Shirley Jackson: A Rather Haunted Life

by Ruth Franklin

This historically engaging and relevant biography establishes Shirley Jackson as a towering figure in American literature and revives the life and work of a neglected master.

Still known to millions primarily as the author of the The Lottery, Shirley Jackson (1916-1965) has been curiously absent from the mainstream American literary canon. A genius of literary suspense and psychological horror, Jackson plumbed the cultural anxiety of postwar America more deeply than anyone. Now, biographer Ruth Franklin reveals the tumultuous life and inner darkness of the author of such classics as The Haunting of Hill House and We Have Always Lived in the Castle.

Placing Jackson within an American gothic tradition that stretches back to Hawthorne and Poe, Franklin demonstrates how her unique contribution to this genre came from her focus on "domestic horror." Almost two decades before The Feminine Mystique ignited the women's movement, Jackson's stories and nonfiction chronicles were already exploring the exploitation and the desperate isolation of women, particularly married women, in American society. Franklin's portrait of Jackson gives us "a way of reading Jackson and her work that threads her into the weave of the world of words, as a writer and as a woman, rather than excludes her as an anomaly" (Neil Gaiman).

The increasingly prescient Jackson emerges as a ferociously talented, determined, and prodigiously creative writer in a time when it was unusual for a woman to have both a family and a profession. A mother of four and the wife of the prominent New Yorker critic and academic Stanley Edgar Hyman, Jackson lived a seemingly bucolic life in the New England town of North Bennington, Vermont. Yet, much like her stories, which channeled the occult while exploring the claustrophobia of marriage and motherhood, Jackson's creative ascent was haunted by a darker side. As her career progressed, her marriage became more tenuous, her anxiety mounted, and she became addicted to amphetamines and tranquilizers. In sobering detail, Franklin insightfully examines the effects of Jackson's California upbringing, in the shadow of a hypercritical mother, on her relationship with her husband, juxtaposing Hyman's infidelities, domineering behavior, and professional jealousy with his unerring admiration for Jackson's fiction, which he was convinced was among the most brilliant he had ever encountered.

Based on a wealth of previously undiscovered correspondence and dozens of new interviews, Shirley Jackson―an exploration of astonishing talent shaped by a damaging childhood and turbulent marriage―becomes the definitive biography of a generational avatar and an American literary giant.

Genres: Biography, Nonfiction, Biography Memoir, Horror, History, Memoir, Writing

608 pages, Hardcover

First published September 27, 2016

Reviews

[Julie · Rating 4 out of 5]

Shirley Jackson: A Rather Haunted Life by Ruth Franklin is a 2016 Liveright publication.


I wonder, when hearing the name Shirley Jackson, which book pops into your mind? ‘The Lottery’ or ‘We Have Always Lived in a Castle’ or ‘The Haunting of Hill House’?

I’d bet most people associate Jackson with Hill House, which is understandable. But, for me, ‘The Lottery’ is the first thing that pops into my mind. Mainly, this is because of a personal experience, that even after all these years, still sticks in my mind.

I was in the fifth grade, the day was cold and rainy, so the teachers kept us indoors, deciding to allow the class to watch a film to keep us occupied. The film we watched was ‘The Lottery’, which was based on Jackson’s short story. This would have been the 1969 version. (This version can be found on YouTube, if you want to see a bit of nostalgia)

I had never heard of it, and if my classmates were being honest, they would have to admit they hadn’t either. I suspect my two teachers, in the progressive school I attended were also rather ignorant of the film’s content, since I can’t, even with the enlightenment our children are apt to possess these days, would have shown that particular film if they had known what to expect. While the film was, and may still be, shown to high school and college students, I don’t know if it was intended for fifth graders. I remember the absolute silence in the classroom when the film ended…

I still remember the shock I felt after the movie ended and recall having a few nightmares too.


Years later, Jackson would grab headlines again with this opening to ‘The Haunting of Hill House’-

“No live organism can continue for long to exist sanely under conditions of absolute reality; even larks and katydids are supposed, by some, to dream.

Hill House, not sane, stood by itself against its hills, holding darkness within; it had stood for eighty years and might stand for eighty more. Within, walls continued upright, bricks made neatly, floors were firm, and doors were sensibly shut; silence lay steadily against the wood and stone of Hill House, and whatever walked there, walked alone.”


