Backlisted - We Have Always Lived in the Castle by Shirley Jackson

Episode Date: October 30, 2017

For our annual Halloween episode John Mitchinson and Andy Miller are joined by Fiona Wilson and Andrew Male to discuss Shirley Jackson's final novel 'We Have Always Lived in the Castle'. In this show's 'What We Have Been Reading' slot John discusses 'True Ghost Stories of Our Own Time' by Vivienne Rae-Ellis, while Andy puts forward 'Going on the Turn', the third memoir from Danny Baker.Timings: (may differ due to variable advert length)5'07 - True Ghost Sories Of Our Own Time by Vivienne Rae-Ellis11'52 - Going On The Turn by Danny Baker20'59 - We Have Always Lived in the Castle by Shirley Jackson* To purchase any of the books mentioned in this episode please visit our bookshop at uk.bookshop.org/shop/backlisted where all profits help to sustain this podcast and UK independent bookshops.* For information about everything mentioned in this episode visit www.backlisted.fm*If you'd like to support the show, listen without adverts, receive the show early and with extra bonus fortnightly episodes, become a Patreon at www.patreon.com/backlisted Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Let's go seize the night. That's the powerful backing of American Express. Visit amex.ca slash yamex. Benefits vary by car and other conditions apply. So we were up at the Durham World Festival last weekend and we were recording an episode of Backlisted in front of a live audience. We were. We were.

Extraordinary work of Gordon Byrne. With Adele Strachan. What are you saying? I don't know why. What's the matter? It was great. It was great. I loved it.

I didn't want to go home. It won't be up for about a month, though, will it, that one? No, because we've got Halloween to do. Which is... Any minute now, apparently. You were reader-in-residence again this year. I was reader-in-residence. Did you. I was reader-in-residence, yeah.

Did you read anything? And the next question, were you in residence? I did read some stories by Shirley Jackson, and I read the first 50 pages of books to Furniture Room by Anthony Pohl. So I did read residentially, and I enjoyed Durham. I went up to the, as listeners will hear in a few weeks' time, I took the Pevsner Guide to Durham with me, and I went perambulating round Durham to take advantage of the architecture.

So I went to the cathedral. Did you go to the cathedral? I love it, because it's my favourite building in the whole world. And Pevsner's brilliant on it as well. It's one of the great things about a book like that, is it doesn't go out of date the cathedral they haven't really built many new extensions to it for a long time i think it's easily my favorite building in the world but i i feel there's a big second-hand book sale which was mostly not good so i mean i think we've been going for about two days but i found a an old copy of I've forgotten the name of it now,

but it's a poetry, one of those books, like new poets that they published every year that Danny Abster used to publish. And I found in it an essay on W.B. Yeats, a memory of W.B. Yeats by Basil Bunting. So I've been thinking about Bunting because of the North East. I might bring it back to a future podcast, maybe the one we do next week,

because it's about Yeats in Rapallo when he's old and his inability to keep a cat. It's just a complete... I'd never seen it, never heard of it, didn't know it existed. But Bunting used to know him really well. And then there's another brilliant essay about Ezra Pound, sort of another memorial. It's kind of that thing you could do in the 1970s because the people who'd known those people were still alive

so it was worth my 50p when I was in Henley the week before the weekend before I was up at the Henley literary festival I went into the Oxfam in Henley and I bought a copy of the Tin Men by Michael Frayne Michael Frayne's first novel and that was like 50p and then when I was in the green room about two hours later and Michael Frayne was in the green room about two hours later and michael frame was in the green room it was only michael frame so i went over to him and i said because i was on duty that's the best question no i went up to him and i said hello mr frame i've just bought your first novel for 50p from Oxfam. Always a good entree. I said, would you sign it?

It seems providential that you should be here. And he looked at it and he went, I don't really think you can call this one a novel, but yes. So that's the... I hope the current publishers of the Tin Men put that on the cover. Shall we start, yeah? Hello and welcome to Backlisted, the podcast that brings new life to old books you

join us in the rotten mildewed summer house at the bottom of the new england estate of our sponsors unbound the website that brings authors and readers together to create something spooky i'm john mitchinson publisher of unbound and i'm andy miller author of The Year of Reading Dangerously. And joining us today on the podcast are Fiona Wilson. Hello. Former book critic at The Times, amongst others. Have you given up all critical duties? I dabble, but... No, I'm now firmly ensconced at Unbound.

And it says here, currently new projects editor here at Unbound. Indeed I am. There we go. Very good. And we're also joined by returning guest and... Record third time. Ghoul. Revenant. Revenant himself.

The Revenant Andrew Mayle. Writer and critic for Mojo, Sight and Sound of the Guardian, amongst others, who once again we have dragged out of his dank subterranean lair, blinking into the light. The price of a pint. The book that Fiona and Andrew have joined us to talk about is We Have Always Lived in the Castle by Shirley Jackson. I should say this is a Halloween edition of Backlisted,

and no creepier writer I think exists. But anyway, the question always. Andy, what have you been reading this week? Well, I want to tell you, but I think as it's our Halloween special, you should tell us what you've been reading this week first. Well, I thought what I'd do is read some... There's a book that I remember reading ages ago, published by Faber in 1990 called true ghost stories of our

own time compiled and edited by vivian ray ellis who was a writer australian who lived in somerset she died i think some years ago but this is one of those compilations of real life ghost stories it comes with everything you'd want including including an introduction by, of course, Brian Inglis. I'll read you two or three little nuggets to give you the flavour. But it is basically divided into historic houses, violent deaths, time warps, children's ghosts, ghosts of pets. It's voices and sounds and odours. And if you like kind of true ghost stories, and I kind of do, it's sort of my idea of fun is sitting around and trying to scare myself.

