to know what to do with it, including me, though I have no objection to the masterpiece label. It’s about a family with many dark secrets. The darkest may be the one kept by Mary Katherine “Merricat” Blackwood, age 18, the first-person narrator. The Blackwoods have long been resented by the locals for being rich and aloof. A few years before the time of this story someone poisoned the entire family with arsenic in the sugar bowl. Only three survived: Merricat and her sister Constance, who didn’t take sugar with the berries that were served, and Uncle Julian, who barely survived the poisoning and is now disabled and in a wheelchair, with mild encroaching dementia. Merricat is the one most able to go into town twice a week for groceries, but she has to be careful or the townspeople will hassle her. I’m not going to give it away but it’s not hard to figure out who did the poisoning, which is readily revealed at about the beginning of the last third of the novel. Constance was charged with the crime but acquitted, leaving the Blackwoods more isolated and reviled than ever. One day their unpleasant cousin Charles shows up and makes an attempt to take over the family. He’s mostly interested in their money. Merricat can’t stand him and wants him to leave, but he intends to stay. Eventually the conflict leads to the house catching fire, destroying the upper floors. Firefighters—who also hate the Blackwoods—arrive to put out the blaze and the rest of the town shows up to watch and catcall. “Let it burn,” is their sentiment. After the fire is under control a riot breaks out. The townspeople enter the home and destroy everything in it that they can. The fire and the riot are amazing, vivid, painful scenes. The entire novel is suffused with intense tensions. In some ways it’s hard to know why We Have Always Lived in the Castle even exists, it is so full of hate and rage and pointless fury. But it’s also powerful and unforgettable—as good as any reasons to exist.

In case the library is closed due to pandemic, which is over. (Library of America)

The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring (2001)

New Zealand / USA / UK, 228 minutes

Director: Peter Jackson

Writers: J.R.R. Tolkien, Fran Walsh, Philippa Boyens, Peter Jackson

Photography: Andrew Lesnie

Music: Howard Shore

Editor: John Gilbert

Cast: Elijah Wood, Sean Astin, Ian McKellen, Liv Tyler, Viggo Mortensen, Cate Blanchett, John Rhys-Davies, Billy Boyd, Dominic Monaghan, Orlando Bloom, Christopher Lee, Hugo Weaving, Sean Bean, Ian Holm, Andy Serkis, Peter Jackson

A friend once told me he thought director and cowriter Peter Jackson seemed intent and focused on “going after the whales,” by which I think he meant the biggest and most popular film subjects available: eight or nine hours on one part of the Beatles’ career ... a complex restoration of World War I footage ... the Nth King Kong picture. And, of course, arguably the greatest fantasy property of the 20th century, J.R.R. Tolkien’s trilogy The Lord of the Rings (Jackson would unfortunately later show his predilections for bloat in his adaptation of The Hobbit, which ran about as long as his treatment of the trilogy, though it’s by far the shortest of the four novels).

Until The Lord of the Rings Jackson was something of a schlockmeister, tucked away Down Under in New Zealand and Australia, lobbing gore and chuckles in the spectacles of 1987’s Bad Taste and 1992’s Dead Alive. He had transition movies in the ‘90s, notably the exquisite and disturbing Heavenly Creatures along with the mockumentary Forgotten Silver. We can see better now that everything before The Lord of the Rings was the work of a craftsman who was very good and getting better at making movies—and had the making of this movie specifically in mind. But was anyone prepared for Jackson taking on something of the scope and ambition of adapting Tolkien’s classic quest tale, complete with Middle Earth elves, dwarves, orcs, hobbits, and other creatures of the ancient Anglo-Saxon imagination? It is something Jackson wanted to do all his life and I, for one, was frankly amazed to see him get the opportunity. But he did and he made the most of it.

