Shirley Jackson: Novels and Stories (The Lottery / The Haunting of Hill House / We Have Always Lived in the Castle)

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• ISBN13: 9781598530728
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Description

"The world of Shirley Jackson is eerie and unforgettable," writes A. M. Homes. "It is a place where things are not what they seem; even on a morning that is sunny and clear there is always the threat of darkness looming, of things taking a turn for the worse." Jackson's characters-mostly unloved daughters in search of a home, a career, a family of their own-chase what appears to be a harmless dream until, without warning, it turns on its heel to seize them by the throat. We are moved by these characters' dreams, for they are the dreams of love and acceptance shared by us all. We are shocked when their dreams become nightmares, and terrified by Jackson's suggestion that there are unseen powers-"demons" both subconscious and supernatural-malevolently conspiring against human happiness.

In this volume Joyce Carol Oates, our leading practitioner of the contemporary Gothic, presents the essential works of Shirley Jackson, the novels and stories that, from the early 1940s through the mid-1960s, wittily remade the genre of psychological horror for an alienated, postwar America. She opens with The Lottery (1949), Jackson's only collection of short fiction, whose disquieting title story-one of the most widely anthologized tales of the 20th century-has entered American folklore. Also among these early works are "The Daemon Lover," a story Oates praises as "deeper, more mysterious, and more disturbing than 'The Lottery,' " and "Charles," the hilarious sketch that launched Jackson's secondary career as a domestic humorist. Here too are Jackson's masterly short novels: The Haunting of Hill House (1959), the tale of an achingly empathetic young woman chosen by a haunted house to be its new tenant, and We Have Always Lived in the Castle (1962), the unrepentant confessions of Miss Merricat Blackwood, a cunning adolescent who has gone to quite unusual lengths to preserve her ideal of family happiness. Rounding out the volume are 21 other stories and sketches that showcase Jackson in all her many modes, and the essay "Biography of a Story," Jackson's acidly funny account of the public reception of "The Lottery," which provoked more mail from readers of The New Yorker than any contribution before or since.

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Customer Reviews

Now You're IT!
Lovers of Stephen King, Joyce Carol Oates, and Alfred Hitchcock will find much to admire in Shirley Jackson's deft portrait of psychopathology in //We Have Always Lived in the Castle//. Two sisters, suspected by villagers of murdering their entire family, live in isolation in a splendid manor. Their lives take a further turn for the macabre when a long-lost cousin disrupts their idyll. In the second of the two complete novels collected here, ghosts in //The Haunting of Hill House//, lead a young woman researching psychic phenomena at Hill House to a curious, abrupt fate.

These novels keep company in this compact Library of America edition with dozens of short stories written in clear, hypnotic prose. Whether it's villagers gathering on the town green for a lottery, a New York street corner where a housewife's nerves snap, a cocktail party with an ominously prescient teenager in the kitchen, or a char woman's simple wheedling, the settings are ordinary, but nothing else is quite what it seems: Middle-class American games at mid-century veer unexpectedly into cruelty, insanity and murder, just when it's your turn to be "it."

Reviewed by Zara Raab

2010-06-21 | Sacramento Book Review (Sacramento, CA) | Helpful Votes: 2 | Rating: 5

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A Master Storyteller gets her Due
A few years ago I read a review of an anthology of short stories in which a story by Joyce Carol Oates was praised as "a study of loneliness worthy of Shirley Jackson." For that and many other reasons how apropos that it's Oates herself who has compiled the contents of this very welcome volume, which features Jackson's three best books in their entirety: her 1949 collection The Lottery and Other Stories, and her classic novels The Haunting of Hill House and We Have Always Lived in the Castle. Not only that, but a bumper crop of 22 of her other short stories are included as well, some of which are among her very best: "One Ordinary day, With Peanuts," "A Visit, or The Lovely House," "The Summer People," "I Know Who I Love," and "The Bus." Jackson's been my favorite author since I was a teen, and I've been really happy to see her literary rep growing again in recent years; I'm hoping this volume might do well enough that The Library of America might release a companion volume collecting her four other novels: The Road Through the Wall, The Bird's Nest, The Sundial, and my favorite of the bunch, the underrated bildungsroman, Hangsaman (I'd also throw in her book of very funny family stories, Life Among the Savages, as well as the novel she was working on at the time of her death, Come Along with Me).

At any rate what we have here is a feast of Jackson's particular brand of mystery, fear, humor, tragedy, and misanthropy, as always communicated in her clear, unmistakably Jacksonian prose, and starring such unforgettable characters as the mysterious, tragic Eleanor Vance, who goes to Hill House for a summer stay and never leaves; Mary Catherine Blackwood and her sister Constance, who together find their very peculiar happy ending in their "castle;" not to mention the nameless protagonist of "The Daemon Lover," likely whom the reviewer above was referring to with his reference to human loneliness (I would add Catherine Vincent from "I Know Who I Love" in that delineation as well); and of course the terrified Mrs. Hutchinson from Jackson's main claim to immortality, "The Lottery." There is also a veritable constellation of dreadful old bats populating these tales as antagonists, tormenting our heroines with their prudish propriety, and worse (Mrs. Montague in The Haunting of Hill House is a good example); and many, many perfectly horrible small town denizens, who play out smaller-scaled but similar versions of Jackson's famous lottery in many stories, practicing or promulgating ostracism, narrow-mindedness, racism, and just plain petty, spiteful, mean-spiritedness in general. Jackson regularly narrated the meme that human beings carry evil within them, and some of the most fearful, anxiety-provoking stories in her oeuvre disturb so because their descriptions of the sheer banality of this herd-pack mentality still ring true ("The Renegade" may yet be the cruelest of all the contes cruels I've encountered). Jackson had her lighter side as well, and in stories such as "The Night We All Had the Grippe," "Charles," and "My Life with RH Macy" her wry humor shines, though still with an almost indefinable air of something off-kilter; through light and dark, the author peered at life with a detached, slightly warped lens.

