Shirley Jackson: A Rather Haunted Life (88 page)

307
   
“the awesome vagaries” . . . “everywhere”
: Arthur Finch,
Book of the Month Club News
, undated, SJ-LOC, Box 23.

307
   
“She not only”
: Interview with Midge Decter, March 13, 2013.

307
   
“This is a remark”
: SJ-LOC, Box 48.

308
   
“Why, I asked”
: Mrs. David Brooks Westwater to SJ, July 13, 1953, SJ-LOC, Box 46.

308
   
Jackson occasionally wrote back
: For an extensive analysis of SJ’s fan letters, see Jessamyn Neuhaus, “ ‘Is It Ridiculous for Me to Say I Want to Write?’: Domestic Humor and Redefining the 1950s Housewife Writer in Fan Mail to Shirley Jackson,”
Journal of Women’s History
21, no. 2 (Summer 2009).

308
   
“Despite interference”
: SJ to BB, April 1, 1952. The correspondence from SJ to her Brandt & Brandt agents is privately held.

308
   
“there was nothing”
: SJ-LOC, Box 23.

308
   
“This was a falsehood”
:
Savages
, 50.

308
   
“Not for me”
:
Savages
, 90–91.

309
   
“pang of honest envy”
: Ibid., 139.

309
   
“sweetly and falsely”
: Ibid., 125.

309
   
“open-mouthed” . . . “their own paths”
: Ibid., 164.

309
   
“with complete abandon” . . . “editorial comment”
: Ibid., 167–68.

309
   
“I’m a sweetie”
: Ibid., 172.

309
   
“When I ask you”
: Ibid., 186.

309
   
“I don’t believe it”
: Ibid., 174.

310
   
“Who was Aristedes”
: Ibid., 174.

310
   
“contemptuously”
: Ibid., 37.

310
   
150 coins
: Compare the account in SJ to GJ and LJ, n.d. [November 1950]: “stanley had a tragedy and is still in a nervous fever. he ordered two shipments of coins from germany, one of a hundred and fifty selected coins of
the world, and the other of a hundred selected counterfeit coins of the world and the two shipments got mixed, so stanley got a package of two hundred and fifty coins of which a hundred were counterfeit.”

310
   
“She has her career”
: C. R. Roseberry, “ ‘Life Among Savages’ Wins Acclaim for Area Author,”
Albany Times-Union
, November 27, 1953.

310
   
“good red, white, and blue publicity”
: Katherine M. Scardino, “Diabolical Humor in Family Routine,”
Savannah
(Ga.)
News
, January 13, 1957.

310
   
As movers were unloading
: File 100-HQ-366428, National Archives at College Park, College Park, Md. All quotations and information in this and the next two paragraphs about the FBI investigation are from SEH’s FBI file.

312
   
“a growing tension”
: SJ-LOC, Box 23.

313
   
“the famed short story” . . . “right now”
: “ ‘Shirley Jackson’ Is Westport Mother-to-Be,”
Bridgeport Sunday Herald
, July 1, 1951.

313
   
“The Lie”
: SJ first submitted “The Lie” in August 1951, rewrote it in October, and revisited it several more times over the years. It finally appeared in
LMTY
.

314
   
“it was a novel”
: SJ to Jeanne Beatty, September 29, 1960. (See chapter 16.) SJ’s letters to Beatty are privately held.

314
   
“a flowery character”
: SJ to GJ and LJ, n.d. [May 1951].

314
   
he rejected almost everything
: Margaret Cousins to SJ, February 27, 1950, August 15, 1950, August 28, 1950, et al., SJ-LOC, Box 43.

314
   
“a quite definite idea”
: Herbert Mayes to BB, July 19, 1951, SJ-LOC, Box 43.

315
   
Mayes demanded that she repay
: BB to SJ, March 7, 1951, SJ-LOC, Box 43.

315
   
“the toughest agent in the business”
: SJ to GJ and LJ, n.d. [May 1951].

315
   
“small, quiet, and neat”
: Interview with Stanley Kauffmann, August 27, 2012.

