As We Have Done Before: Shirley Jackson's The Haunting of Hill House

Well,  you never know what's going to lure me back to posting.

This time around, it's to partially appease, partially excorsise an apparition that follows me in some kind of orbit, one as mysterious and elongated as Pluto's; Shirley Jackson's The Haunting of Hill House.

Haterz Gonna Luv: The Joys of Hatewatching TV

So, my husband's been on my case about my TV watching habits.

No problems here.

See, he thinks I watch too much of it. Hah! Just because I found Law and Order on Comcast OnDemand doesn't mean I watch too much! Just because whenever he comes home I've got the TV going for background noise as I obsessively update my posts on Television Without Pity doesn't mean I watch too much! Just because I threatened his life the last time he tried to speak when Mad Men was on doesn't mean I watch too much, okay? I can handle it! I can quit anytime!

Okay, I can't. But that's all the frustrated actor in me. If I can't be on TV I can at least watch other people on TV. And then go on TWoP and enjoy reading fifty five page threads with others who feel the same way! Thoroughly dissecting In The Hall of the Mountain King or Lay Down Your Burdens on the boards makes watching TV all the more rewarding.

"Okay, fine," says stubborn husband. "But you watch stuff you don't even LIKE!"

Ahhh, here we go. Here's where we separate the the fluffy watcher, the casual, the dillettante, from the serious viewer. The viewer who has something to say, and is using a truly wretched/pretentious show as a channel to say it.

THE TRUTH ISN'T OUT THERE, IT'S IN HERE ( . . . in my heart)!

                    
You know how you sometimes run into someone you've almost forgotten, but not quite?

Maybe you knew them in high school or college, or that year you lived in Chicago, or when you did that semester abroad thing or took a vacation in Lincoln, Nebraska. And you liked them--in fact, you ended up hanging out with them a lot. They were funny and cool, in a way that your other friends, even the funny and cool ones, weren't. You got really interested in them and wanted to hear everything they had to say, and if it sometimes didn't track or got a little overly complicated you didn't care, because their complications were way more fascinating then other people's efforts to keep things simple.

But time passed, and the context you knew them in passed, and you kind of lost touch. You didn't forget them--the names remained fresh and crisp, the faces finely drawn--you just were in different places now and you didn't think about them very much.

And then one day you're fooling around on the internet and some site has a gossip item and you read it and those names are right there and suddenly you remember how much fun they really were, and you have this out of nowhere desire to connect with them again! Right now!

That's how it was with me and the X Files.

FATE CLENCHED IN MY MANOS

Oh, my God, you guys. I've never been happier to be wrong.

When this was first announced:

OMG!