As this book clearly proves, Shirley Jackson's entire body of work exists today as an integrated whole, with a distinct vision and overall worldview that remains universal yet curiously her own; something I suppose every artist would strive for. Love this book: 5 out of 5 stars.

2010-06-11 | rndkr (USA) | Helpful Votes: 9 | Rating: 5

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Jackson's two great shorter novels, with a wide-ranging selection of stories
Here are the contents of The Library of America's first Shirley Jackson volume:

THE HAUNTING OF HILL HOUSE

WE HAVE ALWAYS LIVED IN THE CASTLE

THE LOTTERY; OR, THE ADVENTURES OF JAMES HARRIS (story collection)
The Intoxicated
The Daemon Lover
Like Mother Used to Make
Trial by Combat
The Villager
My Life with R. H. Macy
The Witch
The Renegade
After You, My Dear Alphonse
Charles
Afternoon in Linen
Flower Garden
Dorothy and My Grandmother and the Sailors
Colloquy
Elizabeth
A Fine Old Firm
The Dummy
Seven Types of Ambiguity
Come Dance with Me in Ireland
Of Course
Pillar of Salt
Men with Their Big Shoes
The Tooth
Got a Letter from Jimmy
The Lottery

UNCOLLECTED STORIES
Janice
A Cauliflower in Her Hair
Behold the Child Among His Newborn Blisses
It Isn't the Money I Mind
The Third Baby's the Easiest
The Summer People
Island
The Night We All Had Grippe
A Visit; or, The Lovely House
This Is the Life; or, Journey with a Lady
One Ordinary Day, with Peanuts
Louisa, Please Come Home
The Little House
The Bus
The Possibility of Evil

UNPUBLISHED STORIES & SKETCHES
Portrait
The Mouse
I Know Who I Love
The Beautiful Stranger
The Rock
The Honeymoon of Mrs. Smith

Appendix: Biography of a Story

2010-05-27 (New York, NY) | Helpful Votes: 15 | Rating: 5

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Just an Ordinary Day: The Uncollected Stories Of Shirley Jackson

Description

The stories in this edition represent the great diversity of her work, from humor to her shocking explorations of the human psyche. The tales range, chronologically, from the writings of her college days and residence in Greenwich Village in the early 1940s, to the unforgettably chilling stories from the period just before her death. They provide an exciting overview of the evolution of her craft through a progression of forms and styles, and add significantly to the body of her published work.

Just an Ordinary Day is a testament to how large a talent Shirley Jackson had and to the depth, breadth, and complexity of her writing. Though this remarkable literary life was cut short, Jackson clearly established a unique voice that has won a permanent place in the canon of outstanding American literature, and remains a powerful influence on generations of readers and writers.

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The late Shirley Jackson (1919-65) is the author of the classic short story, "The Lottery," a dark, unforgettable tale of the unthinking and murderous customs of a small New England town. She is also the author of several American Gothic novels, such as We Have Always Lived in the Castle and The Haunting of Hill House. Her atmospheric stories explore themes of psychological turmoil, isolation, and the inequity of fate. Just an Ordinary Day is a posthumous collection of 54 short stories (many of which have never been published), edited and introduced by two of Jackson's children. Jackson penned many of the stories in this volume for the popular press, for titles ranging from Fantasy and Science Fiction and The New Yorker to women's magazines such as Charm and Good Housekeeping. The disparity of the intended audience and the divergent styles result in an uneven collection of short stories, some that are outstanding and will be much appreciated by the reading public, others that hold interest only to the die-hard fan or chronicler of Jackson's work.

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Customer Reviews

Buy it for one story, enjoy the rest
"One Ordinary Day With Peanuts" Buy this book to read that story. Before this book was released that story, more ambiguous and both funnier and more chilling than the famous "The Lottery" was only available in an old issue of The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction and a decades out of print Best Of paperback collection by Judith Merril. Don't let Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction put you off; the magazine had deeply catholic tastes, particularly then, as did Judith.

The rest of the stories range from very, very good to "yeah, I see why that wasn't published or completed". There's arguments whether the latter should've been published. Reading Judy Oppenheimer's biography Private Demons: The Life of Shirley Jackson puts things in context though doesn't settle the issue. One of her daughters, who completed one of Jackson's novels after her death, used "Ordinary" to test prospective boyfriends and she oversaw the publication of this collection.

Jackson is today only remembered for "The Lottery" and maybe the not-bad Haunting of Hill House. We Have Always Lived in the Castle is a subtle, sneaky novel. Not without flaws but long overdue for rediscovery as is the author herself, both her fiction and non-fiction (Life Among the Savages is Erma Bombeck + Stephen King + Mark Twain).

2009-12-22 (Portland Maine, USA) | Helpful Votes: 0 | Rating: 4

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Wonderful
Beautiful collection of precise, perfectly edited stories. A delight from the first page to the last. Shirley Jackson's writing is clear, effortless, and completely free from self-indulgence. A master craftsman of the story.

2008-10-22 | lifelong reader (USA) | Helpful Votes: 0 | Rating: 5

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Jackson remains one of the finest American writers to have lived
This is a wonderful collection of Shirley Jackson's short stories in a new easy to read book. Jackson's "The Lottery" continues to shock and mesmerize readers sixty years after it's publication in "The New Yorker". To this day, this story holds the record for generating the most mail and telegrams in "the New Yorker's" history and Jackson, until her death, contended that this was "just a story." Her writing is a wonderful guide for all people who wish to write. It's a satisfying smörgåsbord of a wide variety of work, all of it centered on character and the inner workings of the human mind. As a fan of writers such a Richard Russo, Charles Dickens, Barbara Kingsolver, Stephen King, Alice Walker and John Irving, Shirley Jackson belongs at the top of this list. You must read everything she wrote, but this book is a wonderful way to get your feet wet. Used or new, it's a book that you will return to many times and you may even want more than one copy so that you can lend it but still have it while your reading buddy takes his or her time savoring each story. This is an example of the power of the written word and an example of why William Shakespeare and Aristophanes are still remembered and read today.

