Shirley Jackson: A Rather Haunted Life (94 page)

470
   
“The whole idea”
: Skype interview with Corinne Biggs, September 3, 2015.

471
   
“with stanley” . . . “a great triumph”
: SJ to GJ and LJ, unsent letter, n.d. [spring 1963].

471
   
“How are things” . . . “not sure”
: Powers,
The Store and Other Stories of North Bennington
([North Bennington, Vt.?]: printed by author, n.d.).

471
   
“I am anxious” . . . “paroxysm of terror”
: SJ to CB, January 27, 1963.

472
   
“How grim” . . . “curious city”
: CB to SJ, March 18, 1963, SJ-LOC, Box 4.

472
   
“I was moved” . . . “a new novel”
: Pat Covici to SJ, March 25, 1963, SJ-LOC, Box 11.

472
   
“what ‘ails’ me” . . . “all the time”
: SJ to GJ and LJ, n.d. [spring 1963].

473
   
“This thing” . . . “tough for him”
: GJ to SJ, n.d. [May 1963].

473
   
“Two bottles”
: GJ to SJ, n.d. [May 1963].

473
   
“My two big difficulties”
: SJ to CB, July 2, 1963.

473
   
“i was quite nervous” . . . “very proud”
: SJ to GJ and LJ, September 4, 1963.

473
   
“She doesn’t want”
: Interview with Laura Nowak, July 24, 2013.

474
   
“a long siege ahead”
: SJ to GJ and LJ, September 4, 1963.

474
   
a letter describing how helpful
: SJ to Mr. Cheek, undated, SJ-LOC, Box 7.

474
   
“Today marks”
: SJ to CB, April 11, 1963.

474
   
“so high” . . . “time for lunch”
:
Famous Sally
.

475
   
“I don’t seem”
: SJ to CB, July 23, 1963.

475
   
“had not been doing”
: SJ to GJ and LJ, September 4, 1963.

475
   
“touching tributes”
: “A Vroom for Dr. Seuss,” 212.

475
   
“Literary criticism”
: SEH to KB, October 29, 1963, KB-PSU.

475
   
“I am in the disagreeable position”
: SJ to CB, November 7, 1963.

475
   
“stir things up”
: CB to SJ, November 20, 1963, SJ-LOC, Box 6.

475
   
“ready to try anything”
: SJ to CB, December 2, 1963.

476
   
the dark winter of 1963–64
: The diary pages are dated by month and day, but not with a year. The only internal evidence to date them is a reference to the recent death of Howard Nemerov’s father, which took place in June
1963. The letter to CB in which SJ reports that she has resolved to try Covici’s system is dated December 2, 1963. For these reasons, I conclude that the diary began that December day and ended on February 7, 1964.

476
   
“if this is going to be”
: SJ-LOC, Box 1. Unless otherwise specified, all quotes in this section are from this diary.

476
   
“Why do you not write?”
: In
Whose Woods These Are
, his history of the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference (New York: Ecco, 1993), David Haward Bain dates this conversation to Nemerov and Jackson’s trip to Bread Loaf together in 1964. This cannot be accurate if the diary was written in the winter of 1963–64. Bain gives no source.

478
   
“I had no pets”
: CAWM, 16.

480
   
“The Little House”
: LOA, 691–99.

480
   
“Home,” written later in the year
:
JOD
, 397–405.

480
   
“The Bus” is the most complex
: LOA, 700–713.

481
   
“twenty or so lonely schoolteachers”
: SJ to Jeanne Beatty, February 4, 1960.

481
   
“slow and dirty” . . . “afraid of practically everything”
: SJ, “No, I Don’t Want to Go to Europe,”
Saturday Evening Post
, June 6, 1964.

482
   
“I am beginning to be”
: SJ to CB, March 20, 1964.

482
   
“nauseating pack of distortions”
: William M. Farley to SJ, June 3, 1964, SJ-LOC, Box 8.

482
   
“Some of the material”
: SJ to CB, February 21, 1964.

