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2 Reviews
america's finest writer has the last word
"Just An Ordinary Day" by Shirley Jackson has served a number of purposews and it is with deep gratitude that our culture can thank her children for compiling these lost works of Jackson (the number one writer of short fiction and most published writer of the 1950's). it is true that at the age of sixteen after learning her mother had been reading her materials and journals in secret that Jackson burned it all. So this collection contains nothing prior to age 16: we have The university of Rochester, Syracuse University and beyond. This collection includes many undated stories from early years, many stories that were printed only once in National Magazines of the day, and several of her famous "Family" stories. Shirley Jackson's work disappeared off the map for a period of about 18 toward the last part of the 20th century largely because no one was able to understand her style. She was not a modernist, nor a post modernist. There are many critical essays being written about her work now and some have dared to categorize Jackson as a pre-post modernist but we contend, after reading virtually every word the woman publsied as well as some cleverly designed letters and even interviewing her son, that like the music of Paul Simon, Ani DiFranco and Leonard Bernstein, Jackson's writing defies categorization.
Jackson was a contemporary of Salinger, Ralph Emerson, Dylan Thomas and Howard Nemerov. Their home in North Bennington, Vermont was, to New England, what Hogharth press was outside of London forty years earlier. Jackson wrote the way Mozart did: sitting at the typewriter was nothing more than the transfer of thought to paper. (This is how we know that Mozart did in fact write his entire requiem- he simple used someone else's hand for everything beyond the 8th movement). Jackson left a novel half finished which her husband, noted critic Stanley Edgar Hyman published in a collection of several stories and lectures she gave in 1968. To see the first draft of half of her book is very telling. Jackson turned a story over to her agent (the famous Carol Brandt) picture ready. Her most famous story, "The Lottery:' was written in forty-five minutes and did not undergo a second draft. ("I just didn't want to fuss with it", she said). In 1988 Stephen King dedicated his book, "Firestarter" `To Shirley Jackson, who never had to raise her voice." She is at the top of his list of favorite writers. She is at the top of ours as well.
Jackson's work was about good and evil and where these two character elements came from. Most of her protagonists are women and all of them live normal lives yet somehow, at the very last minute, Jackson is able to turn things on us and leave us shocked with our mouths hanging open. Jackson wastes not a single word and no matter how much you read and how much you can recognize her style it remains impossible to see where each story is going. The early stories in this book are about the lives of late teens and college students, and though undated, this suggests that they were written when she was very young. Her crafty got better as she aged, but we strongly suspect that she began to write faster, not better. Her earliest work was perfection. The final two stories in this book- both of which were published after her death in august of 1965, are very telling indeed. We read this book straight through, not skipping any stories and taking them in order as the editors (Laurence and Sarah Hyman) would have wanted.Read full review...
Are you kidding me? It's SHIRLEY JACKSON! Read everything she ever wrote - then read it all again.
Verified purchase: Yes | Condition: pre-owned | Sold by: alankirpalani