2008-01-26 (Boston) | Helpful Votes: 0 | Rating: 5

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A Nice Discovery
Shirley Jackson was a gem. She was a suburban mom and wife who managed to find the time to crank out loads of short fiction as well as authoring The Haunting of Hill House, easily the greatest haunted house novel yet done. Jackson's uncollected, often unpublished stories are here in this volume that arrives in the world like a late Christmas present. Some of these tales are hilarious, a few are disturbing, many are weird, and a handful are touchingly personal and concern Jackson's life raising her kids in post-War America. (Those last types were the ones I enjoyed most of all.) Shirley Jackson left the world far too soon and her like won't be seen again, but this volume, compiled by her son, is a nice keepsake for her fans, who never knew most of this existed.

2005-11-09 (Under Your Skin) | Helpful Votes: 5 | Rating: 4

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oh, so very,very good, mrs. jackson!
well, i just loved it.

i adore shirley jackson's style: the way she caputured a time period long gone and dosed it with play and shivers.

i haven't had such a delightful time with a short story collection in eons.

if you've never read shirley jackson, start with 'the lottery' short story collection & you'll be so itchy for more, you'll hug this book to your chest just before you begin eating the pages.

2005-07-10 | sakura kitty (east coat) | Helpful Votes: 3 | Rating: 5

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Come Along with Me

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• ISBN13: 9780140250374

Description

If you were thrilled by Shirley Jackson's "The Lottery" but aren't familiar with her other stories, don't miss the chance to pick up this important collection edited by the author's husband. In addition to "The Lottery," it includes classics like "The Beautiful Stranger" (body snatcher theme with a twist), "The Summer People" (a tale of sinister villagers), "A Visit" (a lyrical ghost story), "The Rock" (where death is a short, shy gentleman), and "The Bus" (Jackson's most overtly ghoulish and frightening story of all). The unfinished novel Come Along with Me is mesmerizing, and Jackson's "Biography of a Story" is an utterly hilarious account of readers' reactions when "The Lottery" was first published in the New Yorker in 1948. As the New York Times said, "Everything this author ... has in it the dignity and plausibility of myth ... Shirley Jackson knew better than any writer since Hawthorne the value of haunted things."

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Customer Reviews

A Little Heartbreaking
Shirley Jackson wrote this (her last book) as her psychologist was working intensely on her agoraphobia. It reads like a woman coming out of a funk and for Jackson, that really works! It's a really wonderful book of stories, including the one that first aroused her husband to stalk and date her. The entire book is excellent, but it always strikes me as incredibly unpleasant that her widowed husband put this collection together with his NEW wife and then dedicated it to HER! Shirley surely turned over in her grave on that one.

2008-06-21 (Hollywood, CA) | Helpful Votes: 1 | Rating: 5

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'I delight in what I fear'
Shirley Jackson was once told that even if she never wrote anything except "The Lottery" she would be remembered forever. Indeed, who can forget the first time they read this story and its shocking, sinister ending? "Come Along With Me" includes not only this classic story, but several of Jackson's other writings as well (short stories, essays, an unfinished novel), which prove Jackson's great talent and unique genius.

Yet, what is it that makes Jackson's work so effective and provocative? Few authors have her talent for tapping into our fears and fantasies quite as well as Shirley Jackson. After dangling the promise of joy and happiness in front of us, she cruelly snatches it away and show us a dark parody of our own dreams. We see this time and time again in Jackson's work, especially in several of the stories collected here. In "Summer People", a married couple's long-awaited extended holiday becomes a nightmare of isolation. In "Beautiful Stranger", a woman is miraculously freed from an abusive husband, but loses herself in the process. In "The Bus", an elderly woman finds pain in childhood memories just when it seems she needs them the most. And, In "I Know Who I Love" a woman finds that even after the deaths of her unloving, overprotective parents, she is still very much within their control. In short, there are few happy endings in Shirley Jackson's world.

This is a great collection for Jackson fans as well as those who might not be too familiar with her work. The only bad part, a few of her early stories are a little weak compared to the later ones. All in all, this book is still well worth checking out!

2007-12-18 | zlowell | Helpful Votes: 2 | Rating: 4

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Jackson's most revealing stories and thoughts on fiction
This book is a fitting testament to Shirley Jackson, as the selections span her entire literary career. It is tragic that a writer of Jackson's caliber should be called away during her productive years, but we are quite fortunate to be allowed a taste of the novel Jackson was working on when she died. That taste is a short one, consisting of six chapters (roughly 27 pages), the final three of which are the first draft. The protagonist is a thoroughly Jacksonian character, sometimes spontaneous and sometimes nostalgic, making a new life for herself in her own peculiar way. Her attempts at shoplifting are particularly telling of her character, but unfortunately her story ends at just about that point. The other stories included here are a special treat. While "The Lottery" is included (just in case someone may not be familiar with it, as Jackson's husband tells us in his preface), the other stories are poignant looks into the lives of rather ordinary people. Jackson had an amazing talent for characterization; the smallest actions can tell us more about a person than his/her overt actions and words, and such little things make Jackson's stories incredibly vivid, illuminating, and personal. Shirley Jackson was a wife and mother whose writing always took second place behind her family. Many of these stories center on family life in all its aspects. "The Beautiful Stranger" and "A Day in the Jungle" deals with the sense of unfulfillment and unhappiness that one partner may come to feel in his/her marriage, "The Rock" speaks to the strength of a brother-sister relationship, "Island" is a somber story about one's end-of-life years. "Pajama Party" is a simple tale of a young girl's birthday slumber party. The story sounds so much like real life that it could be a neighbor telling you about it firsthand; it is also the funniest story Jackson ever wrote There are darker stories where characters become "lost," hopeless, and frightfully alone--"The Bus," "The Little House, "A Visitor" (which is a strange ghost story of sorts). The best stories here, in my mind, are "Louisa, Please Come Home," which has a uniquely Jacksonian twist of the prodigal son motif, and "I Know Who I Love," which illustrates the fact that parents can be much too overprotective of their children.

