Words were exchanged between friends – the house of human companionship was established in secret – eons passed – eons passed – eons passed – eons passed

A) The house was diminished!

B) The house was strengthened!

C) The house was swept away!

Backyard #1 - John Salminen

American , b. 1945 -

Like one of the major reasons I tuned out after the first episode or two of his The Haunting of Hill House adaptation is because I couldn’t take the just kind of okay character and dialogue writing seriously when it was immediately following up a full quotation of what is quite literally the best opening paragraph in all of fiction. I don’t think you even need to be familiar with the book to instantly recognize that that specific part is written by a different, much better writer.

It’s not that the writing was even all that bad, it’s just that it wasn’t Shirley Jackson, which is, you know, an insanely high bar to reach.

Could he/his writers have written a more compelling opening narration? Almost definitely not, but it just seems lazy to not even try. At least that would’ve been made to be an opening to what the first episode actually entailed instead of just yanking the opening paragraph from the book with no regard to the context of how it was leading in to the rest of the chapter, thus completely wasting any narrative flow you could’ve potentially gotten from that kind of narration. I’m not saying it’s not possible to do that in a way that recontextualizes the quote in an interesting way, but that wasn’t the case here imo.

It also kind of gives off the vibe that you’re using the source material as set dressing which I kind of really hate.

It also feels like a lot more egregious of an offense when the majority of your audience are people who haven’t read the source material. If you google “The Haunting of Hill House” his show is the first result instead of the book it’s based on which I am. so normal about.

The police ruled it a suicide. The family and local community demanded an investigation. The police refused to change their ruling.