Shirley Jackson Day, biography miracles, and a horror movie come to life

Updates from the Shirley Jackson Files, #5

Today’s newsletter will be brief because I’m busy preparing for my trip tomorrow to North Bennington, Vermont for Shirley Jackson Day! I’ll be reading from the new book at 7 p.m. on Saturday at the Left Bank, a lovely old building at 5 Bank Street that’s now an art space. Please come, and spread the word!

In connection, yesterday I was interviewed on Vermont Public Radio, which did a special show about Shirley’s life and work. The show was live with people calling in — that part was a first for me. I had no idea what to expect, but fortunately the questions weren’t too off the wall. You can listen here.

For our biography miracle of the month: years’ worth of correspondence between Shirley and her agents, which I had given up for lost, amazingly turned up. When I started working on this book, the only known significant collections of letters written by Shirley were to her parents and to Stanley Edgar Hyman (most of those from the period before their marriage). Now I’ve got … well, let’s just say a lot more. It’s overwhelming — particularly at this late stage of the writing process. But in a very good way.

If ghosts in Brooklyn weren’t enough, a family in New Jersey has sued the previous owners of their house after receiving a series of terrifying letters from someone identified only as “the Watcher.” Among other incredibly creepy things, the Watcher asks if the family has “found what is in the walls yet” and if the “young bloods [children] will be playing in the basement.” I wonder how Shirley would have responded to this. Probably not with a lawsuit.

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