OH, IT'S SO GOOD, IT'S LIKE MY SECRET PERSONAL FAVOURITE OF HER NOVELS. Haunting and Castle are both gorgeous superb classics, but Hangsaman really went right to the heart of College Moi.
I finished it! ... actually a few days ago, but it blew my tiny mind so I couldn't post about it right away.
It's kind of funny that I wanted to read this book for the intense friendship, and griped when I got Hill House instead - but in fact Hill House has a much higher intense friendship concentration. Natalie's friend Tony doesn't even show up until nearly two-thirds of the way through the book, and the story pretty much skips over the part where they actually become friends: one page they're acquaintances who are just getting to know each other (although Tony seems to be the first person at the university Natalie really likes) and a few pages later - instant besties!
And clearly everyone in Tony's dorm thinks they're lovers, witness Natalie's walk of shame down the hallway to Tony's dorm. Possibly this is what Jackson meant to imply, but she couldn't write it straight out because of censorship at the time? They do sleep in the same bed.
I particularly liked their blarney as they were walking around town together, talking about Tarot and sort of making up a story as they go - this is the sort of thing I've done with friends (although usually without the violent edge that Tony & Natalie's story gets) and I don't recall seeing it in fiction before.
Re: that violent edge to Natalie's fantasies - I think part of what makes Jackson's work so unsettling and haunting is the fact that she really understands and digs into the rage of unhappiness. There's no quiet beautiful suffering: her characters are miserable and furious about it, (Natalie more subtly than Merricat - no homicide here) at whoever they think is to blame, possibly everyone else in the world who has failed to befriend them
It's striking how fast Natalie's feelings about Tony change. I came to the book off a recommendation that described Tony as a demon lover, which maybe made me expect her to turn on Natalie in some more dramatic way - but actually it wasn't clear to me that Tony turned on her at all, just that Natalie's feelings changed. Tony takes her out to the abandoned amusement park and it's dark and cold and unpleasant and Tony loses track of her in the woods for a bit, and when Natalie finds her again she's decided that Tony is an enemy - that perfect enemy that Tony and Natalie talked about earlier in the day, in fact - but Tony's behavior is ambiguous: she doesn't make any overtly threatening moves.
So is Tony actually an enemy? Or is Natalie so attuned to threats at this point (because of the subtle hostility of the college, and also her father's general... well, everything about him) that she's seeing maliciousness where really there's only thoughtlessness? This ill-considered excursion shows that Tony's not the perfect friend, and if she's not, then she must be an enemy. There is no in-between.
Also, Natalie's father is the Actual Worst. (I particularly hate the dismissive undermining way he writes about her mother in his letters.) And he's so subtle and insidious and flattering about it to Natalie that you can tell she barely even sees it, although clearly she feels it without understanding it.
...This comment has grown out of control so I'd better stop. Although one more thing: given that Jackson was herself a faculty wife, and her husband did cheat on her with his students, the depiction of faculty wife Elizabeth made me sad - like maybe it's a self-portrait.
Natalie's friend Tony doesn't even show up until nearly two-thirds of the way through the book, and the story pretty much skips over the part where they actually become friends: one page they're acquaintances who are just getting to know each other (although Tony seems to be the first person at the university Natalie really likes) and a few pages later - instant besties!
There's an interpretation that Tony is actually someone Natalie made up (like in that conversation about how you'd have to make up your own enemy as knowing your own weaknesses best), which seems obvious to many people, but uh not to me? In the most recent biography that person says Tony is the thief in the dorm who leads Natalie to the treasure they've stolen, but that doesn't seem right either.
Possibly this is what Jackson meant to imply, but she couldn't write it straight out because of censorship at the time? They do sleep in the same bed.
Jackson writing about lesbianism can get really dodgy, because she wasn't comfortable with the idea personally and was also writing in a straitlaced time; one earlier biography said, and I think this is more on the mark, she's more interested in the psychological melding than a sexual/romantic relationship. That melding can certainly be read as including that relationship, but it's like when Eleanor wants to go home with Theo and Theo is like, WTF, I have my life, you have yours -- but of course, Eleanor doesn't, there's this big gap in her and she's trying to fill it with Theo. (The bit where Luke tries to appeal to Eleanor's sympathy because he had no mother, and she just cuts him off instantly, is for my money one of the funnier scenes in the book. She's just like NOPE, this is about MY needs, not yours.) Jackson is fascinated by liminal psychological states -- there's that amazing bit in Hill House when Eleanor seems to blend with the house, and she's laughing and having fun but you can still feel the horror. The sisters in Castle are also that close, nightmarishly so sometimes, but Jackson's not interested in "sick" or "healthy," but in that intense connection. But just because she didn't write in same-sex attraction doesn't mean it isn't there, if that makes sense. She's writing about enmeshment.
