Shirley Jackson: A Rather Haunted Life (85 page)

233
   
“presented the rite” . . . “same vein”
: RE to SEH, August 13, 1948, SEH-LOC, Box 6. Arnold Rampersad hears a note of jealousy in Ellison’s tone over the fact that “Jackson had dipped into the well of myth and ritual from which he had been hauling water”: see Rampersad,
Ralph Ellsion: A Biography
(New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2007), 237. But the well was surely deep enough for both of them.

233
   
“certainly a great success”
: Harold Ross to SEH, July 1948, “Lottery” scrapbook, SJ-LOC, Box 32.

234
   
Her friend Helen Feeley
: Oppenheimer,
Private Demons
, 131.

234
   
its theme is strikingly consonant
: “Normal men do not know that everything is possible,” Rousset wrote. “The concentrationees do know.” Quoted in
The New Yorker
, July 26, 1947.

234
   
an early version
: “How I Write,”
LMTY
, 390. Larry Powers, who insisted that he had never read the story, affirmed that some of the townspeople believed that they were models for the characters (interview, July 23, 2013). The writer Jonathan Lethem, who attended Bennington College in the mid-1980s, writes that “a handful of the townspeople portrayed in thin disguise . . . were still around”: see his “Monstrous Acts and Little Murders,”
Salon
, January 6, 1997.

234
   
“Shirley’s beautiful piercing eyes”
: Wallace Fowlie,
Journal of Rehearsals
(Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 1977), 156–57. But in 1953 SJ told a newspaper reporter, “If you’ll notice, the village is not even in New England. It doesn’t have any location”: “
Life Among the Savages
Wins Acclaim for Area Author,”
Albany Sunday Times-Union
, November 29, 1953.

234
   
the brief period she and Hyman spent
: Interview with Jai Holly, July 22, 2013.

234
   
“If you can’t”
: Telephone interview with Jennifer Feeley, February 23, 2015.

234
   
“rural harshness”
: Janna Malamud Smith,
My Father Is a Book
(Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2006), 162.

234
   
“The Renegade”
: LOA, 57–68.

235
   
“I suppose I hoped”
: Joseph Henry Jackson, “How a Story Puzzled Readers, Critics (and the Author),”
San Francisco Chronicle
, July 22, 1948.

235
   
“It seems to us”
: SJ-LOC, Box 48.

235
   
The Crucible
: Carolyn Wolf to SJ, July 6, 1953, SJ-LOC, Box 8.

236
   
in many ways resembles Jackson
: Compare Tessie’s embarrassed explanation of her lateness—“Wouldn’t have me leave m’dishes in the sink, now, would you?”—to SJ’s comments in the posthumously published essay “Here I Am, Washing Dishes Again”: “If I were any sort of a proper housewife at all I’d start my dishwashing at a specific hour in the morning, duly aproned, trim and competent, instead of heaping the dishpan high while my neighbors and no doubt the rest of the world are off on some blissful pursuit” (
LMTY
, 317).

236
   
Female sacrifice
: Gayle Whittier points out, in “ ‘The Lottery’ as Misogynist Parable,” that the story depicts Tessie as a “bad mother” who is willing to sacrifice her children before herself: “She may be sacrificed . . . because she is not sacrificial enough.”

236
   
“One of the most terrifying”
: LOA, 789. A similar anxiety about mail can be found in “Mrs. Spencer and the Oberons”: “Mrs. Spencer detested letters on principle, because they always seemed to want to entangle her in so many small, disagreeable obligations . . .” (
LMTY
, 29).

237
   
“Exalted Rollers”
: This letter, not included in the “Lottery” scrapbook, can be found in Box 14 among the pages of a draft of one of SJ’s lectures.

237
   
“I am out”
: LOA, 801.

237
   
“The razor’s edge”
:
Biographia Literaria
, chapter 7.

238
   
“villains to heroes”
: Reader’s report by William York Tindall, AK-HRC.

238
   
“the ideal critic”
: SEH,
The Armed Vision
(New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1948), 395.

239
   
“Stanley himself felt”
: Phoebe Pettingell, e-mail to author, March 27, 2013.

