Every now and then I get a little bit terrified

A lightning review of The Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson (New York: Viking, 1959). Ebook.

I'm not a huge reader of horror fiction (Stephen King, of whom I am a devoted fan, being an exception). Occasionally, though, I like a good thriller, and I thought I'd try out a classic ghost story.

Dr. John Montague has heard that Hill House, an isolated mansion with a history of violent deaths, is haunted. Wanting scientific proof of the supernatural, he rents the house and invites a small party of people, who have had some past paranormal experience, to live with him for a summer: Luke Sanderson, the heir to the house, Theodora, a free spirit, and Eleanor Vance, a shy recluse who has lived practially alone caring for her invalid mother. Within only a few days, they begin to experience strange events: mysterious noises, ghost sightings, and writing on the wall. Eleanor herself seems to be particularly targeted by the manifestations. The ghosts, if they exist, appear to be making a specific effort to communicate with her, and the house itself may be trying to possess her.

The Haunting of Hill House is a classic of horror fiction. It's very similar to Henry James' The Turn of the Screw, the 1898 gothic novel in which a governess becomes convinced her employer's house is haunted. You're never quite sure whether the haunting is real, psychological, or even some sort of self-inflicted psychic phenomenon. I enjoyed reading the novel well enough, but found myself dissatisfied with the suspensefulness. To be fair, the novel is 60 years old, and what was relatively fresh in 1959 can almost be considered a cliché in 2019. Nonetheless, the story is good, Shirley Jackson's prose is a pleasure to read, and the ending did catch me by surprise.

I was prompted to read this novel by the Netflix series The Haunting of Hill House, which is loosely based on it. (Apparently the second season will be based on The Turn of the Screw.) So if you like that TV show and want to read the (considerably different) story that inspired it, give it a read. Best of all, if you're in Canada, it's been in the public domain for a few years, and is freely downloadable!

In other news: It appears that the local library no longer has The Storm of War in its catalogue. That's aggravating. Oh, well, on to Plato, I guess.

Science Fiction-Free September XV1

Been a while. When I said I would be updating this blog more frequently, I didn't mean every nine months as opposed to every two years. Nonetheless, there's the letter of the law and there's the spirit . . .

It's September, albeit a quarter of the way through. That means it's again time for Science Fiction-Free September, in which I place a temporary moratorium on reading science-fiction novels, my preferred genre, and generally stretch my boundaries a little bit by reading something I wouldn't normally pick up. Over the past few years, though I haven't blogged about it, I've still held to it, if only by the technicality of happening to be reading something else at the time. Again, there's the letter of the law.

The particular challenge this year is that as part of my planned reading, I'm going through all the Hugo and Nebula Award-winning novels chronologically, starting in 1953 with Alfred Bester's The Demolished Man and most recently wrapping up with 1969's Hugo winner, Stand on Zanzibar by John Brunner. It so happens that the next book on my to-read list is Rite of Passage by Alexei Panshin, the 1969 Nebula winner. Alas for Mr. Panshin, it is not to be.

Let me say in passing, and by way of closing off discussion of SF for the remainder of September: Three of the last five SF novels I've read were boring. The late 60s were, apparently. not good years for science fiction. Well, at least after Panshin comes selections by le Guin, Niven, Farmer, Clarke, and Asimov, so for a time I'll be in familiar territory.)

This month, after wrapping up my current book—The Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson, which is nearly finished and quite short—I plan on tackling something on my backlog: The Storm of War, a 2011 history of World War II by Andrew Roberts. This is a book that's been on my planned list for years. (In fact, if, heaven forbid, you've been paying attention to the sidebar on this oh-so-active blog, you'd have seen it listed as "In Progress," practically for ever, until I decided a book I had returned to the library and never borrowed again for two or three years was not, in any meaningful sense, in progress.) Assuming 700+ pages aren't enough to keep me occupied till October, I'll probably read something by an author I've never read before, to be determined later. (Update: I've settled on Allan Bloom's venerable translation of Plato's Republic.)

And at least I'm posting something rather than nothing. That's also a good start to the month.

Footnotes

¹Well, let's call it that, since I've been doing this since 2004 anyway.

So . . .

-

I just happened to notice that while I've been keeping the reading log on the sidebar up-to-date, more or less, I haven't been too bothered of late to write anything here.

Of course, there was never a conscious decision to give up blogging. Other things just got in the way. In the 18 months and change since my last post, I've returned to school and since graduated with a two-year diploma in computer programming. So I've written hundreds of lines of Java and Python code, if not thousands, but not a line of English for this blog.

In the meantime, since my last post on this blog, I've also discovered the serenity Minecraft. So I've recreationally and virtually laid tens of thousands of blocks of dirt and stone constructing Asian-themed buildings, but not a single block of text for the Crusty Curmudgeon.

