I watched the Shirley Jackson-ish movie last night. And by "ish" I meant that the movie is based on a fictional novel with only a tangential relationship to Shirley Jackson's life, mostly because there are no kids in it and she had 4 kids. The movie has a Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf vibe with a fictional young, hot couple coming to live with Shirley and her obnoxious husband.
Few things: Shirley Jackson is a damn trip. You can be a fan (I am BIG TIME) and not realize she wrote two child rearing non-fiction books. Life among the savages and raising demons. Reading Haunting of Hill House and imagining her in the Erma Bombeck type of writing space is very weird.
How is Shirley the movie? Better than I thought it would be. It all hinges on Moss and some of it is a bit wobbly at times but overall maybe I was just swayed by the excellent shirts that Shirley Jackson wore.
This duck one is particularly good
Here's another trip about Shirley. She died at 49.
People really aged differently back in the day. But I feel like a dick pointing this out, I'm being honest that I was tripping on it, but also a reason I vibed with the movie is because as someone who has grappled with self image my entire life I am drawn to stories of women who yield power and magnetism that they do not gain through beauty.
During the movie Shirley is writing a book that I had no idea is a real book, called Hangsaman and now I must read immediately but help I have like 12 books lined up to read right now!!! Current rotation: Call Me By Your Name (trying to rush to the dirty parts), How the Word is Passed (reading with a friend) and a book on daughters of narcissistic mothers. Just finished: Shirley Hazzard The Great Fire.
As far as the Jackson oeuvre I've read We Have Always Lived in the Castle and Hill House is the best scary book of all time IMHO. Of course I've read The Lottery but probably should check out more of her short stories but I just don't really like reading short stories.
The director of Shirley is Josephine Decker who has an interesting body of work. I have seen her movies "Butter on the Latch" "Thou Wast Mild and Lovely" and also a very cringey doc. that she made with an ex about their relationship that has a lot of real sex in it! And them talking about where their relationship went wrong. Shirley was def her biggest movie, with Coppola as producer and I wonder what it did for her career. It got released during the pandemic. I know flops are harder for female directors to recover from. She has a new movie in post-production with Jason Segel in it. Haven't thought about that guy in a while.
I am off the 'Gram so I have nowhere to post food photos. This one is an extremely bad photo and also you can see where I salted after cooking and there's salt on the plate. I made chile rellenos. Two coworkers had told me it's not worth the trouble but I would make again. I made two kinds: stuffed with Oaxacan cheese and the other stuffed with a saute (how do you spell) of shrimp, onion and tomato.
I made the sauce from garden tomatoes, serrano chile, garlic and onion. Blended, cooked down and strained.
The different thing about frying rellenos is you whip the eggs. The recipe I had led to me overwhipping them so that they were too foamy and wouldn't coat the chile (which is first dipped in flour). So while frying the second batch I added another egg white and mixed in so it would not be so stiff.
You roast the chilies beforehand and de-skin and de-seed etc. I think I overroasted them slightly so they were too soft and tended to split. You can hold them together with toothpicks for frying, but it seems sketchy like you are going to bite into one.
Delicious! It made me miss my customary 524 relleno order even though mine were better.
2 comments:
Have you read her child-rearing books? They are amazing. She has a story about calling herself a cab to go to the hospital to have a baby and smoking a cigarette and possibly drinking booze on the way? It is a window into a different time, but also it sounds like this chain-smoking horror writer was a super fun parent. Her book probably convinced me to have kids and I gotta say there was a lot less smoking and taking cabs to the hospital than she promised me.
At least one of her kids was mad about the movie because he said she was a really good mom and it made her look like a monster.
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