And it's a very, very good collection. And there are some wonderful little asides. And I particularly like in the introduction, she says, I'm deeply indebted to my contributors and to the editors of journals and newspapers who published my appeal. So there was obviously people sent in. the response from readers in the midlands and northern areas of

england was remarkably high an intriguing point which might warrant further investigation anyway i'll read you a couple uh there are a couple here that are quite funny i mean there are some of them are truly scary and they're what that tends to be the ones that are a bit longer a bit scary but i'll read you one which i think is good it's lucy the daughter of mary outthwaite experienced something strange in their 15 year old house on the edge of dartmoor but learned how to handle the situation this is the something there's something really quite that there's the matter of factness about some of these hauntings. I mean, I am really genuinely sceptical about it, but I'm also genuinely not.

I mean, I think people do experience things, and I've got a theory which I'll come on to in a moment. Anyway, here's this. She was looking out of the window one day and said she could see a figure of a man coming up the drive dressed all in blue in a doublet and hose and wearing a hat with a blue feather. She could hear his feet on the gravel of the drive. my mother and i happened to be looking out of the window at the same time and yet we saw nothing sir francis drake was born a few miles

away and a neighboring farm had a sign of his keys impressed over the door so obviously the neighborhood had some connection with him could this this have been the figure Lucy saw? At the same time as Lucy saw the man in blue, she seemed unable to sleep at night and kept complaining of the face of a little girl leering down at her while she was in bed, pulling horrible faces at her, which terrified her. I suggested she should pull her face back at the child.

And once Lucy started doing this, the face disappeared and the child never came back. There you go. Brilliant. Lucy started doing this, the face disappeared, and the child never came back. There you go. So many questions. We're laughing, you know. It's not merely amusing though, right? You're going to chill us to the bone now. I'm not going to...

I'm going to tell you, I'm going to tell you, here's a literary, a little literary one Christina Foyle a Foyle's bookseller had an experience which she mentioned in an article by Daniel Farson oh by Daniel Farson in the Sunday Telegraph on the 27th of December 1987

according to Farson Christina once spent a night in a reputedly haunted room and woke to find two tooth marks on her shoulder, wounds which her doctor told her had been infected by a germ unknown for years. Hang on. I must just tell listeners

that Andrew just did the universal symbol of having a drink. No, no, no. Use the word. Yeah, Farson was a regularly tormented by spirits. This is why I have to read the next bit, because Daniel Farson found himself staying in Tyndall's room in a wonderful little sodbury manor north of Bristol. Brilliant.

Tyndall, as you know, was uh executed he was strangled and then hang anyway daniel farson having seen one ghost sometime before his visit to little sodbury and being keenly aware of the room's reputation was nervous of the night to come after dining with the harfords he left them reluctantly to climb the stairs to Tyndall's room. He, too, woke at one point, convinced he was being smothered, only to find that the heavy bedspread had risen to cover his face. There is no doubt

my sleep was disturbed, he reports, and having got up once during the night to make the hazardous journey to the bathroom down slippery wooden stairs, he was feeling even more shattered than usual when he woke in the morning. He hurried again to the bathroom in order to rinse out his mouth, which seemed half full of liquid. I was shocked to see a stream of crimson blood pour into the basin instead of water and assumed this was simply a matter of bleeding gums.

Though my dentist could not explain it, nor has it happened since. a matter of bleeding gums. Though my dentist could not explain it, nor has it happened since. Some people believe the evil presence in the attic room at Little Sodbury Manor may not be the spirit of William Tyndall, but that of his murderer, the man who strangled him. Daniel Farson discussed his experience in Tyndall's room with Peter Underwood, a leading writer on the topic of ghosts and president of the Ghost Club. He was intrigued by Underwood's conclusion. It seems that the evil presence may well be that of a person responsible for strangling Tyndall before he was burnt as a heretic. This particular influence could be a case of derangement in respect of time and place. The manner where Tyndall concentrated and worked so hard could well provide the atmosphere necessary

for an impression of the cruel nature of his strangler to become locked there in some way we do not understand. Your experience of a mouthful of blood, something Tyndall would have experienced in his last moments, is interesting. I imagine he didn't actually say that. If there was no natural or physical

explanation, as seems likely, then it would appear to be a case of the superphysical affecting the physical. Or... Yeah. Or is there another explanation? Once again, Farson wicks in a strange place with his mouth full of

liquid. I just thought of all the people you could choose as a reliable source. I've no doubt the deadline was approaching i can tell you it's out of print from favor but it is available as an ebook it's just if you if you like it's a just a good collection what's it called ghost stories it's called true ghost stories of our own time it's a nice it's a divertissement for a for a halloween

andy what have you been reading yes by way of contrast when i was in uh henley two weekends ago uh i was interviewing various people at the book festival one of the people i was interviewing was one of my great heroes and i introduced him by saying the following thing which was that uh marquis smith of Fall once said, you should never meet your heroes, and vice versa. You know what I mean? And I'm not sure I do know what he means, but I said I've been lucky enough this year, I've met three of my heroes.

I met Julian Cove, we talked about that, I met Jimmy Webb, I talked about Jimmy Webb's book, and I met the third of my heroes, and they've been fortunate enough to meet me, Danny Baker, the broadcaster, journalist, television personality, Danny Baker. Now, Danny Baker, the broadcaster, journalist, television personality, Danny Baker. Now, Danny Baker has just published the third volume of his memoirs. It's called Going on the Turn. The first volume was called Going to See in a Civ and was a bestseller.

The second volume was called Going Off Alarming and was a bestseller. Going to See in a Civ is the basis of the TV series that they then made starring Peter Kay called Cradle to Grave, another series which may or may not be in the offing. And I asked Danny Baker whether he had intended to set out to write a trilogy, and he said, well, hang on, there's another one on the way. So volume four is of the quadrilogy the baker the going quadrilogy

is probably in the offing and the thing i feel i ought to say to listeners if they think they know danny baker or they think they know him from being on i'm a celebrity or being a football pundit or from hanging out with chris evans and gaza the 90s, is that doesn't really do him justice. He's very difficult to put in a box and pass off as one kind of thing or another kind of thing. But what he definitely is, is a writer. And he's a polymath. I mean, he's an extraordinarily knowledgeable man.

