BotM October: We Have Always Lived in the Castle by Shirley Jackson

The Something Awful Forums > The Finer Arts > The Book Barn > BotM October: We Have Always Lived in the Castle by Shirley Jackson

Hieronymous Alloy: Jan 30, 2009; Why! Why!! Why must you refuse to accept that Dr. Hieronymous Alloy's Genetically Enhanced Cream Corn Is Superior to the Leading Brand on the Market!?!; Morbid Hound

In this thread, we choose one work of ~~literature~~ absolute crap and read/discuss it over a month. If you have any suggestions of books, choose something that will be appreciated by many people, and has many avenues of discussion. We'd also appreciate if it were a work of ~~literature~~ complete drivel that is easily located from a local library or book shop, as opposed to ordering something second hand off the internet and missing out on a week's worth of reading. Better yet, books available on e-readers.

Resources:

Project Gutenberg - http://www.gutenberg.org

- A database of over 17000 books available online. If you can suggest books from here, that'd be the best.

SparkNotes - http://www.sparknotes.com/

- A very helpful Cliffnotes-esque site, but much better, in my opinion. If you happen to come in late and need to catch-up, you can get great character/chapter/plot summaries here.

:siren:

For recommendations on future material, suggestions on how to improve the club, or just a general rant, feel free to PM the moderation team. :siren:

Past Books of the Month

[for BOTM before 2019, refer to archives]

2019:
January: Roadside Picnic by Arkady and Boris Strugatsky
February: BEAR by Marian Engel
March: V. by Thomas Pynchon
April: The Doorbell Rang by Rex Stout
May: Thinking, Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman
June: 1491: New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus by Charles C. Mann
July: The Art of Fielding by Chad Harbach
August: Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds by Charles Mackay
September: Picnic at Hanging Rock by Joan Lindsay
October: Her Body and Other Parties by Carmen Maria Machado
November: The Maltese Falcon by Dashiell Hammett
December: Moby Dick by Herman Melville

2020:
January: The Jungle by Upton Sinclair
February: WE by Yevgeny Zamyatin
March: The Autobiography of Benvenuto Cellini by Benvenuto Cellini
April: The Decameron by Giovanni Boccaccio
May: Black Lamb and Grey Falcon by Dame Rebecca West
June: The African Queen by C. S. Forester
July: The End of Policing by Alex S. Vitale
August: The Merry Adventures of Robin Hood, of Great Renown in Nottinghamshire, by Howard Pyle
September: Strange Hotel, by Eimear McBride
October:Kwaidan: Stories and Studies of Strange Things (怪談)("Ghost Stories"), by Lafcadio Hearn
November: A Libertarian Walks Into a Bear: The Utopian Plot to Liberate an American Town (And Some Bears) , by Matthew Hongoltz Hetling
December: Ignition!: An Informal History of Liquid Rocket Propellants by John Drury Clark

2021:

January: The Mark of Zorro by Johnston McCulley
February: How to Read Donald Duck by Ariel Dorfman and Armand Mattelart
March: Carrier Wave by Robert Brockway
April: The Third Policeman by Flann O'Brian
May: You Can't Win by Jack Black
June:Treasure Island by Robert Louis Stevenson
July:Can Such Things Be by Ambrose Bierce
August: Swann's Way by Marcel Proust
September:A Dreamer's Tales by Edward John Moreton Drax Plunkett, 18th Baron of Dunsany

Current:

We Have Always Lived in the Castle by Shirley Jackson

Book available here:

https://www.amazon.com/Always-Castle-Penguin-Classics-Deluxe/dp/0143039970

About the book

quote:

We Have Always Lived in the Castle is Shirley Jackson�s last book and widely considered as her life�s masterpiece. It revolves around two sisters, Merricat and Constance, who live with their sickly Uncle Julian in their family mansion. They are the only survivors of a murder in the Blackwood household, where an arsenic-laced sugar bowl and berries left four members of the family dead. Merricat was sent to bed without dinner and Constance doesn�t take sugar, so the two were unaffected by the poison. Uncle Julian consumed only a little but he never fully recovered and remains ailing.

https://medium.com/@rachitkataria/rachit-reviews-we-have-always-lived-in-the-castle-32ff87fe7ec5

quote:

The theme of persecution of people who exhibit "otherness" or become outsiders in small-town New England, by small-minded villagers, is at the forefront of We Have Always Lived in the Castle and is a repeated theme in Jackson's work. In her novels The Haunting of Hill House and, to a lesser extent, The Sundial, this theme is also central to the psychology of the story. In all these works, the main characters live in a house that stands alone on many acres, and is entirely separate physically, socially, as well as ideologically, from the main inhabitants of the town. In his 2006 introduction of the Penguin Classics edition, Jonathan Lethem stated that the recurring town is "pretty well recognizable as North Bennington, Vermont", where Jackson and her husband, Bennington professor Stanley Edgar Hyman, encountered strong "reflexive anti-Semitism and anti-intellectualism".[5]

All of Jackson's work creates an atmosphere of strangeness and contact with what Lethem calls "a vast intimacy with everyday evil..." and how that intimacy affects "a village, a family, a self". Only in We Have Always Lived in the Castle, though, is there also a deep exploration of love and devotion despite the pervasive unease and perversity of character that runs through the story. Constance's complete absence of judgment of her sister and her crime is treated as absolutely normal and unremarkable, and it is clear throughout the story that Merricat loves and cares deeply for her sister.