The Haunting of Hill House (1959)

Shirley Jackson’s haunted house novel has been so wildly oversold to me (chiefly, recently, on so-called booktube) that it could not possibly live up to the hype. But it’s pretty dang good anyway, even effectively scary in parts. It may be too late now for going into it the best way possible, which is with no knowledge at all of it. I mean, there’s only two movies, one play, and one TV series. I wouldn’t be surprised if there were video games too. Jackson hits you with a lot of tropes and cunning tricks. The layout of the mansion in question is very peculiar. The main character, Eleanor, has a troubling background. Now in her early 30s, she has spent the previous 11 years caring for her demanding ailing mother. Jackson even injects farcical and very funny humor with the appearance of a character in the last third. We laugh but by that point we are a little sickened by developments. There’s no gore, I don’t mean that—it’s just the constant unease by that point has done its work. One of Jackson’s best effects is phenomena that are experienced by more than one character but not all, as if the terrible spirit can choose who experiences these things—stuff like very loud pounding and other unusual noises, or strange smells. As you have likely heard, the four people are there as part of research into psychic or supernatural phenomena. Like a character out of The X Files, the scientist heading up the project wants to believe, but he approaches it cautiously. Eleanor is there because she has a history of psychic phenomena associated with her. Theodora feels a little like Jackson’s stand-in here. She is fashionable and witty and somehow had a lesbian vibe to me. Luke is related to the family that owns the haunted mansion—putting a member of the family there for the project is one of their conditions. There are also a couple of caretakers who refuse to spend the night there but provide services during the day. Mrs. Dudley particularly is funny. The Haunting of Hill House is really well conceived and executed. It lives up to its outsize reputation as one of the best horror novels ever written.

In case the library is closed due to pandemic, which is over. (Library of America)

“After You, My Dear Alphonse” (1943)

Some interesting points over at the Internet Speculative Fiction Database (ISFDB) about this very short Shirley Jackson story. First, as always, ISFDB's sort of inverted bias makes them quick to declare anything suspiciously realistic as “non-genre.” “Although this story is listed in Ashley & Contento's Supernatural Index, there isn't anything supernatural in it,” they note. And that’s certainly true, at least if you exclude a certain level of future-seeing prescience. It’s a story about racism, and it couldn’t be any more clear, though what’s remarkable may be more the publication date, arguably early in terms of 20th-century integration, even before the U.S. military was formally desegregated in 1948. Mrs. Wilson’s son Johnny has brought home a new friend for lunch. Boyd is “a Negro.” They are about 8 or 9 years old. The moment Mrs. Wilson sees Boyd everything changes. Her bigotry is not based exactly on hatred but more on a mix of uninformed compassion and condescension. She assumes Boyd is poor, has numerous siblings, and doesn’t get enough to eat. She offers to make up a box of blankets and used clothes for his family. She means well, maybe, but she is also overbearing. Boyd very tactfully turns her down, which annoys her. You get the feeling Boyd has encountered this treatment before. He appreciates the kindness, but plainly all he wants is to be treated like anyone else. Johnny is the only person who seems to be genuinely colorblind here. The giveaway about Mrs. Wilson is when she becomes annoyed Boyd won’t accept anything but a small lunch from her. And what works more than anything is the clarity of this story, clarity being one of the greater virtues in Shirley Jackson’s work. It’s a very short story, maybe four pages, and you may want to call it obvious but Jackson packs a lot into it. The title comes from a joke whose sources lie in a turn-of-the-century comic strip about hobos, a joke that Johnny and Boyd share, politely exchanging with one another, “After you, my dear Alphonse,” and then, from the other, “No, after you, my dear Alphonse.” The story is excellent, as clear a crystallization of racism as you could hope to find even today and a painful reminder of how deeply enmeshed with race so many of our problems still are.

Shirley Jackson, Novels and Stories
Read story online.
Listen to story online.

"The Summer People" (1950)