I mean, he's done QI several times. He actually did the very first QI, where he kind of... You know, Alan was very good. John Sessions was kind of good, but a bit odd. And poor old Hugh Laurie was totally nonplussed by the format. But Danny, kind of, he was... He's brilliant because, you know,

there are no embarrassed pauses in a show that Danny's... But his knowledge... I must say i must say interviewing him was one of the easiest gigs of all time because you can't you kind of go oh i got three four in yeah pretty good eh so one of the things about him is that he is a real writer and you get the sense reading his books that what makes him tick this isn't like a celebrity autobiography it is the ability to tell a good story to the very peak of his ability. You know that famous Douglas Adams quote about P.G. Woodhouse, plot doesn't matter,

character doesn't matter, it's pure word music. The idea that the words are being put together in such a combination as to make them irresistibly funny. That's sort of what's going on, I think, with Danny Baker's writing. And that's certainly what he seems to be aiming for in the book. So they're properly written and they're brilliantly written. He also talks about in this book his cancer. He nearly died, he had cancer. And the thing that's so interesting about that is not that he has rarely talked about it

or that he treats it as a confessional. It's fascinating to see a writer respond to a piece of material as they're writing it and think to themselves this is good so even while these awful things are happening to him the writer is pushing to the fore to go i've got to get this down that's great so i'm just going to read one story i can't do it in the true Baker style, and I won't try, but I will read one story about when he was working. I think this is on the Six O'Clock Show, which was a show that was on LWT,

and he was a presenter, and he would often do some of the sort of larkier stuff with the public or whatever. At some point in the studio discussion, I must have said that I couldn't even entertain hypnotism as a viable science. After the show, we received a slew of calls from people affronted by this, with several offering to come

and demonstrate the bona fides of the great science, capital G, capital S. Sniffing some show-filling hoopla, the producers booked a working theatre hypnotist to come on to the very next programme and give it to me live and undiluted. Have you ever heard this story, any of you? OK. I met him during rehearsals and he seemed an agreeable old pro,

a little nervous and not dissimilar in appearance to the great Harry Worth. I didn't want to embarrass the man by tearing up his act live on air, but I also knew there was no way I would actually succumb to the old your eyes are getting heavy guff and this would undoubtedly result in professional loss of face for him still the last thing i was going to do was play along like all those desperate volunteers you see on hypnotism stage shows who pretend to helplessly disco dance at the mention of certain words or imagine they get electric shocks from ordinary ballpoint pens. Use the word ordinary there.

Frankly, I've always thought such hopeless end of the pier showboating to be the physical representation of those signs in insurance offices that say you don't have to be allowed to work here, but it helps. No, once we got on air, it was either him or me that had to be put to the sword, and I sat about trying to think of the kindest way to undermine his efforts while getting a few good laughs into the bargain. Sadly that evening as our spot in the show approached I could feel the ham in me start to sizzle and I suddenly realized that I had little choice but to make as big a splash as I could. I became resigned to total resistance and if that meant chucking the

old pro overboard live on air, then so be it. However, never, ever underestimate those who have been in the game longer than you have. This sweet, avuncular, anxious bumbler had an ace up his sleeve that perfectly sucker-punched a cocky young pretender like me. Heavily trailed throughout the show, our moment arrived, and in all honesty, I was licking my lips

at the laughs I was about to get at this whole waxworks expense. Following an introduction by Michael Aspel, the camera zoomed in on the far side of the studio where I sat in the sucker's chair, waiting to be transported into the fourth dimension. But behind me, and now in full dress suit, was my guide.

Before I could say a word, before I could deliver my very first finely honed undercutting comic whiz-bang, he grabbed the high ground and picked me off like the sap I was. During the huge applause that greeted Aspel's intro, the old rogue leant forward and said very

softly in my ear, I hope this goes well, that's my grandson in the front row. He's not seen me work before. What a bastard! What a brilliant, conniving, magnificent, blackmailing old bastard. And yes,

sure enough, as I looked ahead, there, smiling and fresh-faced, was a kid of about seven that I hadn't noticed before. His eyes were wide, his hair neat and brushed, his face full of hope, and he was applauding wildly because his granddad was about to be the star of the show i repeat what a sly old bastard now what could i do well i'll tell you what i did i went under meekly compliantly like the impotent stooge i was

i clucked like a chicken and i ran around the chair like a rabbit i sang like frank sinatra and i sat up and begged for a biscuit for a dog like a dog or rather like the beaten mutt i've become and he goes on and he says there was the kid in the front row looking so proud of his old grandpop that he was fit to burst i looked at his beaming grin and wondered if he would ever know what humiliating was a humiliating sacrifice i just made for him and then as junior's eyes met mine, it hit me. Of course he would know. He wasn't there by chance.

That kid was no more the hypnotist's grandson than I was. He probably wasn't even a kid. He was most likely some hard-bitten midget with a rat sheet as long as your arm that had been travelling with the act for about 40 years. He was the guarantee and I was the mark. Fantastic. What a fantastic... Now, I can't do justice justice that in the full baker style

but the books are full of is he doing the audiobooks yeah and he's doing all the audiobooks as well you know and and the great thing about that it's a bit of business isn't it and you can you can see the the ham in me started to sizzle absolutely kind of you know you're aware of his reading of you know kind of classic showbiz autobiographies or his love of kind of you know you're aware of his reading of you know kind of classic showbiz autobiographies or his love of kind of you know musical and everything every these anecdotes are worked on they're finely honed and that you know they're done as a bit of business you know and it's also but also the literary element too yeah that's the thing it's perilman and woodhouse yes absolutely dignity of the indignity, but the dignity of proper comic prose.

