Read Shirley Jackson: A Rather Haunted Life Online
Authors: Ruth Franklin
Tags: #Literary, #Women, #Biography & Autobiography
116
“acutely homesick” . . . “this vast quiet”
: SJ to SEH, July 29, 1939, SEH-LOC, Box 2.
117
“the most delicate”
: SJ to SEH, August 3, 1939, SEH-LOC, Box 2.
117
“i’d forgotten” . . . “barry to sleep”
: SJ to SEH, August 2, 1939, SEH-LOC, Box 2.
117
“movie-travelogue” . . . “not from lack of trying”
: SEH to SJ, July 31, 1939, SJ-LOC, Box 42.
118
“a form of fish”
: SJ to SEH, July 20, 1939, SEH-LOC, Box 2.
118
“one of the finest modern novels”
: SEH to SJ, June 1939, SJ-LOC, Box 42.
119
“My daughter’s” . . . “please help me”
: SJ to SEH, August 9, 1939, SEH-LOC, Box 2.
119
“a first-class bigot” . . . “tell me so regularly”
: SJ to SEH, August 12, 1939, SEH-LOC, Box 2.
119
“i’ve read your letter” . . . “fuck her”
: SJ to SEH, August 14, 1939, SEH-LOC, Box 2.
119
This one was solely about the book
: SJ to SEH, August 16, 1939 (incorrectly dated August 13), SEH-LOC, Box 2.
120
“guess what started it”
. . . “down the hall”: SJ to SEH, August 26, 1939, SEH-LOC, Box 2.
120
“i was half certain”
: SEH to SJ, September 14, 1939, SJ-LOC, Box 42.
120
“have some music” . . . “more apart”
: SEH to JW, October 7, 1939, JW-BU, Box 30.
121
“the most beautiful” . . . “uncomplimentary tenor”
: Ibid.
121
“If it’s all you say”
: Walter Bernstein to SEH, n.d., SEH-LOC, Box 4.
122
“We called the magazine”
: “We the Editor,”
Spectre
1, no. 1 (Fall 1939), Syracuse University Archives.
122
“We haven’t any editorial policy”
: Ibid.
123
“If you want to have”
: “We the Editor,”
Spectre
1, no. 2 (Winter 1940), Syracuse University Archives.
123
“Censorship, or Repression”
: Ibid.
124
“sells out every time”
: “We the Editor,”
Spectre
1, no. 3 (Spring 1940), Syracuse University Archives.
124
“The overwhelming majority”
: “We the Editor,”
Spectre
1, no. 4 (Summer 1940), Syracuse University Archives.
124
“We wish them”
: Ibid., 3.
124
“race records”
: William Howland Kenney,
Recorded Music in American Life: The Phonograph and Popular Memory, 1890–1945
(New York: Oxford University Press, 1999).
125
“Bessie talks” . . . “a heavy surf”
: SEH, “Big Brown Woman,”
Spectre
1, no. 4 (Summer 1940).
125
Three of her poems
:
Spectre
1, no. 2 (Winter 1940).
126
“advocat[ing] retreat and weakness”
: “The Muse Hits Syracuse,”
Spectre
1, no. 4 (Summer 1940).
126
“The college was glad”
: SEH to Robert Phillips, April 4, 1961, Robert Phillips Papers, Syracuse University Archives, Syracuse, N.Y.
126
“most of which I wrote”
: SEH to SJ, August 27, 1939, SJ-LOC, Box 42.
126
“ ‘If we had fifty dollars’ ”
: SJ, “Had We but World Enough,”
Spectre
1, no. 3 (Spring 1940).
127
A cartoon Shirley drew
: SJ-LOC, Box 37.
5. THE MAD BOHEMIANS
128
“a brief three-minute thing” . . . “that sort of wedding”
: SEH-LOC, Box 47.
129
“that Mick”
: SEH to SJ, summer 1938 (“drujok, it was cool today”), SJ-LOC, Box 42.
130
first serious talk
: SEH to SJ, March 24, 1940, SJ-LOC, Box 42.