That line, is perhaps one of the most chilling opening sequences ever, at least in regards to stories about haunted houses, and the novel solidified Shirley’s reputation and popularity.

However, despite her undeniable and natural talent as a writer, and her ultimate success, both critical and commercial, her private life was by turns happy and content or unhappy and discontent, occasionally all at once.


Shirley and her mother had a rocky relationship, which most likely left her with a predisposition which allowed the same behavior and treatment from her husband, Stanley Hyman to go on from the beginning of their relationship and into their marriage pretty much unchecked.

Shirley’s writing often tackled in an allegorical way, the difficulties of balancing her homemaking role with her desire for a career in writing. The rock and a hard place she often found herself in, was expressed in her stories, which chronicled loneliness, depression, anxiety, fantasy, and longing, showcasing the conflicts and feelings of entrapment and boredom women coped with, especially those who were married.

Shirley’s struggled with her husband’s many infidelities, her strained relationship with her mother, the expectations placed on her, and with her appearance. Shirley had trouble with her weight and was not interested in becoming a fashion plate. Her life was her writing, her books, and her children.

She did try to control her weight, at least on a few occasions, and fought hard against anxiety, and hoped for relief for debilitating headaches. These battles led her doctors to prescribe a myriad of medications, which only added to her health problems and increased her anxiety.

One interesting subject, which was played up by Shirley on occasion, was her interest in witchcraft and the occult. She even learned to read Tarot cards. But, the author stops short of suggesting the interest went beyond that, although Shirley often joked about using witchcraft for one purpose or another.

Still, the author insists most of that was simply something Shirley did to tease and entice, hoping to add a little mystique to her personality… and sell more books, of course.

‘Jackson was interested in witchcraft, she writes, less as a “practical method for influencing the world” than as “a way of embracing and channeling female power at a time when women in America often had little control over their lives.”

In many ways, Shirley is an enigma, a woman ahead of her time, and full of inconsistencies. I could sympathize and relate to her on many points, felt outraged on her behalf, and was amazed by her talent.

This biography is very well researched, organized, and chock full of revealing details and interviews, never published, until now. The author wisely allows the reader to draw their own conclusions about what Shirley’s work really meant, and gently points to the parallels between her personal life and the stories she wrote.

There were a few times when the author strayed off course and spent a little too much time with Shirley’s family members, especially with Stanley. Occasionally, I grew impatient with this, and Stanley personally was pretty hard to take, but thankfully, it only happened a couple of times.

There are also a few photographs and includes a comprehensive index at the end. It is obvious Ruth Franklin tackled Shirley’s biography with respect and awe, covering every aspect of her life, giving the reader one of the most intimate portraits of this beloved and often underestimated author. The care and time that went into this book is quite apparent.

While I have enjoyed a couple of pretty decent memoirs lately, this is one of the most fascinating biographies I’ve read in recent memory. Every single moment was interesting, absorbing, and provoked as many emotions as a novel might for its fictional main character.

I have not read all of Shirley Jackson’s novels, but I hope I can find copies of her work, other than the novels she is most famous for. She was a most prolific author and a great talent gone way too soon and it is sad she didn’t live to see her literary contributions gain the measure of respect she was mostly denied in her lifetime.


4 stars

[Justin Tate · Rating 5 out of 5]

A spectacular biography of Shirley Jackson, one of the great masters of literary horror fiction. Her short story "The Lottery" has been required reading in classrooms for decades and The Haunting of Hill House will be a Halloween staple until the end of time. Yet her legacy extends beyond these iconic works and her life was often as unsettling as her fiction.

Ruth Franklin's research aims to be the definitive account of Jackson's life, extending from birth to death with impressive detail. She lingers, understandably, during the eras of Jackson's major novels. She also drifts into the equally fascinating life of Shirley's husband, literary critic Stanley Hyman. Brief interludes of historical context set the scene so that readers are easily transported to the time period.

Jackson's archive must have been staggeringly well-preserved. Franklin demonstrates familiarity with the most obscure ephemera, including unmailed letters, unpublished stories and various drafts of major and minor works. Even grocery lists! Nearly every sentence unveils a hidden gem about Shirley's life and literature that I never knew.

