Shirley Jackson: A Rather Haunted Life (86 page)

254
   
“run away”
:
Bennington Banner
, December 7, 1946.

254
   
Jackson wrote one story explicitly
: Oppenheimer and others have claimed that
Hangsaman
was inspired by the Paula Welden case. As far as I can tell, there is no evidence for this.

254
   
“Got a Letter from Jimmy”
: LOA, 225–26.

254
   
based closely
: Oppenheimer,
Private Demons
, 104.

255
   
Hyman jokingly compared
: SEH to Ben Zimmerman, November 3, 1947.

255
   
“Pillar of Salt”
: LOA, 184–98.

255
   
“The Daemon Lover”
: LOA, 10–25.

255
   
“The Tooth”
: LOA, 207–24. According to SEH’s letters to Zimmerman, SJ wrote “Pillar of Salt” (originally titled “Vertigo”—see SJ-LOC, Box 18) in May 1947, “The Daemon Lover” in June 1947, and “The Tooth” (originally titled “Persephone”—SJ-LOC, Box 19) in September 1947. SJ’s manuscript of “The Tooth” shows that she submitted it to her agent on October 15, 1947.

255
   
“The Beautiful Stranger”
:
CAWM
, 63–71.

256
   
“Sometimes a woman”
: Betty Friedan,
The Feminine Mystique
(1963; repr., New York: W. W. Norton, 1997), 8.

256
   
“Document of Loneliness”
: SJ-LOC, Box 15.

257
   
“you once wrote me”
: SEH-LOC, Box 2.

257
   
“He promised her”
: SEH, obviously under SJ’s influence, quoted this passage facetiously in a March 22, 1948, letter to Herbert Weinstock during his contract dispute with Knopf: “She saith, That when the Devil doth any thing for her, she calls for him by the name of Herbert, upon which he appears, and when in the Shape of Man, she can hear him speak, but his voice is very low. He promised her when she made her Contract with him, that she should want nothing, but ever since she hath wanted all things”(
Armed Vision
scrapbook).

257
   
“Once in a long while”
: FSG-NYPL, Box 174.

257
   
“very pleased”
: GJ to SJ, n.d. [c. 1949], SJ-LOC, Box 2.

257
   
“the most terrifying”
: SJ to GJ and LJ, n.d. [late December 1948].

258
   
“Boy, that story”
: SJ to GJ and LJ, April 11 [1949].

258
   
“With attractive features”
: W. G. Rogers, “Shirley Jackson is ‘Sure ’Nuff’ Witch,” Associated Press, May 21, 1949.

258
   
“fortunately he had”
: SJ to GJ and LJ, April 11, 1949.

258
   
“writers i admire” . . . “night before”
: Ibid.

258
   
“I can’t persuade myself”
: Harvey Breit, “Talk with Miss Jackson,”
The New York Times Book Review
, June 26, 1949.

259
   
“i don’t like housework”
: Biographical notes, SJ-LOC, Box 40.

259
   
“I am tired”
: “The Real Me,”
LMTY
, 357. The title was given by the book’s editors, Laurence Jackson Hyman and Sarah Hyman DeWitt.

260
   
“i’m a kind-hearted mama”
: Draft of
Come Along with Me
, SJ-LOC, Box 15.

260
   
One of her favorite “tricks”
: Oppenheimer,
Private Demons
, 189.

260
   
“I suggest”
: John Buck to John Farrar, n.d. [c. October 1949], SJ-LOC, Box 43.

261
   
“with a string of rattles”
: “Shirley Jackson, Novelist, Dies at Vermont Home.”
New York World Telegram and Sun
, August 9, 1965.

261
   
“i like writing fiction” . . . “magic equals fiction”
: SJ-LOC, Box 14.

262
   
“She loved me”
:
Savages
, 71.

262
   
“full of ultra-violet rays”
: SJ to RE, November 16, 1948, RE-LOC.

262
   
“one of the first”
: Telephone interview with Virginia Bush, August 25, 2015.

262
   
“now that i am not”
: SJ to GJ and LJ, June 13 [1949].

263
   
“very brave” . . . “little girl”
: GJ to SJ, n.d. [1949], SJ-LOC, Box 2.

