The Haunting of Hill House on Netflix, and other things I've been up to

Dear friends and Shirley Jackson fans,

No TV show has ever made me more anxious in anticipation than The Haunting of Hill House, which premiered on Netflix last Friday. If you're reading this, you probably know that Hill House is my favorite of Jackson's books. It's already been adapted twice for film, once successfully, once less so. What would the new version have to offer?

Plenty, it turns out. The word "adaptation" is being used very loosely here--the TV series is actually an entirely new story that uses Jackson's novel, and specifically the house, as inspiration. I was skeptical, but it works--mostly. I recapped the show for New York magazine's Vulture website: start here. Note that these pieces contain spoilers: the point of a recap is to provide a sort of Monday-morning-quarterback perspective on each episode. So you'll probably want to wait till you've started watching the show to read them.

I was interviewed for a few different pieces pegged to the show--mostly having to do with "the true story" behind Hill House. Of course, there is no such story. But, as you might remember, my suspicion is that the Everett Mansion (now part of Southern Vermont College) served as one of her inspirations. Here's a great blog post about its alleged ghosts. A little essay I wrote about my own experience there is now the introduction to a new limited edition of Hill House from Suntup Press, illustrated by Steven Gervais. It looks beautiful: 

I've been doing a lot of writing lately that's not Shirley Jackson-related, including author profiles in The New York Times Magazine (on U.S. poet laureate Tracy K. Smith's plan to heal the country's divisions through poetry) and New York (about the rooming-house-cum-writer's-retreat that novelist John Wray runs out of his Brooklyn townhouse). And, as always, plenty of book reviewing, such as this piece for The Atlantic about the Norwegian author Karl Ove Knausgaard and his strangely successful autobiographical novel My Struggle, which finally just wrapped up with Volume Six. Here's the first paragraph:

I know more about the Norwegian writer Karl Ove Knausgaard than I do about my parents, my children, my friends, and possibly my husband. I know how he lost his virginity, what he buys at the supermarket, how he makes his coffee, what kind of cigarettes he smokes and how many, the quality of his bowel movements. I know how he shapes the narrative of his life: his initial difficulty writing novels, his relationship with his parents, his two marriages. I know that he loves his children but feels emasculated pushing a stroller. I know there are youthful crimes he still feels ashamed of. I know the pin for his bank card.
 

I'll be sharing more work like this here in the future--my own and that of others. If your interest lies mainly with Shirley Jackson, I won't be offended if you unsubscribe. But I hope you'll stick with me for news and links from the literary scene, with a focus (as always!) on women's writing, biography, and criticism.

All best,
Ruth

"No live organism can continue for long to exist sanely under conditions of absolute reality; even larks and katydids are considered, by some, to dream." Shirley Jackson, The Haunting of Hill House