Shirley's mother becomes a particularly intriguing figure. Her letters are often cruel and it's understandable how that kind of poison harmed the author's mental well-being. Likewise, Stanley is presented as both a soul mate and source of constant anxiety. Franklin is perhaps kinder to Stanley than some reports, however. She shows clear evidence that his polyamorous views were in direct conflict with Shirley's desire for monogamy, yet she also argues that perhaps Stanely did not sleep around nearly as much as Shirley suspected.

Because this book's goal is to be the biography of Shirley's life, it does come across as a mere summary of events. Franklin must be the most knowledgeable person on Shirley Jackson in the world, and I wouldn't have minded her offering more opinions on the facts rather than simply list them.

Perhaps that will be another book someday. It seems there must enough documents that one could write an entire book on any given year of Shirley's life. She was a complex woman who battled internal and external demons. It's easy to see why her life has been considered "haunted" because that is the best word to describe it.

Though this is a thick tome, it could have easily been twice or three times as long. The editing feels like the right blend of breadth of knowledge and readability. This is a rigorously academic text, yet one does not need to be writing a dissertation to appreciate it. In fact, I'd say anyone with even a casual interest in Shirley Jackson will devour it with no trouble. Those who aren't familiar with her work can still appreciate the details of a fascinating life. Highly recommended!

[Terri · Rating 5 out of 5]

“My name is Mary Katherine Blackwood. I am eighteen years old, and I live with my sister Constance. I have often thought that with any luck at all, I could have been born a werewolf, because the two middle fingers on both my hands are the same length, but I have had to be content with what I had. I dislike washing myself, and dogs, and noise. I like my sister Constance, and Richard Plantagenet, and Amanita phalloides, the death-cup mushroom. Everyone else in our family is dead.”
― Shirley Jackson, We Have Always Lived in the Castle

Fantastic biography of the talented, sensitive and extremely unhappy author, Shirley Jackson. She was wise beyond her years, from the time she was a child, gifted, troubled and the the people around her obviously did not know how to understand her gifts. This book is insightful and very sad especially regarding her last years. If you are a fan, don't miss this book. Five stars. Highly recommend.

[Ellen · Rating 4 out of 5]

This biography of Shirley Jackson is a comprehensive exploration of a fascinating woman, who was full of contradictions. Her children's perception of her as a happy mother is challenged by her use of drugs. She appears to have suffered from her husband's infidelities while at the same time maintaining a seemingly "happy" marriage. All this while writing some of the best books of her time. Her story "The Lottery" is a sharp look at small town life (in this case, a village) that is still taught in schools. My favorite of her books is "We Have Always Lived at the Castle," with its menacing and haunting atmosphere.

This book is filled with facts and insights about a great author.It is a like a treasure chest. I strongly recommend this book. I thank NetGalley, W. Norton & Company, and Ruth Franklin for making this book available to me.

[tortoise dreams · Rating 3 out of 5]

A biography of the too often overlooked American writer Shirley Jackson (1916-65), author of "The Lottery," The Haunting of Hill House, and other tales of a damaged psyche.

Nonfiction Review: Despite the recent renewal of her reputation (all her major work seems to be in print) Shirley Jackson is one of the most underrated authors of the 20th Century, so I much anticipated this new biography by Ruth Franklin. Unfortunately, I was disappointed and this is not the definitive volume I hoped for. To paraphrase Franklin herself: I am impressed by the amount of work that has gone into the book, but am underwhelmed by its argument.

Shirley Jackson: A Rather Haunted Life reads as if Ruth Franklin wanted to write a biography of Jackson's husband, critic Stanley Hyman, found no takers, so decided to turn it into a biography of Jackson. There are still, however, long stretches devoted solely to Hyman, and Franklin is his strong defender despite Hyman's obvious cruelties to his wife. There are large chunks of the book in which Jackson is only an afterthought, as Hyman and other of Franklin's preoccupations are discussed. This could have been a better and more effective biography of Jackson at 300 to 350 pages, cutting the irrelevant bits (ironic, as she notes Jackson's advice to "avoid anything extraneous to the narrative"). Although Franklin fails to acknowledge the prior major biography of Jackson, Private Demons: The Life of Shirley Jackson by Judy Oppenheimer (1988), in the text (it's mentioned in the notes), that book is warmer, more alive, more affectionate, and more satisfying; Franklin also fails to include some of the invaluable revelations about Jackson contained in that volume. As this book was written with significant help from Jackson's children, it's uncertain how much she chose not to publish because of that assistance (she states they read the manuscript before publication, but "ceded approval of its final version"). Despite Franklin's own interviews and access to new documents, the book ends suddenly, leaving questions unanswered, and it's unclear whether Franklin tried to answer them. There are curious silences in this book (there is also no bibliography or list of supplemental commentaries or references).

