In his “Ask Me Anything” on Reddit earlier this year, Paul Thomas Anderson was asked to name some of his favourite authors. Among the authors: Chester Himes, Pynchon, John O’Hara, Steinbeck, Orwell, Shirley Jackson. The last author he mentioned was a woman I’ve never heard of before: Caroline Blackwood.
Like any PTA fanboy worth his salt would do, I immediately Googled this mysterious “Caroline Blackwood” in hopes of finding out who she was. I was surprised to learn that, not only are most of her books not available at my local library (get your shit together Toronto Public Library), some of them aren’t even in print anymore. So I bought whatever I could find off of Amazon, and I’m really glad I did.
I could not believe I hadn’t heard of her work before: each book is a little masterpiece. Caroline Blackwood’s novels seem to be a direct influence on Phantom Thread. And if you liked PTA’s film as much as I did, that’s a great thing. Much of her writing has this in common with Phantom Thread:
-They have a gothic feeling: throughout her books, you always get the sense that something is “off,” and that something bad is lurking around the corner.
-They often take place primarily indoors: this also goes hand in hand with the first point. Being inside becomes a source of great oppression to the characters (even if those interiors are mansions).
-They depict quiet characters who have a cutting sense of humour. They also sometimes speak in a very theatrical, unrealistic way. That sounds awful on paper, but for some reason it just works. In Phantom Thread, when Reynolds Woodcock says lines like, “I’m admiring my own gallantry for eating it the way you prepared it,” it sounds like an unnatural sentence to come out of a person’s mouth. But the world PTA creates makes it feel fitting; it’s the same in Blackwood’s work.
-They have the tendency to feature characters who are rich but still seem to not be doing any better emotionally than other people. These toxic characters are usually contrasted by someone who is an outsider looking in, serving as an avatar for the reader (like Alma in Phantom Thread).
Blackwood was born in London. As a result, her writing has that caustic, wry, dark British humour that inhabits Phantom Thread. All her books feel like variations of the same themes and types of people, yet they’re each distinct in their own way.
Another great thing about Blackwood’s literature (for those of you that hate reading): they’re short, and they go by very quickly. The writer in me is very impressed by how much she’s able to accomplish in such a short span of time. The brevity and economy of her words comes at no compromise to the quality of her storytelling. Just like Phantom Thread has the feeling of a film that has a much shorter running time than it does, Blackwood’s novels are fully formed stories that don’t feel heavy-handed.
I am so enthusiastic about Blackwood’s work I feel compelled to tell people about it so I have more people to talk about it with. I haven’t updated this website in months, and this is the first thing I’m posting: that’s how much I like her work. It’s unjustly underrated.
If you loved Phantom Thread and are interested in reading the works of Caroline Blackwood, I would strongly suggest starting with:
Great Granny Webster
The Stepdaughter