130
his synagogue
: Gershon Greenberg, “Kristallnacht: The American Ultra-Orthodox Theological Response,” in
American Religious Responses to Kristallnacht
, ed. Maria Mazzenga (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009), 180.
130
“he would be awfully sore”
: SEH to SJ, March 24, 1940.
130
“the real business”
: SEH to SJ, March 27, 1940, SJ-LOC, Box 42.
130
“they will do anything”
: SJ to SEH, May 26, 1940, SEH-LOC, Box 2.
130
“i have come to the conclusion”
: SJ to SEH, March 26. 1940, SEH-LOC, Box 2.
131
After visiting Shirley
: Joan Schenkar,
The Talented Miss Highsmith
(New York: Picador, 2010), 242.
132
“being barred from certain circles”
: Anonymous, “I Married a Jew,”
The Atlantic Monthly
, January 1939.
132
“The disease was growing”
: Irwin Shaw, “Select Clientele,”
The New Yorker
, August 17, 1940.
132
“Whispering”
: Interview with Florence Shapiro Siegel, March 5, 2014.
133
“still messing around”
: College notebook, SJ-LOC, Box 37.
133
“I Cannot Sing the Old Songs”
:
LMTY
, 61–62.
133
Leslie and Geraldine did not know
: Interview with Jai Holly, July 16, 2015.
133
“bounced it off Stan’s skull”
: College notebook, SJ-LOC, Box 37.
133
Anthony
: SJ-LOC, Box 30.
134
“i’m not made”
: Ibid.
134
“jealousy had no part”
: Ibid.
134
“When you get out of college”
: SJ-LOC, Box 38. The speech comes from an unpublished story that appears to track closely to a real-life argument.
135
A real estate market analysis
:
New York City Market Analysis
, compiled by
The News
,
The New York Times
,
Daily Mirror
, and
Journal-American
, 1943, accessed October 21, 2015, www.1940snewyork.com.
135
homeless scribe Joe Gould
: Joseph Mitchell,
Up in the Old Hotel
(New York: Vintage, 2008), 52–70 and 623–716.
136
“[t]he guests at those dinners”
: Mary McCarthy,
Intellectual Memoirs: New York, 1936–38
(New York: Harcourt Brace, 1993), 60–61.
136
“1919 all over again”
: Ross Wetzsteon,
Republic of Dreams: Greenwich Village: The American Bohemia, 1910–1960
(New York: Simon & Schuster, 2002), 498.
136
“The city had never looked”
: James Atlas,
Bellow: A Biography
(New York: Random House, 2000), 82.
136
“The Villager”
: LOA, 41–46.
137
“Every time a train”
: Ruth McKenney,
My Sister Eileen
(New York: Harcourt, Brace & World, 1938), 107.
137
“pleasure-loving robber”
: Ibid., 108.
137
“village urchins” . . . “symphony of noise”
: Ibid., 109.
137
“he is highly intelligent”
: SEH-LOC, Box 12.
137
“i choose you”
: SEH-LOC, Box 44.
138
job in a sweatshop
: Phoebe Pettingell, e-mail to author, March 27, 2013.
138
“we have to have oranges”
: Unpublished essay, SJ-LOC, Box 19.
138
scripts for a radio station
: SJ-LOC, Box 20.
138
“i am twenty-three”
: Unpublished essay, SJ-LOC, Box 19.
138
“My Life with R. H. Macy”
: LOA, 47–49.
139
a few short poems
: The poems appeared under two of SJ’s pseudonyms, Agatha Nunnbush and Meade Lux, in February and May 1941.
139
“Portrait of the Artist”
: SJ-LOC, Box 13.
139
“Not for us, it seems”
: SJ-LOC, Box 13.
139
“song for all editors”
: SJ-LOC, Box 13.
140
“a thousand years”
:
The New Yorker
, April 8, 1933.
140
“Americans’ philosophy seems to be”
:
The New Yorker
, March 7, 1936.
140
“In almost everything I wrote”
: Ben Yagoda,
About Town: The
New Yorker
and the World It Made
(New York: Scribner, 2000), 63.
