Shirley Jackson and the Shadow Self

Ellen Datlow (editor), When Things Get Dark: Stories Inspired By Shirley Jackson

When I was in high school, Shirley Jackson’s “The Lottery” was part of the standard AmLit curriculum, though it’s apparently fallen out of favor. Jackson combined mystery, psychological realism, and gothic themes into a specific hybrid that’s often marketed, lazily, as “horror.” Her most-loved works occurred in settings so familiar, they could’ve been Anytown, USA, until the moment they weren’t. American audiences loved and feared Jackson in equal measure.

World Fantasy Award-winning anthologist Ellen Datlow collects eighteen new stories inspired by Shirley Jackson. No other theme unifies this collection, and different authors understand differently what it means to be “inspired by” Jackson. Thus the collection is a wild and uneven journey, through several different authors and their relationships with Jackson and the uncanny. Expect only that your expectations at the beginning will be overturned by the end.

Not that no commonalities exist among these stories. They share Jackson’s dedication to the shadow side of ordinary American experiences. The settings could be anywhere; the characters could be your neighbors, clinging desperately to rational explanations amid extraordinary circumstances. Some stories feature monsters and phantoms, others don’t, but most stories share viewpoint characters failing to adequately address the uncertainties and unspoken violence of their lives.

Datlow’s gathered authors are well-known within the world of fantastic, dark, or “weird” fiction. Stephen Graham Jones’ story “Refinery Road” features a man revisiting a memory of troubled youth, only to discover the memory is still growing. Karen Heuler’s “Money of the Dead” similarly has characters trapped in remembrance and regret; given a Monkey’s Paw-like chance to make things right, each character finds unique ways to fatally compound their situation.

Richard Kadrey sets his story, “A Trip to Paris,” during Jackson’s lifetime, and apparently tries to create something Jackson herself would’ve written. Other authors, like Kelly Link in “Skinder’s Veil,” use a contemporary setting, but impose Jackson’s principles of shadow and repression onto our world. Kadrey did well, I think, but the stories least obviously beholden to Jackson herself generally have the greatest depth of feeling. For me, anyway.

Shirley Jackson

Perhaps the best-known author in this collection, Joyce Carol Oates, offers one of the shortest stories. At only four pages, “Take Me, I Am Free” critiques the modern fondness for disposability by asking: where does it stop? Is anything worth saving? She also follows Jackson’s most fundamental precept, that good authors ask questions, but don’t answer them. Literature is something we live with, not something we turn to for guidance.

One hallmark of Shirley Jackson’s writing is that she explained little. She’s one of the few writers under the broad rubric of “horror” to consistently tell successful stories where the monster remains unseen. Scholars continue arguing what, if anything, actually happened at Hill House. Many authors have attempted to recreate Jackson’s talent for withholding the horrible truth, and few have succeeded. Not reliably, anyway.

Carmen Maria Machado’s “A Hundred Miles and a Mile” starts well, full of dark foreboding, but her conclusion feels grafted from another story. Elizabeth Hand’s “For Sale By Owner” likewise has a disquieting set-up, but only the outlines of a pay-off, kept at arm’s length. Seanan McGuire has a resolution matching her premise, but they’re so close together that she resolves her tension before we have time to feel it.

These are highly respected authors, award winners, among my favorites. Unfortunately, they fumble when trying to write in Jackson’s oeuvre rather than their own. I appreciate them for trying, and these stories have seeds of something exciting, which hopefully will germinate in their own stories. They just don’t match Jackson’s almost unique ability to keep the boogeyman visible to the characters but hidden from the audience.

Don’t misunderstand me. Though not every story successfully twigs my sense of the uncanny, this collection has enough stories to keep dedicated weird fiction audiences engaged. The best stories are perhaps influenced by Jackson’s ethos, but aren’t pastiches of her voice. Though no stories feature Jackson directly, some of the best, like Genevieve Valentine’s “Sooner or Later…,” serve as metafictional critiques of Jackson’s work and influence.

Shirley Jackson remains relevant because her works speak to her time and ours. Like now, Jackson wrote amid social upheavals, when family roles and economic principles looked outdated. She forced Americans to directly face our shadow self, collectively and individually. These stories demonstrate how Jackson’s themes remain timely, the questions she asks very current.

These eighteen writers find ways to ask Jackson’s questions in their own voice. How are we going to answer?