This Shirley Jackson story is devastating in a very sneaky way, which is typical of her clinical style, half New Yorker breeze and half ancient eerie portents warning you not to do things, like go into that house. Or, in this case specifically, not to stay at your summer place after Labor Day. The Allisons—Mr. is 60, Mrs. 58—have always talked about staying but have always returned to New York on time, white shoes put away. Then they usually spend much of September and October regretting it. We never do find out things like the source of their income. They are obviously wealthy on one level, but not so much that they feel they are. They put up with things at their summer place like no electricity or plumbing in order to enjoy the soft, rustic summer views of a lake. The inconveniences make the Allisons seem more hardy and adventurous. This year, they finally decide at the last minute to stay. Jackson then wields an artful sledgehammer to knock the foreshadowing into place. Not a single local they mention it to likes the decision one bit. They could simply be resistant to change, as the Allisons take it. But the news travels like fire among them and their resistance feels sinister. And indeed, by the time of the story's insanely undetailed end, sinister is practically all that's left. Certainly it has exact parallels with Jackson's more famous story, "The Lottery," the two stories written within months of one another. The style is pure midcentury New Yorker, with a chirpy third-person voice relating compressed description and dialogue. It bears a vertiginous sense of pitching forward momentum that is unnerving, hard to put a finger on. We don't know where we're going, ever, but we feel the motion almost right away. The reveals, such as they are, come swiftly and they are powerful, almost physically affecting. In the space of a day or two the Allisons go from looking forward to an extra few weeks at the lake, to encountering trouble getting their usual services, to—apparently—sitting quietly as the sun sets waiting for their deaths. Their kerosene has been cut off. Their car has been tampered with and won't start. Their phone is dead. A letter from their son doesn't sound right—a very effective detail that throws the scope of this into much broader perspective. I haven't really been able to let go of this story since I first read it several years ago.

The Dark Descent, ed. David G. Hartwell
The Weird, ed. Ann and Jeff VanderMeer
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"The Daemon Lover" (1949)

This Shirley Jackson story works so subtly as horror that it almost isn't. If you insist, it isn't. And yet, its most uncanny detail is also its best: the door which no one will ever answer, though voices can be heard from behind it. Down here on the natural plane, the story especially in 1949 is every woman's nightmare (and a lot of men's too). It takes some time catching us up on the whole situation but the scope of devastation is also large. We see our unnamed main character seized by nervous but happy anxiety and Jackson doesn't make us wonder long why, as she sits down to write a note to her sister: "Dearest Anne, by the time you get this I will be married. Doesn't it sound funny? I can hardly believe it myself, but when I tell you how it happened, you'll see it's even stranger than that...." Then she tears it up and throws it away. Over the course of the story the contents of the letter will grow a little haunting: you'll see it's even stranger than that. We follow her actions and learn much about her. What a hard time she has selecting her outfit. The fact that she lied on the marriage license and said she was 30 instead of 34. The story chugs on a kinda-cute rom-com neurosis Annie Hall style as she remakes the bed with clean linen, changes her underwear, and checks the groceries she has bought for breakfast the next morning. But when the appointed hour arrives and her beau does not, we start to feel sick with her. In a way Jackson plays cruelly with her and with us. The woman is flawed and pathetic in many ways but she is sincere and deserves her dignity, even as it gradually slips all the way away. Everyone she meets and questions about him in her search on that day—the people in his apartment building, the newsstand man, the florist, the shoeshine guy—all smirk at her as if they are mocking her right down to her most vulnerable parts thinking she was going to be married. Until finally we arrive at that door behind which are those voices and likely, perhaps, her lover, Mr. James "Jamie" Harris. But no one ever responds to her knock—at story's end, we are weeks out.

Jackson has offered a further rabbit hole, for those so inclined, in this Harris fellow. In fact, the subtitle of The Lottery, the only collection by Jackson published in her lifetime, which includes this story, is The Adventures of James Harris. The subtitle was subsequently often dropped by publishers apparently unaware she intended the collection more as a cycle of connected stories, with Harris as a recurring character. You can take it even a step further (thanks to this discussion by Anne M. Pillsworth and Ruthanna Emrys at Tor.com) as there is also a James Harris, who is also a daemon lover, in a certain 17th-century Scottish ballad. This is not a coincidence. The story in that ballad is somewhat different from the Jackson story at hand. In the ballad the lover visits her again when she has married another and had a child and entices her away at that point. That would be a kind of embarrassment of riches for the woman in "The Daemon Lover," who for all we know is still climbing those stairs on her way home from work and knocking again at that door, from behind which are voices, but no one ever answers.

Shirley Jackson, Novels and Stories (Library of America)
Read story online.