I particularly liked their blarney as they were walking around town together, talking about Tarot and sort of making up a story as they go - this is the sort of thing I've done with friends
I think it's partly modelled on what Jackson and her best friend in college, a French exchange student, did -- a lot of their friendship is in Hangsaman. (It didn't end badly, the girl just went back to France and they wrote letters.) Jackson writes about her children, especially her youngest daughter, doing it in her nonfiction, too, and she said she had a story going on in her own head all the time. It's a way of making things special, and also distancing them.
I think part of what makes Jackson's work so unsettling and haunting is the fact that she really understands and digs into the rage of unhappiness. There's no quiet beautiful suffering
YES. She REALLY taps into that angry adolescent girl fire like very few writers -- even today! That kind of incandescent blaze that often doesn't have anywhere to go. Merricat is such an amazing example of that -- someone basically outside society. You see that a bit in Natalie too, when she gets frustrated with her literally confining college dorm room, or has the fantasies about eating people and destroying the town like it's made out of alphabet blocks.
It's striking how fast Natalie's feelings about Tony change. I came to the book off a recommendation that described Tony as a demon lover, which maybe made me expect her to turn on Natalie in some more dramatic way - but actually it wasn't clear to me that Tony turned on her at all, just that Natalie's feelings changed. Tony takes her out to the abandoned amusement park and it's dark and cold and unpleasant and Tony loses track of her in the woods for a bit, and when Natalie finds her again she's decided that Tony is an enemy - that perfect enemy that Tony and Natalie talked about earlier in the day, in fact - but Tony's behavior is ambiguous: she doesn't make any overtly threatening moves.
What makes sense to me is it's a mirror of the opening scene, with the man who obviously abuses Natalie -- whether it's sexual isn't clear, but her body's bruised -- the man takes her into a dangerous place from a party in her own home, and Tony takes her literally to the end of the line (Natalie can't go on the way she has been) and Natalie gets lost in the woods, again. But this time it has a different outcome, where she won't go with Tony, and it's the opposite of her saying desperately "nothing happened, nothing happened I don't remember, I don't remember anything that happened." That first encounter, it can be argued, is the real start of her crack in the novel, not going off to college -- that just exacerbates it. So in a weird way Natalie's reversing that. It's less important who or even what Tony is, than how Natalie reacts to her, feels about her -- which is of course true of adolescence in general. Tony's not a demon lover (that's, if anyone, the man at the beginning) -- Natalie turns away from her. But like you say, they're either enemies or besties; there's no middle ground in enmeshment.
Jackson's most recent biographer also points out this is a pretty clear example of the rite of passage/ritual initiation into society a la Jane Harrison, the Golden Bough and Hyman's own writing himself on mythic rituals in literature: Natalie has died as that adolescent (maybe even as Tony), but she's been reborn again as an adult, ready to literally return to society (the car ride with the old couple, the college campus) and she is "alone, and grown-up, and powerful, and not at all afraid." The structure of that last very dream-like section is the three stages of the rite of passage, Franklin argues -- the separation from the world (Tony taking Natalie to the end of the line), a penetration to an underworldly source of power (the park, the forest) and the return to life, literal ascendancy. I think the major problem is, the book is so "realistic" (altho Natalie's flights of fancy and detachment from reality are there from the very start: talk about an unreliable narrator!) readers understandably went WHOAH WHAT at a literal underworld journey at the end.
-- Although again, it's like the moment you try to pin Jackson's fiction to any clear explication, it starts to sound wrong and off. That's one of the most interesting things about her writing for me -- it's really hard to pin down that way. Is it a fantasy or reality? Is this character a lover or an enemy, a husband or a stranger, someone to embrace or someone to fear? (In The Bird's Nest, this extends even to identity -- am I one person, or many?) It all runs together. So the "But is Tony really real?" supposed problem I think, misses the question.
Also, Natalie's father is the Actual Worst. (I particularly hate the dismissive undermining way he writes about her mother in his letters.)
Natalie's father is ABSOLUTELY HORRIBLE and a total academic Type. He's also clearly based at least partly on Shirley Jackson's own father, and her husband -- she's wickedly satirizing him, along with the college he taught at. Natalie is clearly a Daddy's Girl (Jackson herself wanted to be a daddy's girl, but he was very distant and she had a terrible relationship with her mother, who was completely different from her and basically wanted a Mini-Me) and Jackson shows how dangerous that is with her, and Elizabeth and the professor, who's also modelled some on Jackson's husband (he cheated on her quite a bit). He's the real villain, a lot more so than Tony!
given that Jackson was herself a faculty wife, and her husband did cheat on her with his students, the depiction of faculty wife Elizabeth made me sad - like maybe it's a self-portrait.