Of course, I remain ever hopeful that my personal recreational life will return to its old normal in the new year. I can't promise new posts every day like when the blog was at its peak, but I can probably promise something. Maybe jump-starting Saturday Superman or my lightning book reviews will be the tonic I need. We'll see. Until next time.

And now . . . this - June 2/17

It's a gardener's worst nightmare: Animals or birds have destroyed your prize display.

That's precisely what the team at Memorial University's Botanical Garden discovered on May 18—a moose had eaten most of their Canada 150 tulips.

[Full Story]

I heartily endorse this heinous act of horticultural hijinks.

Do trees make a sound in the forest if no one is there to hear it?

Apparently so, and it's "Yes, yes, yes!"

"Trees are very social beings," says German forester Peter Wohlleben, "the parents, the 'mother trees' look after their offspring…they like to stand close together and cuddle." They also talk to each other, have sex, form friendships and feel physical pain, he told the Canadian documentary series "Intelligent Trees."

[Full Story]

And now . . . this - June 1/17

"Hold muh beer 'n' watch this, Jeb."

Idiot tests whether his steel-toed boot is bulletproof by shooting himself in the foot. (Warning: Result is not pretty.)

It's a good thing he didn't try to test his hard hat in a similar fashion, though I suspect it wouldn't be protecting anything important, anyway.

Roger Moore (1927-2017)

Sir Roger Moore has died at the age of 89.

Moore is best known for playing James Bond in seven films (more than anyone else) from 1973 to 1985. He is the oldest actor to have played the character, and of the six actors to have portrayed Bond, the first to pass away.

Compared to the more serious portrayal by his predecessor Sean Connery--and certainly in contrast with Ian Fleming's brooding, nihilistic secret agent--Moore's James Bond was suave and lighthearted, almost cartoonish. It wasn't the best period for Bond movies. But when Moore played Bond straight, as he did in Live and Let Die or For Your Eyes Only, he was very good indeed, and we can forgive him for Moonraker and Octopussy. Besides, if not for seeing Moonraker on TV as an eighth grader, I would never have sought out the novel, and James Bond may never have become one of my favourite literary characters. I recently finished reading straight through Fleming's Bond books for the third time.

Moore was also well known for his six-season run on television as the Saint, based on another literary favourite of mine, Leslie Charteris' Master criminal.

Goodbye, Mr. Bond.

On the appropriateness of appropriation

A week and a half ago, the editor of Write, the magazine of The Writers' Union of Canada (TWUC), has stepped down after an article he wrote generated numerous complaints. In this article, Hal Niedzviecki argued that there is no such thing as "cultural appropriation."

This generated numerous complaints from other members of TWUC, which was formed to "promote the rights, freedoms, and economic well-being of all writers," leading to a statement from the union in which they apologized "unequivocally," affirmed that the magazine exists to "offer space for honest and challenging discussion," and having been so challenged by Niedsviecki's editorial, bravely threw him under the bus.

I am not a reader of Write nor a member of TWUC. It is clear I could not be, given how they ignore their own mandate in favour of the intellectual Zeitgeist of the day, not to mention their apparent lack of a spine.

Don't believe the hype

In the spring of 1988, while in grade 12, I traveled to Calgary for a high-school band competition. To pass the time en route, in addition to the homework assignments for the days I was away, I had a reading list for the grade 13 English literature course. I would be taking the course the following year, but my then-girlfriend was enrolled in it, and she gave me the list of books (and my teachers were happy to loan me copies).

The required reading included Brave New World, The Stone Angel, and Cannery Row; optional books included Nineteen Eighty-Four, likely one or two titles that I have since forgotten, and, notably, two novels by Margaret Atwood: The Edible Woman and The Handmaid's Tale. The curriculum had a distinctly dystopian edge for some reason. Over the course of the trip, I devoured them all. I distinctly recall reading The Handmaid's Tale in one or two sittings on the return trip somewhere between Calgary and Winnipeg; in my mind, the novel still evokes memories of sunny prairies, grain elevators, and wheat fields seen from a train window, in stark contrast to the novel's actual, bleaker subject matter.

And now . . . this - Jan. 5/2017

The main takeaway from this article: The number of crazy, older single women in the world will soon precipitate a global cat shortage.

And now . . . this - Dec. 16/16

Many animals, including moose, have a natural need for salt in order to maintain good health and if there is no natural source available, they will search elsewhere for replenishment. . . .

While it is unclear exactly how many car-licking incidents have been reported in 2016, Alberta Parks says this is something that happens every year during the wintertime.

[Full Story]

Also not reported: the number of cars are spotted leaving Kananaskis at high speed with frozen moose tongues stuck to their bumpers.

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