It's worked. Great. Yeah, it's really good. Great, great, great, great. Now, to return to, well, I suppose vaguely spooky, isn't it? Yeah. Anyway. Oh, the mists are rolling over the kitchen table.

Yes. This seems like a match time for a break we'll be back in just a sec time to begin Andy so the main book we're talking about today is We Have Always Lived in the Castle by Shirley Jackson

which I hadn't read before which I hadn't read before which comes plastered with quotes from people like Neil Ga gaiman and donna tart and stephen king and uh johanna harris and paul theroux and nigel neal this huge lineup of of uh writers paying homage to to shirley jackson who was i don't well we'll come on we'll discuss this fiona we always ask this, but where did you first read We Have Always Lived in the Castle or encounter Shirley Jackson?

Well, a few years ago, I was writing a column called Classic Reads, much like Packlestone. Every week, I would reread a book that had sort of either fallen out of print or had been reissued by a publisher. And a few years ago, all of Shirley Jackson's books were brought out again by Penguin and you know it was that era where there were a lot of the girl on the train was coming out and there was Gone Girl as well and everyone was talking about domestic noir as though it was some new thing and I was talking to one of my colleagues and he said well have you have you read Shirley Jackson and I hadn't and so I sort dug in, and I first read Have We Always Lived in the Castle? And I was just blown away.

I mean, it's got one of the most memorable opening paragraphs you'll have ever read. And I just kept reading after that. Why don't you give us that opening paragraph? Because one of us is going to read it, aren't we? And I think we should do it now. Because one of the great things about this book, actually about Jackson as a writer, is that her scene setting ability

is is fantastic so just just give us the opening it is it's one of those it is you know immediately I was just thrilled yeah you know and it's that thing it doesn't always happen is it that thing of oh I'm really going to enjoy this and actually the book I think as we'll discuss I think really does deliver but go okay so it begins my name is Mary Catherine Blackwood I am 18 years old and I live with my sister Constance I have often thought that with any luck at all I could have been born a werewolf because the two middle fingers on both my hands are the same length but I have had to be content with what I had I dislike washing myself and dogs and noise I like my sister Constance and Richard

Plantagenet and Amanita Phalloloides, the death cup mushroom. Everyone else in my family is dead. Fantastic. It's quite a way to open, isn't it? Those lovely little kind of taking your feet from under you moments,

they're threaded through the book, aren't they? Well, it's written as if it could be a book for children or teenagers i think that's one of the genius strokes of it the voice that is in there and obviously she's meant to be 18 the narrator yeah but it's written in the voice of a teenager it's kind of and it pulls you in as if you're reading a piece of children's fiction and that's why it proceeds to become so disturbing. Is that one of the reasons why you think it has become, and I think it has become, very popular in the last ten years? It seems to me that it has a sort of,

the combination of slightly geeky female teenage narrator in a post-Buffy universe has probably endeared it to quite a lot of i noticed if you go to youtube and you type in shirley jackson we have always lived in the castle you will find dozens of young american women uh reviewing it and infusing about it it seems to speak to those people right right? Oh, absolutely. I mean, when I first started talking to friends about it, I felt like I had joined a cult, like here was this huge group of people who had been reading it for years,

and yet she's just not as well-known as you would have thought she would have been. So, Andrew, where did you encounter Shirley Jackson for the first time? In a book called The Masterpieces of Shirley Jackson. Introduction by Donna Tartt. It's a 20-year-old paperback, Masterpieces of Shirley Jackson. Introduction by Donna Tartt. It's a 20-year-old paperback.

And I bought it because the two novels that are in there, The Haunting of Hill House, and We Have Always Lived in the Castle, I bought it because of The Haunting of Hill House. Because I'd seen the film, the Robert Wise film, The Haunting, in 1963. We've got an audio clip from the trailer of The Haunting just to give us a bit of the spook, so let's listen to that now. My name's Marquay, Dr. Marquay, a scientist interested in the

supernatural, the unnatural, if you like. I came to Hill House to find the key to another world. Assisting me in this exploration of the unknown was Eleanor, Nell, who could look back into the past,

and Theo, something of a witch who could see into the future. This is Luke, who didn't believe in anything until evil, patient and waiting, made him change his mind. Stop it! That's great, isn't it? That's very good. It's such a brilliant film because of its accumulated psychological tension that it builds up. And I mean, it's

basically a noise that gets louder and then goes away. Yes. But I remember seeing it at a reasonably young age and was completely obsessed with it. And I didn't know it was a Shirley Jackson so so I've read that and I've read, obviously, the book we're discussing today. But should we do a bit more background? Well, yes. Why don't we read the blurb? Andrew has very kindly brought with him an American first edition of We Have Always Lived in the Castle.

It's got a fantastic cover as well, as ever. One of the best cats in literature, I have to say. Jonas the cat. And it might be interesting to compare these two blurbs because actually they're quite short so the the sort of the more recent one this is the u.s first edition with her own special witchery shirley jackson has once again fashioned a strange terrible and beautiful tale from the very first page a mystery hangs over the three people living in the big old house on the hill. Shunned by the villagers, they live their private life behind

closed doors. As their story quietly and deftly unfolds, the reader is led into a situation both startling and macabre. The drama of its denouement, with its unforeseen aftermath, has the quality of a horror tale disguised in the most deceptive innocence. But telling the story of a book by Shirley Jackson is as meaningless as trying to describe in words what is conveyed to the eye by a surrealist painting. Boris is not just the subject about which she chooses to write, or even her ability as an immensely gifted storyteller

that distinguishes her work. It is her unique vision illuminating the familiar her most recent previous novel the haunting of hill house had in it overtones of the supernatural these are not present in we have always lived in the castle but rare will be the reader who will not find his memory haunted by the unworldly drama and the very real people Miss Jackson has here created. God, that's a glove. Now let's, Fiona,

could you read us how Penguin have positioned this 40 years later? God, it sounds so sterile. 50 years later, sorry, 50 years later. Okay, so it reads living in the Blackwood family home with only her sister Constance and her uncle Julian for company,

Mary Cat just wants to preserve their delicate way of life. But ever since Constance was acquitted of murdering the rest of the family, the world isn't leaving the Blackwoods alone. And when cousin Charles arrives, armed with overtures of friendship and a desperate need to get into the safe, Mary Cat must do everything in her power to protect the remaining family. In her final greatest novel, Shirley Jackson draws us into a dark and settling world of family rivalry, suspense and an exquisite black comedy. Nothing about witches, though.