Yeah, Elizabeth is like Jackson without her immense talent and equally immense self-discipline -- she wasn't confident in most areas of her life but she was rock solid about her writing -- and she knew it. It's really sad.
tl;dr I can go on about Jackson forever, seriously
I'm nowhere near as up on Jackson as you are (I've only read the most recent biography and about half her books) but I'm a casual fan, so I wanted to say thanks for this comment. Especially the bits about how she's fascinated by enmeshment and liminal psychological states. I think it's a lot of what I find compelling about her work.
Yes, I've heard about the interpretation that Natalie actually made Tony up, although I feel like... Tony has a room and we see her talking to people... unless Natalie is actually sneaking across campus to chatter away to the air in an empty room and the girls are gathered around the door not because they think she's having a scandalous lesbian affair but because they're like, "Should we do something about this? She's clearly cracked up. But who would we even tell? It's not like there are any responsible adults at this college..."
And meanwhile Natalie is enjoying her fantasy that she's finally achieved the level of enmeshment that she desires. Although on second thought, that can still be a fantasy even if Tony is real: she may be projecting a level of enmeshment/commitment to their relationship on Tony which Tony isn't really feeling. Like Eleanor with Theo, although there it's clearer that Theo a) exists and b) is not interested in that level of commitment.
Yes, I definitely think the earlier incident in the woods (it really reads like a sexual assault - especially given Natalie's reaction later to the question during the hazing ritual, "Are you a virgin?" - it's striking that the absolutely annihilating part of that scene, though, is not the hazing itself, but the fact that no one notices when Natalie walks out. Like in Hill House, when Eleanor is eavesdropping and no one is talking about her. The horror of invisibility...)
But getting back to the point - I agree that Natalie's unraveling begins with that incident in the woods. Although clearly her family dynamics have also played a role, but more subtle and long-term.
Did Jackson's husband realize she was satirizing him? It's funny, the back flap copy on my book mentions that Natalie "becomes infatuated with a married professor," and I'm not sure I would characterize Natalie's feelings about him as simple infatuation - she seems ambivalent about him - and also that's ultimately not a very important relationship in the book, possibly not even as important as Natalie's relationship with Elizabeth, which is also ambivalent although not in quite the same way.
I don't know that I would characterize Jackson as writing about adolescent rage, or at least not only adolescent rage; Eleanor is in her early thirties but she's still angry - although not as obviously as Merricat. (To be fair, very few characters reach Merricat levels of rage.)
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osprey_archer
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Date: 2019-01-11 09:02 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2019-01-15 10:17 pm (UTC)It's kind of funny that I wanted to read this book for the intense friendship, and griped when I got Hill House instead - but in fact Hill House has a much higher intense friendship concentration. Natalie's friend Tony doesn't even show up until nearly two-thirds of the way through the book, and the story pretty much skips over the part where they actually become friends: one page they're acquaintances who are just getting to know each other (although Tony seems to be the first person at the university Natalie really likes) and a few pages later - instant besties!
And clearly everyone in Tony's dorm thinks they're lovers, witness Natalie's walk of shame down the hallway to Tony's dorm. Possibly this is what Jackson meant to imply, but she couldn't write it straight out because of censorship at the time? They do sleep in the same bed.
I particularly liked their blarney as they were walking around town together, talking about Tarot and sort of making up a story as they go - this is the sort of thing I've done with friends (although usually without the violent edge that Tony & Natalie's story gets) and I don't recall seeing it in fiction before.
Re: that violent edge to Natalie's fantasies - I think part of what makes Jackson's work so unsettling and haunting is the fact that she really understands and digs into the rage of unhappiness. There's no quiet beautiful suffering: her characters are miserable and furious about it, (Natalie more subtly than Merricat - no homicide here) at whoever they think is to blame, possibly everyone else in the world who has failed to befriend them
It's striking how fast Natalie's feelings about Tony change. I came to the book off a recommendation that described Tony as a demon lover, which maybe made me expect her to turn on Natalie in some more dramatic way - but actually it wasn't clear to me that Tony turned on her at all, just that Natalie's feelings changed. Tony takes her out to the abandoned amusement park and it's dark and cold and unpleasant and Tony loses track of her in the woods for a bit, and when Natalie finds her again she's decided that Tony is an enemy - that perfect enemy that Tony and Natalie talked about earlier in the day, in fact - but Tony's behavior is ambiguous: she doesn't make any overtly threatening moves.
