publication day approaches! giveaway! etc.
Updates from the Shirley Jackson files, #14
Dear friends and Shirley Jackson fans,
Two weeks from today, Shirley Jackson: A Rather Haunted Life will officially be out in the world. I couldn't be more excited. It's been tremendous fun to share glimpses of the book with you along the way, and I'm as thrilled as could be that you'll finally be able to read it.
Jackson has always been among my pantheon of important writers. Which of us doesn't remember reading "The Lottery," one of the few truly foundational American short stories? I realized I had to write Jackson's biography after reading her essay "The Third Baby's the Easiest," in which she describes arriving at the hospital to give birth to her third child. The clerk asks for her occupation. "Writer," she says. "I'll just put down housewife," the clerk tells her.
To me, this story sums up exactly what makes Shirley Jackson emblematic. She was a woman pursuing serious creative work at a time — from the 1940s through the mid-1960s — when that was far from a usual choice. Yet at the same time, she was a mother and a housewife. (She wrote "The Lottery" with one of her children in a playpen nearby.) The tension between these roles forms an undercurrent to all her work, which constitutes — as I write in the book — nothing less than a secret history of American women of her era.
Please help me spread the word about this book. There are many ways to do so. Follow me on social media — Facebook, Twitter, Instagram — and react to or share my posts. Post about the book on your own accounts — pictures are especially good! Add it to your Goodreads list. Review it on Amazon. Suggest it to friends. Request it at your local library. Come to the launch party in New York or my events in Boston, Washington, Baltimore, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Bennington, or elsewhere. (The full list is here.) Forward this newsletter to a friend.
But the single most important thing you can do is preorder the book: from Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Indiebound, or your local bookstore. Preorder sales are technically counted as taking place the day the book comes out, so they can propel a book to the best-seller list. That means even more people will hear about it (and buy it). It's that simple.
Many of you have preordered already, for which I'm incredibly grateful. For those of you who haven't yet, I have a special enticement. Anyone who preorders Shirley Jackson: A Rather Haunted Life will be eligible to win a complete set of Jackson's novels from Penguin Classics: each of her novels, plus Life Among the Savages and Raising Demons. This set will include beautiful new deluxe editions of The Haunting of Hill House and We Have Always Lived in the Castle, both to be released this fall, as well as a special bookmark designed for the biography.
To enter, just email the receipt for your preorder to shirleyjacksonbio@gmail.com and put GIVEAWAY in the subject line. If you order from a physical store, snap a picture of your receipt and email it. I'll conduct the lottery (yes) on September 27. And of course, if you've preordered already, you're eligible! Just send your receipt.
The biography has been receiving some great advance press. SJ is on many "most anticipated" lists for fall, including Buzzfeed, Vogue, The Boston Globe, Entertainment Weekly, and Library Journal. Apple chose it as one of five nonfiction books to feature in the iBooks store. In Virginia Quarterly Review, Susan Cheever calls it "a gripping and seductive story that is as compelling as it is accurate." Reviewing in Bookforum, Kate Bolick writes, "To reclaim a legacy, it generally helps to have a big, penetrating biography, one that takes into consideration everything that's come before and pushes forward a new and improved interpretation. Shirley Jackson: A Rather Haunted Life is all that and more."
Thanks for all your support along the way.
All best, Ruth
“No live organism can continue for long to exist sanely under conditions of absolute reality; even larks and katydids are supposed, by some, to dream." — Shirley Jackson, The Haunting of Hill House