Shirley and the Oddballs.

I now have another Shirley Jackson novel to read. It’s called Hangsaman, and I chose it because the synopsis appealed to me. What other basis is there to choose to buy and read an unfamiliar book?

Well, the problem is that synopses offer little other than an outline of the plot, and plot isn’t necessarily all that important to me, especially where Shirley Jackson is concerned. What I most like about Shirley Jackson is the nature of her characters, and most especially with the contrast most perceptively – and often humorously – observed between the typical, mid-twentieth century, all-American box dwellers, and the less conventional characters – often the main ones – whose odd mannerisms, perceptions and aspirations fall strictly and fascinatingly outside the box.

They’re the ones I identify with. They’re the outsiders who would struggle to negotiate the comfortable and conformist pathways of mainstream culture so they don’t bother. They live in a world of one, and the fun comes with watching how they relate to the world of the many when they come into contact with it. They might even be described as insane, and probably would be by most box dwellers and those literary critics who feel they’re providing a valuable service to conventional society by explaining oddness in conventional terms.

But then, the line which divides the sane from the insane is a broad one with indistinct edges which sway and fluctuate from culture to culture and time to time. For my own part, I prefer to see oddness as an expression of walking alone in no man’s land with no way back to the world of the many. That’s pretty much how I see myself, and you’ve no idea how difficult this short post was to write. I don’t even know why I bothered. Happy September.