At times it seems this was too big a project and the writing suffers for it, perhaps more editing was needed. Some anecdotes are repeated two or three times, and the many detours away from Jackson's life are distracting and unhelpful. Plot summaries of Jackson's works can be inaccurate, or plots given only a single interpretation, when other views are equally likely. The author often makes value judgments and conjectures wildly about rape, bigotry, and the like, providing little or no evidence to support her opinions and theories. Better to let the reader decide, rather than merely speculate. At one point Franklin asks, "What is witchcraft, after all, but the desire to generate fear in others and instill their obedience?" Well, that's not my understanding of witchcraft. Later Franklin writes, "Witchcraft ... was important to Jackson for what it symbolized: female strength and potency." Female strength is generating fear and instilling obedience?

Franklin's take on situations is frequently questionable. In one novel, when a mentally disabled girl seeking art to decorate their shabby house mistakenly orders pornographic pictures, Franklin finds this to be one of the book's "wonderful moments of humor." Mocking the disabled is not what Jackson, always sensitive to outcasts, would find humorous. But admittedly Franklin finds much more levity (as opposed to incisive satire) in Jackson's writing than I do. She finds Jackson's novel about multiple personality disorder her "most overtly comic novel," but another novel is her "funniest." In yet another, a character I only found annoying and offensive, is described as "comic relief." I know I don't have a great sense of humor, but this is puzzling if you've read all Jackson's novels. At one point, after a large meal together, a friend of Jackson and Hyman wrote that "they got up hungry." Franklin, doubting this, asks, "How could he know?" Gosh, maybe they said, "I'm still hungry" when they rose from the table. Later, a Catholic girl "probably did not consider abortion." Stupid Catholics. Why speculate if you don't know? At some points Franklin takes Jackson's statements at face value, and other times notes that Jackson took "liberties with the factual record." There's also a constant reliance on Betty Friedan as the only feminist writer worth quoting (nine times), though she later criticizes Friedan as myopic. Her take on the great writer Ralph Ellison is also arguable.

There are spots in A Rather Haunted Life where the writing seems immature. I've not read serious biographers who rely on exclamation points to make a point. After one of Hyman's repeated infidelities, Jackson refrains from sending him an angry letter and then suffers a throat infection. Franklin writes, "the metaphorical connection is too rich to ignore ... after choking back the words ... she fell ill with a swollen throat!" But it was a letter she failed to send, not a conversation. At another point Franklin notes that Jackson "no longer had to fight for her turn at the typewriter. Of course, she also had a baby to take care of!" Was that a surprise? But then Franklin undercuts her own excitement by saying, "she also seemed to have derived imaginative energy from the constraints" of being a housewife. Franklin will also provide a quote, and then tell us what we should think about it: that it was "not especially kindly," "wrote sourly," "wrote sadly," "commented, unhelpfully," "wrote insultingly," "wrote cheerfully," "wrote snidely," a "snide line," "condescending caption," "responded huffily," "unkindly described," etc., etc. But when reading the quote, those statements were not necessarily sad, snide, sour. Again, better to let readers think for themselves, because sometimes her adverbs seem askew.

A careful, thoughtful reader of this book will find much to question. All of these points may seem minor individually, but so many flawed opinions and dubious value judgments can make the reader doubt the lens through which the narrative was filtered, challenge the reporting and interpretation. A close reading shows that the author's preferences are never far from the surface and considered equally important as Jackson herself, or why so many tangents away from the subject.

