Episode 43: On Shirley Jackson

Phil Ford and J. F. Martel — Wed, 27 Mar 2019 11:00:00 -0400

Shirley Jackson's stories and novels rank among the greatest weird works produced in America during the 20th century. However, unlike authors such as Philip K. Dick and H.P. Lovecraft, Jackson didn't cut her teeth in the pulps but among the slick pages of such illustrious publications as The New Yorker. On the other hand, whether because her most famous novel uses the traditional ghost story form or because she was a woman, Jackson only rarely appears in the litanies of weird literature, where she most definitely belongs. In this episode, Phil and JF discuss two of Jackson's short works, "The Lottery" and "The Summer People." The conversation touches on such cheerful topics as human sacrifice, the use of tradition to license evil, and the alienness that can infect even the most familiar things ... when the stars are right.

Header image by Hussein Twabi, Wikimedia Commons

REFERENCES

The Weird Studies Patreon
Shirley Jackson
Zoë Heller, “The Haunted Mind of Shirley Jackson,” review of Ruth Franklin, Shirley Jackson: A Rather Haunted Life
American writer Mitch Horowitz
Rhonda Byrne, The Secret
Stuart Wilde, The Trick to Money is Having Some
Seymour Ginsburg, Gurdjieff Unveiled
Randall Collins, Violence: A Microsociological Theory
James Hillman, A Terrible Love of War
Homer, The Iliad
Phil & JF at Octopus Books in Ottawa, 2015
Marcus Aurelius, Meditations “Whatever happens to you has been waiting to happen since the beginning of time. The twining strands of fate wove both of them together: your own existence and the things that happen to you.”
David Lynch, Blue Velvet

Episode 23: On Presence

Phil Ford and J. F. Martel — Wed, 15 Aug 2018 10:00:00 -0400

Phil stops by JF's Canadian homestead for a raucous IRL conversation on the idea of presence. The range of topics includes objects of power, the magic of books, the mystery of the event, modernity's knack for making myths immanent, genius loci, the mad wonder of Blue Velvet, and the iron fist of the virtual.

REFERENCES

Gil Scott-Heron, "The Revolution Will Bot Be Televised"
Louis CK on smart phones at the ballet recital
Henri Bergson, Matter and Memory, Creative Evolution
Gilles Deleuze on the virtual: see Bergsonism, Proust and Signs, The Logic of Sense, Difference and Repetition, Cinema II: The TIme Image
Expanding Mind with Erik Davis, "Being Anarchist"
JF Martel, "Reality is Analog"
Jason A. Josephson-Storm, The Myth of Disenchantment (and Gyrus's review)
Gyrus, North: The Rise and Fall of the Polar Cosmos
William Irwin Thompson, The Time Falling Bodies Take to Light: Mythology, Sexuality and the Origins of Culture
Geoffrey O’Brien, Phantom Empire
David Foster Wallace, “David Lynch Keeps His Head”
Donald Barthelme
David Lynch, Blue Velvet
Eduardo Viveiros de Castro, Cannibal Meraphysics

Weird Studies - Episodes Tagged with “Virtuality”

Episode 43: On Shirley Jackson

Episode 23: On Presence