No, it's sort of... And too much emphasis on plot as well, which, if you're going to critique this book, the arrival of the plot device is probably yeah there's probably the weakest part of it and the thing that's fantastic about that blurb is it's all about atmosphere and mood which is where the book succeeds i i had not heard of this book at all and i don't think i'd heard of shirley jackson at all until a couple of years ago around the time penguin reissued that some of these books and i was doing a panel

on what makes a classic book with the amongst others the author joanne harris and everyone had been asked to nominate a book in the category and joanne nominated we've always lived in the castle and when asked why she said brilliantly, it doesn't fulfil many of the criteria for a classic apart from the fact it's perfect. That's great, isn't it? And when I read it last week, I thought what was so interesting about it is she's one of those writers and it's one of those books

where she has devised her own set of rules, which she sticks to, even though you can't quite put your finger on what the rules are. It's like any writer with a voice, or any writer who has a specific story that they want to tell. And one of the things that's so interesting about it, this doesn't ever quite go where you think it might. I mean, the one thing that's flagged up

is the identity of the poisoner, pretty obviously and early on. That doesn't really matter. It's because she creates a world. I mean, it really is, this house is a sort of complete universe unto itself. And you find yourself participating in the rhythms of it. It's the detail of their daily routine

and their interaction with uncle jimmy and then every now and then a little just a little thing will be dropped like literally in the case of she drops that she goes and smashes the jug mary cat smashes the jug and you get a sense that well you obviously know that the family are all dead and they were all poisoned you don't quite know how or by whom or well you're watching you're watching mary cat play a game aren't you i think that's it you're basically seeing her go through a ritual and play a game we're seeing both sisters play at rituals and i think that's one of the things about shirley jackson so many of her books they're about rituals that center on the house and um ritual as a kind

of witchcraft the reordering of the house is as much of a kind of witchcraft and we've always lived in the castle as the talismans and totems around the house these are little patterns that they go through all the time to restore a kind of order i mean there's a there's a cleansing it's not a cleansing the cleansing comes later but this idea of just keeping order and keeping disorder away and both sisters going through these strange little rituals all the time so that's you're watching them in a way play at house in a way the play is the food and the preparation of food yeah absolutely there's one passage which is towards the beginning of the book all the blackwood women had made food and the preparation of food. Yeah, absolutely. There's one passage which is towards the beginning of the book. All the Blackwood women had made food

and had taken pride in adding to the great supply of food in our cellar. There were jars of jam made by great-grandmothers with labels in thin, pale writing, almost unreadable by now, and pickles made by great-aunts and vegetables put up by our grandmother, and even our mother had left behind her six jars of apple jelly. Constance had worked all her life adding to the food in the cellar and her rows and rows of jars were easily the handsomest and shone among the others. You bury food the way I bury

treasure, I told her sometimes and she answered me once. The food comes from the ground and can't be permitted to stay there and rot something has to be done with it all the blackwood women had taken the food that came from the ground and preserved it and the deeply colored rows of jellies and pickles and bottled vegetables and fruit maroon and amber and dark rich green stood side by side in our cellar and would stand there forever a poem poem by the Blackwood women. Each year, Constance and Uncle Julian and I had jam or preserve or pickle that Constance had made, but we never touched what belonged to the others. Constance said it would kill us if we ate it.

Fantastic. So much going on in that one paragraph. You know, kind of the uncanny, the sense of ritual, the kind of the idea of a family, and it's almost like memory preserved, literally preserved in jars, the sense of cycles, the idea of sort of charms, you know. It's just dense.

And the thing that I really loved about, I mean, I do love an isolated, strange, estranged, hypersensitive young female character and Shirley Jackson does those pretty damn well um but what I found fascinating about Mary Cat and her rituals you know burying the silver dollars in the ground um having these sort of totems um around the place and Constance is that they kind of represent these different spheres you could say of Shirley Jackson's life on the one hand there's this very domesticated life which is about you know cooking providing for your

family everyday order and then there's Mary Cat this sort of wild undomesticated character who you know roams free and goes wandering with her cat and sleeps outdoors. And I sort of thought that there's something going on there about perhaps, you know, 1950s domesticity and Shirley Jackson's roles as a writer and at home. Yes, I agree with that. And I also, the thing that Andrew was saying about the role that houses, towns and rooms play in Jackson's novels and short stories is probably

not coincidental. We'll come into why that. The autobiographical, yeah. But also the role of women in 40s, 50s, post-war America seems to be one of the things that this

book's about, right jackson's book yeah also the constant theme of problems with neighbors yes which the problem she's this is serious problems with neighbors in this book and again grounded in autobiography we should talk a little bit about her life yeah well her big breakthrough was a story called the lottery which is studied in school has become very famous one of the most famous stories of the 20th century was published in 1948 in the new yorker you can see echoes of it in so many things you can see echoes of it in this book in fact in the way the neighbors and the small town community very american utterly reject the people who live in the house

you can see it in i was thinking of like that episode of the twilight zone called the monsters are due on maple street yeah totally related to shirley jackson tonally and subjects and everything and the lottery was such so phenomenally um popular isn't the right word but it it caused many letters to be written to the new yorker to shirley jackson people cancelled their subscriptions because of the unflinching brutality of the story. And the story became so celebrated or notorious that in 1960, Folkways Records released an LP of Shirley Jackson reading the story in full. So we have a clip of Shirley Jackson now reading from The Lottery. The children assembled first, of course.