Franklin tries to pigeonhole Jackson's writing, with which Jackson would have disagreed, as her concerns were broad and universal, investigating "the demon in the mind," the damaged psyche. Jackson wrote that her work was "one long documentation of anxiety." But despite major reservations, although I didn't enjoy it, I'm still glad I read A Rather Haunted Life. Together with Judy Oppenheimer's better biography, it's a contribution to our knowledge and understanding of the too much underappreciated Shirley Jackson; it just isn't the definitive summation that Jackson deserves. What is still needed, what I'd hoped to read, is something like the controversial but wonderful biography of poet Anne Sexton by Diane Wood Middlebrook . [3★]

[Roman Clodia · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is an excellent biography which both illuminates Jackson's literary output and ties it, in an intelligent and not simplistically linear fashion, to her life. It's fascinating how even small incidents or an unsettling house glimpsed from a train window are food for Jackson's wonderfully fertile and macabre imagination.

Franklin is conscious of the historical context for Jackson as a female author in America and how the backdrop of McCarthyism, the development of second-wave feminism, and Civil Rights impacted her life and career. Her parents never quite reconciled themselves to her marrying a Jewish man and Ralph Ellison was a friend and frequent visitor.

In her later years, Jackson dealt with mental health problems, with something akin to a nervous breakdown and agoraphobia which significantly curtailed her life.

Never dull, always astute and sympathetic without being hagiographical, this is an engaging biography which makes me want to read and re-read everything Jackson ever wrote.

[Frank Errington · Rating 5 out of 5]

Review copy

Admittedly, I don't read a lot of biographies. Not my thing. Nothing against them, I just prefer to spend my time reading fiction. That being said, when I saw there was going to be a Shirley Jackson bio, I decided to get out of my comfort zone just a bit.

Shirley Jackson is perhaps most remembered for her short story, THE LOTTERY, and her novel, THE HAUNTING OF HILL HOUSE, but there is so much more to her short life.

The bio covers her childhood, college years (she wasn't a very good student), early published works, novels, family life, her troubles with anxiety and a period of agoraphobia, and ends with her untimely death.

Shirley Jackson was the mother of four. Two boys and two girls. Laurence (Laurie), Joanne (Jannie), Sarah (Sally), & Barry. Each unique in their own way and often fodder for lighter, more humorous stories she wrote, in sharp contrast to her more serious pieces. She also had a sense of humor about the children's misdeeds. One day Laurence, twelve or thirteen years old, balked when she told him to take a bath. Shirley went into the kitchen, came back with an egg, and smashed it on his head. "Now you need a bath," she told him.

Her husband, Stanley Hyman, was a firm believer in polyamorous relationships, much to Jackson's dismay, but despite numerous thoughts of divorce throughout the years, the couple remained married until her death in 1965.

Of the many quotes from Jackson's work included in her biography, there was one which seemed just as relevant today, as it was when written 60+ years ago. From THE WITCHCRAFT OF SALEM VILLAGE.

"We are not more tolerant or more valiant than the people of Salem, and we are just as willing to do battle with an imaginary enemy...The people of Salem hanged and tortured their neighbors from a deep conviction that they were right to do so. Some of our own deepest convictions may be false. We might say that we have far more to be afraid of today than the people of Salem ever dreamed of, but that would not really be true. We have exactly the same thing to be afraid of--the demon in men's minds which prompts hatred and anger and fear, an irrational demon which shows a different face to every generation, but never gives up its fight to win over the world."

The biography is certainly complete, right own to the seemingly most minor of details. As much a treatise on the times and the publishing industry in general as it was on the life of Jackson. Plus, there are a number of wonderful pictures interspersed throughout the book.

Recommended for all readers who are the least bit curious about Shirley Jackson.

Published by Liveright, a division of W.W. Norton & Company, Shirley Jackson: A Rather Haunted Life is available in hardcover, e-book, and audio formats.

From the author's bio. Ruth Franklin is a book critic and former editor at The New Republic. She has written for many publications, including The New Yorker, Harper’s, The New York Times Book Review, The New York Review of Books, and Salmagundi. She is the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship in biography, a Cullman Fellowship at the New York Public Library, a Leon Levy Fellowship in biography, and the Roger Shattuck Prize for Criticism. Her first book, A Thousand Darknesses: Lies and Truth in Holocaust Fiction (Oxford University Press, 2011), was a finalist for the Sami Rohr Prize for Jewish Literature. She lives in Brooklyn, New York.

