Read Shirley Jackson: A Rather Haunted Life Online
Authors: Ruth Franklin
Tags: #Literary, #Women, #Biography & Autobiography
150
“It is worth noting”
: SEH, “The Urban New Yorker,”
The New Republic
, July 20, 1942.
151
“just didn’t click”
: SEH-LOC, Box 1.
151
“a very good slick”
: Ibid.
151
It described a young woman
: “Lunch with Aunt Cassandra,” SJ-LOC, Box 17.
152
“Simon Hyman”
: SJ-LOC, Box 1; SEH-LOC, Box 1.
152
“probably but not certainly pregnant”
: SEH-LOC, Box 1.
152
“too dull to record”
: SJ-LOC, Box 1.
153
“he was more interested”
: Ibid.
153
“mild as water”
: SEH-LOC, Box 1.
153
“if I had to marry”
: SJ-LOC, Box 1.
153
“coarse and vulgar” . . . “am too fat”
: Ibid.
154
“it got quieter” . . . “being left alone”
: “Meadelux,” SJ-LOC, Box 17.
155
“why should i be”
: “Scapegoat,” SJ-LOC, Box 18.
155
“poor little boy”
: SJ-LOC, Box 1.
155
“no more”
: Ibid.
156
“If it’s sex”
: Notebook marked 1942, SJ-LOC, Box 37.
156
“my rape”
: SJ to SEH, June 7, 1938 (“portrait of the artist at work”), SEH-LOC, Box 2. Judy Oppenheimer provides a conflicting account of SJ’s loss of virginity based on interviews with SJ and SEH’s friends, in which their first attempt to consummate their relationship was ruined by friends who barged in on them; on their second attempt, Hyman was supposedly too nervous to perform (
Private Demons
, 68–69). These stories are impossible to verify. Oppenheimer does not mention the letter or the journal entry.
156
teenaged Sarah Hyman
: Janna Malamud Smith,
My Father Is a Book
(Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2006), 187.
156
not to “get fucked”
: SJ to SEH, July 7, 1941, SEH-LOC, Box 2.
156
“We should never”
: SJ-LOC, Box 37.
157
“Maybe when I have my baby”
: Ibid.
6. GARLIC IN FICTION
158
“My menagerie now includes”
: SEH to Louis Harap, May 19, 1942, LH-AJA.
158
He gathered food
: Claude Fredericks,
The Journal of Claude Fredericks
, October 25, 1961. Fredericks recounts hearing SEH describe “how—in the year they lived, the first of their marriage, in the woods—he had six kinds of snakes and would set out in the morning to gather food. . . . Each needed a different kind, live warmblooded animals, live coldblooded animals, live insects. . . . He could steal, with a can of tunafish, a live mouse from a clever cat.”
159
“Sometimes we have such good luck”
: These details about RE’s relationship with SEH come from a series of notes about SEH in RE-LOC, Box I:188. Although undated, they seem to represent RE’s attempts to write a tribute after Hyman’s sudden death in 1970.
160
“discussions concerning the relationship” . . . “sharply honed minds”
: Ibid.
160
But the initial response
: Ibid. Malcolm Cowley was among the critics who turned RE down. It could not have helped that RE had no money to offer: he asked all his contributors to write for free.
160
he immediately sent Ellison
: The initial postcard has been lost, but RE writes of it in his reminiscence. The earliest existing letter between them is RE to SEH, dated June 22, 1942, thanking him for his note and suggesting two possible books for review.
160
“Between the sophisticated
New Yorker
”
: Arnold Rampersad,
Ralph Ellison: A Biography
(New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2007), 159.
160
he followed T. S. Eliot’s footnotes
: Bryan Crable,
Ralph Ellison and Kenneth Burke: At the Roots of the Racial Divide
(Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2011), 34.
160
an essay in
The New Masses
: RE, “Camp Lost Colony,”
The New Masses
, February 6, 1940.
161
“A Jew married to a gentile”
: Rampersad,
Ralph Ellison
, 160.
161
The Child’s Garden of New Hampshire
: SJ-LOC, Box 20.
161
she may have seriously considered
: Phoebe Pettingell, introduction to
The Critic’s Credentials: Essays and Reviews by Stanley Edgar Hyman
(New York: Atheneum, 1978), x.
162
their only local friends
: SEH to Louis Harap, October 22, 1941, LH-AJA.
162
“I can’t understand”
: SJ-LOC, Box 36.
162
“mutual assistance”
: Gwynne Ross to SEH, August 6, 1942, SEH-LOC, Box 14.
162
Jackson would later say
: Interview with Jai Holly, July 22, 2013.
162
“a worse madhouse than ever”
: E. B. White to Stanley Hart White, March 2, 1944, in
Letters of E. B. White
, ed. Dorothy Lobrano Guth (New York: Harper & Row, 1976), 239.
163
a source of guilt
: Thomas Kunkel,
Man in Profile: Joseph Mitchell of The New Yorker
(New York: Random House, 2015), 136.
163
“living in New York”
: William Shawn to SEH, July 27, 1942, SEH-LOC, Box 15.
163
“magic briefcase”
: Brendan Gill,
Here at the New Yorker
(1975; repr., New York: Da Capo, 1997), 247.
163
“the borough of homes”
:
The WPA Guide to New York City: The Federal Writers’ Project Guide to 1930s New York
(New York: Random House, 1939), 555.
164
Laurence Jackson Hyman (Laurie)
: In her family writings, including letters, SJ always referred to the children by their nicknames. I have chosen to use their given names in the text, except in the context of SJ’s writing about them.
164
“Bring ’em to me”
: Interview with Sarah Hyman DeWitt, February 17, 2013.