239
   
weekly “allowance”
: SEH to JW, October 7, 1948, JW-BU. This allowance was not a salary, but a “drawing account,” as described in the previous chapter. Being constantly in debt to the magazine created stress for many of
The New Yorker
’s writers. “I do not draw enough to live on (and buy books on) from The New Yorker,” SEH wrote to JW. “It has to be supplemented regularly by checks for Shirley’s stories or my miscellaneous activities [lecturing or writing reviews]. When those do not come, we run into debt. When a big check comes, it pulls us out of debt, but leaves nothing in the bank. That happened in July and left us almost on our feet, but since then no check for more than $25 has come in, and three such months put us right back in. Only the next big check can pull us out (an advance on my new book, a slick sale for Shirley) but I doubt that we will ever be ahead, with money in the bank like other people.”

239
   
“The Daemon Lover”
: Because the story appears under a different title (“The Phantom Lover”), with certain details changed, some critics have assumed that it constitutes an earlier version. In fact, SJ revised the story as her editors at
Woman’s Home Companion
insisted, but restored the original version and title in
The Lottery
. See Elliott Schryver to SJ, November 6, 1947, SJ-LOC, Box 44.

240
   
“on the theory that”
: SEH, outline for
Four Poets
, AK-HRC.

240
   
“what is loosely”
: Herbert Weinstock to SEH, May 8, 1947, SEH-LOC, Box 3.

240
   
“The basic point”
: Alfred A. Knopf to SEH, July 7, 1947, AK-HRC.

240
   
A profile of Knopf
: Geoffrey T. Hellman, “A Very Dignified Pavane,”
The New Yorker
, November 20, 1948.

241
   
Knopf’s
New York Times
obituary
: Herbert Mitgang, “Alfred A. Knopf, 91, Is Dead,”
The New York Times
, August 12, 1984.

241
   
“We will rest”
: Alfred A. Knopf to SEH, July 14, 1947, AK-HRC.

241
   
In the scrapbook
: The
Armed Vision
scrapbook is held privately.

241
   
“one of the prestige”
: Jim Bishop to SEH, September 10, 1947, SEH-LOC, Box 12.

241
   
“criminal and farcical”
: SEH to Herbert Weinstock, November 23, 1947, AK-HRC.

241
   
“You see our difference in scale”
: SEH to RE, November 20, 1947, RE-LOC.

241
   
“If Alfred A. Knopf”
: SEH to Weinstock, November 23, 1947.

242
   
“everything for me”
: SEH,
Armed Vision
, xiv.

242
   
an interviewer asked her
: W. G. Rogers, “Shirley Jackson Is ‘Sure ’Nuff’ Witch,” Associated Press, May 21, 1949.

242
   
“I am delighted”
: SEH to Herbert Weinstock, October 24, 1947, AK-HRC.

243
   
“makes the author”
: SEH to Herbert Weinstock, March 15, 1948,
Armed Vision
scrapbook.

243
   
“The literary future”
: SEH to Herbert Weinstock, March 2, 1948,
Armed Vision
scrapbook.

243
   
“exciting” . . . “the pool”
: Herbert Weinstock to SEH, May 21, 1948,
Armed Vision
scrapbook.

243
   
“I feel certain”
:
Armed Vision
scrapbook.

243
   
When Saul Bellow
: James Atlas,
Bellow: A Biography
(New York: Random House, 2000), 60.

243
   
“brilliant display”
: W. G. Rogers, “Literary Guidepost,” Associated Press, May 29, 1948.

243
   
“distinguished” and “explosive”
: “Critics Under Critic’s Knife,”
Omaha World Herald
, June 13, 1948.

244
   
“One lays down”
: Joseph Wood Krutch, “About Writing About Writing,”
New York Herald Tribute
, June 20, 1948.

244
   
“questionable” and its evaluations “arbitrary”
: John Farrelly, “Goals of Criticism,”
The New Republic
, June 21, 1948.

244
   
“uncomplicated and often witty”
:
The New Yorker
, May 29, 1948.

244
   
“nasty petulance”
: SEH to RE, June 21, 1948, RE-LOC.

