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| Reading List - The Haunting of Hill House |
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Title: The Haunting of Hill House
Author: Shirley Jackson
Started Reading: 2020-10-07
Finished Reading: 2020-10-18
via Libby
This was much more difficult of a read than I'd expected. I'm glad to have the experience under my belt, but I feel like after seeing so many re-imaginings of this story, the original fell a bit flat. Sort of like the original War of the Worlds inspired so many, much more intense variations on the "alien attack" theme. I respect this story for the door it opened in the "haunted house" genre, but ultimately found it a bit tedious.
Highlights
All from the introductory chapter: Haunted Castles, Dark Mirrors: On the Penguin Horror Series by GUILLERMO DEL TORO
I take great pride in presenting a new edition of Haunted Castles: The Complete Gothic Stories as part of this Penguin Horror series.
Which brings us to Howard Phillips Lovecraft. There is so much to say about him and such illuminating texts have been written by brilliant scholars (above all else my kind accomplice S. T. Joshi), colleagues (L. Sprague de Camp’s Lovecraft biography), or fellow authors (H. P. Lovecraft: Against the World, Against Life, Michel Houellebecq)
Henry James was fascinated by ghost stories—which he defined as fairy tales for adults—and studied them carefully. He devoted considerable time to the creation and contemplation of such tales and, in my opinion, devised one of the most moving and tenuous of all ghost tales in “The Way It Came."
It is not until Poe that the seat of evil is transferred back to its proper place: the human mind.
"To learn what we fear is to learn who we are. Horror defines our boundaries and illuminates our souls. In that, it is no different, or less controversial, than humor, and no less intimate than sex."