Shirley Jackson: A Rather Haunted Life (84 page)

204
   
“the oldest family in town”
: “Flower Garden,” LOA, 83.

205
   
“The nerve of her”
: Ibid., 106.

205
   
In an early draft
: “The Flower Garden,” SJ-LOC, Box 16.

205
   
“they’re all beautiful”
: LOA, 93.

206
   
“a solid respectable”
: Ibid., 102.

206
   
“What he needs is a baby sister”
: SJ-LOC, Box 37.

206
   
“seems as arbitrary” . . . “the weather”
: SJ-LOC, Box 50.

206
   
Joanne nicknamed herself
: I refer to her in the text as Joanne Hyman and in notes as Jai Holly, which is now her name.

207
   
“We don’t have any Charles”
: “Charles,” LOA, 77. The story appeared in
Mademoiselle
in July 1948, nearly simultaneous with “The Lottery.”

207
   
“a thousand” . . . “Only these few”
: Catherine Osgood Foster, “The Hymans of Prospect Street,”
Quadrille
7, no. 2 (Winter/Spring 1973), 53.

207
   
“I’m good, aren’t I?”
:
Savages
, 39.

207
   
“the second Mrs. Ellenoy”
: Ibid., 107.

207
   
“Jannie is our beauty”
: SJ-LOC, Box 14.

208
   
“He had a little jacket”
: Interview with Nowak, July 24, 2013.

208
   
“She was always working”
: Interview with Jai Holly, July 23, 2013.

208
   
playing Monopoly
: Foster, “Hymans of Prospect Street,” 53.

208
   
“tense and even impatient” . . . “not a story”
: Ibid.

209
   
“Half the people”
: Thomas Kunkel,
Man in Profile: Joseph Mitchell of The New Yorker
(New York: Random House, 2015), 103. Mitchell himself insisted on having a salary rather than a drawing account, which “terrified” him.

209
   
the magazine also rejected
: Ben Yagoda,
About Town: The New Yorker and the World It Made
(New York: Scribner, 2000), 233.

209
   
earned $365
: Blake Bailey,
Cheever: A Life
(New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2009), 123.

209
   
Stafford’s first story . . . Cheever’s signing bonus
: Yagoda,
About Town
, 219; Bailey,
Cheever
, 319.

210
   
“Be a darling”
: Frances Pindyck to SEH, September 5, 1945, SJ-LOC, Box 43.

210
   
“Our authors”
: Pindyck to SJ, October 17, 1945, SJ-LOC, Box 43.

210
   
“a well-earned rest”
: Jean Rogers to SJ, February 1, 1946, SJ-LOC, Box 43.

210
   
After Thompson died
: “Woman, Widow Two Weeks, Ends Life with Pistol Shot,”
New London
(Conn.)
Day
, July 20, 1953.

211
   
“In a crisis”
: Jim Bishop to SJ, October 4, 1946, SJ-LOC, Box 43.

211
   
“still very dear”
: Ibid.

211
   
“You can bait”
: SJ to Jim Bishop, August 16, 1946, SJ-LOC, Box 43.

211
   
I Know Who I Love
: SJ-LOC, Box 29.

212
   
“Shirley has finished”
: SEH to JW, November 26, 1946, JW-BU.

212
   
“Seventy thousand words”
: SEH to Ben Zimmerman, January 5, 1947. Zimmerman’s daughter Anne generously shared their correspondence with me.

212
   
“I have never known”
: Jim Bishop to SJ, February 13, 1947, SJ-LOC, Box 43.

212
   
The winning match
: Roger Straus to Tom Foster, January 25, 1949, and April 23, 1954, FSG-NYPL, Box 173.

212
   
For the sake of comparison
: Boris Kachka,
Hothouse: The Art of Survival and the Survival of Art at America’s Most Celebrated Publishing House, Farrar, Straus and Giroux
(New York: Simon & Schuster, 2013), 94.

212
   
“My goodness, how you write”
: John Farrar to SJ, July 29, 1947, SJ-LOC, Box 43.

213
   
“We must expect”
:
RTW
, 148.

214
   
“something more than a housewife”
: Ibid., 125.