[Robert · Rating 5 out of 5]

7/6/18: reread it this week and it’s even better than I’d remembered. Hats off to Ruth Franklin for a marvelous job of synthesizing all the facts of Jackson’s life into such a rich narrative.

A Rather Haunted Life is an excellent, highly readable biography of my favorite author, Shirley Jackson. It seems to have some real buzz, which is fabulous, as all modern day buzz for Jackson related books = long overdue. While I loved the 1988 biography Private Demons by Judy Oppenheimer, here Ruth Franklin takes a more rigorous, almost academic approach; she in fact presents as her thesis that Jackson’s writing acted as a sort of barometer to the fears and anxieties of women—especially housewives—during mid-twentieth century America; a proto-feminist, she created what Franklin calls “Domestic Horror.” I think this is an astute observation, and speaks to the fact that the mostly male (read sexist) arbiters of what is called the Literary Canon generally ignored or dismissed Jackson’s work after her death at age 48 in 1965. Despite this, Jackson was a very successful writer during her lifetime: penning the instantly immortal short story “The Lottery,” and bestselling, critically acclaimed novels like The Haunting of Hill House (for which she was nominated for the National Book Award) and We Have Always Lived in The Castle. She made her mark.

One thing with which I was taken aback was the highly negative assessment of Jackson’s husband, the noted critic Stanley Edgar Hyman. Though I knew from Oppenheimer’s book that Hyman could be an exasperatingly demanding and unfaithful spouse, Franklin-who had access to previously unavailable writings and personal correspondence-discloses that Jackson was far more resentful and emotionally battered by his critiques, demands and misbehavior than had previously been revealed, and had strongly entertained thoughts of leaving him through many years of their marriage. The scenario of leaving one’s established, shackled life for the freedom of the unknown thus played out in much of Jackson’s fiction, notably in such short stories as “Louisa Please Come Home,” “The Beautiful Stranger,” and “A Day in The Jungle,” as well as the unfinished novel Come Along with Me. (All fiction writing is autobiographical to some degree or another.) It broke my heart a little to know the depth to which Jackson was conflicted in her partnership with Hyman, despite their strong personal/professional bonds. Through her convincing, contextualized literary analysis, Franklin brings her subject to full, sympathetic, and fascinating life. I enjoyed A Rather Haunted Life very much and was genuinely sorry to see it end. If I have time I may write a more official review for Rain Taxi, but for now trust me, Shirley fans: you want to read this book. Five stars.

[Book Riot Community]

I technically have not finished reading this one, despite starting in August, but that’s because it is so so so so good that I am savoring every word. A loving tribute to my favorite author. One million thumbs up; all the stars.

–Annika Barranti Klein


from The Best Books We Read In November 2016: http://bookriot.com/2016/12/01/the-be...

[Teresa · Rating 4 out of 5]

I don’t read many biographies of writers, but when I do, I’m interested in the time, place, and people that influenced who they were and how that affected their writing. In Shirley Jackson’s case, the people were her mother and her husband, two strong individuals who demanded her conformity. If she partially gave into their demands—nothing she did was good enough for her mother, who represented conventional thinking and so-called Society—this biography shows how all of Jackson’s writings, including her ‘light’ fictional family memoirs, were fueled by her nonconformist inner life and her outsider status.

Starting with her childhood diaries, she kept one suitable for a prying mother to read and others, secret, containing a multitude of voices. She wrote chatty letters her mother, living on the other side of the country, expected, and at least one important letter that was never sent (same with a lengthy letter Jackson wrote to her husband).

Because I’d read the chronology of a Shirley Jackson Library of America volume, I didn’t learn much new as to the facts of her life in this biography. New to me were the details about Jackson’s mother and husband, some facts about the latter’s own publishing career maybe seeming extraneous but they didn’t overpower the story and were needed as to explaining the marriage’s dynamic.

I read an e-copy because of the libraries being closed. The format of the endnotes was frustrating, practically impossible to use effectively while reading the text—not the fault of the author of course.