The true highlight of this book, though, are the three "lectures." One gives Jackson's response to the old "where do you get your ideas?" question. Another one addresses the techniques of writing effective fiction. My favorite, though, is an essay describing the reaction of readers to the publication of "The Lottery" in New Yorker Magazine. Jackson includes comments from all sorts of readers, almost all of it negative, which she breaks down into three different categories. While "The Lottery" is certainly an original, successful story, I cannot imagine that so many people would have been so affected that they felt compelled to put their shock and disapproval into words. The responses that Jackson describes to us offer a vivid look at American culture at mid-century.

If you are a Jackson fan, you (should) already own this book. If you want an introduction to Jackson, the stories included here will certainly delight you and win you over to Jackson's unique way of telling stories. These stories clearly reveal Jackson's humanity and family devotion, and the reader comes away with great respect for the author as both a writer and as a human being.

2002-04-10 | darkgenius (Shelby, North Carolina USA) | Helpful Votes: 28 | Rating: 5

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An intimate tribute to a bright, literary star.
Shirely Jackson was a gifted writer who deserves to be regarded with the same prestige heaped upon Ray Bradbury and others. Come Along With Me, a posthumous collection gathering together early works with lectures and a novel fragment, not only allows readers to shiver and giggle as only Ms. Jackson could make us do, it also offers the reader an intimate glimpse into the creative process (compare the sharp focus in the revised segments of Come Along With Me with the somewhat blurred unrevised sections) and, by printing short stories in order of their publication, the growth of Ms. Jackson's considerable talent for the intelligently ghoulish can be seen and savored. As with her other, more famous stories (i.e The Haunting of Hill House), it is what is implied in the methodical unfolding of the tales that makes for the chills rather than in your face grue. This book, along with Jackson's others, is an essential in any literature loving bookworm's library. Highest recommendation.

2002-02-25 | Bookworm (Concord, CA United States) | Helpful Votes: 11 | Rating: 5

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A Must for Shirley Jackson Fans
This book is amazing! If you love short stories with a twist (or twisted short stories), you will be mezmerized by this book. The real gems in this collection are the short stories--you will find it difficult to put this book down. If you loved "The Lottery", get this book! The collection was assembled posthumously by Shirley Jackson's most trusted critic--husband Stanley Hyman--and it is pure gold!

2000-08-17 | Helpful Votes: 7 | Rating: 5

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The Lottery and Other Stories

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• ISBN13: 9780374529536
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Description

The Lottery, one of the most terrifying stories written in this century, created a sensation when it was first published in The New Yorker. "Power and haunting," and "nights of unrest" were typical reader responses. This collection, the only one to appear during Shirley Jackson's lifetime, unites "The Lottery:" with twenty-four equally unusual stories. Together they demonstrate Jack son's remarkable range--from the hilarious to the truly horrible--and power as a storyteller.

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Customer Reviews

A Crusader Against Racism
None of my students had ever read, or even heard of, Shirley Jackson nor her famous story "The Lottery" when I taught a fiction workshop in a prestigious MFA writing program eighteen months ago, so I have to believe that, with the proliferation of newer models, Shirley Jackson doesn't have the cachet she once had. Maybe Shelley Jackson has taken her place in the minds and hearts of young writers today. (Both writers grew up in the Bay Area and we are proud of them both!) Anyhow "The Lottery" was a big hit and many said that it reminded them of a film project that would be a good fit for disgraced movie director M. Night Shyamalan (The Sixth Sense, The Village). "Professor Killian, are there other Shirley Jackson stories as chilling as The Lottery?" My brow furrowed. "Not exactly," I admitted. "She wrote some scary novels, but I can tell you're not interested in those."

Finally one student slapped down a wellworn paperback copy of "The Lottery and Other Stories" onto the seminar table. "Talk about a one hit wonder!" he snorted. It was up to me to stand up for the other stories in the volume which, though none of them are exactly as perfect as the title piece, still carry a certain amount of resonance even sixty years later. We noticed that much of the work was written during World War II, with the consequence that men play small parts in general in these stories. It's mostly a women's world, and the women are really messed up. In "The Tooth," a housewife from upstate takes the bus down to Manhattan to get a tooth seen to, and somewhere along the way she loses her mind and thinks that she has a demon lover. By the end of the tale a sordid amnesia has set in. In "Pillar of Salt," another married woman goes to Manhattan and has a breakdown just from the noise and bustle of city life. You'd think an editor would have spoken to Miss Jackson pointing out the similarity between the two stories. But maybe it's a systemic failure she's pointing to--the way in which society has both denigrated women and put them up on a pedestal. And in many of the stories, it's another woman who's the enemy. Jackson attacks the casual racism and anti-Semitism of the period in that forthright 1947 fashion that we loved so much in Gentleman's Agreement and Intruder in the Dust, but on other issues, like that of identity, she seems curiously muted, perhaps convinced that human beings are constitutionally drawn towards evil and malice. So, it's not a cheerful book by any means.

Neither is it a particularly compelling one. For some reason The New Yorker was encouraging vague markers of identification, for everyone in the book seems to have the same name and the same futile tags. This one wears a housedress, that one carries a pug dog, and that's about it, they're all pretty shadowy and prejudiced. And lost! Lost in the broken dreams of post-Fordist America.

2010-05-11 (San Francisco, CA United States) | Helpful Votes: 0 | Rating: 4

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Nothing Interesting.
No short story I have ever read has left me hanging or wanting as much as Shirley Jackson's. This happened with more than just one story in the book. As brief as most of the stories are in this collection, I can understand there is not much room for character development. But that is why I don't care what happens to the characters. I don't get time to know them. If I don't know them, then I don't care and that is what makes Ms. Jackson's stories, in this collection anyway, difficult to read.

