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Vintage mindscrew books
Jan. 30th, 2010 10:11 pmWhile working through a weed-out list at the library (books that haven't been checked out for two or more years), I spotted two theoretical modernish classics I hadn't yet read and decided to give them life-support by borrowing them: Shirley Jackson's The Haunting of Hill House and Richard Condon's The Manchurian Candidate. They share a number of interesting features.
Both books were first published in 1959 and have been made into two movies each: a black-and-white classic within a few years of publication, and a more recent remake within the past decade-- I've seen both of the Manchurian Candidate versions, but neither of the Jackson adaptations, both of which are simply called The Haunting (there's also a parallel knockoff book/movie called Hell House). Both books are also themed around the unreliability of self-awareness (not just of one's own motives, but extending to one's own actions and even sanity) and the ambivalent pathologies of manipulative love/hate.
I found Condon a much tougher read for some reason, and ended up skimming through large portions to reach the end; haven't yet tried to give it a more careful re-read. Part of my difficulty was because of film-based expectations (Raymond Shaw gets the first POV scenes in the book and the crucial backstory event is exposed within the first few chapters, whereas both movies are filtered much more heavily through Ben Marco's POV of bewildered inquiry and the backstory isn't explained until a significant distance into the narrative); another part was because of Condon's narrative prose style (it strikes me as self-consciously florid yet hardbitten, if that makes sense); and part of it is because of characterization-- the POV gets handed off among three or four different people, all of whom seemed rather static compared to what I remembered seeing onscreen. But then, I may just have bad taste, since at the moment my favorite version of the story is probably the recent remake movie, which radically changed and compressed the plot. I may change my mind if I can give the book a good thorough re-read, though.
Conversely, I've been giving the Jackson book a more careful re-read for the past day or two. Although hailed as a classic horror novel, it's been metaphorically hissed by various Amazon reviewers who didn't think it was scary enough to've earned the praise-- and they're right, if their scare-o-meter is based on eldritch apparitions wreaking graphic vengeance for clearly-explained past wrongs (desecrated graves, secret sins etc.). I don't think the full effect of the book *can* take hold on the first reading, except in retrospect; the re-read is much more chilling in terms of picking up clues about what once happened in the house and what is happening now, esp. in terms of watching the main (and unreliable) narrator slowly lose her grip on herself. Jackson also uses color imagery in bright, sharp stabs of symbolism.
Major spoilery (if still only half-formed) speculation about the Hill House backstory below the cut.( Read more... )
Both books were first published in 1959 and have been made into two movies each: a black-and-white classic within a few years of publication, and a more recent remake within the past decade-- I've seen both of the Manchurian Candidate versions, but neither of the Jackson adaptations, both of which are simply called The Haunting (there's also a parallel knockoff book/movie called Hell House). Both books are also themed around the unreliability of self-awareness (not just of one's own motives, but extending to one's own actions and even sanity) and the ambivalent pathologies of manipulative love/hate.
I found Condon a much tougher read for some reason, and ended up skimming through large portions to reach the end; haven't yet tried to give it a more careful re-read. Part of my difficulty was because of film-based expectations (Raymond Shaw gets the first POV scenes in the book and the crucial backstory event is exposed within the first few chapters, whereas both movies are filtered much more heavily through Ben Marco's POV of bewildered inquiry and the backstory isn't explained until a significant distance into the narrative); another part was because of Condon's narrative prose style (it strikes me as self-consciously florid yet hardbitten, if that makes sense); and part of it is because of characterization-- the POV gets handed off among three or four different people, all of whom seemed rather static compared to what I remembered seeing onscreen. But then, I may just have bad taste, since at the moment my favorite version of the story is probably the recent remake movie, which radically changed and compressed the plot. I may change my mind if I can give the book a good thorough re-read, though.
Conversely, I've been giving the Jackson book a more careful re-read for the past day or two. Although hailed as a classic horror novel, it's been metaphorically hissed by various Amazon reviewers who didn't think it was scary enough to've earned the praise-- and they're right, if their scare-o-meter is based on eldritch apparitions wreaking graphic vengeance for clearly-explained past wrongs (desecrated graves, secret sins etc.). I don't think the full effect of the book *can* take hold on the first reading, except in retrospect; the re-read is much more chilling in terms of picking up clues about what once happened in the house and what is happening now, esp. in terms of watching the main (and unreliable) narrator slowly lose her grip on herself. Jackson also uses color imagery in bright, sharp stabs of symbolism.
Major spoilery (if still only half-formed) speculation about the Hill House backstory below the cut.( Read more... )