Elizabeth Hand’s “A Haunting on the Hill” (Mulholland) is, the book jacket notes, “the first novel authorized to return to the world of Shirley Jackson’s The Haunting of Hill House.” Authorized—by whom? Not by Jackson, who died in 1965, but by her heirs. “A Haunting on the Hill” is, therefore, a ghost story conjured by representatives of a deceased author’s estate. It all sounds a little uncanny.
Isn’t that the case, though, whenever we try to resurrect dead writers? In the past decade, a resurgence of acclaim has fully established Shirley Jackson as the queen of dark literary fiction, and there is no surer sign of an author’s success than the arrival of a new generation of writers eager to channel her spirit, rereading and reimagining her work. So much for the death of the author. These days, it seems, fan-fiction writers start posting their rewrites the moment a book leaves the printer—sometimes over the author’s vociferous objections.
Read Full Article »