482
   
“all of this i do”
: SJ to GJ and LJ, April 1964.

483
   
heart-shaped china-boxes
: Interview with Sarah Hyman DeWitt, February 21, 2013.

483
   
“Notes for a Young Writer”
:
CAWM
, 263–73.

483
   
“I hate it”
: Martha MacGregor, “The Week in Books,”
New York Post
, May 10, 1964.

484
   
“Since I do not seem to be writing”
: SJ to CB, June 2, 1964.

484
   
“
The Fair Land of Far
begins with”
: SJ-LOC, Box 50.

18. LAST WORDS

485
   
“I always believe in eating”
:
CAWM
, 3.

486
   
“I want to write”
: Alfred J. Farnett to
Daily Orange
, May 6, 1940, SJ-LOC, Box 8.

486
   
“Being invited there”
: Telephone interview with Jerome Charyn, July 3, 2015.

487
   
“a little private group”
: SJ to GJ and LJ, n.d. [September 1964], SJ-LOC Box 3.

487
   
“dour yet direct” . . . “hypnotizing experience”
: Mark Mirsky, e-mails to author, August 31 and September 1, 2015.

488
   
“all the lovely chili”
: SJ to GJ and LJ, n.d. [September 1964].

489
   
“Currently teetering”
: SEH to KB, August 25, 1964, KB-PSU.

489
   
“Mr. Hyman lost”
: Interview with Patty Burrows, September 5, 2014.

489
   
“He looked” . . . “sometimes imaginary”
: Brendan Gill,
Here at the New Yorker
(1975; repr. New York: Da Capo, 1997), 246.

490
   
“I knew this would be”
: CB to SJ, October 15, 1964, SJ-LOC, Box 6.

490
   
“A great editor” . . . “my conscience”
: John Steinbeck,
Working Days: The Journals of The Grapes of Wrath, 1938–1941
(New York: Viking, 1989), 143; accessed via Google Books.

490
   
“It seems to me”
: CB to SJ, October 15, 1964.

490
   
“more grownup type of thing”
: SJ to CB, October 30, 1964.

490
   
“Working, working”
: SJ to CB, November 6, 1964.

490
   
“It is Viking’s wish”
: CB to SJ, January 18, 1965, SJ-LOC, Box 6.

490
   
“I am full” . . . “under these terms”
: SJ to CB, January 20, 1965.

491
   
Her age and size
: SJ began writing the book just before her forty-eighth birthday, so the two women are the same age, once her customary deduction of three years is factored in.

491
   
“in case it’s vital”
:
CAWM
, 4.

491
   
“dabble[s] in the supernatural”
: Ibid., 12.

491
   
“might turn up”
: Ibid., 4.

491
   
“my God, he was a lousy painter”
: Ibid., 3.

491
   
“I hadn’t ever been there”
: Ibid., 5.

491
   
“perfectly square, which was good”
: Ibid., 16.

491
   
“and anything you raise”
: Ibid., 14.

491
   
“In case you are wondering”
: Ibid., 11.

492
   
“what the cat saw”
: Ibid., 19.

492
   
“i’m a kind-hearted mama”
: SJ-LOC, Box 15.

492
   
“Are you sure” . . . “hang up, it’s over”
:
CAWM
, 24.

492
   
“fine high gleefulness” . . . “everything I want”
: Ibid., 3.

492
   
“splendid but tiring” . . . “taking it easy”
: SJ to CB, March 8, 1965.

493
   
“dripped all over”
: SJ to GJ and LJ, May 12, 1965.

493
   
“a sick lady”
: Frank P. Piskor to SJ, May 25, 1965, SJ-LOC, Box 11.

493
   
“the schedule” . . . “completely apathetic”
: SJ to GJ and LJ, May 12, 1965.

493
   
“gleeful” . . . “horizon at all”
: Telephone interview with Barry Hyman, July 16, 2015.

494
   
She visited June Mirken Mintz
: Judy Oppenheimer,
Private Demons
(New York: Putnam, 1988), 266.