263
   
expulsion of Miriam Marx
: Frederick Burkhardt, Bennington’s president at the time, later said that he had to uphold the judgment of the college’s Judicial Committee, to test “whether student democracy and student input
should be real or not.” Frederick Burkhardt, interview by Stephen Sandy, August 15, 2005, Bennington College Archives.

263
   
“What do you say first?”
: Wallace Fowlie,
Journal of Rehearsals
(Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 1977), 156.

263
   
“the girls and i”
: SJ to GJ and LJ, June 13, 1949.

263
   
One of the students
: Gail Newman, letter to the editor,
The New Yorker
, September 22, 2003.

263
   
“interminably”
: SEH to Ben Zimmerman, August 1949.

264
   
Hyman was invited
: Margaret Farrar to SEH, April 20, 1949, SEH-LOC, Box 7.

264
   
“modesty” and the “supreme skill”
: Margaret Farrar to SJ, August 24, [1949], SJ-LOC, Box 8 (misfiled).

264
   
“had a fine time”
: SJ to GJ and LJ, August 23 [1949].

264
   
“no one but me ever remembers”
: SJ to GJ and LJ, November 18 [1948].

264
   
“perfect wives and mothers” . . . “the home”
: Friedan,
The Feminine Mystique
, 5, 28.

265
   
“Here I Am, Washing Dishes Again”
:
LMTY
, 317–22.

265
   
“any kind of problem”
: “Put It in a Box,” Shirley Jackson Papers (MS 336), University of Colorado at Boulder.

265
   
“before going out” . . . “every wrinkle”
: “Pillar of Salt,” LOA, 195.

265
   
“anything natural” . . . “deserve it, too”
: “Something Less than a Good Cigar,” SJ-LOC, Box 50.

266
   
“even the bookends”
: SJ to SEH, summer 1938 (“snookums”), SEH-LOC, Box 2.

266
   
“The crack in the kitchen linoleum”
:
LMTY
, 291.

266
   
In a piece called “Fame”
:
JOD
, 429–31.

266
   
“William Barber”
: SJ-LOC, Box 33.

267
   
“Mrs. Spencer and the Oberons”
:
LMTY
, 29–49.

268
   
“literary reputation” . . . “great thing”
: SJ to Lucy Grey Black, March 9, 1948, FSG-NYPL, Box 174.

268
   
“The general consensus”
: Interview with Barry Hyman, July 24, 2013.

268
   
“you can imagine”
: SJ to GJ and LJ, June 13 [1949].

268
   
“no more teaching”
: SJ to GJ and LJ, n.d. [summer 1949].

268
   
“The Summer People”
: LOA, 594–607.

268
   
“the biggest dog in town”
: SJ to GJ and LJ, June 13 [1949].

269
   
One of Hyman’s
: SEH to JW, October 18, 1949, JW-BU.

269
   
“in a position”
: SEH to JW, November 26, 1948, JW-BU.

269
   
He and Williams
: SEH to JW, September 14, 1949, JW-BU.

269
   
This time Hyman
: SEH-LOC, Box 8.

269
   
Charles Jackson received
: Blake Bailey,
Farther and Wilder: The Lost Weekends and Literary Dreams of Charles Jackson
(New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2013), 265.

269
   
“The Wishing Dime”
:
JOD
, 248–57. Contrast this saccharine treatment of the theme with a passage in
Hangsaman
, written the following year: “ ‘I found a wishing stone,’ little Natalie was telling her mother. ‘I knew it was a wishing stone because when I dug it up it
looked
like a wishing stone, so I held it tight in my hand and closed my eyes and wished for a bicycle, and then nothing happened. . . .’ Natalie could still, this many years later, see her mother’s stricken eyes. She remembered that her father had laughed, and that her mother had begged for the bicycle for Natalie. . . . Too, Natalie saw now that if she had kept the wishing stone until the right time came, she could have used it to wish for a bicycle on that Christmas Eve when a bicycle was so obviously awaiting her under the Christmas tree. Then, magic would have been sustained, and cause and effect not violated for that first, irrecoverable time. . . . Mustn’t violate the sacred rules of magic. . . . Never wish for anything until it’s ready for you.”