315
   
“there is nothing”
: SJ to GJ and LJ, n.d. [May 1951].

315
   
Porcellian Club
: Matthew Bruccoli,
James Gould Cozzens: A Life Apart
(New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1983), 88.

315
   
“Personally I think”
: BB to SJ, September 11, 1951, SJ-LOC, Box 43.

315
   
She told her client
: Bruccoli,
James Gould Cozzens
, 289–90.

316
   
“When we come”
: Ibid., 290.

316
   
Mayes wanted her to promise
: BB to Margaret Cousins, July 30, 1952, and BB to SJ, May 20, 1953, SJ-LOC, Box 4.

316
   
“The damn baby wouldn’t show up”
: Judy Oppenheimer,
Private Demons
(New York: Putnam, 1988), 157.

317
   
“This one’s for you”
: Interview with Jai Holly, July 15, 2015.

317
   
“quiet determination”
: SJ to GJ and LJ, January 14, 1958.

317
   
“Barry was always good”
: Interview with Sarah Hyman DeWitt, February 21, 2013.

317
   
“Mr. Beekman” . . . “thoughtful”
: SJ to GJ and LJ, October 31, 1952.

317
   
“a rational conversation”
: Interview with Sarah Hyman DeWitt, February 21, 2013.

317
   
“barry is unbearable”
: SJ to GJ and LJ, n.d. [November 1960].

318
   
“the least accurate nickname possible”
: Interview with Laurence Jackson Hyman, February 17, 2013.

318
   
“quiet and unobtrusive”
: Telephone interview with Lyn Sprogell, March 4, 2014.

318
   
“loved Barry” . . . “listen and nod”
: Interview with Sarah Hyman DeWitt, February 21, 2013.

318
   
“I guess it will be nice”
:
Savages
, 226.

319
   
“the sordid Westport experiment”
: SEH to John Fischer, November 26, 1952, Harpers Papers, Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center, University of Texas at Austin. Describing the move in
Raising Demons
, SJ considerably simplified the family’s living situation: they moved from one house in their town to another, with Westport omitted.

319
   
“Shirley, no friend”
: SEH to KB, April 4, 1952, KB-PSU.

319
   
“I feel ten years younger”
: SJ to BB, April 25, 1952.

319
   
“You had to wash”
: Interview with Jai Holly, July 16, 2015.

319
   
“beethoven sits there”
: SJ to GJ and LJ, n.d. [May 1952].

320
   
the Durands
: Oliver Durand took care of all the Hymans. Laurence remembers his lax approach to house calls: “He’d come and have a big glass of bourbon, and then he’d go see the sick child” (interview, February 17, 2013).

320
   
“there is a constant pack”
: SJ to GJ and LJ, n.d. [May 1952].

320
   
“Been away”
: SJ to BB, May 8, 1952.

320
   
a comic account
: “An International Incident,”
The New Yorker
, September 12, 1953. In SJ’s story, the Japanese students show up at the Hymans’ house unannounced, and she and the children spend an afternoon trying to entertain them in true American style. A letter to her parents about the incident makes it clear that the reality was less involved: “we met one japanese character, named takehashi, who persisted in calling stanley ‘mr stanley’, and we finally realized that of course that’s the way they run names, the formal one first. he said to me, ‘madam i am happy to be meeting of you, how are you feeling?’ and that did it, as far as i am concerned; i leave the foreigners to laurie and stanley. he kept clicking his
heels and bowing every time sally or jan came into the room, and since it is the first time a gentleman has ever stood up for jannie she was impressed. sally just thought it was screwy.” Another day she offered a ride to a group of foreign students lost in North Bennington: “sally stood up peering over the seat to the back where they were sitting, and finally one of them, trying to be polite, said, ‘the curls, is it hair?’ which polished off sally.”

320
   
Bread Loaf School for English
: This program is separate from the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference, where SJ was on the faculty in 1964.

320
   
the Hymans still had not found
: The reality contrasts sharply with SJ’s description of the situation in
Raising Demons
, in which she presents the move to the house on Main Street as driven by “an extraordinary feeling of inevitability” (9).