School was recently over for the summer, and the feeling of liberty sat uneasily on most of them. Soon the women standing by their husbands began to call to their children, and the children came reluctantly, having to be called four or five times. Bobby Martin ducked under his mother's grasping hand and ran laughing back to the pile of stones. His father spoke up sharply, and Bobby came quickly and took his place between his father and his oldest brother. The lottery was conducted, between his father and his oldest brother. The lottery was conducted, as were the square dances,

the teenage club, the Halloween program, by Mr. Summers, who had time and energy to devote to civic activities. He was a round-faced, jovial man, and he ran the coal business, and people were sorry for him because he had no children and his wife was a scold when he arrived in the square carrying the black wooden box there was a murmur of conversation among the villagers and he waved and called little late today

folks wow it sounds like the whole LP sounds like it was recorded in you know thekways office. There's a clink of a glass somewhere in there as well. So Shirley Jackson was born in San Francisco in 1916, and she died aged 48 in 1965. She's a writer of short stories, six novels between 1948 and 1962.

We've Always Lived in the castle is her final novel she also only published one volume of short stories in her lifetime for a writer who wrote dozens of short stories and she wrote two volumes of memoir or lightly fictionalized memoir for women's magazines life among the savages and raising demons both of which were extremely popular in that time both of which are still held up as sort of comic classics. Tonally, they're completely different from her fiction. But she also, did you know she wrote four books for children? Yeah, you say that, but if you listen to the lottery again

after having read the stuff that she writes in Life Among the Savages and Raising Demons and the stuff that she wrote for Good Housekeeping, that kind of homey, old English style that she has in those is how she describes the village in The Lottery before it turns dark. And I think one of the fascinating things about her is the way that she constantly flickers between those two worlds. And her characters do as well,

that they walk a line between American normality and American madness. But she walked that line herself in the way that she wrote, so she could write in a very homely, warm, almost hokey style, but just below the surface is this horror. Her first book for children was a work of non-fiction. Funnily enough, The Witchcraft of Salem Village. But, you know, there it is. There's witchcraft in a small town, right?

As we said, her breakthrough story is The Lottery in 1948. She's married to the literary and jazz critic Stanley Edgar Hyman. Now, I'm going to read a bit about Stanley Hyman here. Jackson's husband, the literary critic Stanley Hyman. Now, I'm going to read a bit about Stanley Hyman here. Jackson's husband, the literary critic Stanley Hyman, wrote in his preface to a posthumous anthology of her work that, quote, she consistently refused to be interviewed to explain or promote her work in any fashion or to take public stands and be the pundit of Sunday supplements. She believed that her books would speak for her clearly enough over the years. Hyman insisted that the dark visions found in Jackson's work were not, as some critics claimed, the product of, quote, personal, even neurotic fantasies, but rather comprised a sensitive and

faithful anatomy of the Cold War era in which she lived, fitting symbols for a distressing world of the concentration camp and the bomb, wrote Hyman. Jackson may even have taken pleasure in the subversive impact of her work. As revealed by Hyman's statement, she was, quote, always proud that the Union of South Africa banned the lottery and she felt that they at least understood the story. Well, now, the thing about that is Hyman was probably not a disinterested witness, was he? I think the phrase is willie would

say that wouldn't he and i think i mean the case for hyman is that he basically he decided to marry jackson before he'd met her on the strength of one of her stories in a college magazine he read the story and he said i want to marry that woman and he was and he encouraged her to write, and he encouraged Ralph Ellison to write. Ellison was a house guest, right? Yeah, Ellison installed Shirley Jackson's stereo. But he was a philandering bastard. And he justified it because he was a communist and all property is theft.

So he was repeatedly unfaithful to her. He held that open marriage was a communist and all property is theft so he was repeatedly unfaithful to her he held that open marriage was a communist ideal um one of his students barbara carmilla and her husband moved into their back apartment and then stanley started having an affair with her and one of the great ways to look at jackson's book is that they are she wrote lots of unsent letters letters where she wanted to tell stan Jackson's book is that they are, she wrote lots of unsent letters. Letters where she wanted to tell Stanley what she thought, but they were never sent. So you can look at the novels or the short stories as versions of the unsent letters. And one of them, she said, you once told me I would never be lonely again. I think that was the first most dreadful lie you ever told me.

He refused to enter her office because her books weren't in alphabetical order and her pictures were crooked. He refused to read any of her supernatural stories because, you know, that was kind of... Because they were pulp. Yeah, because that was something beneath her. He told her to stop writing letters and stop writing in her diary because, quote,

they were costing her $40 a page. We're not liking this. And she, I mean, you talked about the books in which she writes about her children and the housekeeping, but that's because she took on all of the housekeeping and all of the childcare.

When she died, Hyman still didn't know how to make a cup of coffee I mean and also I think the most important the kids were amazingly the kids went on to edit the kids are fantastic

the kids had quite a feral upbringing like a lot of the children in the books and so the children in We've Always Lived in the Castle as well as being based on Shirley, are also based on her children. But the one thing that I think that needs to be said is that when she was writing We've Always Lived in the Castle, she was something of a mess. And I think it was due to Stanley. There's a famous line that she wrote to a friend around that time when she said, I have written myself into the house.

But she was on dexamyl, valium, secanol, thorazine. She was drinking too much. She was depression, agoraphobia, panic attacks. And so the thing I was saying earlier about that flicker between the normal and the surreal or the abnormal, I think she went through that herself because of the drugs, because of the agoraphobia, and because of the unhappiness and the surreal or the abnormal. I think she went through that herself because of the drugs, because of the agoraphobia, and because of the unhappiness and the depression.