2010-04-04 | Helpful Votes: 1 | Rating: 1

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Suitable for middle school child
Ordered by error. I was surprised to find it was a classroom short story and not meant for adults. It is an old plot but with proper teaching, would help a child understand how different cultural customs could be viewed by outsiders.

2010-03-09 (Florida) | Helpful Votes: 0 | Rating: 2

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Good transaction!
The book arrived promptly in good condition. Sadly, it didn't have the one short story I really wanted to read (The Summer People), but none-the-less very enjoyable reading.

2009-08-10 | Helpful Votes: 0 | Rating: 4

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A Dark and Magnificent Brilliance
Shirley Jackson (1916-1965) was a professional short story writer in an era when the term meant an author who was able to subordinate their own inclinations to the demands of the magazines in which they were published. As such, she well-paid to write stories tailored to such magazines as VOGUE, MADEMOISELLE, WOMAN'S DAY, GOOD HOUSEKEEPING, and THE SATURDAY EVENING POST. Although much admired at the time, these stories are considered trivial today--largely because, whenever the opportunity arose for her to work without restriction, Jackson produced material that was infinitely more powerful, material that shocked, disquieted, upset, disturbed, and horrified readers who came to it in an unsuspecting frame of mind.

Inasmuch as most of the reading public presently knows her from the short story "The Lottery" and the novel THE HAUNTING OF HILL HOUSE, Jackson is frequently thought of as horror writer. There is truth to this, but this is not the literally monstrous horror of such writers as Stephen King or Dean Koontz; it is instead the horror of the ordinary and the everyday. It is a nice old gentleman on a train chatting with a small child; it is the dog that chases the neighbor's chickens; it is a woman on vacation in the city. It is nothing more nor less than the horror of strangulation by the absolutely ordinary.

Much of Jackson's fiction rests on the social boundaries that constricted women of the 1940s and 1950s, when a woman's preferred career was thought to be marriage and motherhood--a notion that Jackson undercuts time after time in truly poisonous portraits of jilted lovers, exhausted housewives, and duped mothers whose situations are made unexpectedly and terrifyingly clear to them in a sudden flash of self-realization. Even the luxury of a housekeeper to a pregnant wife is frought with danger, as the young Mrs. Hart so painfully discovers when confronted with the invisible hooks of cleaning woman Mrs. Anderson in "Men With Their Big Shoes." But if women's issues are the vehicle by which Jackson most often delivers her message, the message itself is one of hell on earth.

Jackson's tales are often ironic, often satirical, and frequently funny, but even so there is no escaping the silenced scream that issues from those who unexpectedly find themselves among the damned--a situation all the more unexpected because most of the time they have done everything they were supposed to do and done it well according to the standards of the world around them. In "The Lottery" Tess was late to the drawing because she didn't want to leave her dishes in the sink. The kindly mother in "Charles" takes pride in the fact that her son is so well-behaved in comparison with the kindergarten class troublemaker. Mrs. Wilson wants to show that she is not racist when her son brings home a black playmate in "After You, My Dear Alphonse;" in the process she unwittingly displays exactly how racist she really is.

The occasional men to whom Jackson turns her attention fare no better: a slightly drunken party-goer finds himself vulnerable to the apocalyptic imagination of a teenage girl doing her homework in the kitchen in "The Intoxicated," and David Turner, who prepares a good meal for next-door-neighbor Marcia in "Like Mother Used To Make," finds himself thoroughly emasculated for his pains. But more often as not, men--sometimes with considerable deliberation--are the slippery slope from which wives, lovers, daughters, and mothers slide into personal chaos and disaster, with the mysterious Jamie Harris of "The Daemon Lover" a case in point.

Jackson's world seethes with violence and the threat of violence, often arising from seemingly innocent circumstances, frequently involving a sense of territorialism and personal possession, and often with children at the center. "The Witch" finds a child much more prepared to perceive, define, and defend himself against psychological danger than his mother; "The Renegade" finds children thoroughly prepared to take bad-taste jokes and sarcasm to a logical and violent conclusion that will anger and horrify anyone who has ever loved an animal. But Jackson's violence is not always literal; it is often emotional, covert, and symbolic, examining the way in which we ceaselessly poison each other, sometimes accidentally, sometimes deliberately--and Jackson is not afraid to imply racism, sexism, homophobia, social class, and the closed doors of the status quo as underlying cause.

Critics are fond of saying that Jackson couldn't have written a bad sentence if she had tried, and it is true that she has a unique, often lyrical, tone of voice. It plays beautifully against the shock of her stories and the questions they leave, often unanswered, to resonate in your mind when the story is done. Although her output was somewhat uneven, she is Truly one of the great masters of the short-story form and truly one of the great American authors of the 20th Century.

GFT, Amazon Reviewer

2009-06-04 | GFT (Biloxi, MS USA) | Helpful Votes: 2 | Rating: 5

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Private Demons: The Life of Shirley Jackson

Description

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Customer Reviews

Private Life Unveiled
"Private Demons: The Life of Shirley Jackson," by Judy Oppenheimer is the life story of the very private writer, Shirley Jackson. In this book we learn of Shirley's life which started in California where she was a sharp-eyed, imaginative child. She could feel and see the caustic details in life surrounding her.

In Shirley's senior year, her father's employment took his family to New York where she felt more potently, the the alienation that was to haunt most of her life. After high school, we learn of her higher education and the details surrounding her early relationship with Stanley Hymen, her future husband.

Throughout all of her developing years, Shirley wrote. She was very faithful to this purpose. This biography tells the tales of the developing writer and her life. It looks as though Judy Oppenheimer had access to journals, diaries and letters, however most of the biographical journal thoughts are revealed toward the end of the book when Shirley wrote in a journal to relieve depression. The book tells a story of when Shirley was young, she found her grandmother snooping in her 'locked' desk and reading her writing. I wonder what these writings were and I wonder if a sense of the author's writing would have revealed a little more then the details derived mostly in the form of family member and friend interviews. Letters to her friends and family are scattered throughout but not much is mentioned of writes and rewrites/journals or diaries-not that I want to be particarly nosy, but isn't it the writing that makes us curious about Shirley?

