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Study 111 - The Summer People (Patreon)

Published:
2024-11-07 18:46:08
Imported:
2024-11
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Content

We're still here! Join us for a discussion of Shirley Jackson's The Summer People.

Special thanks to our reader, Madeleine O'Keefe!

Next up: The Birds!

Files

Comments

Steve

Finally getting to the bottom of the Chris and Chad dynamic.

Steve

It's not just the Greek islands, even in Istanbul, toilet paper can't go down the loo. It's the largest city in Europe!

Brittany King

Loved this story! But I gotta admit, I was a little thrown off at first. I thought it was the same story as CBS Radio Mystery Theater's 'The Summer People,' so when it seemed to end out of nowhere, I was like, wait…what? 😂 If you haven’t heard The Summer People, definitely check it out on YouTube! It’s different but has that same uncanny folk-horror vibe! https://youtu.be/Rc9wgwNVZaQ?si=L1eY9Kxj54NXe2rp

Steve

The Who picked up on this in their 1965 hit My Generation, Things they do look awful c-cold (talkin' 'bout my generation) I hope I die before I get old (talkin' 'bout my generation) This is my generation This is my generation, baby Why don't you all f-fade away? (Talkin' 'bout my generation) And don't try dig what we all s-s-say (talkin' 'bout my generation). It's clear from the way it's said that they didn't mean f-fade away but that's more radio friendly. It's as old as me.

Dyche Mullins

Señor Wences! The despair in Chris's voice when he said, "Nobody knows who Señor Wences is," actually broke my heart. Chris, that those who know and LOVE Señor Wences are out here. We are listening; we got the joke; and we all gave you a big psychic hug at that moment. Having thought about it for a few minutes, however, I now realize that your outdated pop culture reference and attendant sadness was just a brilliant little riff on the theme of today's story. Well done.

Illegal_Structures

What a great pairing with “The Picture in the House”! Of course both stories involve city folk interloping in rural places where they don’t belong; they also touch upon themes of class, power and isolation in interesting ways… and they both feature cleansing bolts of lightning⚡️ Great work as always!

Allison Albright

Do these people have a daughter in law named Alice Allison? Brutal. I'm always glad when you guys do a Shirley Jackson story. She's just so great. Any plans to do the Haunting of Hill House?

Scott Butler

I would love to hear you discuss "We have always lived in the castle" by Shirley Jacksonat some stage. I read it earlier this year as part of my book club, and I would really like to get the Strange Studies take on it.

Sundance

I don’t know if you guys brought it up (listened and re-listened to the podcast many times) if you did I apologize but I would definitely love to hear you guys cover “I have No Mouth and I Must Scream” by Harlan Ellison. I’m sure y’all know about it but it’s the one story (out of very few) that roams around in my brain.

Nathaniel Lekki

I lived on an island in Lake Erie for a year, and the situation was honestly very similar to this place. The main industry revolved around summer tourism and you weren't a real islander unless you lived the winter. Lots of people owned and ran businesses on the island but left during the off season, and these people were pretty looked down upond by the Islanders. I enjoyed the luxury of staying with my camp director, who was accepted, and the islander's all just decided I was cool. Being a local is pretty fun

Alan Ricks

Birdemic: Shock and Terror for the bonus episode!!

Alan Ricks

If you take the story as reality and these acts of sabotage are really happening, are the locals going to murder them next? Like is that it? Are they like a cult that uses the summer houses in the winter for unholy rites and they can’t do their summoning with cityfolk around? Or every year do they eat an unlucky outsider that decides to stay a la the “Our Town” episode of X-Files? Why would they the townsfolk want to pull a “now youse can’t leave” type thing? (Unless its not actually sabotage… or their already dead like you suggested which is really interesting in a “The Others” type way.)

Andi Watson

Thanks for covering this one, I love Miss Jackson. Interesting to hear it from your perspective. I read it pre-pandemic and didn't pick up on the class aspect so much (even though it's hardly hidden in the text). I was caught up in the alienation of the couple and their breaking (unknown to them) social taboos. What strikes me post-pandemic is how we were made to realise how much we depend on so-called menial labour. The people working at the grocery store were suddenly heroes. Serving us our essentials while putting themselves in harms way for (mostly) minimum wage. As you both mentioned, we are totally reliant on the unacknowledged labour of others. Pandemic over, and the people stacking shelves are back to being invisible again. I would recommend Nickel and Dimed by Barbara Ehrenreich for her insight into how no labour is unskilled. Not likely to be covered in the pod, but it is a (non-fiction) horror story of precarity which has metastasized into the gig economy.

