Episode 43: On Shirley Jackson

Episode 43: On Shirley Jackson

Author: SpectreVision Radio March 27, 2019 Duration: 1:16:32
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 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

At the heart of Weird Studies, a podcast from SpectreVision Radio, you’ll find long-form conversations between Professor Phil Ford and writer J. F. Martel. Their discussions aren’t simple reviews or straightforward analyses; instead, they wander through the tangled undergrowth where art and philosophy meet, giving generous time to concepts that resist easy understanding and to creative works that fracture our ordinary sense of the world. This podcast deliberately lingers in that ambiguous space, treating the “weird” not as a genre but as a particular mode of experience-one that reveals the cracks in what we comfortably assume is real. Each episode feels like joining a deep, meandering dialogue between two friends who are both deeply knowledgeable and endlessly curious, covering a vast terrain that includes literature, film, music, and esoteric thought. It’s a show for anyone who suspects that the most profound truths are often found in the shadows, the anomalies, and the strangely beautiful. As part of the SpectreVision Radio network, which specializes in content that explores the uncanny edges of creativity, Weird Studies builds a unique community of listeners who are eager to think differently. You won’t find pat answers here, but you will encounter compelling questions and a shared sense of exploration that makes each installment a distinctive journey.
Author: Language: English Episodes: 230

Weird Studies
Podcast Episodes
Episode 67: Goblins, Goat-Gods and Gates: On 'Hellier' [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 1:23:34
On the night before this episode of Weird Studies was released, a bunch of folks on the Internet performed a collective magickal working. Prompted by the paranormal investigator Greg Newkirk, they watched the final episo…
Episode 66: On Diviner's Time [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 1:32:19
In the paper discussed in this episode, Phil Ford coins the term "diviner's time" to denote a particular feeling that will be familiar to anyone who has engaged in divinatory or magical practice, namely the feeling that…
Episode 63: Faculty X: On Colin Wilson's 'The Occult' [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 1:19:35
At its simplest, what Colin Wilson calls Faculty X is "simply that latent power in human beings possess to reach beyond the present." Yet its existence is evinced in all those phenomena that modernity files under "supern…
Episode 61: Evil and Ecstasy: On 'The Silence of the Lambs' [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 1:07:16
The Welsh writer Arthur Machen defined good and evil as "ecstasies." Each one is a "withdrawal from the common life." On this view, any artistic investigation into the nature of good and evil can't remain safely ensconce…
Episode 60: Space is the Place: On Sun Ra, Gnosticism, and the Tarot [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 1:26:27
Somebody once said, "No prophet is welcome in his own country." Whether this was true in the case of jazz musician and composer Sun Ra depends on whom you ask. With most, the dictum probably bears out. But there are thos…
Episode 59: Green Mountains Are Always Walking [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 1:20:28
"Perhaps the truth depends on a walk around a lake." This line from Wallace Stevens' "Notes Toward a Supreme Fiction" captures something of the mysteries of walking. It points to the undeniable yet baffling relationship…
Episode 58: What Do Critics Do? [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 1:00:34
What is the role of the critic in the world of art? For some, including lots of critics, the figure exudes an aura of authority: her task is to tell us what this or that work of art means, why it matters, and what we are…