214
   
“In ten years” . . . “what I say”
: Ibid., 164.

214
   
Harriet agonizes
: In an excruciating scene near the end of the novel, a senile old woman tells Harriet she’s lucky she won’t ever be pretty.
“Harriet knew already that this would keep her heartsick for months, perhaps the rest of her life, and she said thickly, ‘I’m losing weight right now.’ ‘It isn’t that you’re so
fat
,’ Miss Tyler said critically. ‘You just don’t have the
air
of a pretty woman. All your life, for instance, you’ll walk like you’re fat, whether you are or not’ ” (ibid., 170).

214
   
“Herewith the baby”
: SJ to John Farrar, June 3, 1947, FSG-NYPL, Box 174.

215
   
“a magnificent job”
: Roger Straus to SJ, August 5, 1947, FSG-NYPL, Box 174.

215
   
“Helen dressed”
:
RTW
, 60.

215
   
“a recent regrettable pink stucco”
: Ibid., 2.

215
   
swim “insanely”
: Ibid., 81.

215
   
“wry unpalatable fruit”
: Ibid., 45.

215
   
“grotesque effect” . . . “he giggled”
: “Notes for a Young Writer,”
CAWM
, 269.

215
   
“No man owns”
:
RTW
, 1.

216
   
“He seemed to possess”
: Kachka,
Hothouse
, 56.

216
   
“everything of quality”
: Ibid., 47.

216
   
“A new imprint”
: Ibid., 46.

217
   
“an owlish aspect” . . . “vile temper”
: Ibid., 39–40.

217
   
“I hope”
: John Farrar to SJ, May 7, 1947, FSG-NYPL, Box 174.

217
   
“so beautiful”
: Margaret Farrar to SJ, August 19, 1947, SJ-LOC, Box 43.

217
   
“She plays the guitar”
: SJ-LOC, Box 40.

218
   
“a man of distinction”
: SJ to Margaret Farrar, November 20, 1947, FSG-NYPL, Box 174.

218
   
“perfectly delightful and fetching”
: Margaret Farrar to SJ, undated, SJ-LOC, Box 7.

219
   
“we hope”
: Barbara Ely to SJ, December 16, 1947, FSG-NYPL, Box 174.

219
   
“ritual week”
: SEH to Ben Zimmerman, February 10, 1948.

219
   
“mediocre market” . . . “an unknown quantity”
: Roger Straus to SJ and SEH, February 11, 1948, FSG-NYPL, Box 174.

219
   
“little secret nastinesses”
: Victor P. Hass, “Strange Folk Who Grew Up on Pepper St.,”
Chicago Sunday Tribune
, March 21, 1948.

220
   
“direct, unsentimental way”
: Leonora Hornblow, “Pepper St. Has 11 houses but No Good People Live in Them,”
Los Angeles Daily News
, April 3, 1948.

220
   
“If you sometimes”
: Cothburn O’Neal, “Village and Artist in Three Novels,”
Dallas Times Herald
, February 22, 1948.

220
   
“supple and resourceful”
: Unsigned review,
The New Yorker
, February 21, 1948.

8. A CLASSIC IN SOME CATEGORY

221
   
Jackson’s neighbors
: Judy Oppenheimer,
Private Demons
(New York: Putnam, 1988), 130.

221
   
“choosing a victim for a sacrifice”
: “How I Write,”
LMTY
, 390.

222
   
“Biography of a Story”
: LOA, 787–801.

223
   
June 26, 1948
: SJ’s lecture mistakenly gives the magazine’s cover date as June 28.

223
   
March 16, 1948
: “How I Write” corroborates that it was written in the spring. Drafts of “The Lottery” are in SJ-LOC, Box 17.

223
   
“some reservations” . . . “take it”
: SJ-LOC, Box 43. SJ would claim in “Biography of a Story” that her agent at the time did not like “The Lottery,” but there is no evidence in her files to support this.

224
   
“It was the pure thing”
: Oppenheimer,
Private Demons
, 128.

224
   
“It is not likely”
: John Farrar to SJ, August 9, 1948, SJ-LOC, Box 43.

