Ken’s Comments (group member since Jan 21, 2020)

Ken’s comments from the The Obscure Reading Group group.

Bionic Jean wrote: "Looking forward to this! If you have a dozen, I'll stop wracking my brains :)"

I often sit nominations out, too. If we only had four nominations, it'd be a different story. West Side Story, maybe.

Ginny wrote: "Still true for 2021.
"

Yeah, it's tough to say which was worse -- 2020 without the vision or 2021. To this year's advantage, there was the vaccine, but like everything else in this Dividers' Paradise called America, that just became a political football and more Us vs. Them fodder.

I'm going to call it a tie and move my money to 2022.

Meanwhile, I have a dozen or so nominations for Feb. from Day 1 of 2 voting days. If you have a pre-1900 book you want to nominate, send it my way today. Tomorrow morning, the first-round poll will be posted.

2020 is like the Wicked Witch of the East. Killed by a falling calendar last Dec. 31st, then someone said of 2021, "She's worse than her sister!"

Yep. We need a bucket of water, sooner rather than later.

You in, 2022?

Believe it or not, while you've been distracted by the holidays and those pesky Greek-lettered variants, it's fast coming time to nominate books for our February CLASSICS WRITTEN BEFORE 1900 read.

That's right: The all-call for nominations goes out on 26 December. And on the Fourth Day of Christmas you'll NOT see four calling birds but a poll.

Remember that February is set aside for reading a classic, but you'll want to be thinking about a less-known or appreciated or read classic. Not one you've already read, but have been tempted to read. Not one many of us have already read (if you're GR friends, check our reading lists), but one many of us have NOT read.

Tall order? I consider it a fun order.

Anyway, we're going to try a new wrinkle for this polling period. As past winners have only mustered a few votes due to the wide spreading of votes, we thought we'd try a first wave poll followed by a final, Top Three Vote-Getters poll, meaning your second vote will hold special weight and help determine the winner. I like this idea because people often vote for their own nomination, and if their nominee doesn't make the Top Three, they will be less distracted by a book they personally want to read (or reread).

My hope is we'll have a selection by New Year's Day so people can get it read for the Feb. 1st start.

One good thing? Classics are usually easy to find at your local library. Lonely, even. Looking for a temporary home and the warmth of two hands.

Until then, have yourself a merry little Christmas (or whatever winter date you mark for special celebration)....

Cindy's comment on Fancy being a sociopath vs. psychopath made me look up the difference (which I didn't know, I'll admit here).

I looked here (you'll have to cut and paste, as GR disallows HTML links on their site):

https://www.mha-em.org/im-looking-for...

It's good to know, especially as regards certain Fancy politicians who have a penchant for... well, read the traits.

This morning saw Jim F.'s review of Lost Classics: Writers on Books Loved and Lost, Overlooked, Under-read, Unavailable, Stolen, Extinct, or Otherwise Out of Commission and said to myself, "Hmn. This might be a good reference book for the ORG, given the subtitle, assuming, as I am, that these writers -- if they were members of our group -- would nominate these very same titles."

Sure enough, thanks to Amazon's "Look Inside" feature, you can see the entire Table of Contents, featuring each writer's choice for a long lost, overlooked, under-read, unavailable, etc. book on the list.

They're not kidding, either. I found many of these titles in GR's database, but some did not appear at all. Although I scanned the list, I did not see a single title I'd heard of, much less read.

Et tu?

I have to go star my review now. I held off until the polls closed (not that polls will matter much in coming years... but for now, yes).

Sandra wrote: "Finished. I have little to offer you about this obscure book. I guess the last comment by Maryjane says it all: “It wasn’t the plot so much, you know, it was the acting. I mean, it was so real you ..."

I, too, wondered if that ongoing conversation between Maryjane and ... Arabella, was it?... was all "meta" as in meant to actually be commentary on the novel they themselves were in (two characters in search of an author).

Yes, a few laughs here -- and there are precious few in this age and day.

Anyone else on the Alice in Sundial Land angle Ginny brings to the fore?

Yes! It's funny I forgot the Cheshire Cat allusion, but were there enough allusions to Alice to make it obvious that was what Jackson was about? And who is the mirror (sorry) of Alice in this book, I wonder? There's a little girl, but she didn't catch anyone's fancy.

I don't know. I reread Alice in Wonderland a few years back and was wowed by Lewis Carroll's imagination. What's more, I was tickled by practically every character -- even the Red Queen! In this book, we could have used a hookah or two.

Here's another positive part (I cannot defend the whole). I thought it a hilarious scene in Ch. 8 when Gloria looks into the looking glass and sees a naked Essex. The reaction of Essex is Jackson at her best.

Here's Gloria:

"'Essex, it looks like you, only you aren't dressed...you haven't got any...' Gloria turned scarlet and put her hands against her cheeks, but she did not sit back...

'You might try to get me into a lion skin or a pair of bathing trunks,' Essex said. 'I probably don't know there are peeping toms around.'

'You are...could you be hunting?'

