A book I left off the 2024 list was We Have Always Lived in the Castle, a 1962 novel by Shirley Jackson. It feels like a fitting day to reflect on it with the death of David Lynch, a filmmaker I have to assume admired this book
(If you somehow found yourself on this blog and haven’t read this book or Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow, know there are spoilers to come.)
It’s a strange and short book. A pithy exploration of living with trauma you can’t confront and the dynamics of family, love, and loyalty.
When I finished it, I felt like I couldn’t read another book for a while. The characters seem thoroughly divorced from reality, community, if not also each other. They all seem yanked from different times, contexts, living an incoherent and unsustainable life together. The Blackwood family was so odd and mysterious, I found myself wondering if they were undead or mythical beings; able to live devoid of nutrition, physically grotesque, or perhaps only conditionally visible to the outside world. Jackson raises all these little questions, many answered only in subtext if at all. Details are so subtle they’re easy to miss (especially if you’re reading at bed time).
The Blackwoods aren’t demons, nor werewolves, zombies, ghosts. They’re profoundly troubled, stunted humans bonded by the trauma of a past they refuse to be liberated from. If their options were fight or flight, they chose defensive isolation: shelter in place, suspect all outsiders. They have always lived in the castle, and they always will.
When you live in the castle for too long, you risk being consumed by your own first principles. You risk seeing your values, your creed, as binaries when reality far from it. It leads to a rigid, uncompromising nihilism and drives you to despair.
Something remarkable about Marx in the book Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow was his uncompromising kindness and ability to unite Sadie and Mazer despite their differences. It’s an interesting response to Castle‘s Merricat. A different way to dig in on the commitments the character made long ago.
Where Merricat literally burns her house down and psychologically manipulates her family in order to protect them and herself. Marx is a collector: people and ideas advance his spirit, and he welcomes all. Both are committed for as long as it takes.
Committed for as long as it takes; it’s a burden and a risk. Sometimes it’s lonely. Sometimes others benefit maybe more than you do, but the horizon is only 3 miles out at sea level. How we approach the miles we can’t see is the integrity and courage of our convictions. Do we try to keep ourselves from ever reaching it, or do we embrace it?
Nihilism is a weapon against the self, against the community, but one worth examining and deeply understanding so we can beat it back with hope, love, and especially kindness. A lesson I wish I’d learned when I was much younger.
I’ll close this post with the line that got me thinking about these two books juxtaposed. It’s from the song “Spud Infinty” by Big Thief. Adrianne Lenker writes (and sings):
What’s it gonna take
To free the celestial bodyWhen I say celestial
I mean extraterrestrial
I mean accepting the alien you’ve rejected in your own heart
When I say heart, I mean finish
The last one there is a potato knish
Baking too long in the sun of Spud Infinity
When I say infinity, I mean now
Kiss the one you are right now
Kiss your body up and down, other than your elbows
‘Cause as for your elbows, they’re on their own
Wandering like a rolling stone
Rubbing up against the edges of experienceWhat’s it gonna take?