How Shirley Jackson Messes With Your Sense Of Reality

Otessa Moshfegh: “Upon awakening, I often ask myself, ‘Who am I? Where am I? What am I doing here?’ and from time to time, I’ve felt that the answers were merely memorized responses, and that my reality might be an arbitrary dash of the imagination – believable, sure, but not entirely trustworthy. This specific vulnerability – of the conscious, willful mind – is precisely what Jackson titillates and exacerbates in her stories.”