In this book, you do learn a lot of Shirley's life. Her habits and many beliefs and thoughts, fears and relationships, but you don't get behind the writing much. She struggled to have time to write in adulthood when she had a huge house, four children, pets, and Stanley to care for, but more inside information as to the workings of the writings would have substantiated this biography a great deal.

Shirley was a larger than life character: she believed in witchcraft, she drank an awful lot, she could entertain and run a large house with unbelievable strength and she wrote some of the most interesting and haunting literature one can read.

One interesting note this reviewer observed was when reading, "We Have Always Lived in the Castle," toward the end, I felt depressed. It was a rather depressing ending if you've read the book, but even more so, when I read the biography in regards to this story in particular as being Shirley's downfall into depression and agoraphobia, I was surprised that this feeling was evoked in the story so well as to pass it on. Many books have sad endings and you may have empathy for the character, but to make one depressed to read on to the very end was an interesting correlation between the writing in the book, the reader, and real life.

There are no other biographies of Shirley's life out there right now. There are some critical reviews of her work and so forth, but no other book delves so deeply into her personal life, so if you are interested, this is a good book, but more importantly, if you want to know what her life was really like: Read her books.

2009-10-24 | "Time is a precious thing. Never waste it." (Placerville, CA) | Helpful Votes: 0 | Rating: 4

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A disappointment
I am surprised by the praise this biography has received. Shirley Jackson has been my favorite American author since the 1960s.... having reread her books almost yearly. But this biography was more of a tell all- yet never informed me about THE WRITING.... I learned nothing about the behind the scenes of the novels themselves, the motivations... I found it to be more of an intrusion in a Private Life.

2009-06-21 (Minneapolis, Minnesota USA) | Helpful Votes: 0 | Rating: 1

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A Brilliant Haunted Mind
Shirley Jackson is best known for her short story "The Lottery" and her novel "The Haunting of Hill House." While these are definitely two of her masterpieces, her other writings (six novels and numerous short stories) showcase a brilliant mind that saw the world in a very unique way. Shirley Jackson offered the world an opportunity to examine itself, whether it wanted to or not, to see the evil that existed beneath the staid common surface of life, spicing up her stories with a wry humor and ambiguity that was both frustrating and exhilirating. Judy Oppenheimer's biography "Private Demons: The Life of Shirley Jackson" is a thorough, poignant, no-holds-barred look at this too often underappreciated author.

Shirley Jackson was born in 1916, to a young mother who hoped for more from her daughter, who was never to be beautiful or thin or proper like her mother wished her to be. Shirley's childhood was one of almost total isolation - she spent most of her time indoors reading and writing, having few friends that her mother would ever approve of. Her true freedom did not begin until she went to Syracuse University (her second attempt at a college education) where she met her future husband, Stanley Edgar Hyman, later a famous critic and professor. Stanley recognized and affirmed the genius in Shirley, and throughout their nearly twenty-five year, often tumultuous relationship, he was her mentor and bedrock of normalcy.

Jackson's reputation as a writer may have suffered from the fact that she was never afraid to write stories for a profit. Her two collections of family chronicles, witty anecdotes about her children and their crazy ways which includes the famous story "Charles," were money makers but not exactly literature. With her novels "Road Through the Wall," "Hangsaman," and "The Bird's Nest" Shirley explored the unchartered territory of depression and schizophrenia. She was always ahead of her time, seeing what was not there, blurring the lines of reality and fantasy, shocking her readers to the core. Her writing is unforgettable and truly remarkable.

Judy Oppenheimer does an incredible job at painting a portrait of the enigmatic Jackson - a woman who lived through various personalities herself, who suffered from depression and anxiety, and in the end who perhaps was not meant for this world for too long. She had other more fantastical places to visit in her own mind. Oppenheimer draws on interviews with friends and family members, painting an equally sad and happy portrait of the writer and her family. Understanding more about what Jackson's life was like might make her stories a bit more understandable, but it will not take away any of the genius that was rightfully hers.

2009-04-05 | beckahi (Chicago) | Helpful Votes: 2 | Rating: 5

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A WELL-CRAFTED BIO WITH BOTH TRIUMPH AND TRAGEDY
Most people remember Shirley Jackson as the talented author of THE HAUNTING OF HILL HOUSE and WE HAVE ALWAYS LIVED IN THE CASTLE, not to mention the deeply disturbing and still popular short story "The Lottery." Some of us also have lucked onto her two essay collections-slash-novels about family life and kids, LIFE AMONG THE SAVAGES (1953)and RAISING DEMONS (1957), books with a surprisingly comedic view of life with four small children, in which Jackson portrays herself as a harried homemaker, not a nationwide celebrity with book contracts and a schedule of (not entirely welcome) speaking engagements.

Yet who was this Shirley Jackson? Talented, yes, and accomplished. But the cost of expressing those talents took an already unbalanced individual and set her on the path of multiple doom due to excessive and steady consumption of sweets, cigarettes, brandy and amphetamines. There were many sides to Shirley Jackson, says the author, and she justifies that by offering a warts-and-all bio that is conversant with feminist theory (the book dates from the 1980s) but not under its thumb; knowledgeable about psychobiography but not entirely a psycho-bio of a book, and understanding how Jackson's past influenced her adult life.

We return to Burlingame, California (suburban San Francisco) for Shirley's grammar-school years and to upstate New York for her teen and college years. With every intention otherwise, Shirley was a thorn in her mother's side, a striking but not particularly pretty face and a body that leant itself to obesity. Shirley was also a bright if not totally focused student and early on leant more toward poetry and short-story writing than the graceful suburban airs and superficial beauty that her mother would much rather have preferred.