So is Tony actually an enemy? Or is Natalie so attuned to threats at this point (because of the subtle hostility of the college, and also her father's general... well, everything about him) that she's seeing maliciousness where really there's only thoughtlessness? This ill-considered excursion shows that Tony's not the perfect friend, and if she's not, then she must be an enemy. There is no in-between.
Also, Natalie's father is the Actual Worst. (I particularly hate the dismissive undermining way he writes about her mother in his letters.) And he's so subtle and insidious and flattering about it to Natalie that you can tell she barely even sees it, although clearly she feels it without understanding it.
...This comment has grown out of control so I'd better stop. Although one more thing: given that Jackson was herself a faculty wife, and her husband did cheat on her with his students, the depiction of faculty wife Elizabeth made me sad - like maybe it's a self-portrait.
no subject
Date: 2019-01-15 10:52 pm (UTC)Natalie's friend Tony doesn't even show up until nearly two-thirds of the way through the book, and the story pretty much skips over the part where they actually become friends: one page they're acquaintances who are just getting to know each other (although Tony seems to be the first person at the university Natalie really likes) and a few pages later - instant besties!
There's an interpretation that Tony is actually someone Natalie made up (like in that conversation about how you'd have to make up your own enemy as knowing your own weaknesses best), which seems obvious to many people, but uh not to me? In the most recent biography that person says Tony is the thief in the dorm who leads Natalie to the treasure they've stolen, but that doesn't seem right either.
Possibly this is what Jackson meant to imply, but she couldn't write it straight out because of censorship at the time? They do sleep in the same bed.
Jackson writing about lesbianism can get really dodgy, because she wasn't comfortable with the idea personally and was also writing in a straitlaced time; one earlier biography said, and I think this is more on the mark, she's more interested in the psychological melding than a sexual/romantic relationship. That melding can certainly be read as including that relationship, but it's like when Eleanor wants to go home with Theo and Theo is like, WTF, I have my life, you have yours -- but of course, Eleanor doesn't, there's this big gap in her and she's trying to fill it with Theo. (The bit where Luke tries to appeal to Eleanor's sympathy because he had no mother, and she just cuts him off instantly, is for my money one of the funnier scenes in the book. She's just like NOPE, this is about MY needs, not yours.) Jackson is fascinated by liminal psychological states -- there's that amazing bit in Hill House when Eleanor seems to blend with the house, and she's laughing and having fun but you can still feel the horror. The sisters in Castle are also that close, nightmarishly so sometimes, but Jackson's not interested in "sick" or "healthy," but in that intense connection. But just because she didn't write in same-sex attraction doesn't mean it isn't there, if that makes sense. She's writing about enmeshment.
I particularly liked their blarney as they were walking around town together, talking about Tarot and sort of making up a story as they go - this is the sort of thing I've done with friends
I think it's partly modelled on what Jackson and her best friend in college, a French exchange student, did -- a lot of their friendship is in Hangsaman. (It didn't end badly, the girl just went back to France and they wrote letters.) Jackson writes about her children, especially her youngest daughter, doing it in her nonfiction, too, and she said she had a story going on in her own head all the time. It's a way of making things special, and also distancing them.
I think part of what makes Jackson's work so unsettling and haunting is the fact that she really understands and digs into the rage of unhappiness. There's no quiet beautiful suffering
YES. She REALLY taps into that angry adolescent girl fire like very few writers -- even today! That kind of incandescent blaze that often doesn't have anywhere to go. Merricat is such an amazing example of that -- someone basically outside society. You see that a bit in Natalie too, when she gets frustrated with her literally confining college dorm room, or has the fantasies about eating people and destroying the town like it's made out of alphabet blocks.
It's striking how fast Natalie's feelings about Tony change. I came to the book off a recommendation that described Tony as a demon lover, which maybe made me expect her to turn on Natalie in some more dramatic way - but actually it wasn't clear to me that Tony turned on her at all, just that Natalie's feelings changed. Tony takes her out to the abandoned amusement park and it's dark and cold and unpleasant and Tony loses track of her in the woods for a bit, and when Natalie finds her again she's decided that Tony is an enemy - that perfect enemy that Tony and Natalie talked about earlier in the day, in fact - but Tony's behavior is ambiguous: she doesn't make any overtly threatening moves.