140
an anti-Nazi demonstration
: Irwin Shaw, “Sailor off the Bremen,”
The New Yorker
, February 25, 1939.
140
a newsboy continually shouts “Hitler!”
: Irwin Shaw, “Weep in Years to Come,”
The New Yorker
, July 1, 1939.
140
advice that Eleanor Roosevelt
:
The New Yorker
, July 5, 1941.
141
“The terrain unquestionably favored”
:
The New Yorker
, August 16, 1941.
141
“tense and humid days”
: “Heat Stays with Us and May Get Worse,”
The New York Times
, July 1, 1941.
141
a man in Coney Island
:
The New Yorker
, August 16, 1941.
141
Five people died
:
The New Yorker
, July 19, 1941.
141
“This is a week”
: SJ to SEH, July 7, 1941, SEH-LOC, Box 2.
141
“Like always I don’t know how”
: Ibid.
142
“there is some incredible”
: SEH to SJ, July 8, 1941, SJ-LOC, Box 42.
142
“The house looks fresh”
: Gwynne Ross to SEH, July 21, 1941, SEH-LOC, Box 14.
142
“Have you ever lived”
: Gwynne Ross to SEH, August 12, 1941, SEH-LOC, Box 14.
142
“With reasonable care”
: Ibid.
142
“a real tin lizzie”
: Interview with Siegel, March 5, 2014.
142
“It has been wonderfully warm”
: SEH to Louis Harap, October 22, 1941, LH-AJA.
143
“The farm seems to agree”
: William Shawn to SEH, October 20, 1941, SEH-LOC, Box 15.
143
“He’s either drowning or fishing”
: SJ-LOC, Box 36.
143
a “familiar”
: SJ-LOC, Box 37.
143
“there is still wood”
: SEH to Harap, October 22, 1941.
144
“Shirley Jackson, the wife of Stanley Hyman”
:
The New Republic
, December 22, 1941.
144
“mentor and friend”
: Walter Bernstein, e-mail to author, April 23, 2014.
145
“thin and frightened”
: “Catharine,” SJ-LOC, Box 15. The published version, “I Know Who I love,” is in LOA, 733–44.
145
“worse for Catharine” . . . “than Catharine did”
: Ibid.
146
“The Fable of Philip”
: SJ-LOC, Box 15.
146
“I cannot, as a friend”
: Louis Harap to SJ, January 27, 1942, SJ-LOC, Box 43.
146
“We should prosecute”
:
The New Republic
, September 1, 1941.
147
Stanley resolved to keep a journal
: SEH’s journal is in SEH-LOC, Box 1; SJ’s can be found in SJ-LOC, Box 1.
148
Arthur, his brother, would later remark
: Skype interview with Corinne Biggs, September 3, 2015.
149
“Shirley is still working”
: SEH to Louis Harap, February 4, 1942, LH-AJA.
149
“have to put it down”
: SJ-LOC, Box 38.
149
“thinking about it”
: Harvey Breit, “Talk with Miss Jackson,”
The New York Times Book Review
, June 26, 1949.
149
“accurate account of an incident”
: Notes for a lecture on writing, SJ-LOC, Box 14.
149
“wow ending”
: SJ-LOC, Box 38.
149
whose collected stories
: SEH,
Standards: A Chronicle of Books for Our Time
(New York: Horizon, 1966), 28.
150
“we want fiction”
: Yagoda,
About Town
, 55.
150
“the same anonymous person” . . . “the subordinate”
: Lionel Trilling, “ ‘New Yorker’ Fiction,”
The Nation
, April 11, 1942. In
Commentary
, nearly ten years later, Saul Bellow made a similar complaint: “The ‘good’ writing of
The New Yorker
is such that one experiences a furious anxiety, in reading it, about errors and lapses from taste; finally what emerges is a terrible hunger for conformism and uniformity. The smoothness of the surface and its high polish must not be marred” (“Dreiser and the Triumph of Art,”
Commentary
, May 1951).