494
   
a strange, vaguely worded letter
: Ibid., 271. The description of this letter was confirmed with Sarah Hyman DeWitt, with whom Brandt shared the letter.

494
   
“I can’t wake” . . . “she’s dead”
: Interview with Sarah Hyman DeWitt, February 21, 2013.

494
   
“hundreds of people”
: Facebook post by Sarah Hyman DeWitt, August 12, 2015.

495
   
“goofer dust” . . . “or something”
: Interview with Laurence Jackson Hyman, February 17, 2013.

495
   
“That airport”
: Kristol to SEH, August 16, 1965. All condolence letters quoted in this section are in SEH-LOC, Box 46.

495
   
“Shirley’s rare talents”
: Marshall Best to SEH, undated telegram.

496
   
“so different”
: Tom Glazer to SEH, n.d. [c. August 1965].

496
   
“wonderful talent” and “warm and wonderful personality”
: Paul and Julia Child to SEH, August 10, 1965.

496
   
“a kindred spirit”
: Isaac Bashevis Singer to SJ, January 26, 1963 [misdated 1962], SJ-LOC, Box 11.

496
   
“Shirley is the main reason”
: Dede Annin to SEH, August 11, 1965.

496
   
“She was one of us”
: Shelley Ellman to SEH, September 30, 1965.

496
   
“More than usual”
: SEH to KB, August 27, 1965, KB-PSU.

497
   
“I do not give a damn”
: SEH to KB, October 22, 1965, KB-PSU.

497
   
Nemerov prepared a press release
: SEH-LOC, Box 46.

497
   
The headline
: “Shirley Jackson, Author of Horror Classic, Dies,”
The New York Times
, August 10, 1965.

497
   
“absolute original” . . . “of witches”
: “School of One,”
Newsweek
, August 23, 1965.

497
   
the old line
: Albin Krebs, “She Wrote With ‘Broomstick, Not Pen,’ ”
New York Herald Tribune
, August 10, 1965.

497
   
“dissipate some of the”
: SEH to KB, August 27, 1965.

497
   
“violent and terrifying” . . . “over the years”
: Reprinted in SEH, ed.,
The Magic of Shirley Jackson
(New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1966), vii.

498
   
“The Possibility of Evil”
: LOA, 714–24.

Acknowledgments

“Her character was so tremendous it was always hard to believe she was just one person,” one of Shirley Jackson’s friends once remarked about her. For their help in corraling this character within the pages of a book, I have a small army of people to thank.

For their cooperation, including permission to quote from Jackson’s archives without restriction or contingency, I am deeply grateful to her children: Laurence Jackson Hyman, Jai Holly, Sarah Hyman DeWitt, and Barry Hyman. They retained the right to read the manuscript before publication and to comment on it, but they ceded approval of its final version. In addition, each of them sat for numerous interviews and made themselves available for queries by telephone and email. I appreciate the faith in me they showed from the beginning of this project.

Phoebe Pettingell, Stanley Edgar Hyman’s widow, also granted unrestricted access to her late husband’s archive, including personal letters and photographs, and sat for lengthy interviews. I am equally grateful for her generosity and trust.

I conducted the majority of the research for this book at the Library of Congress, which holds both Jackson’s and Hyman’s archives. For their assistance and their patience, I’m grateful to the entire staff of the Manuscript Reading Room, especially Alice Birney, the archivist in charge of Jackson’s papers. Melissa Mead, an exceptional archivist at the University of Rochester, found treasures in the archives there, including Jackson’s first known publication. Sandra Steltz at Pennsylvania State University helped me navigate Kenneth Burke’s unwieldy archive, Danielle Rougeau offered direction in the Bread Loaf archives at Middlebury College, and Sarah Pratt assisted at Boston University’s Howard Gotlieb
Archival Research Center. Staff at the New York Public Library, Chicago’s Newberry Library, the Lilly Library at Indiana University, the University of Colorado at Boulder, the Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center at the University of Texas, and the Getty Center in Los Angeles were also generous with their time and knowledge.