There is a great deal of truth in the comedies-of-family life LIFE AMONG THE SAVAGES and RAISING DEMONS and a great deal of omission, too. Through those books we gather a picture of her husband, scholar Stanley Hyman, as a reticent and somewhat reserved man; when in fact Stanley Hyman was a political firebrand who loved debating and plain old arguing. When Shirley narrates that she went to bed "with a mystery," there's no mystery now that a portable typewriter, pack of cigs and snifter of brandy probably climbed in too.

This woman of many contradictions fiercely loved her children and was fiercely protective of them, yet was at best a mediocre homemaker who occasionally enjoyed cooking but rarely got the chance or took the chance. What we don't hear--and hear only in this significant biography--was that as the Hyman - Jackson family expanded, so did their standard of living. There were housekeepers some of the time, and generally they didn't work out. But there was also the money for some travel and to send the two middle children--both girls--to prep school out of town.

In some ways, Jackson was a kind of "multiple" personality who found it more and more difficult to reconcile her roles or personae as happy homemaker yet sophisticated party person, a sensible but hard-headed and politically sensitive citizen who did not shy from pursuing justice to get a malfeasant public-school teacher fired, yet a woman who bemoaned the deep gulf between adopted town North Bennington, Vermont's locals and the faculty at the still-newish Benninngton College.

Shirley Jackson used all her writerly talents in her sunny letters home to mother, even (or especially) a women desperate to achieve a sunny tone in her letters to mother but in reality deeply given to depression, especially the "post-partum" type when the artist finishes a significant work. Just a plain old regular harried housewife, as she portrayed herself in SAVAGES and DEMONS, would have found life with four exuberant children and without today's labor-saving devices difficult enough, but with a full-time-plus career as author, her personal life became untenable even as her novels gained ever more acceptance and acclaim -- and she leaned on her crutches ever more.

In essence, as Shirley Jackson continued to expand her work by moving into novels instead of short stories, her crutches became her addictions. She had been taking Amphetamines since the 1950s when they were considered fairly harmless "diet drugs" or "pep pills." Shirley always worried about her weight, in large part occasioned by her fear she was a failure in the eyes of her mother. She died very overweight before her fiftieth birthday, a sad combination of liquor and drugs that would be roundly condemned today, and also without thanks from cigarettes and chocolates. Sadly, only the youngest child, Barry, was home at the time.

What also comes through in this book is the love all four of her children held for their mother, and a much more rounded picture of an author under great psychogical strain who strained even harder to fit a picture of small-town normality. In this book we get to hear how her real life differed from the charming LIFE AMONG THE SAVAGES and RAISING DEMONS; also we get to understand why the back chambers of her tortured soul formed the impetus and inspiration for her very best writing. This is the only full-scale biography of Shirley Jackson we are likely to get, at least anytime soon. While not particularly "academic," the book is excellent and thorough journalism that is a pleasure to read even as we learn of the pain that composed so much of Shirley Jackson's life. Highest recommendation.

2007-10-21 | Constant Reader, (Chicago, IL United States) | Helpful Votes: 6 | Rating: 5

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Deserves more than five stars.
PRIVATE DEMONS is the best biography I've ever read in my life. I first read it years ago when it first came out, and am on my second copy.

Shirley Jackson was an interesting and complex woman with talent to burn. She was comfortable with penning the pyscological/creepy/haunted house types of novels and equally comfortable turning out humorous short pieces about her family life. She was a genius with both.

More than one reader has experienced a little cognitive dissonance when realizing that Jackson wrote both "The Lottery" and "Charles". "THAT'S the SAME author?" is a constant refrain.

Author Judy Oppenheimer does an outstanding job of bringing this tremendous writer to life, as well as doing her fans a great service by bringing Jackson's name and reputation back to the literary forefront. Through skillful writing and research and generous interviews with Jackson's 4 children and many friends, the reader is mesmerized by the too-brief life that was behind Jackson's multifacted talent.

Writing this book could not have been an easy task, since Shirley Jackson contained multitudes, to quote Walt Whitman. PRIVATE DEMONS may be out of print now, but search your secondhand bookstores both in your city and online, and track down this treasure of a biography. You will not be sorry.

2006-05-06 (Kumi, South Korea) | Helpful Votes: 6 | Rating: 5

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The Witchcraft of Salem Village (Landmark Books)

Description

Stories of magic, superstition, and witchcraft were strictly forbidden in the little town of Salem Village. But a group of young girls ignored those rules, spellbound by the tales told by a woman named Tituba. When questioned about their activities, the terrified girls set off a whirlwind of controversy as they accused townsperson after townsperson of being witches. Author Shirley Jackson examines in careful detail this horrifying true story of accusations, trials, and executions that shook a community to its foundations.

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Customer Reviews

A very good preface to the subject of the Salem witchcraft trials
There were two reasons for my interest in this book; one is the fascinating issue of the Salem Witchcraft trials, a subject that has intrigued me for years (I first encountered this topic while reading articles dealing with matters of child testimony in court and children eyewitness in general) and the second is the writer, Shirley Jackson, whose work I try to read in full.
It is no wonder Shirley Jackson has chosen to write about this chapter in American history. Shirley Jackson, as her biography notes, was interested not only in witchcraft and the supernatural, but more in the power of the community, especially a small one, on an individual person. Jackson experienced this power as an evil force and she describes it as such in her work (a good example would be the book "We have always lived in the castle"). Several efforts were made to link Jackson's personal life with her work. After reading much of her work and biography one realizes how she must have sympathized with the accused in the Salem Witchcraft Trials, as a person who was also an outcast or a "strange" member of the community. It seems that the issue of the Salem Witchcraft Trials was more then just an historical chapter for Shirley Jackson.
But beyond the author herself, this is a description of a dead end situation for those wrongly accused of witchcraft and nothing they may possibly do could prove them innocent. Jackson does well in her effort to describe the political and religious atmosphere of the time before getting to the story itself. This is the horrible tale of a group of girls, who in their fear for themselves wrongly accuse other people in witchcraft. One event leads to another and pretty soon they are many steps beyond return. The atmosphere of the time enabled such misdeeds to happen.
As the book is intended for kids, the language and terminology are rather simple, yet Jackson manages to be clear and precise and does not let her thoughts and feelings (which we can only imagine) evade the writing. Even though Jackson describes the wrongdoings she does not dwell on the suffering of the accused when blamed, in prison, or the after come of the hanging itself. Jackson tries to stick to the historical details and facts and gives an objective description of the events themselves. However, Jackson does not wish to leave her historical story to mere facts, as facts are rather scarce in this case. The author tries to supply reasons and semi-explanations as to how something as terrible as this could have happened. Besides the court summaries, names and details of living people there are no real facts to hang on to, and what could be the facts in this case? The mere facts were only the tales and actions of the "Afflicted children" and the atmosphere in the country during the time of the Salem trials.
I found the book very clear and interesting although as an adult I feel I would like to further dwell into this issue. This is a good job of describing the episode to children ( I believe the readers age should be above the age of 10-11 and definitely not ages 4-8 as recommended in the product description!) with an effort to remain as neutral as possible, as much as can be done in such a story.