"The Lottery" (1948)

At this point, Shirley Jackson's story is your basic stone classic—of horror, of short stories, of midcentury literature. For spoiler-phobes who haven't read it, I'm talking about everything here. According to legend (and Wikipedia), no story or article published by The New Yorker has ever received as much mail from readers—some concerned the story was factual reporting, some thinking it was reporting and wanting to know where they could go watch. But most, quite reasonably, inquiring into just what in the hell was going on around here. By the methodology used at Make Lists, Not War, "The Lottery" is the highest-ranked short story of all time, tied with D.H. Lawrence's "The Rocking-Horse Winner" (which, in case anyone was wondering, is the Lawrence story misplaced in The Dark Descent). It's not hard to see the reason for the brouhaha. The story is crisp, straightforward, and quick to the point, yet bottomlessly mysterious, with no explanations. In fact, a good many of those letters to The New Yorker and/or Jackson were exactly requests for explanations. To me, its popularity (or notoriety) is equally surprising and mysterious, emerging sideways out of the horror genre (The New Yorker known for many things but horror not one of them), banked as it is with such superhot stores of blind cruel rage they are practically explanatory in themselves. I get a similar charge from the more current Purge franchise of movies, which also rely on a similar outrageous yet believable enough ritual. Further enlightenment on what this story unleashes may also be found in the end of director Peter Jackson's movie from the '90s, Heavenly Creatures.

The explanation, which ironically satisfies no one, is catharsis. Let's think about that one because it's one of those things that always seems fuzzy, even at dictionary level. Merriam-Webster, for example, puts "catharsis" squarely in the realm of art, with its 1-a definition—"purification or purgation of the emotions (such as pity and fear) primarily through art"—but I think the Oxford spin actually applies more directly here: "the process of releasing, and thereby providing relief from, strong or repressed emotions." That seems to be an explanation, at least for the lottery within Jackson's story. But I'm not sure it explains the story "The Lottery" itself, why it exists in the world or its effect on us. As with The Purge—and resembling Scott McCloud's space between the panels in comic book narrative—a lot of the power of "The Lottery" is derived from trying to imagine how we got from here to there. Why June 27, for example? What does that commemorate? We can guess Jackson's intent as the writer, using the solstice associations of that time of year with ancient rituals, sacrifices, and festivals. The "purge" in the movies is set similarly on the spring equinox, the night of March 21. Both imply surging life and bloody rites of spring. But how, within the story of "The Lottery," did this shockingly barbaric ritual—stoning!—come to pass? No explanation. Why do they do it at all? No explanation. The Purge movies offer some extreme right-wing Christian patriot mumbo-jumbo justifications, which may not weaken them as a whole but plainly is where they depart from "The Lottery."

"The Lottery" makes you answer those questions for yourself, or give up and write them down and mail them to The New Yorker or Jackson (who died in 1965 at the age of 48). The story is full of great effects, mostly working like some sunny day afternoon John Cheever story. This so-called village could as well have been named Any Town Suburb USA, it is intended to be so white-majority generic, with its families named Watson and Martin and Delacroix and Hutchinson. The people are brave and everyone is kind. The ritual has been deeply impressed into the fabric of their lives. It simply exists without question. As with public exhibitions of lynchings and executions in the US past, a number of sadists may be seen nibbling at the edges, there for the sick kicks. Mostly it seems to be ordinary people on a busy weekend but the details can be telling. Much is revealed in small actions by these people, e.g., Mrs. Delacroix, who lifts "a stone so large she had to pick it up with both hands." After the victim has been selected, in a murky process, the official in charge lets the townspeople loose with a word: "All right, folks. Let's finish quickly." It is a nearly perfect balance between a suburban daydream and a sickeningly barbaric violation. Stoning is perfect. Hanging would not be enough. Crucifixion would be too much. Jackson's precision is amazing at every point of this story. We are shocked, benumbed, that its events are even happening at all, so swiftly do they come.

Shirley Jackson, Novels and Stories (Library of America)
Read story online.