The novel was described by Jackson's biographer, Judy Oppenheimer, as "a paean to agoraphobia",[6] with the author's own agoraphobia and nervous conditions having greatly informed its psychology.[7] Jackson freely admitted that the two young women in the story were liberally fictionalized versions of her own daughters, and Oppenheimer noted that Merricat and Constance were the "yin and yang of Shirley's own inner self".[8] Written in deceptively simple language, by an entirely unreliable narrator, the novel implies that the two heroines may choose to live forever in the remaining three rooms of their house, since they prefer each other's company to that of any outsiders. Lethem calls this reversion to their pre-Charles stasis Merricat's "triumph".

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/We_Have_Always_Lived_in_the_Castle

About the Author

quote:

Shirley Hardie Jackson (December 14, 1916 � August 8, 1965) was an American writer, known primarily for her works of horror and mystery. Over the duration of her writing career, which spanned over two decades, she composed six novels, two memoirs, and more than 200 short stories.

Born in San Francisco, California, Jackson attended Syracuse University in New York, where she became involved with the university's literary magazine and met her future husband Stanley Edgar Hyman. After they graduated, the couple moved to New York and began contributing to The New Yorker, Jackson as a fiction writer and Hyman as a contributor to "Talk of the Town".

The couple settled in North Bennington, Vermont, in 1945, after the birth of their first child, when Hyman joined the faculty of Bennington College.[1]

After publishing her debut novel The Road Through the Wall (1948), a semi-autobiographical account of her childhood in California, Jackson gained significant public attention for her short story "The Lottery", which presents the sinister underside of a bucolic American village. She continued to publish numerous short stories in literary journals and magazines throughout the 1950s, some of which were assembled and reissued in her 1953 memoir Life Among the Savages. In 1959, she published The Haunting of Hill House, a supernatural horror novel widely considered to be one of the best ghost stories ever written.[a]

"The persona that Jackson presented to the world was powerful, witty, even imposing," wrote Zo� Heller in the New Yorker. "She could be sharp and aggressive with fey Bennington girls and salesclerks and people who interrupted her writing. Her letters are filled with tartly funny observations. Describing the bewildered response of New Yorker readers to 'The Lottery,' she notes, 'The number of people who expected Mrs. Hutchinson to win a Bendix washing machine at the end would amaze you.'"[1]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shirley_Jackson

Pacing

:justpost:

Read as thou wilt is the whole of the law.

Please post after you read!

Please bookmark the thread to encourage discussion.

References and Further Materials

There was a 2019 adaptation : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W6CVyg_0iKc

Suggestions for Future Months

These threads aren't just for discussing the current BOTM; If you have a suggestion for next month's book, please feel free to post it in the thread below also. Generally what we're looking for in a BotM are works that have

1) accessibility -- either easy to read or easy to download a free copy of, ideally both

2) novelty -- something a significant fraction of the forum hasn't already read

3) discussability -- intellectual merit, controversiality, insight -- a book people will be able to talk about.

Final Note:

Thanks, and we hope everyone enjoys the book!

# ? Oct 4, 2021 11:51

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# ? May 8, 2024 22:09

Bilirubin: Feb 16, 2014; The sanctioned action is to CHUG

Off on our first vacation for a year and a half, have this book packed and ready for some reading at the lakeshore!

# ? Oct 4, 2021 14:58

DreamingofRoses: Jun 27, 2013; Nap Ghost

I went into this book completely blind, didn�t even read any of the synopses. I�m about 2/3rds of the way through and it�s really interesting how Merricat has regressed to young childlike behavior during this whole thing. I have a weird inverted Anne Shirley vibe off of her.

Even though I know it�s from Mary Katherine�s point of view and she is highly unreliable, I still loathe Charles.

My overall thoughts so far are: poor Constance.

Edit: Finished it. Poor Constance still stands. Also the absolute loving gall of those people. Charles 100% a shitbird. The big surprise revelation was kinda obvious. Good book.