You know, I think kind of, you know, I know you can talk about the death of the author and let's not read the personal into a novel, but Shirley Jackson's books seem so autobiographical in so many ways that I think you have to look at them as these kind of, these unsent letters in a way and I think you know in in um you see Mary Cat um talking to Constance and her loyalty to her and there's this repeated line look Constance we are going to be very happy and it's that

sense of wanting to be self-determined and during this incredibly difficult time in her life, like trying to find that happiness. I mean, it took her two years to recover after she wrote this book from her agoraphobia and everything that she was going through. And towards the end of that period, I think she is, am I right in thinking she had decided to leave Stanley? And that's what her unfinished novel is about, Come Along With Me. It's, and she had this dream, I think the phrase is that she could step through a crack and disappear. And there was another unsent letter, which she talked about leaving Stanley as well. But she knew that her subject matter of her books was going to have to change if she actually did that. That all of these anxieties that were going on in her life, all of this intense split of the personality. You see it in The Haunting of Hill House as well

with Eleanor and Theo's character, this sort of divided self again and again that that was probably going to have to go in her later books. And so she starts talking about what she might write next. And then there's this absolute... Her last words in her journal so she kept did you say she kept two journals didn't she kept two journals yeah so again and she had three different personalities at least that she gave different names so again this idea of these opera you know

compartmentalized different worlds that she existed in and her last words in her journal which um were written six months before she died and sort of suggest this woman heroically trying to persuade herself into optimism a little bit like mary catt telling constance we're going to be very happy she writes i am the captain of my fate laughter is possible laughter is possible laughter is possible it's absolutely tragic another one of the heartbreaking things is that there is the theme of escape, obviously, and we've always lived in the castle, but it's the moon. Yeah.

Oh, you know, so it's beautiful, but it's heartbreaking because it's never going to be achieved. And it's in the kitchen, at the kitchen table. Yeah. They make room, and it's worth saying without too many spoilers, it's a happy ending. Yeah. It is. It happy ending. Yeah. It is. It's unexpected. Yeah.

In the light of what you were just talking about, we must talk a bit about Jackson's short stories. I have to say, for me, you know, I really liked We've Always Lived in the Castle. I love The Haunting of Hill House. But actually, some of the short stories for me, in terms of what you were saying, Fiona, about how much information is contained

within any given paragraph of we've always lived in the castle the stories managed to these incredible shifts of narrative and tone in quite compact spaces as you would expect a short story to in some respects but again they never quite end up where you think they might end up and again they play off that idea of domestic entrapment and there's a story called what a thought which i think andrew has got a bit of here could you just read us the beginning of that andrew dinner had been good margaret sat with her book on her lap and watched her husband digesting an operation to which he always gave much time and thought as she watched he put his cigar down without looking and used his free hand

to turn the page of his paper. Margaret found herself thinking with some pride that unlike many men she had heard about, her husband did not fall asleep after a particularly good dinner. She flipped the pages of her book idly. It was not interesting. She knew that if she asked her husband to take her to a movie or out for a ride or to play gin rummy, he would smile at her and agree. He was always willing to do things to please her, still, after ten years of marriage. An odd thought crossed her mind. She would pick up the heavy glass ashtray and smash her husband over the head with it.

Like to go to a movie? Her husband asked. I don't think so, thanks, Margaret said. Why? You look sort of bored, her husband said. Were you watching me? Margaret asked. I thought you were reading.

Just looked at you for a minute. He smiled at her, the smile of a man who is still, after ten years of marriage, very fond of his wife. The idea of smashing the glass ashtray over her husband's head had never before occurred to Margaret, but now it would not leave her mind. She stirred uneasily in her chair, thinking, What a terrible thought to have. Whatever made me think of such a thing? Probably a perverted, affectionate

gesture. And she laughed. Funny? Her husband asked. Nothing, Margaret said. Oh, that's good. I mean, you know, she does what people think Roald Dahl does. Oh, you're saying? But much, much better.

I mean, I always find Dahl, they're so wooden, everything's kind of obvious. I mean, I always find, Darl, they're so wooden. Everything's kind of obvious. I mean, that reminds me of that ludicrous leg of lamb story. Yeah. But it's so much more subtle. And her psychology, she's one of those people, you know that she's, some of the things I've read

where she talks more obviously about the psychological underpinnings and the mythological underpinnings. She's very, very good at not allowing that to kind of dominate. I mean, it's everywhere in this novel. And especially the short stories as well. You feel that she's setting up something that feels like a classic Freudian dichotomy. And then she kind of... Like you say, you end up in a place that you're not expecting to go

Also in this novel there's a parallel that struck me with a book that we did on Backlisted last year that being Lolly Willows by Silvers which appropriates witchcraft and the occult to say something about things other than witchcraft and the occult

right? I mean so what is the role of witchcraft in We Have Always Lived in the Castle, would you say? I feel I'm not. Well. Speaking as a practitioner of the dark arts. Well, yeah, I've been dabbling in some tarot recently, so me and Shirley have got something in common.

Well, you know, I think Jackson's first biographer really, really played up her interest in the occult. And, you know, Jackson went along to seances and she used the Tarot de Marseille. But I don't get the sense that she was using it because she necessarily wholly believed in it. And this most recent biography of her life that came out sort of deals with it in a sort of a more secular way and basically Jackson's less interested in witchcraft as a sort of a practical method for influencing the world it's more of a way of embracing and sort of channeling that female power at a time when women in America often had very little control over their lives

and that's what you see kind of in the history of witchcraft and when it rises up in society it's all about kind of people trying to find ways of understanding the world going around them and taking back power it's a protection against reality and which kind of i suppose in a way her writing is as well and a lot of the rituals that her um characters have and when they lose those rituals or they go on a trip and they're out of their normal world and that reality collapses, then that's when the horror and disorder creeps in.