Shirley (2020)

All the grains of salt: I don't know much about Shirley Jackson beyond reading a few of her stories, and I know even less about director Josephine Decker. Decker's fifth or so feature (she's also done documentaries, shorts, and collaborations) felt to me like classic edgy middlebrow film festival fare, which instantly made me nostalgic for film festivals even though it's only (!) been seven months. Elisabeth Moss is excellent, as she often is, lacerating and scary as a vision of Jackson as an alternating cringing agoraphobe and literary monster (think Dorothy Parker with no filter or social skills). In a way, Jackson is depicted as living inside the story "The Yellow Wallpaper." In another way she is Luella Miller, draining everyone around her. Well, maybe—I know she was a faculty wife. I haven't read the biography by Ruth Franklin nor the novel on which this movie is based by Susan Scarf Merrell. Shirley the movie seemed more to conform to a stereotype of the thunderingly anguished artist typified by Van Gogh sawing off his own ear. And possibly it is so re: Jackson. My favorite part of the movie is the first sequence, when the young woman principal reads "The Lottery" and gets so hot she lures her husband into having sex with her on the train. The young couple is on their way to live with Jackson (Moss) and her husband Stanley (Michael Stuhlberg), a pompous literary academic at Bennington College. The young couple needs a place to stay and, as it turns out, Shirley is somewhat in need of being cared for. The house needs cleaning too and they could use a cook. Thus our young reader on the train, Rose Nemser (Odessa Young), is transformed into a kind of housemaid with privileges as events transpire. Meanwhile, her husband Fred (Logan Lerman) is trying to make it as a grad student assistant to Stanley. I love that name Fred for this guy. Others have compared Shirley to Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? and there is indeed some of that here. It reminded me more of High Art, with Rose in the Radha Mitchell role. What it doesn't remind me of is very much that I've read by or know about Shirley Jackson, except in general ways. Perhaps she was a difficult person. The person in this movie certainly is very difficult, and unpleasant. Shirley is set as early as the late '40s and as late as 1964—vaguely, postwar midcentury. Everyone is uptight and stylish in the way of Todd Haynes's 2015 Carol or his 2002 Far From Heaven or the Mad Men TV series. Watching it at home on my computer felt like I'd taken a shot at a film festival film and was liking parts of it but the whole thing was turning out to be a disappointment but in a way that made me wonder if seeing it again, or talking it over with someone, might help me like it better, and hoping the picture I was looking at later that day would be better. I miss film festivals already.

Leaving Neverland (2019)

This long documentary sets out to answer once again the key questions regarding Michael Jackson as a pedophile: Was he one, and why does it matter now after his death? At this point, a definitive answer is as futile in its way as deciding how JFK died, but Leaving Neverland is not a useless stop for anyone with lingering curiosity. It hasn't convinced true believers, and it's likely to spoil your mood, as it did mine, but it has its merits. It's one of the quicker four-hour documentaries you'll ever see, engrossing and credible. Perhaps the single most affecting aspect of this sad story, one of the saddest in all popular culture, is not so much the evidence it offers for sex abuse as its clearsighted understanding of the damage done by it, which continues long after the abuse and indeed is quite apparently still going on for the two telling their stories in full for the first time here. These two—Wade Robson, who later became a choreographer for NSYNC and Britney Spears, and James Safechuck—are articulate and believable. Inevitably celebrity and the vast amounts of money at stake cloud the issues. When you are rich and powerful your lies carry outsize weight, as we know from present-day American politics (the Supreme Court refers to it as "freedom of speech"). Safechuck declined to participate in the second round of Jackson's legal troubles in the 2000s, but both supported him the first time in the '90s and Robson testified for him in 2005. Jackson paid a huge sum to the first complainants in the '90s and then won an acquittal in the 2000s case. But over the years, especially now with people like Robson and Safechuck coming forward, it's hard to escape the sense that Jackson was pretty much what he looked like, a pedophile, damaged emotionally in his own youth and indulged for his wealth and celebrity. I always wanted to give him the benefit of the doubt—and for the usual reasons, because I appreciated his music and legacy—but the size of the settlements, the fact that he did settle, his own ever-worsening bizarre behavior, and the pattern of constant credible accusations that followed him for most of his adult life (he died at age 50) perpetually undermined any faith I could put in him. By "credible," I suppose I should say, I mean the internal consistencies of most of these stories, particularly now Robson's and Safechuck's, as well as their consistencies with known behavior of pedophiles. Among the most chilling aspects of Leaving Neverland are the stories of Jackson's grooming behavior, which is sophisticated and about as far from child-like as it's possible to be. The mothers of both Robson and Safechuck also appear with extensive interviews—they have often been hotly assaulted in the public discourse as much and sometimes more than Jackson. Obviously they made huge errors in judgment—they allowed the sleepovers, and they believed their sons when their sons lied to protect Jackson. I have my own issues with these mothers, more related to the seductions of celebrity, but I'm not sure how many people judging them so harshly would have behaved that much differently if they had been in the strange situation. We'll probably never know the absolute truth of Michael Jackson's life and whether or not he did all the things he's accused of. But Leaving Neverland is already an important part of any judgment.