164
“man who sits in chair reading”
: SJ to Louis Harap, October 18, 1944, LH-AJA.
164
“Insist on your cup of stars”
: LOA, 256.
165
Diana Trilling
: Interview with Midge Decter, March 13, 2013.
165
“it was the men” . . . “bohemian life”
: Ibid.
165
“The first was young Miss Grattan”
: LOA, 397.
165
“She was afraid she would lose us”
: Interview with Sarah Hyman DeWitt, February 17, 2013.
166
Shirley went into the kitchen
: Telephone interview with Walter Lehrman, August 13, 2014.
166
“All we could figure”
: SJ to GJ and LJ, n.d. [end of November 1950], SJ-LOC, Box 3.
166
“She could go”
: Interview with Jai Holly, July 23, 2013.
166
“listen to the house”
: Interview with Jai Holly, July 16, 2015.
167
“reeling from one birthday cake”
: Unpublished article, SJ-LOC, Box 14.
167
“irregular income”
: SJ-LOC, Box 43.
167
“They would put sheets”
: Interview with Sarah Hyman DeWitt, February 17, 2013.
168
“dog candy”
: “No Christmas Cookies” (unpublished article), SJ-LOC, Box 14.
168
“Shut up and deal”
: Interview with Laurence Jackson Hyman, February 17, 2013.
169
“Every month, our family was exposed”
: Interview with Sarah Hyman DeWitt, February 17, 2013.
169
“The nicest thing” . . . “pleasure and delight”
: Unpublished article, SJ-LOC, Box 14.
170
“i do very little writing”
: SJ to Louis Harap, n.d., LH-AJA.
170
“looks just like every other baby”
: Postscript by SEH on ibid.
170
“6 o’clock feeding”
: SJ-LOC, Box 37.
170
“Dear, you know the doctor”
: SJ-LOC, Box 37.
171
“I did three paragraphs”
: SJ-LOC, Box 37.
171
“Oh, no, we haven’t got company”
: SJ-LOC, Box 37.
171
“Honest to God, Stanley”
: SJ-LOC, Box 37.
171
she steals up
: SJ-LOC, Box 37.
171
a pile of books
: SJ-LOC, Box 37.
171
“I understand she’s trying”
: SJ-LOC, Box 37.
171
But on Christmas Eve
: Phyllis Meras, “Her Husband Turned Green,”
Providence Sunday Journal
, August 14, 1960.
171
Gus Lobrano had finally taken
: Even though the stories were sold at the same time, “After you, My Dear Alphonse” appeared in the issue of January 16, 1943, but “Afternoon in Linen” didn’t run until the issue of September 4, 1943.
172
“We’re going to be hitched!”
: Frances Pindyck to SJ, January 27, 1943, SJ-LOC, Box 43.
172
“now that we are making”
: SJ to Louis Harap, n.d. [early 1943], LH-AJA.
172
“nagging thoughts”
: SJ to GJ and LJ, April 1950.
172
“All the time that I am” . . . “always noticing”
: “Memory and Delusion,”
LMTY
, 377.
173
drafts on yellow paper
: SJ used several different shades of paper, depending on what was available. The shade she favored is technically called goldenrod. Since SJ refers to it several times in her writings as “yellow,” I have followed her lead.
173
“A book is”
: “Private Showing,”
LMTY
, 220.
173
“In the country of the story”
: “Notes for a Young Writer,”
CAWM
, 263.
173
“their stories are, far too often”
: “Garlic in Fiction,”
LMTY
, 396.
173
“unless the writer”
: Ibid., 397.
173
“garlic in fiction”
: Ibid.
174
“move as naturally”
: “Notes for a Young Writer,” 264.
174
“It is not enough”
: Ibid., 266–67.
174
“a character who says”
: Ibid., 267.
174
“Alphonse”
: LOA, 69–72.
174
“I guess all of you”
: LOA, 71. There may be something of Geraldine in Mrs. Wilson. Some of her letters contain racist remarks. SJ seems to have taken special pains to mention black friends in her own letters to her mother, perhaps deliberately to discomfit her.
174
“Unlike most
New Yorker
stories”
: RE to SEH, June 16, 1945, SEH-LOC, Box 6.
175
“Afternoon in Linen”
: LOA, 78–82.
175
his family’s lodge
: Blake Bailey,
Cheever: A Life
(New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2009), 116.
175
a male-bonding activity
: Despite the presence of notable women on staff—Katharine White, Janet Flanner, and others—the writing published in
The New Yorker
thoroughly reinforced gender stereotypes. A typical example was James Thurber’s “The Case Against Women” (October 24, 1936), a poisonous little satire.
175
“the patronizing sniffing”
: Irwin Shaw to Gus Lobrano, October 1, 1943, quoted in Ben Yagoda,
About Town: The New Yorker and the World It Made
(New York: Scribner, 2000), 22.
176
“Pretty formula[ic] and unconvincing”
: Gus Lobrano to Frances Pindyck, February 11, 1943, SJ-LOC, Box 43.
176
“A lady does not permit”
: SJ, “Little Old Lady in Great Need,”
Mademoiselle
, September 1944.
176
“Come Dance with Me in Ireland”
: LOA, 171–76.
177
“On the House”
:
JOD
, 217–21.
177
“It Isn’t the Money I Mind”
:
LMTY
, 51–55.
177
“Colloquy”
: LOA, 117–18.
177
“a nice big old place”
: SEH to KB, October 8, 1943, KB-PSU.
178
Laurence’s crib piled
: Judy Oppenheimer,
Private Demons
(New York: Putnam, 1988), 98.
178
“hideously green mashed potatoes”
: Interview with Jesse Zel Lurie, June 1, 2014.