The Big Read IV: The Lottery and Other Stories -- Shirley Jackson "The Intoxicated" and "The Daemon Lover"

"The Intoxicated":  In which a young woman scares the bejeebers out of an older drunk man.

• I love the opening line:  "He was just tight enough and just familiar enough with the house to be able to go out into the kitchen alone, apparently to get ice, but actually to sober up a little; he was not quite enough a friend of the family to pass out on the living-room couch."

• I've read this story before.  I wonder where and when? 

• This is perfect:

He waited for a minute before he said, "I think it's a little silly for you to fill your mind with all this morbid trash.  Buy yourself a movie magazine and settle down."

So she should fill her mind with fluffy trash instead.  Get the feeling that he's more upset about her filling his mind with morbidity?  And wow, how condescending is that bit about the movie magazine?

• "He wanted badly to say something adult and scathing, and yet he was afraid of showing her that he had listened to her, that when he was young people had not talked like that."

• This story would be less creepy if Eileen poisoned his coffee or something.  Their conversation, her words and his reactions, made my skin crawl.  I got the distinct feeling that she hated him and what she thought he represented.  Either that, or she was screwing with him in a major way.  Or both.

"The Daemon Lover":  In which a groom doesn't show.

• I've read this one, too.  But I'm positive I haven't read this whole collection.  We shall see.

• Was he ever really there?  She ripped that letter up before finishing it.  "Thirty, it said on the license."  Marriage license?  Were there actually people in that apartment at the end, or was it another empty one with rats?  So.  Is she bananas or is there an actual missing person?  Or does any of it matter?

• And then there's this:  The Ballad of James Harris.  GAH.

• Okay, so the first story made my skin crawl.  This one made me tense up.  My neck got so tight that I'm still rolling my head around trying to unkink it.  It wasn't just her growing panic -- it was that everyone laughed at her.

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Other reader/bloggers:

Heidi at Adventures in Multiplicity
Gail at Original Content (not posting about it, but reading and discussing!)

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Previously:

The Schedule

Comments

[gailg]

Oh, so that's what's going on in the first story. Now I get it. For a while I thought that maybe this was one of those Poe-like stories where people are partying while or after something horrible has happened and the girl was the truth-teller. But I like your take that he's simply a drunk being frightened by a young girl.

I have almost certainy read the whole collection. I recognized The Daemon Lover lover but not the first story. I think we're not supposed to know for certain whether the main character in The Daemon Lover is living in a sad fantasy or has truly been tormented by an awful man.

I've read ahead a bit and I think Jackson is creating a New York City world, era. As a general rule, I find New York City stories written and set in the forties through sixties dated and somewhat off-putting. Nineteenth century stories don't bother me. Pre-WWII stories don't bother me. I'm put off by these stories, but at the same time I'm beginning to feel that she's creating a specific world, whether or not it reflected the true world at that time.

[Heidi]

I don't seem to have the same emotional response, but we seem to have similar interpretations.

I wonder if it's because I haven't encountered Shirley Jackson before. At least I don't think I have. I've got my first post up. hehe I'm already a day behind.

[Leila]

It's funny, Gail, that you're seeing the world that she's creating, whereas I'm seeing the similarities between the people. The people in all of the stories I've read so far seem to be so concerned with not rocking the boat, not making a scene, not being impolite -- that they end up exactly where they don't want to be. But they go along with it rather than speaking up.

Heidi, I'm caught up now, but I missed yesterday -- so you're not alone!

[tuliptoe]

"The people in all of the stories I've read so far seem to be so concerned with not rocking the boat, not making a scene, not being impolite -- that they end up exactly where they don't want to be. But they go along with it rather than speaking up."

Exactly. Death by passivity. ugh.

I'm really enjoying these again. As an O.Henry, Roald Dahl loving kind of gal I find these stories right up my alley.