[ALLEN · Rating 2 out of 5]

A disappointing book. Author Ruth Franklin begins with the premise that talented and accomplished author Shirley Jackson was a highly unhappy individual, and given the fact that she developed addictions to liquor, cigarettes, "diet" pills and even chocolate, then died at age 48 of heart failure in 1965, grossly overweight, that's not a difficult case to assert. It is, however, a tougher case to prove. Shirley Jackson succeeded at almost everything to which she put her mind, be it mystery short stories, intense novels, cultural milestones like "The Lottery," still widely anthologized, and her curious, satiric send-ups of Fifties life with small kids in a small town in Vermont (Bennington, where the college is), LIFE AMONG THE SAVAGES and RAISING DEMONS. Toward the end of her life she maintained an active (and lucrative) lecturing schedule and continued to throw "wing-ding" parties for her neighbors and the town's intelligentsia at which her firebrand husband (critic and professor Stanley Hyman) argued loudly and long into the night in sharp contrast to the mild-mannered soul portrayed in the life-with-kids comedies.

What adds interest but also hampers the overall motion of this biography is author Ruth Franklin's chronic motif that Shirley Jackson's life is to be viewed through the lens of modern "difference" feminism, fifty years after her death. Thus at times the reader will wonder how and why so much authorial effort was expended to "true" Jackson's life in terms of Sixties feminist writing, such as Betty Friedan's THE FEMININE MYSTIQUE (first published two years before Jackson's death), or the extent to which she was involved in white witchcraft -- an assertion which would certainly have shocked Jackson's husband, the Bennington townsfolk who considered her odd but hardly pagan, her four children, or even her readers.

In essence A RATHER HAUNTED LIFE, while not an unworthy book, is often a surprisingly inapposite one. After reading Judy Oppenheimer's 1998 bio of the deceased author, PRIVATE DEMONS, I was certainly quite aware of the earlier traumas and continuing stresses of this overachieving author, wife and mother's life and had hoped for more in a purely biographical vein. Yet, while there is plenty of room for secondary sources, I find it a pity that her four children, now all in their sixties and seventies and all alive, received so little personal attention in the compilation of this book.

Will A RATHER HAUNTED LIFE hold interest for motivated readers? If you are interested in Shirley Jackson's lives, both literary and personal, the answer has to be yes. (Though I still think Judy Oppenheimer's PRIVATE DEMONS is the better place to start.) Might you feel that a great opportunity to turn over more stones of her existence has been lost amid the welter of armchair discourse at five decades' remove? If you're like me, the answer is also yes. So read the book if you're interested, but if you think it involves more work to get at Shirley Jackson's life than is strictly necessary, I won't disagree with you.

Private Demons: The Life of Shirley Jackson

[Louise · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book was on so many “Best” lists of 2016 that I had to take notice. I relish a big thick well researched biography, and I was not disappointed.

Shirley grew up in a growing and wealthy suburb of San Francisco, an area which her maternal forbears helped develop and had profited from. Her father was hardworking and upwardly mobile rising to a CEO status that took the family to Rochester NY in Shirley’s late teens. Unfortunately for Shirley, she was not born the petite debutante that flourishes in her mother’s world and her mother never let her forget it. Shirley was emotionally abused at home and at school.

She was finally able to leave the home of her parental abusers when her father OK’d a transfer from the University of Rochester to Syracuse University. She achieved academically, finally had a trusted female friend, edited a literary magazine and met Stanley Hyman. In great offense to her parents (they being anti-Semitic and he being Jewish) she, at age 24, married him in 1940.

He was as much a bully as her parents. He forced her to accept his many infidelities, abdicated any responsibilities for the (4) children and hogged the family’s one typewriter. Despite time pressures and emotional battering (from Stanley, her mother and manuscript rejections) she slowly got some notice and her writing career grew (while Stanley’s, as a critic and academic, stalled). When her short stories started fetching $2,000 each, Stanley begrudged the time she was not writing.

Franklin shows how Shirley’s work reflects her personal life and while not considered political or feminist, her characters are a realistic portrayal of outsiders, minorities and women in the 1950’s world of conformity. For “Good Housekeeping” (appropriate to the times title) and similar glossies she writes of her children. While the stories are humorous, they often had a twist showing the pecking order or an unresolved issue of childhood. For the higher brow, stories such as “The Lottery” showed how groups can be orderly and polite without challenging a nasty underlying purpose.