270
   
“at a thousand bucks”
: SJ to GJ and LJ, n.d. [October 1949].

10. THE LOVELY HOUSE

271
   
“Smart New Yorkers”
: Nina Leen (photo essay), “Fairfield County: Smart New Yorkers Are Flocking to It,”
Life
, August 8, 1949.

272
   
restricted to WASPs
: Lisa Prevost,
Snob Zones: Fear, Prejudice, and Real Estate
(Boston: Beacon Press, 2013), 94.

273
   
an entire moving truck
: Interview with Larry Powers, July 23, 2013.

273
   
seven or eight thousand volumes
: SJ to GJ and LJ, n.d. [c. January 1950], SJ-LOC, Box 3.

273
   
“plump, disarmingly affable”
: All quotations in this and the next paragraph are from SEH, “Book Scout,”
The New Yorker
, November 8, 1952.

274
   
every year he accompanied Scher
: SEH to Ben Zimmerman, July 13, 1950, and SJ to GJ and LJ, n.d. [c. April 1950].

274
   
“vicious French game”
: “Book Scout.”

274
   
her godfather
: Interview with Sarah Hyman DeWitt, February 17, 2013.

274
   
“Life at Castle Jackson”
: SEH to Zimmerman, July 13, 1950.

274
   
“a vast improvement”
: SJ to GJ and LJ, n.d. [c. January 1950].

275
   
“before the World Series”
: SJ-LOC, Box 45.

275
   
Shirley made the entire basement
: SJ to GJ and LJ, n.d. [c. January 1950].

275
   
“sheltered and private”
: SJ to GJ and LJ, n.d. [c. April 1950].

275
   
“big enough”
: SEH to Ben Zimmerman, July 13, 1950.

275
   
“about the same” . . . “just like everyone else”
: SJ to GJ and LJ, n.d. [c. July–August 1950].

275
   
“one of the things”
: SJ to GJ and LJ, n.d. [August 1950].

275
   
“There is no reason”
: GJ to SJ, n.d. [August 1950], SJ-LOC, Box 2.

276
   
“She always had one red arm”
: Interview with Sarah Hyman DeWitt, February 17, 2013.

276
   
Salinger
: Interview with Laurence Jackson Hyman, February 17, 2013. Salinger, like the Hymans, would eventually leave Westport after his privacy was exposed: see Kenneth Slawenski,
J. D. Salinger: A Life
(New York: Random House, 2010), 184, 190, 205.

276
   
a neighbor stopped by
: Telephone interview with Walter Lehrman, August 13, 2014.

276
   
“finished most” . . . “I was on”
: Albert Murray and John F. Callahan, eds.,
Trading Twelves: The Selected Letters of Ralph Ellison and Albert Murray
(New York: Modern Library, 2000), 19.

277
   
Pen and Brush
: SJ to GJ and LJ, n.d. [January 1950].

277
   
a piece by Cowley
: Malcolm Cowley, “New Tendencies in the Novel,”
The New Republic
, November 28, 1949.

277
   
“a rich writer” . . . “work it right”
: SJ to GJ and LJ, n.d. [April 1950].

277
   
“Don’t you like”
: GJ to SJ, n.d. [April 1950].

277
   
“if i don’t”
: SJ to GJ and LJ, n.d. [April 1950].

278
   
“as long as he is amused”
: SJ to GJ and LJ, n.d. [May 1950].

278
   
“we’ll take four”
: SJ to GJ and LJ, n.d. [June 1950].

278
   
“intriguing” and “wonderful as hell”
: Rae Everitt, telegram to SJ, June 17, 1950, SJ-LOC, Box 43.

278
   
“a brilliant job”
: Roger Straus to SJ, June 28, 1950, SJ-LOC, Box 8.

278
   
“a subsidiary theme”
: Gus Lobrano to SJ, August 1, 1948, SJ-LOC, Box 43. SEH rated it more highly: the story “not only seems scarier than Lottery but is probably better” (SEH to JW, August 3, 1948, JW-BU).

278
   
“With six thousand”
: SEH to Zimmerman, July 13, 1950.

278
   
Jackson bought a spinet
: SJ to GJ and LJ, n.d. [June 1950].