They Shall Not Grow Old (2018)

From the first I heard of this project, a commissioned restoration of archival World War I footage, I thought director Peter Jackson sounded like a good choice. But that was because much of what we've seen in his career, from Bad Taste to Heavenly Creatures to the Lord of the Rings trilogy, has boasted a natural facility for gee-whiz technical stunts, nearly rivaling Robert Zemeckis for bravura in that realm. What I didn't know is that Jackson is a WWI buff—with a nearly complete run of the War Illustrated magazine and a handy collection of authentic uniforms on which his crew could base colorizing decisions. He also has some personal stake in what was first known as the Great War, with a grandfather who fought and an uncle who died in it. They Shall Not Grow Old, no surprise, is impressive. Jackson's restoration focused primarily on correcting small matters that can make its subjects seem more distant and rinky-dink to us now, adjusting film speeds for example to make movement natural, serving up the most subtle and extraordinary colorizing job I've ever seen (though I admit I haven't seen many), adding a lot of original foley and other sound work, and drawing on hundreds of hours of oral history interviews. It plays much like a Ken Burns documentary in that way—we only hear the words of veterans. Among other things, Jackson hired forensic lip-readers to track down what soldiers in the archival footage were saying, rerecorded artillery sounds in battle conditions, and traveled to Belgium to get the color palette right for specific locations. It's fair to call the result painstaking, and rewarding. The narrative approach removes events from historical specificity and instead offers a more generic WWI experience. The break in and out of color happens when we arrive and leave the Western Front, and no man's land. With the first flush of color it occurred to me that Vietnam and movies like Apocalypse Now have set the cinematic terms for the immediacy of color in war scenarios, a disorienting juxtaposition. The fear and tension of the soldiers and everything about their miseries is somehow more visceral in the intensity of this hallucinatory color. We see lots of detail about life in the trenches. We see and hear about horrible conditions, mud pools of decaying human, mule, and horse corpses into which a man could sink and drown. Lice. Rats. Gangrene. Terrible smells. Chemical gas attacks. We see and hear the constant shelling. We see an unnamed battle start to finish. That's where the War Illustrated images turned out to be useful, as no camera ever went near the fiercest battles. We also get an interesting thumbnail sense of the war, through the words of these veterans, as essentially a battle between Britain and Germany. We really come to know the texture and feel of this extraordinary war, one of the greatest and most lethal atrocities in history. Those soldiers, in those conditions, are some of the bravest who ever fought.

"Charles" (1948)

Read story by Shirley Jackson online.

SPOILER ALERT. "Charles" is a very short story with a twist ending in the O. Henry vein. I had it figured out on the first page, but I had read it before. I can't remember if it fooled me the first time. It might have. Wikipedia comments: "This story is a prime example of dramatic irony where many times the reader can figure out——" Ah ah ah, Wikipedia. You just might have given it away without even a spoiler alert. Between my figuring it out quickly, and Wikipedia giving it away just like that, there's probably no harm in discussing it candidly, but I'll be scrupulous just in case. It's right there online for you and it's very short. By the evidence of this, "The Lottery," and other stories by her, Shirley Jackson was often in the surprise ending business, which was very popular in short stories for much of the 20th century. Jackson's work has value beyond this entertainment aspect, and reasons can be glimpsed here, though this story is mostly focused on its surprise business. Jackson is really good at midcentury American suburbia with malevolent overtones. "Charles" turns on a young couple sending their first-born off to kindergarten and dealing with what comes of it. There are profound moments in terms of child development and the bemusement and wonder of the parents. At a length of only five printed pages, this story verges on being a "short short." I understand it gets hard making these distinctions—short short and short stories, novellas, novelettes, etc.—and maybe it's not even worth it. But they seem to have some shadings by size. A short short (three printed pages max and as short as two sentences) almost always has a twist or multiple twists. Otherwise we're in the realm of prose poetry and frankly I don't want to go there. "Charles" is long enough to establish a narrative sequence, even though it deliberately dances around a key plot point that is saved for a "reveal" (that new noun). It's not purely a stunt, as Jackson's crisp jokey rhythms and suburban detail are worth the quick ride—her characters can be real in surprising ways. Still, it's mainly a stunt, or at best occupying the form of a stunt. "The Lottery" is a better story, but mostly because it's longer and thus there is more of Jackson's writing. It's also a stunt. But both are also more than that.

