There is great concern for how one is perceived, how one moves through and does-or, more likely, does not-fit into society, for everyone here is an outsider. This is about politics on the most macro of levels. They care about appearances-how they are seen by others they possess certain kinds of respectability and a healthy dose of small-town cruelty. They are shy, unassuming folks who, for all intents and purposes, would pass through the physical world unnoticed. They live in houses that need painting, in furnished rooms, inside the lives of others-as though in a psychic halfway house, having lost their footing. Her characters are trapped by the petty prejudices of people who make themselves feel good by thinking they are somehow better than us all. Her stories take place in small towns, in kitchens, at cocktail parties.
Jackson writes with a stunning simplicity there is a graceful economy to her prose as she charts the smallest of movements, perceptual shifts-nothing pyrotechnic here. Out of the stories rises a magical somnambulist’s ether-the reader is left forever changed, the mark of the stories indelible upon the imagination, the soul. Hers is the ever-observant eye, the mind’s eye, bearing witness. It is a place where things are not what they seem even on a day that is sunny and clear, “with the fresh warmth of a full-summer day,” there is the threat of darkness looming, of things taking a turn for the worse. The world of Shirley Jackson is eerie and unforgettable. For my mother and father Introduction by A.
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