'Hunting for what, in God's name?' said Mrs. Halloran.

'Almost certainly for a pair of bathing trunks,' Essex said. 'Couldn't I please stand behind a bush?'...

'It's such a beautiful country. Essex is gone; there are just soft hills and trees and that blue blue sky.'

'Thank God I am out of sight,' Essex said irrepressibly. 'I was beginning to have that feeling of being stared at.'

'Look,' Gloria said, 'oh, look,' and she laughed. 'It's changing,' she said, 'it's like a little painting of a landscape, and it's changing so I can see over the hill and through the trees and now there are people, very far away. 'They're...dancing, I think; the sun is so bright. Yes, dancing.'

'Dressed?' asked Essex, who was enjoying himself enormously."

Note that when Gloria first sees Essex revealed, "she did not sit back." She's so horrified, she needs to look closer.

Reading this back and forth badinage, I can't help but think it's Shirley Jackson, not Essex, who is enjoying herself enormously.

It's little set pieces like the Julia fleeing in a cab scene and this that gave some enjoyment to a book I otherwise rued.

Kathleen wrote: "My thought about the sundial was that it shows the time of day--the end is near.

But here's a quote. I'm not sure if it means anything, but someone else might have a thought!

“Mrs. Halloran, touc..."


A good quote, and the part where Mrs. Holloran thinks "I am earthly" serves nicely as a foreshadowing device. Earth to earth, dust to dust, she is going into the earth sooner than she thinks, following the Lionel train down the stairs (choo-choo).

The word play is reminiscent of the mortally-wounded Mercutio in Romeo & Juliet, who, in his last breaths, tells his friend Romeo, "Ask for me tomorrow and you shall find me a grave man."

Sorry if I misquoted you, Sue. I thought your friend had said that Jackson admired this book more than her others. I do think authors play favorites among their own works, but maybe, like parents with their kids, they're not supposed to.

The car ride with Julia is a perfect example of a "set piece" nestled like a jewel on this corroded ring of a book in that it shined nicely. I quite enjoyed that little build up of suspense, convinced, from Jackson's reputation, that she was going to have this psychopath attack the poor girl. Creepy.

Then, poof. It was back to our regularly-scheduled nonsense.

Cindy wrote: "Ginny wrote: "Diane wrote: "Personally, I wouldn't want to restart civilization with any of these characters. ..."

I don't think anyone has mentioned yet the obvious parody of Christianity, and th..."

Good questions all, Cindy. I don't think Jackson in any way wanted to draw positive Biblical parallels between the "chosen" in this house and, say, the chosen in Noah's ark. The one similarity is how they are animals -- mostly selfish, vain, and superior to the "great unwashed" in town.

Jackson works hard to give readers plenty of reason to dislike most every character (confused or not) in the book. Positively takes glee in it. Somehow I think that's part of her grand plan, if you can perceive any plan, grand or not, for this book.

Are metaphors allowed to be random, though?

Diane wrote: "Readers have a right to think anything they like about a book or an author."

Agreed. Maybe a better way to say this: Is it fair to dislike an author's book because you can't stand a single character in it?

Or perhaps that changes nothing. It's fair because the reader has sovereign rights to opinions. I wonder, though, how many authors would say it's fair. And poor Edgar Allan Poe. He'd have NO fans.

Here we can discuss not only the second half of Shirley Jackson's book, but the book as a whole.

How does it hold together?

What were its strengths and weaknesses?

What would you like to say about the usual suspects: plot, characterization, setting, theme, writing style, point of view?

Parts vs. Whole?

Humor? Horror?

Sue (I think it was) wrote in her review that she read where Jackson called this her favorite baby (book). Is Shirley Jackson being self-indulgent in this book, then, the readers be damned? Or is there no such thing for an author if at least one reader signs on and says, "Great book!"?

Is the sundial irrelevant, or a symbol?

Yvonne (I think it was) brought up the possibility of satire on Christianity. Father (Aunt Fanny's), son (dial?), holy spirit (humor?).

Final possibility for discussion: Do readers have a right to dislike a book simply because they can't stand a single character in the book?

Or whatever you want to say, ask, or wonder, in a stirring-the-pot kind of way.

Kathleen wrote: "I'm sorry to see so many are not enjoying this as much as I am. Perhaps it is one more for die-hard Shirley Jackson fans, who would probably not agree about it being of poor quality. :-)

I like h..."


Fear not! I will say a few words for the defense next week!

Sara wrote: "Matthew Ted wrote: "I had slight interest but it's waning fast. Not doing too much tomorrow so might push to the end too. I just can't figure out what Jackson is going for and the amount of charact..."

Not that we ever want "obscure" to be synonymous with "of poor quality." Jude would have to file for a title change and, last I checked, Thomas Hardy was otherwise occupied.

Ginny wrote: "Diane wrote: "Personally, I wouldn't want to restart civilization with any of these characters. ..."

I don't think anyone has mentioned yet the obvious parody of Christianity, and the "chosen peop..."



In the name of the Father, no son, and any holy spirits, that went right over my head!