And the use of that. I mean, the thing is, it's great, isn't it? Because Charles in the book is obviously, he is injected as the order of... I mean, you know, he's not particularly rounded, although some of the descriptions of the way he intrudes on their private space with his cigar smoker...

Yes. But the way she writes that it becomes this psychic battle, that Maricat is fighting a battle to try and... Yeah. That he's a demon. Yeah. But Constance has this sort of bit in the middle of the book where she aligns herself with Charles, and those are some of the most difficult bits to read. Oh, absolutely, yeah.

So on the one hand, what I think is interesting about Jackson is she's sort of had a renaissance in the last ten years. I think that's fair to say. There's a film coming of We Have Always Lived in the Castle, which has got... Yeah, with Crispin Glover in it. Crispin Glover. Yes.

And he picks those roles carefully. And of The Haunting of Hill House. Did I see that Netflix... Oh, they're doing a ten-part series, aren't they? But also, at the same time, when several of her works were republished by the Library of America a few years ago, there was genuine letters to the...

I don't know, to the publisher and the new york times and what have you complaining and saying she's not she's not up to the standard jump the shark but it's middle but it's that classic thing of demeaning the work of female writers by calling it middle brow yeah right there's something not robust enough about Jackson's writing as there is about, say, Cheever's writing. So Cheever is, don't wish to get on my hobby horse here, but Cheever is often held up by many as the acme of the American short story. But also, he's an extremely male writer. But also writing about that particular post-war America.

You know, those small towns and the men who commute and go away and everything and she especially in her short story she captures that and one of the things that is brilliant you mentioned the demon the demon lover appears throughout the short stories this man who appears may not be actually real and casts a spell over the woman and kind of it's constant and the way in which that man is almost presented as that figure very like the cheever male you know that who works in new york who works in publishing and you know has this kind of almost demonic hold over the women in the short stories it's the whole way that she can in a, there's just a little thing here that, you know, literary credentials. I just, I found myself marking all the way through these marvellous,

it's just a couple of lines. I was wondering about my eyes. One of my eyes, the left, saw everything golden and yellow and orange, and the other eye saw shades of blue and grey and green. Perhaps one eye was for daylight and the other eye saw shades of blue and grey and green. Perhaps one eye was for daylight and the other was for night. If everyone in the world saw different colours from different eyes, there might be a great many new colours still to be invented.

I just, I don't know, that felt to me really Lyra. It's fantastic, isn't it? But also it's the division again. Yeah, again. It's the kind of polarity. And I just, I think there are very few writers who've taken on all of that kind of mythic stuff and been able

to really sink it into character in a convincing way and I think like you say with the stories and in the novels she does something that's really rare We haven't even touched on her relationship with her mother. Oh my god. This is just, I mean

Speaking of Freud. To get onto that, I mean she used to write to Shirley and criticise her, even as an adult about the way she looked her weight, her hair, her will, her hair,

her willful refusal to cultivate female charm. She told Shirley she was the result of an unsuccessful abortion. Yeah. I think she came as parental. But I think the great thing that is looming over this is what were her family? They were a family of Gilded Age architects who designed all the Gothic monstrosities in san francisco and hill house yeah and hill house is based on one of those houses down in the jackson cage and yeah

absolutely so kind of you know all those hideous terrifying um most of which got destroyed in the earthquake but her family built those houses i've got a brilliant brilliant letter an extract from a letter that her mother sent her which is she'd sometimes just get an emissive out of nowhere saying I've been so sad all morning about what you have allowed yourself to look like. Who writes that sort of stuff?

She wrote that letter after We've Always Lived in the Castle came out she didn't say anything about what a wonderful book it was or well done. She said there was a picture of her in Time magazine. Yeah, there's a little bit more here. It's like, for your children's sake and your husband's, I've been so sad. You were, and I guess still are, a very willful child. Oh, man.

But then you look again at We Have Always Lived in the Castle and the arrival of Charles and this idea that, you know, constant things, OK, our life is going to change. Maybe it's going to change for the better with the arrival of Charles and this idea that, you know, Constance thinks, OK, our life is going to change, maybe it's going to change for the better with the arrival of Charles. And you think there's a parallel there to her husband, Jackson's husband, arriving and her thinking, this is going to nurture my writing career, this is a whole new chapter in my life, I get away from my mother,

and it isn't that at all. Yeah. There's a very moving quote from shirley jackson about why she first started writing stories and um and it touches on all those things that we've been saying about madness and and her style of writing she said when i first used to write stories and hide them away in my desk i used to think that no one had ever been so lonely as I was and I used to write about people all alone once I started a novel but never finished because I found out about insanity

and I used to write about lunatics after that I thought I was insane and I would write about how the only sane people are the ones who are constantly condemned as mad and how the whole world is cruel and foolish and afraid of people who are different

That is so good i think one of the great things about doing this podcast is that you like so many like uh sylvia townsend warner you get the flavor of a writer like shirley jackson and i it's so interesting that she has become uhavour of the Month again. But that just seems to me is because it really is good. It really is. It's rich and it stays with you. It's exactly what Joanne Harris said. What makes classic writing? Well, you know what?

It has an element of perfection to it. It might not be perfection you recognise at first, but time will allow it to come through. And that absolute confidence from the first sentence, the first paragraph that we started with, you may not know where you're going, but she does. Well, that seems as good a point as any at which to stop. Thanks to Fiona Wilson and to Andrew Mayle,

to our producer Matt Hall and to our sponsors Unbound. You can, of course, get in touch with us on Twitter at BacklistedPod, Facebook, which is BacklistedPod, and on our page on the Unbound site at unbound.com forward slash backlisted. Thank you for listening. We'll be back with another show in a fortnight. Until then, goodbye. Could you just pass me that ashtray? If you prefer to listen to Backlisted without adverts,

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