244
   
“Aside from being”
: SEH to JW, September 25, 1948, JW-BU.

245
   
Vladimir Nabokov
: Nabokov’s copy of the book is in the Berg Collection of the New York Public Library.

245
   
“We may be”
: SJ to Pyke Johnson, July 15, 1949, FSG-NYPL, Box 174.

245
   
“An ugly story”
: Harriet van Horner, untitled clipping,
Washington Times
, March 16, 1951.

245
   
“anti-prejudice message”
: Untitled newspaper clipping (interview with Rod Serling), 1960, SJ-LOC, Box 49.

245
   
“she felt that
they
”
: SEH, preface to
The Magic of Shirley Jackson
(New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1966), viii.

245
   
One scholar analyzed the method
: Richard R. Williams, “A Critique of the Sampling Plan Used in Shirley Jackson’s ‘The Lottery,’ ”
Journal of Modern Literature
7, no. 3 (September 1979), 543–44. See also, among others, Peter Kosenko, “A Marxist/Feminist Reading of Shirley Jackson’s ‘The Lottery,’ ”
The New Orleans Review
12, no. 1 (Spring 1985).

246
   
“let the poor old chestnut”
: SJ to CB, July 16, 1963. SJ’s letters to CB are held privately.

9. NOTES ON A MODERN BOOK OF WITCHCRAFT

249
   
As she would tell it
:
Savages
, 65–66.

250
   
“fat and happy”
: SJ to GJ and LJ, November 18 [1948], SJ-LOC, Box 3.

250
   
“Three children are enough”
: GJ to SJ, n.d. [c. late 1948], SJ-LOC, Box 2.

251
   
“Her general appearance”
: “Sunday, Eleven A.M.” (an early draft of a portion of
Savages
), SJ-LOC, Box 14.

251
   
“any notion”
:
Savages
, 138.

251
   
“mischievous”
: Interview with Laura Nowak, July 24, 2013.

251
   
“She always presented herself”
: Interview with Barry Hyman, July 22, 2013.

251
   
“I tried to be”
: Interview with Sarah Hyman DeWitt, February 21, 2013.

251
   
a question about sex
: Interview with Jai Holly, July 16, 2015.

251
   
“sally has always”
: Unpublished essay, SJ-LOC, Box 14.

252
   
“She had a lot of light”
: Telephone interview with Elizabeth Greene, October 16, 2013.

252
   
she attempted suicide
: Interview with Sarah Hyman DeWitt, February 21, 2013.

252
   
“There is a rightness”
: John Farrar to SJ, July 7, 1948, SJ-LOC, Box 43.

252
   
now to be titled
: In addition to
The Intoxicated
for a somewhat different collection, another previous title was
Merry Meet and Merry Part
(also spelled
Marie Meet and Marie Part
), a ritual greeting among witches. See
memo from Margaret Farrar to Roger Straus and John Farrar, June 3, 1948, FSG-NYPL, Box 174.

252
   
“I never heard anything”
: SJ to Pyke Johnson, November 22, 1948, FSG-NYPL, Box 174.

252
   
“so excruciating”
: SJ to GJ and LJ, December 18 [1948].

252
   
the postmaster overruled
: Albert Goldman to Farrar, Straus, December 3, 1948, FSG-NYPL, Box 174.

253
   
“Like Mother Used to Make”
: LOA, 26–34.

253
   
inspired by an anecdote
: Telephone interview with Anne Zimmerman, June 12, 2014. See also Judy Oppenheimer,
Private Demons
(New York: Putnam, 1988), 102.

253
   
In an early draft
: SJ-LOC, Box 17.

253
   
feminine gifts for homemaking
: SJ may be dropping a veiled hint that Ben Zimmerman, who did not come out to his family until much later, was gay. “Paranoia,” another story with a male subject written around the same time, was left out of the volume, possibly because SJ could not make it fit with the James Harris theme.

254
   
The case dominated
: SJ’s file on Paula Welden shows that the
Bennington Banner
published updates on the case every day from December 3, 1946, until December 21, 1946, when the search for Welden was apparently abandoned. SJ-LOC, Box 45.