Squirrely_Wrath

Is there a disturbance in the collective unconscious? Woke up today with a song in my head, singing it quietly to myself all morning. As I start the commute, I fire up the latest episode. Half listening, half still singing that song, Chris and I say at the same time, "Ms. Jackson if you're nasty". What are the odds. So Chris, jinx you owe me a coke.

Derrick Mcmullin

I think that the lack of improvement is another thing that seperates the summer people from the country folks. Country folks don't improve their house because it's expensive even if they can do most of the work themselves. This couple probably do it because they are spending the summer pretending to be like the country folk.

Cole Caron

Of course Chad does his screenwriting on a typewriter.

Anne Ominous

The country menace in this story is as thick as the couple's city superiority complex. How many times do you need to be told to 'get out of the house?' Ms Jackson is so nasty! I'd also like to humbly suggest that when the author described the Allison's as 'not troubled themselves to put in any improvements' on the cottage, that it pretty well sums up their relationship with the locals.

Falconhoof

I can relate to the stories about your uninvited houseguests. My early twenties were full of similar, awkward life situations, although mine rarely came to such a fortuitous conclusion. I'm convinced that Chad must have a voodoo doll in the back of his closet, with the ankle snapped to a horrifying angle

Jim Cannon

Pretty sure I have been the guest overstaying their welcome more often then not - I perfected the Irish Goodbye to avoid being "that guy" ever again. As a native New Englander, albeit city born, I do occasionally resent how fiction so often paints us as insular, resentful, and potentially murderous towards outsiders. We are not all xenophobes, I swear!

Forrest Rush

The not really appropriate thing I always relate these kinds of stories to, including folk horror, is being in Florida visiting my stepmom's parents and getting invited over to some neighbor's house for dinner once when I was a kid. They were snowbirds from Boston. After dinner, they loved regaling us with tales of other winter transplants and tourists, including me—though I lived less than a hundred miles north, across the Georgia state line from where we sat. All this was done in the thickest Mark Wahlbergian which my unaccustom’d eahs could beahly make out hahf the time. Great ep though as always. Has anyone tried Worshippers of Cthulhu? It's an AOE style lovecraft-fest. Pretty good is my take so far. It's still in early access.

Devin Morse

Utter genius. Jackson’s short story “The Tooth” would be another good one to cover on the show because it’s pretty surreal, like reading a dream.

Eric - Speaker in Digressions

After listening to this episode I caught up with a "Ken and Robin Talk About Stuff" episode from two weeks ago that in one segment discussed the Straw Hat Riots in NYC in 1922. In short: When September rolled around, you were supposed to switch from your summer straw hat to winter felt hats. Some hooligans started attacking people still wearing straw hats later in September than they thought they should, and it escalated. Some people really want to enforce those seasonal rules, I guess. (That Ken and Robin episode also had a segment on the hodag, the cryptid Chad talked about in the Feedback episode, which I also listened to today. I assume this is some kind of cosmic warning to me about hodags. Or else that Chad heard the same segment?) While I'm blathering on I can mention in relation to unappreciated workers the Ayn Rand fantasy that if the wealthy elite went off on their own everything would collapse. Against this, one thinks of the Secession of the Plebs, the general strike during the Roman Republic when the commoners, wanting more say in government, just left Rome and told the aristocrats, "good luck having a society without us." The nobles were forced to make some compromises.

Robert Curtin

One of the few non-Lovecraft stories I've read before listening to the episode!

Wayne Arthurton

Ever since I heard this story read on a podcast in 2006 - 2008ish, it occasionally pops into my head. Like the Lottery, it has and needs not have the end wrapped in a bow. I ponder what’s next, but the only image I can bring to mind is a couple, clutched in each others arms like the bodies of Pompei. Side fact, HP Lovecraft’s father lived in Rochester, NY at some point; Shirley Jackson went to High School and some college in Rochester, NY; and Rod Serling died in a hospital in Rochester, NY (the same month I was born).