What makes sense to me is it's a mirror of the opening scene, with the man who obviously abuses Natalie -- whether it's sexual isn't clear, but her body's bruised -- the man takes her into a dangerous place from a party in her own home, and Tony takes her literally to the end of the line (Natalie can't go on the way she has been) and Natalie gets lost in the woods, again. But this time it has a different outcome, where she won't go with Tony, and it's the opposite of her saying desperately "nothing happened, nothing happened I don't remember, I don't remember anything that happened." That first encounter, it can be argued, is the real start of her crack in the novel, not going off to college -- that just exacerbates it. So in a weird way Natalie's reversing that. It's less important who or even what Tony is, than how Natalie reacts to her, feels about her -- which is of course true of adolescence in general. Tony's not a demon lover (that's, if anyone, the man at the beginning) -- Natalie turns away from her. But like you say, they're either enemies or besties; there's no middle ground in enmeshment.
Jackson's most recent biographer also points out this is a pretty clear example of the rite of passage/ritual initiation into society a la Jane Harrison, the Golden Bough and Hyman's own writing himself on mythic rituals in literature: Natalie has died as that adolescent (maybe even as Tony), but she's been reborn again as an adult, ready to literally return to society (the car ride with the old couple, the college campus) and she is "alone, and grown-up, and powerful, and not at all afraid." The structure of that last very dream-like section is the three stages of the rite of passage, Franklin argues -- the separation from the world (Tony taking Natalie to the end of the line), a penetration to an underworldly source of power (the park, the forest) and the return to life, literal ascendancy. I think the major problem is, the book is so "realistic" (altho Natalie's flights of fancy and detachment from reality are there from the very start: talk about an unreliable narrator!) readers understandably went WHOAH WHAT at a literal underworld journey at the end.
-- Although again, it's like the moment you try to pin Jackson's fiction to any clear explication, it starts to sound wrong and off. That's one of the most interesting things about her writing for me -- it's really hard to pin down that way. Is it a fantasy or reality? Is this character a lover or an enemy, a husband or a stranger, someone to embrace or someone to fear? (In The Bird's Nest, this extends even to identity -- am I one person, or many?) It all runs together. So the "But is Tony really real?" supposed problem I think, misses the question.
Also, Natalie's father is the Actual Worst. (I particularly hate the dismissive undermining way he writes about her mother in his letters.)
Natalie's father is ABSOLUTELY HORRIBLE and a total academic Type. He's also clearly based at least partly on Shirley Jackson's own father, and her husband -- she's wickedly satirizing him, along with the college he taught at. Natalie is clearly a Daddy's Girl (Jackson herself wanted to be a daddy's girl, but he was very distant and she had a terrible relationship with her mother, who was completely different from her and basically wanted a Mini-Me) and Jackson shows how dangerous that is with her, and Elizabeth and the professor, who's also modelled some on Jackson's husband (he cheated on her quite a bit). He's the real villain, a lot more so than Tony!
given that Jackson was herself a faculty wife, and her husband did cheat on her with his students, the depiction of faculty wife Elizabeth made me sad - like maybe it's a self-portrait.
Yeah, Elizabeth is like Jackson without her immense talent and equally immense self-discipline -- she wasn't confident in most areas of her life but she was rock solid about her writing -- and she knew it. It's really sad.
tl;dr I can go on about Jackson forever, seriously
no subject
Date: 2019-01-16 02:19 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2019-01-18 02:58 am (UTC)And meanwhile Natalie is enjoying her fantasy that she's finally achieved the level of enmeshment that she desires. Although on second thought, that can still be a fantasy even if Tony is real: she may be projecting a level of enmeshment/commitment to their relationship on Tony which Tony isn't really feeling. Like Eleanor with Theo, although there it's clearer that Theo a) exists and b) is not interested in that level of commitment.
Yes, I definitely think the earlier incident in the woods (it really reads like a sexual assault - especially given Natalie's reaction later to the question during the hazing ritual, "Are you a virgin?" - it's striking that the absolutely annihilating part of that scene, though, is not the hazing itself, but the fact that no one notices when Natalie walks out. Like in Hill House, when Eleanor is eavesdropping and no one is talking about her. The horror of invisibility...)
But getting back to the point - I agree that Natalie's unraveling begins with that incident in the woods. Although clearly her family dynamics have also played a role, but more subtle and long-term.
Did Jackson's husband realize she was satirizing him? It's funny, the back flap copy on my book mentions that Natalie "becomes infatuated with a married professor," and I'm not sure I would characterize Natalie's feelings about him as simple infatuation - she seems ambivalent about him - and also that's ultimately not a very important relationship in the book, possibly not even as important as Natalie's relationship with Elizabeth, which is also ambivalent although not in quite the same way.
I don't know that I would characterize Jackson as writing about adolescent rage, or at least not only adolescent rage; Eleanor is in her early thirties but she's still angry - although not as obviously as Merricat. (To be fair, very few characters reach Merricat levels of rage.)