Last month, some of you will remember, I listened to the audio book version of Richard Matheson’s HELL HOUSE.  This month, I am listening to Shirley Jackson’s THE HAUNTING OF HILL HOUSE.  The two have the basic similarity of sharing a venue and a couple of character types, but there the similarity, so far, ends.  What I’m getting a sense of from this second novel is the vast spaces between the minds of two talented writers.

People often say - about books or filmes - that something sounds “just like” something else.  Here are two rules I live by.

1) If they sound the same it does not mean they ARE the same.

2) If they ARE the same, one of the two was written by a writer, and the other is more like the moon, reflecting something already great.

I feared this might be the case with these two books, but it is not.  They are definitely similar in makeup, but they are such vastly different books - both incredibly well written - that it got me thinking.  There is room in the world for more haunted houses.  You could even write another book where an intrepid group comprised of a professor, a mousy woman, a hotter woman, and a young man with a sense of humor were the focus.  The key isn’t whether or not another book could be good, but could it be written in such a way that - while drawing inevitable parallels from those who encountered it to Hill and Hell Houses, respectively, it stood alone, stark on the hillside, teeming with evil and waiting.

The characters in Hell House were hard to like.  All of them had their flaws and they wallowed in them.  The house was so vile that reading about it made your skin crawl, and if there is a flaw in the storytelling, it’s that despite the vile nature of the house, it’s hard not to root for it to squash the protagonists like bugs.

Shirley Jackson, on a different note entirely, presents a very likable group.  They also have their flaws, but they are the kind that grant character.  They are people you would love to meet and spend time with.  I suspect when the house gets its claws into them that I will empathize heavily with the characters and be ready to see the Hill House go up in flames to protect them.

I also wonder at the film most recently associated with this particular book.  The Haunting - who told them it would be better if they, basically, turned the professor in Hill House into the professor from Hell House?  Who told them the people should be tricked and not know why they were there?  How is this better?  I find it irritating, and though I do appreciate seeing Theo in my mind as Catherine Zeta Jones, I am disgusted with the way they twisted and ruined a classic story so they could slide in more effects.  I assume they changed the characters to insomniacs because it explained how they could stay awake days on end…but why not leave that to the imagination?  To the house?  Would YOU sleep there?

I loved Owen Wilson in that part…but having a member of the family who owns the home present is a crucial plot element, and shifting all that knowledge to Liam Nieson was a mistake.

I digress.  The bottom line is, if my mind continues down the roads it is now wandering, there may be a haunting or two in the near future of my work.  I have already written a haunted house novelette - and I’ve often wondered if it wouldn’t make a good novel.

The Fall of the House of Escher…

Thinking…always thinking….

DNW

Technorati Tags: Catherine Zeta Jones, ghosts, Haunted, haunting, hell house, hill house, medium, professor, spirits, The Haunting

Posted on 08/13/08, 5:44 AM
in: writing
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