320
   
“picturesque, ancient, expensive”
: SJ to Virginia Olsen, September 16, 1952, SJ-LOC, Box 52.

321
   
“inexplicably” double
: SEH to Herbert Weinstock, September 29, 1952, AK-HRC.

321
   
“
disintegrated
personality” . . . “memories”
: Morton Prince,
The Dissociation of a Personality
(London: Longmans, Green, and Co., 1906), 3.

322
   
the voice inside Natalie’s head
: In a draft of
The Bird’s Nest
, Dr. Wright refers to Elizabeth’s demon as Asmodeus, the same demon that possessed Natalie in an early draft of
Hangsaman
.

322
   
“dismal little house”
: SJ to GJ and LJ, December 30, 1953.

322
   
“completely delightful”
: Memo from Margaret Farrar to John Farrar and Roger Straus, May 15 [1952], FSG-NYPL, Box 173.

322
   
“Every time I think of”
: Margaret Farrar to SJ, August 8, 1952, SJ-LOC, Box 8.

322
   
“warm and affectionate”
: Memo from Stuart Young to John Farrar and Roger Straus, July 18, 1952, FSG-NYPL, Box 173.

322
   
“With the proper enthusiasm”
: FSG-NYPL, Box 173.

322
   
“It seems too bad”
: FSG-NYPL, Box 173.

323
   
“so they can admire” . . . “Cabbages”
: SJ to John Peck, n.d. [early March 1952], FSG-NYPL, Box 173.

323
   
“the funniest, the most engaging”
: Orville Prescott, “Books of the Times,”
The New York Times
, June 22, 1953.

323
   
Jackson was so delighted
: SJ to BB, June 23, 1953.

323
   
“Staggered”
: SJ to BB, July 14, 1953.

323
   
“when i am making”
: SJ to GJ and LJ, n.d. [July 1953].

323
   
“Funny how people”
: GJ to SJ, n.d. [fall 1953].

323
   
“If you don’t”
: SJ-LOC, Box 11.

324
   
“very cute”
: M.M., “Cute Kids, but Mommy’s Better When She’s Sinister,”
New York Post
, June 21, 1953.

324
   
“There is no reason”
: “Sterling North Reviews the Books,”
New York World Telegram
, June 22, 1953.

324
   
“Never, in this reviewer’s opinion”
: Jane Cobb, “Chaos Can Be Beautiful,”
The New York Times Book Review
, June 21, 1953.

325
   
“it is the very familiarity”
: Margaret Parton,
New York Herald Tribune
, June 23, 1953.

325
   
“chilling objectivity”
: Joseph Henry Jackson, “Bookman’s Notebook,”
San Francisco Chronicle
, June 23, 1953.

325
   
“Shirley Jackson has built” . . . “like home”
: Edmund Fuller, “Life Among the Savages,”
Chicago Sunday Tribune Magazine of Books
, July 5, 1953.

325
   
“female Thurber”
: “A Female Thurber: Mother of Four Also Produces Wit,”
Miami Herald
, January 27, 1957.

325
   
“i thought she might”
: SJ to GJ and LJ, n.d. [July 1953].

326
   
“You’re such a nice woman”
: Mary Margaret McBride to SJ, July 1, 1953, SJ-LOC, Box 9.

326
   
“the most uncooperative”
: SJ to Lynn Caine, February 26, 1958, FSG-NYPL, Box 174.

326
   
“You
must
learn”
: GJ to SJ, n.d. [June 1953].

326
   
“big, in that fine old”
: SJ to Virginia Olsen, September 2, 1953, SJ-LOC, Box 52.

326
   
“an extremely reasonable price”
: SJ to GJ and LJ, n.d. [May 1953].

326
   
“It seemed to go on”
: Telephone interview with Anne Zimmerman, June 12, 2014.

327
   
“totems . . . and masks”
: Claude Fredericks,
The Journal of Claude Fredericks
, October 13, 1961.

327
   
On the wall
: Phoebe Pettingell, “s.e.h.—a biography,”
Quadrille
7, no. 2 (Winter/Spring 1973).