Shirley Jackson Day, larks and katydids, etc.

Updates from the Shirley Jackson files, #10

Dear friends,

Happy June! As some of you may recall, June 27 is "Lottery Day" -- the day on which the lottery in Jackson's story is said to take place. In recent years, Jackson devotees in North Bennington, Vermont (her longtime place of residence), have observed Shirley Jackson Day on the Saturday that falls closest to the 27th. This year it's June 25, and the event will feature two of Jackson's children, Jai Holly and Barry Hyman, reading work from Let Me Tell You, which is new in paperback. Details (including an interview with Barry) here.

If you make the trip to North Bennington, write and tell me how it was! Unfortunately, I'll have to miss it this year. And be sure to check out this piece to plan your Shirley Jackson walking tour. This china cat from Jackson's collection is on display in the North Bennington library!

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In the course of working on this book, I've had the pleasure of getting to know Benjamin Dreyer: by day the copy chief at Random House, by night a passionate Shirley Jackson fan. (The two happily collided last year when he was tapped to copy-edit Let Me Tell You.) Here he brilliantly annotates the first paragraph of The Haunting of Hill House, to which, as you may have guessed, I'm also partial. I love what he says about the comma in the last sentence -- "Whatever walks there, walks alone":

This may well be my favorite comma in all of literature. It’s not grammatically necessary; you might, if you were so inclined (I’m not), argue that it’s incorrect. But here it is, the last breath of the paragraph, and I like to think that it’s SJ’s way of saying, “This is your last chance to set this book down and go do something else, like work in your garden or stroll down the street for an ice cream cone. Because from this point on it’s just you, and me, and whatever it is that walks, and walks alone, in Hill House.

Benjamin wonders in the piece whether Jackson experimented with other fauna before settling on "larks and katydids." Judging from her manuscript notes, it looks like she decided on the larks early but also considered grasshoppers, dragonflies, and butterflies instead of katydids. In case you too were wondering.   A quick question for you, my loyal readers. What sort of content would you like to see in this newsletter? Are there questions about Jackson you're curious to have answered? More behind-the-scenes stories about writing the biography? Recipes from Jackson's collections? I'm open to anything. Write and let me know.   Very 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