2005-08-16 | Tsila Sofer Elguez (Haifa, Israel) | Helpful Votes: 8 | Rating: 5

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Witchcraft Truth
Jackson shows me what it is like to live in 1692 and have magic on your hands! I definitly recomend this book for 12- adult!Jackson ROCKS!

2005-04-25 | Helpful Votes: 1 | Rating: 4

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Excellent History Lesson for Children
This book was an excellent educational book and an easy read for children to understand and learn from. It is clear that this Martha Nassaer has an egotistic issue (arrogance) and has filled her review with what she believes to be impressive words; however, all were meaningless and unimpressive to this reader. It is unfortunate that people would use such a forum to dissuade others from reading such a wonderful book. Obviously, she is not an educator. I highly recommend it for children 8 and up.

2003-03-05 | Helpful Votes: 14 | Rating: 5

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MY REVIEW OF THE WITCHCRAFT OF SALEM VILLAGE
THE WITCHCRAFT OF SALEM VILLAGE WAS AN EXCEPTIONAL BOOK FOR CHILDREN FROM THE AGES 10-13 WHO ARE INTERESTED IN THE SALEM WITCH TRIALS. I ESPECIALLY ENJOYED IT BECAUSE IT WAS A QUICK AND EASY READ BUT IT KEPT ME INTERESTED THE WHOLE TIME.IT WAS VERY DESCRIPTIVE AND IT HAD TRUE FACTS ABOUT THE WITCH TRIALS.IT WAS A GREAT BOOK AND I RECOMMEND IT TO EVERYONE!!!!

2001-12-07 (OKC,OK,USA) | Helpful Votes: 9 | Rating: 4

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History through Rationalism - an occultic view
One must sometimes delve into the background of an author to acquire that person's worldview and how it molds their material, especially when the material being used for historical accounts for educational purposes. "Private Demons" a biography of Shirley Jackson by Judy Oppenheimer, reveals a plethora of information about the author, including that fact that she was an occultist and active occult writer. This book is written with a religiously unilateral, occcult/rationalistic view. Despite intense political & religious controversy surrounding this story, there was an enormous amount of literature concerning broader aspects of the trials which held alternate views not relayed in many of Ms. Jackson's often innaccurate and spiritually condescending renderings of the account.

Many believed the girls were commissioned by Satan to divide Christ's Kingdom through false accusations. Ms. Jackson mocks these Spiritual leaders by negating their position that the root of the dissention began with the afflicted girls and their occult involvement, and alludes that these leaders were vehicles of dissention in the community, by advocating that the colonists oppose Christian teachings. Spiritual leaders were trying to expose their belief that Satan's ploy was to sow seeds of division in the church. Ms. Jackson makes no tangential, historical reference to this fact, that spiritual leaders believed the root of the dissention began with occult involvement.

Ms. Jackson omits various aspects of the afflicted girl's involvement in occult practices, and substitutes a rationalistic world view to explain the occurences. Rationalism excludes Biblical interpretations and the value of conventions and dangers of popular superstitions. Ms. Jackson does not depict occult activities utilized by the afflicted women to avoid any inference as to the validity of an alternate power. Rather, she alleges that these girls merely "pretended" to be controlled by demons, ignoring the fact that many Christian leaders strongly believed in Satanic influence surrounding these issues.

You will notice that the bulk of the content provided by the author in the "afterword" section expresses her rationalistic viewpoint when she focuses heavily on demonology as a myth, and places blame for the witch trials on religious fervor and intolerance, boredom, psychological pressure, and possible physiological disorders. Ms. Jackson attempts to categorize spiritual leaders as zealots.

Ms. Jackson consistently negates to include accurate historical information throughout her book. Ms. Jackson could not include this information because it would not conform to her rationalistic view. It appears that Ms. Jackson selectively utilized facts she chose to paint the picture she wanted the reader to see by flavoring the historical rendering to that of her own world view. She does this by mocking the power of Satan, and accredits belief in his existence to ignorance. By enmeshing her view within her account of the actual events, Ms. Jackson emphatically and repeatedly negates the significance of a ubiquitous entity believed in by a multitude of religions still to this day. I would not recommend this material to be used in a primary or middle school setting as is has the potential to religiously sway an immature reader. It does not qualifies as a concise, historical rendering suitable to be contained as part of the curriculum in a public school setting based on the conjectural commentaries of religiously sensitive content espoused by Ms. Jackson. This material is more suitable to a mature reader who is readily equipped to separate true historical facts from biased conjecture. Please take notice as to the origin of where this book is listed in the Classified Catalog, Sixteenth Edition, under 100 PHILOSOPHY, PARAPSYCHOLOGY AND OCCULTISM, PSYCHOLOGY, 133.4 Demonology and witchcraft. The rendering is an edited account of history through a rationalistic world view, that is condescending and offensive to any aware Christian reader.

2001-05-24 (Wainscott, New York) | Helpful Votes: 21 | Rating: 1

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