224
   
“No one writes”
: Joseph Henry Jackson to SJ, July 7, 1948, “Lottery” scrapbook, SJ-LOC, Box 32.

224
   
“preservation of” . . . “human behavior”
: I was unable to find this memo in SJ’s archive. It is quoted in Oppenheimer,
Private Demons
, 125.

225
   
“the smoothest and roundest” . . . “their husbands”
: LOA, 227.

225
   
“Wouldn’t have me”
: Ibid., 230.

225
   
“time and energy”
: Ibid., 228.

225
   
“It wasn’t fair!”
: Ibid., 233. The critic Joseph Church speculates that Mr. Summers may be manipulating the outcome; see his “Getting Taken in ‘The Lottery,’ ”
Notes on Contemporary Literature
18, no. 4 (September 1988).

226
   
“The children”
: LOA, 235.

226
   
Jackson would claim
: LOA, 788.

226
   
“The most important” . . . “original ritual”
: Gus Lobrano to SJ, April 9, 1948, NY-NYPL, Box 463.

227
   
“ ‘They do say’ ”
: LOA, 232.

227
   
“Nothing but trouble”
: Ibid.

227
   
that line is written
: SJ-LOC, Box 17.

227
   
“so large”
: Ibid., 235. The critic Gayle Whittier points out that no men are shown holding or throwing stones—the women are the ones who display “blood lust.” See her “ ‘The Lottery’ as Misogynist Parable,”
Women’s Studies
18 (1991). The lottery is run by men, but—as in
The Road Through the Wall
—women are responsible for enforcing social norms.

227
   
“I could not” . . . “thought it meant”
: SJ to James Thurber, n.d. [c. spring
1958; in response to his letter of April 22, 1958], SJ-LOC, Box 11. Thurber quotes the letter in
The Years with Ross
(Boston: Little, Brown, 1958), 263.

228
   
“We’ve never been”
: “The Enormous Radio,”
John Cheever: Collected Stories and Other Writings
, ed. Blake Bailey (New York: Library of America, 2009), 49.

228
   
“He’d say”
: Ben Yagoda,
About Town: The New Yorker and the World It Made
(New York: Scribner, 2000), 155.

228
   
“contrived” and “heavy-handed”
: Interview by Thomas Kunkel with William Maxwell, March 1, 1992. Kunkel, who touches on the editorial debate surrounding “The Lottery” briefly in
Genius in Disguise: Harold Ross of The New Yorker
(New York: Random House, 1995, 397–98), generously shared his transcript of the interview.

228
   
“I think”
: Brendan Gill to SJ, n.d., “Lottery” scrapbook, SJ-LOC, Box 32. Gill would use almost the same terms in 1957 about Saul Bellow in a review of
Seize the Day
that Bellow biographer Zachary Leader characterizes as “condescending”: Gill calls Bellow “one of the three or four most talented writers to come along in this decade.” Leader,
The Life of Saul Bellow: To Fame and Fortune, 1916–1964
(New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2015), 510.

229
   
“Shirley Jackson’s ‘The Lottery’ ”
: Unless otherwise noted, all the “Lottery” letters quoted here are in the “Lottery” scrapbook, SJ-LOC, Box 32.

230
   
Friend still remembered
: Telephone interview with Miriam Friend, June 9, 2013. “I don’t know how anyone approved of that story,” she said.

230
   
“not counting”
: SEH to Ben Zimmerman, July 22, 1948.

230
   
up to 150
: SEH to JW, August 3, 1948, JW-BU.

231
   
“and they were mostly from friends”
: LOA, 789.

231
   
“bewilderment, speculation”
: Ibid., 790.

231
   
“could be considered”
: Ibid., 789.

232
   
“because as a social anthropologist”
: Ursula Kroeber Le Guin, e-mail to author, June 20, 2013.

233
   
Jackson wrote back
: Lenemaja Friedman,
Shirley Jackson
(New York: Twayne, 1975), 21.

233
   
“one of the most”
: Herbert Weinstock to SJ, July 1, 1948, AK-HRC.

233
   
“a very profound conceit”
: KB to SEH, July 31, 1948, “Lottery” scrapbook, SJ-LOC, Box 32.