DreamingofRoses fucked around with this message at 21:59 on Oct 7, 2021

# ? Oct 7, 2021 18:43

Hammer Bro.: Jul 7, 2007; THUNDERDOME LOSER

I haven't read the book but I listened to a great summary / discussion of it that makes me wish I had:

https://anchor.fm/claytemple-media/episodes/Ep--4-We-Have-Always-Lived-in-the-Castle-by-Shirley-Jackson-e5mbtl

Even in recap form it's a moving piece of media. Definitely on my grab-if-I-stumble-across-it list.

# ? Oct 12, 2021 15:26

AARD VARKMAN: May 17, 1993

I read it last year for the first time so won't be rereading yet but I really, really liked this book.

# ? Oct 12, 2021 18:02

Bilirubin: Feb 16, 2014; The sanctioned action is to CHUG

Just finished the scene setting first chapter. Very intriguing.

# ? Oct 15, 2021 05:02

Bilirubin: Feb 16, 2014; The sanctioned action is to CHUG

Chapter 2, the tea party. Hilarious

# ? Oct 16, 2021 04:26

MaddestMethod: Jun 5, 2020

Loved this book and related deeply to Merricat. The pacing and narration was that rare kind of disjointed that makes something interesting and oddly satisfying rather than jerky and unconnected. I can't believe I didn't know that Jackson also wrote Haunting of Hill House and will definitely be picking that up next.

# ? Oct 18, 2021 01:07

iTrust: Mar 25, 2010; It's not good for your health.

Wasn't sure on what to read next and decided to buy this based solely on this thread title featuring the words "Shirley Jackson."

Read the first chapter and I'm in. Last BOTM I read was "Carrier Wave" so its good to be back.

# ? Oct 18, 2021 18:15

Bilirubin: Feb 16, 2014; The sanctioned action is to CHUG

wow wow wow is this ever a good book!

# ? Oct 19, 2021 04:06

DreamingofRoses: Jun 27, 2013; Nap Ghost

Just the image at the end of Merricat and Connie just sitting on either side of the front door, looking out, just staring silently has been haunting me since I finished the book. It�s so creepy! And sad!

# ? Oct 19, 2021 23:54

Bilirubin: Feb 16, 2014; The sanctioned action is to CHUG

Just finished. Agreed DreamingofRoses

I also as the book went on struggled with whether Merricat struck such fear into Constance that she had no option but go along with her as it seemed her "rules" were set by herself. But then I realized they were both trapped in the same mindset, and even Merricat's rules seemed to have some sort of external component to them that she simply discovered.

A real good book! Thanks for taking up this suggestion HA!

# ? Oct 20, 2021 04:07

Hieronymous Alloy: Jan 30, 2009; Why! Why!! Why must you refuse to accept that Dr. Hieronymous Alloy's Genetically Enhanced Cream Corn Is Superior to the Leading Brand on the Market!?!; Morbid Hound

Speaking of, need suggestions for November!

# ? Oct 20, 2021 12:17

Kangxi: Nov 12, 2016; "Too paranoid for you?"
"Not me, paranoia's the garlic in life's kitchen, right, you can never have too much."

I was really happy to reread this one this month. Shirley Jackson is a favorite of mine even though I haven't read as much of her work as I should have.

�Oh Constance, we are so happy."

# ? Oct 24, 2021 21:53

Selachian: Oct 9, 2012

Hieronymous Alloy posted:

Speaking of, need suggestions for November!

Since it's come up in the SF thread, how about Doris Lessing's Shikasta?

# ? Oct 28, 2021 00:18

Lawman 0: Aug 17, 2010

This was an extremely bizarre and unsettling book.
Enjoyable read though.

# ? Oct 29, 2021 02:06

Hieronymous Alloy: Jan 30, 2009; Why! Why!! Why must you refuse to accept that Dr. Hieronymous Alloy's Genetically Enhanced Cream Corn Is Superior to the Leading Brand on the Market!?!; Morbid Hound

I went back through the old BOTM polls looking for candidates and right now I'm leaning towards "Strong Poison" by Dorothy Sayers. It's a good month for a cozy mystery.

# ? Nov 1, 2021 02:25

Zurtilik: Oct 23, 2015; The Biggest Brain in Guardia

Is that the official choice? I'm gonna try to read along again!

# ? Nov 1, 2021 14:16

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# ? May 8, 2024 22:09

Hieronymous Alloy: Jan 30, 2009; Why! Why!! Why must you refuse to accept that Dr. Hieronymous Alloy's Genetically Enhanced Cream Corn Is Superior to the Leading Brand on the Market!?!; Morbid Hound

Zurtilik posted:

Is that the official choice? I'm gonna try to read along again!

unless something changes my mind in the next 24 hours yeah. I should be able to get a thread up tonight. It got runner-up in a poll a few months back is why.

# ? Nov 1, 2021 18:49

The Something Awful Forums > The Finer Arts > The Book Barn > BotM October: We Have Always Lived in the Castle by Shirley Jackson