Hangsaman is a bizarre, challenging, and emotional novel. I have read it multiple times in the past decade and am of the opinion it should be in the library of anyone concerned with the human condition. Hangsaman inspires my writing; it the book that makes mine possible.
A Historical Note
The most widely read work I published under my Aniko Carmean pen name is a 2014 review of Shirley Jackson’s Hangsaman. I pay homage to the protagonist (or protagonists, depending on your interpretation of the text) of Hangsaman in my novel, Aulisyn. Given that my publication is imminent, I revisit my thoughts on the book that inspired me.
You can read the original text on Goodreads here: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/131177.Hangsaman
NOTE: Goodreads does not appear to allow linking to a particular review; it has consistently been on the first page for the last decade and should not take much scrolling to find.
The Review
Hangsaman is a fishhook piercing flesh: the flesh is ours, and the hook is the narrative voice which withholds more than it shares.
The most remarkable aspect of Hangsaman is that, on the surface, nothing happens. A seventeen-year-old girl, Natalie, starts college, drinks martinis with professors, and goes on long, thought-addled walks. Natalie is also deeply troubled, “coping” with a trauma by pretending it never happened. Her repression is evident in the book’s structure: the reader is privy to emotional reverberations of the trauma, but not the incident itself. Hangsaman is a fishhook piercing flesh: the flesh is ours, and the hook is the narrative voice which withholds more than it shares.
Natalie’s psychological contortions become increasingly disturbing as she fails to integrate into collegiate social life. When a spate of random thefts occurs, Natalie agonizes over if she should say something was stolen from her to look less suspicious- just in case she is the thief. When several girls report being slapped in the middle of the night but are too startled to identify the culprit, the reader wonders, is it Natalie? Natalie doesn’t seem to know, and the narrator isn’t telling us, either.
Hangsaman is not a novel of absolutes: it is a compendium of disorientation, isolation, and loss of self.
It is unclear where Natalie ends and the narrator begins; as the perspectives shift, the only constant is absence of a first-person point of view. The blended narrative persona is used to excellent effect right from the opening scenes, when a “detective” interrogates Natalie. It is only on a second (or third) read that I understood the exchange between Natalie and the detective is so very, very strange because the detective is prescient. His questions can be applied to multiple situations that arise throughout the novel, and it is illuminating that at the time the questions are shared with the reader, they are entirely out of context. Perhaps the narrator is Natalie’s future self, broadcasting thoughts into the past? It is another question without an answer, for Hangsaman is not a novel of absolutes: it is a compendium of disorientation, isolation, and loss of self.
The tragedy of Hangsaman is that Natalie has no sense of who she is: trauma destroyed her psyche as she approached the cusp of self-discovery. She fails to individuate from her dominant father. She cannot forge relationships due to her paralysis of identity. When a shadow self emerges, Natalie alternates between being intoxicated with and terrified by her new companion. Lost to herself, Natalie Waite has no “I.”
Have you read Hangsaman? If yes, then what do you think of Tony? If no, is it because of the relative obscurity of this work, the style of the work, or something else?
As ever,
-erzsebet
Erzsebet Carmean 