Updates from the Shirley Jackson Files
Thank you for subscribing and welcome! I'm so pleased to know of your interest in Shirley Jackson and my biography. I promise you won't drown in e-mail -- I'll be sending these updates sporadically, most likely once or twice a month.
Lately I've been planning for Shirley Jackson Day. Can this really be a thing? you wonder. Well, yes. It's held every year in North Bennington, Vermont, where SJ spent the last dozen or so years of her life, on or around June 27 -- the date of the main event in "The Lottery." This year I'll be reading from my manuscript at The Left Bank, a lovely old building just off the main square in North Bennington, at 7 p.m. I would love to see any and all of you there. I believe Shirley's son Barry Hyman, a professional musician, will also perform.
The Penguin reprints of SJ's two memoirs, Life Among the Savages and Raising Demons, are out on May 5. Both are (lightly edited) collections of her magazine stories about life with children, and they're very, very funny. Reviewers at the time marveled that the same person could have written these memoirs and her fiction, which -- as you almost certainly are aware -- tends toward the darker side. "One would sooner expect [Charles] Addams to illustrate 'Little Women' than Miss Jackson to write a cheerful book about family life," one commented. I'd say they're not quite as different from her more serious writing as they appear to be. Would love to hear your thoughts. I've also enjoyed reading them to my children, ages 11 and 9, who at times literally fell on the floor laughing.
Speaking of humor, Mallory Ortberg published this funny piece on the-toast.net about "How to Tell If You Are in a Shirley Jackson Story." Some possibilities: "A stranger says something unremarkable yet sinister to you on a train while you eat your lunch of bread and butter.... You left your apartment this morning intending to visit the dentist, but have instead found yourself in Hell." Here's hoping that if you wind up in one of these situations, you'll at least get a good story out of it.
All best,
Ruth
p.s. Please feel free to pass this on to any Shirley Jackson fans you know!
"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