On a Fictional Twin and Frugality.

I’m reading Shirley Jackson’s Hangsaman again. I remember liking it the first time I read it, and since I have no DVDs to watch I decided to read it again. I don’t often do that.

When I finished this evening’s session I turned the book over and read the brief synopsis on the back. As usual, I disagreed. I nearly always do, you know. My understanding of what a novel is about rarely accords with the received view propounded by academics, reviewers, or publishers’ editors…

(Personal note: Please don’t tell Mr Kearin I said that, Nancy. He probably hasn’t forgiven me yet for the slug-on-the-Christmas-dinner joke.)

To continue:

… I sometimes think it’s because the aforesaid are just trying to sound clever by way of self-justification, and sometimes I assume it’s because I’m a complete dimbo who knows nothing about the correct interpretation of good quality literature. The truth is probably that I simply have a different world view than that held by academics, literary reviewers, publishers’ editors, and approximately 99% of the rest of the population. And that leads me neatly into the little mystery contained within Hangsaman.

The MC is a young woman called Natalie who is shortly to go off to college (or uni as we have it in the UK.) The early part of the book is set entirely in the domestic environment inhabited by Natalie, her parents, and her younger brother. It is at once both conventional and dysfunctional, and Natalie’s relationship with each member of the family is ambivalent. And that’s because the only environment in which she can feel truly at home is the one inside her own head.

So is it surprising that I should feel a complete sense of communion with young Mistress N? In one way it might appear to be a mystery since I’m not female, I’m not seventeen, I’m not American, and I don’t have long legs. But it makes perfect sense to me. She hasn’t started falling apart yet as I recall she does later in the story – and as I seem to be doing these days – but at the moment she’s as sane as any of us loner types can reasonably expect. Natalie and I are conjoined twins, which I suppose is why I like the book.

*  *  *

I’m experiencing a terrible attack of the munchies tonight. I keep reaching for things to eat, and they’re mostly not particularly healthy things. It’s probably because I had a Caesar salad for my dinner tonight, and Caesar salad is pleasant but unsubstantial.

I’d never heard of Caesar salad before I went to Toronto on a photographic assignment for a UK publisher. I saw it on the hotel menu and decided to give it a try. I liked it and it had the added advantage of being the cheapest option on the list. I was on a fixed rate contract, you see, so it made sense to use as little as possible of the agreed fee on things that didn’t matter very much. Accordingly, I had it nearly every might for 2½ weeks because I was brought up to be frugal in all things.

(I might just explain that both my parents had been poor kids from the back streets of a northern industrial town where frugality was life’s first principle. The rule was that you spent as little as possible on the necessities, and the rest on alcohol to keep you sane. It rubbed off on me.)