Ghosts and Other Characters

On Sunday Laureen joined me for a viewing of the 1963 classic The Haunting. (See Laureen above with 2 of her fans, as well as Claire Bloom and Julie Harris.)  In a good (or even great) ghost story, the ghost is not merely something that says "boo," but a real (dead) character with psychological connections to the other characters.
 The Haunting is one of my favorite spook-flicks.  Every time I watch it I notice little things I'd missed before.  Of course, I can't think of an example now.

I continue to probe the mysteries of old TV shows.  I just finished seeing several episodes of Biff Baker, U.S.A. featuring character actor Alan Hale (aka "The Skipper").  Though still in his early 30s, Hale's signature character had already jelled into a hearty, jolly, joking, unpolished regular guy.  In this case, he was a regular guy defending American interests all over the world accompanied by his equally jolly wife.  It isn't very good, but it's a source for American post-war psychology.

Of course, when dealing with Alan Hale, the question that always comes up is whether he is related to Barbara Hale (aka "Della Street").  IMDB.com mentions nothing, but nothing mentioned is not proof of nothing being there.  The fact that they both appeared in The Giant Spider Invasion suggests a blood connection: why else would they act in that turkey of a flick?

Speaking of character, recently a research assistant approached our ref desk with a strange request.  Her boss wanted to do some kind of scientific psychological measurement of people who had just read various kinds of literature, such as fiction with characters and fiction without characters.  She needed to find some examples of fiction without characters: no human characters, no animal characters, no alien characters, and no anthropomorphized objects.  No characters.  Not surprisingly, she couldn't find any examples.

For the benefit of Science, I wish to fill this literary lacuna...

The House

A piece of fiction

There's a house on Maple St. with white aluminum siding and a dark green pitched roof.  It has a front door in the front and a back door in the back.  It has a front yard in front and a back yard in back.


Furthermore, it looks just like every other house on Maple St.  This house has no character.

A Grave Visitor

This odd truck was parked on my street today.  Fortunately, no sythe-bearing visitor came to my door.

More Granary Burial Ground Photos

The Mary Goose buried here is not Mother Goose, but people still pay her penny-homage.

This monument reminds me of something...but I can't think what.

What Are Ghosts Anyway?

Yesterday in the staff room Chris and I were talking about supernatural fiction.  He was saying that ghost stories were, in a sense, out of date, since people don't believe in ghosts anymore. How could a modern person get scared?  Only movies could do the job with their appalling special effects.

I was struggling to explain my own love of some supernatural fiction; fiction in which the ghosts are taken seriously as characters and there is real character development.  I kept getting stuck in my explanations.  I think the ghost has to have a psychological connection with a living character, but I don't want to say that the ghost symbolizes somebody's repressed something-or-other.  Then people are bound to think I mean it is just in the character's mind. "Just in somebody's mind" usually means, "It's not real."  It means one is taking a pitying or smug attitude towards that character:  "Poor thing!  She's obviously nuts." (I hate studies of The Turn of the Screw that take that attitude.)  I'm a Jungian; I believe in the reality of the psyche.  I think the mind is more than an epiphenomenon of the brain.  I believe in Rupert Sheldrake's "extended mind."  As far as ghosts go, I neither believe nor disbelieve that ghostly phenomenon are spirits of the dead.  So if a ghost in a story is acting out some unconscious complex of a living character, that doesn't diminish the reality of the ghost character at all.

And, speaking of supernatural fiction, I had been eagerly awaiting the Library of America edition of Shirley Jackson's work.  In particular, I was looking forward to owning her novel The Bird's Nest, which is not available new at a reasonable price.  (I read the Widener copy.)  I could have bought a grimey old paperback, but I would so much prefer to reread it printed on crackling fresh new pages.  But what a disappointment!  The editor of that edition, Joyce Carol Oates, didn't think The Bird's Nest was good enough to include.  In fact, in the interview of the LOA site, Oates admiration of Jackson sounded rather restrained. She also makes that distinction (which I disdain) between ghosts that are "psychological" and ones that are "real" I am pissed, and I hope Oates gets thouroughly haunted by Jackson's ghost.
UPDATE:  The LOA is planning another volume that will include The Bird's Nest.  So I guess I will have to retract my haunting-curse on J.C. Oates.

Tilt

Look at this picture I took. It looks like all the gravestones are about to slide down to the left, but they're not. I ramped up the color saturation. Few things, photographically speaking, are more satisfying than ramping up the color saturation. It's easy to go overboard, and I do.