Library of America Story of the Week (Library of America)

Heavenly Creatures (1994)

#42: Heavenly Creatures (Peter Jackson, 1994)

Peter Jackson knows his way around moviemaking, and he certainly has range, but too often his interests land wide of the mark of my own. I appreciate the capacity for joke-gore that he demonstrated early in his career with Bad Taste and Braindead, over-the-top exercises that rival even Sam Raimi's. But the joke wears thin. And while his Lord of the Rings trilogy is magnificent as can be, it doesn't quite transcend the literary property on which it's based, something with which I never quite connected even though I slogged all the way through it as a teen.

That makes Heavenly Creatures something of the Baby Bear for me of his catalog: juuust riiight. It relies as much as anything of his on the flights of fancy of which he's so capable, slipping occasionally into gorgeous eye-candy visions that feel as if they veer close to psychotic breaks, and churning always with an unholy energy and exuberance. The story, "based on real events," recounts an intense friendship between two adolescent girls that takes a turn for the unhealthy. Starring Melanie Lynskey and Kate Winslet, both in debut performances, it travels deep into the darkest heart of the relationship. The clip at the link, which features a Mario Lanza song, gives some indication of what Jackson is managing here, most impressively finding ways to avoid sexualizing the whole thing, even when the girls spontaneously start tossing away their clothes. It's a temptation that would have been way too hard to resist for many a filmmaker, I suspect (and an interpretation of the film that some still see, wrongly I think). The ending, which leaves behind all pretense of fantasy and turns instead to jarring cuts and a gritty handheld-camera verite, is devastating (if you're so inclined you can relive it here, complete with the Puccini preamble that sets it up so well; parental warning).

"Billie Jean" (1983)

1. Michael Jackson, "Billie Jean" (Jan. 29, 1983, #1, 7 wks.)

If anybody ever figures out the secret to writing the perfect pop song, I think they are going to have to name it "Billie Jean" in honor of Michael Jackson's greatest moment. This song works on so many levels, not least that it's the purest and most sincere pleasure to hear, with that snaky, sinuous bass, the whisper-soft keyboard chords that bring it up, the tightly propelled mix generally, the rapscallion guitar break, and the spine-tingling cascading string flourishes that slash across the chorus like lightning (I guess that's actually keyboards at this juncture in history, and thank you Quincy Jones, for everything you did). This little production, full of complexities and textures, soars and swoops and dive-bombs and rockets back up. It don't stop till you get enough, to coin a term. At times I swear it belongs on a permanent play loop. No other song necessary, ever. Then there's the matter of Jackson's appearance at the Motown 25th anniversary celebration, where he took the stage and performed this song and introduced the world to the Moonwalk, which for me might be the single most riveting television moment in all of rock 'n' roll history. I cannot take my eyes off it any time I see it again; the whole thing in its pristine moment is endlessly spooky good. At one time, in the blinding flash of Thriller as it was just having its way with the pop charts, all the songs seemed pretty good. But it didn't take long to realize this was the real flashpoint, the one I couldn't actually get enough of and that could leave me almost short of breath from the exhilaration (or was that me dancing?). I suppose you could complain about the silly story the lyrics tell, or maybe Jackson's choked-off way of singing, which makes it harder to follow the general through line of the song as closely as you might like. Go ahead. Complain away.

Heavenly Creatures (1994)

New Zealand/Germany, 109 minutes
Director: Peter Jackson
Writers: Fran Walsh, Peter Jackson
Photography: Alun Bollinger
Editor: Jamie Selkirk
Cast: Melanie Lynskey, Kate Winslet, Sarah Peirse, Diana Kent, Clive Merrison, Simon O'Connor, Jed Brophy, Peter Elliott, Gilbert Goldie

A quiet landmark of its kind hiding in plain sight, this is director Peter Jackson's more or less first essay at the mainstream market and an interesting mix of a lot of the elements he has always been preoccupied with: fantasy, horror, and a swooning, almost drunken, embrace of the alluring surface details of adolescent life, which eventually open to reveal a careering maw of terror. It's also more or less Kate Winslet's first movie (complete with "introducing" in the opening credits, which also attaches to her co-star Melanie Lynskey, who matches well with her here even if she hasn't enjoyed the same stellar arc to her career since). Set in 1950s New Zealand, and based on a true story, it traces the path of an intense friendship between two lonely adolescent girls, Juliet Hulme (played by Winslet)—who interestingly went on to become a well-known mystery writer, Anne Perry—and Pauline Parker (played by Lynskey), a friendship that ultimately takes on grotesque and tragic dimensions. Much of the language, in fact, is taken from Parker's diaries of the time. They are an oddly matched pair, crossing class lines. Juliet suffers from tuberculosis and a peripatetic English family (her father is an academic) all too willing to leave her behind "for the good of her health." Pauline comes from a lower-middle-class New Zealand family and is all too aware of, and ashamed of, her mean origins. From the beginning, opening on a lengthy foreshadowing of the final scene that nonetheless hardly prepares us for it, the action and momentum here is swirling, dizzying, headlong. It's exuberant, pulsing with adolescent energy, staying on the point of view of the two girls. The camera echoes this dynamic, perpetually restless and roaming, making the action feel supercharged every step of the way. At first, Juliet and Pauline share an obsession with the opera cum pop singer Mario Lanza, a particularly amusing abhorrence of Orson Welles (who they refer to as "It"), and fairy-tale-like fantasies of the British royal family. In the private world they construct, they set themselves to creating novels and pictures and elaborate if incoherent backstories of their romantic adventures. As the fantasies of the girls become more intense so does their presentation here, with unreal radioactive glowing colors, landscapes that warp and shift, and eventually animated clay figures who act out the roles imagined for them. Between Juliet's condition and some sexual misbehavior on the part of Pauline with an unpleasant boarder (adroitly done), the parents of both are soon concerned and stepping in to try and cool the ardor between them, which of course only serves to fire them further. The parents are fascinating and affecting characters, particularly Pauline's. Eventually the girls set themselves to a horrific plan to liberate themselves from these parental oppressors, and as the film shifts into that final, closing sequence, the swooning fantasy approach falls away and is replaced by something that's almost verite, delivering a payoff that's shocking, disturbing, and unforgettable.

"Rock With You" (1979)

56. Michael Jackson, "Rock With You" (Nov. 24, 1979, #1, 4 wks.)

I remember this song playing always at night and I heard it most often when I was driving. It got under my skin right away, so sinuous and groovy and focused so deceptively on its dance floor preoccupations to a degree ironically almost credible. After all, I don't want to "rock with you" on the dance floor as such. That is intended, appropriately, as the prelude. But that's how Michael Jackson did it. It was always the alluring glow of the distance that exists between the performer and the fantasy and the reality, and the potential of the glamour within those spaces. And that's all it ever has to be, just about the dance, because the dance is ultimately about everything. And that's also how Michael Jackson did it, however you tend to identify and define "how" and "did" and "it." He was a master—and here I have to give all credit to his unerring pop instincts, which he had and they were true, which ultimately helped to earn him the rather sad and misleading label of the "King of Pop," even if it was true enough in its way and in its day. Much about Michael Jackson, including this lovely interlude, seems to me now to be extraordinarily timebound, of a particular and peculiar era that is bounded on one side by various disco convulsions and on the other by hideous and notably painful media excesses. In between, this suave and confident young fellow made the case for the return to mystery wherever he could find it and make it. He sure as hell wasn't a little kid anymore. He was all growed up now, and he seemed to be onto something with both his arms around it.