You think of all the 1950’s housewives who, like Shirley, had to contend with a society that enabled husbands such as Stanley to dominate. Women who entered careers had to be very talented, brave and have strong social support. Shirley was enormously talented but it may have taken her best seller status to finally give her the bravery to confront her abusers. Franklin shows how Shirley was thinking about taking on her mother and was hinting that she was leaving. Was she really planning to escape the ungrateful Stanley (only 2 kids at home now) or did she know she was dying?

There were a lot of primary sources for author Ruth Franklin to work with: Shirley’s journal, drafts with notes, letters, and responses and interviews. The information is presented in a way that shows its relevance to her life. Transitions are smooth. The stories and novels are discussed, many with “spoilers”. The photos (all b & w) are good, but not all are on the appropriate page. The Index worked for me.

I’d have liked to know more about her children and how Stanley (who all too soon after Shirley’s death, married a former student 20+ years younger) fared with his children and his life.

I’ll have to read some Jackson novels.

This definitely earns its place on the “Best” lists.

[Ksenia · Rating 1 out of 5]

During the past year I have read multiple biographies, memoirs, and everything in-between ranging from excellent to barely mediocre. But none of them left me so enraged and disappointed and disgusted as ‘A Rather Haunted Life’ did, not for the contents but because of Ruth Franklin’s authorial approach.

There is something so deeply cruel and insidious in making Shirley Jackson, a woman who was abused, oppressed and disregarded her whole life, a secondary character in her own biography. In fact, after finishing this book I have felt like, somehow, my knowledge of Shirley went into the negative space. There is nothing personal about this book, nothing written with a humane and empathetic touch, no accounts of her friends, children, colleagues. Don’t worry - you will know for sure that she was overweight, had a difficult relationship with her mother, struggled with mental health issues, and was not liked by her neighbours - that will be repeated constantly throughout. But what ‘A Rather Haunted Life’ doesn’t explicitly tell you it really, truly is, is a love letter to Shirley Jackson’s husband - Stanley Hyman.

You know what I wanted from the biography of one of my most beloved writers? I wanted to know which poems Shirley quoted when she was a teenager. I did not want to know about Stanley Hyman. I wanted to know a recipe of her favourite dish, how she took her coffee, what was her favourite outfit to wear. I did not want to know about Stanley Hyman. I wanted to find out about what kind of teacher she was, what were her relationships and work set up with her agents and editors in a way greater detail than one paragraph. I wanted to know what happened to her children. I wanted to learn about her friendships, her obsessions, her inspirations, her witchcraft, her work progress start to finish, her grudges, and her intellectual quirks in a beautiful and moving way.
I did not want to know about Stanley Fucking Hyman.

He is like a tumour of this book - ever growing, constantly spreading, even in the deepest corner you can’t escape his influence. In fact, first 56-60% of the book (that is, about 350 pages) made Shirley seem like a distant, barely important nagging wife of this legendary literary genius. Even after death SJ cannot avoid being connected to some second - rate typically abusive critic dude whom she had a misfortune to marry.

This man have been destroying her emotionally and mentally throughout her entire adulthood and as a young woman. He controlled her, critiqued her looks, moods, work ethics, literally did not allow her to take breaks or time to herself, because she was a money making machine for him. He ditched his children, cheated cruelly and openly, spent all his time grooming young girls and being bitterly jealous of his wife‘s success as a writer. You can’t find a more pathetic character if you try to look for it.

And Ruth Franklin gives this guy the complete ownership of this book. She is always empathetic towards him, always finding absolutely ridiculous excuses for his abhorrent behaviour (oh but he didn’t sleep with his female students when he was their teacher, he did it after graduation; oh but he told Shirley he was a polyamorous guy; oh but his book took so long cause he was so busy with his professorial job, etc). The bias and venerable preferential tone is obvious, even if tried to be obscured. As I’ve said before, Franklin should have just written Stanley’s bio instead, but I guess maybe 5 people total would have bought it if the book didn’t have Jackson’s name on the cover. At best. Smart business decisions all around.

The author definitely put hours in and did her research. You can get a nice chronological layout of Shirley Jackson’s life, moves, and bibliography. This biography also has in-depth summaries and analysis bits of novels and short stories written by Shirley, which are the only thing that kept me going. But even then, every book is analyzed in the same context within the exact same margins:
1. Abusive mother
2. STANLEY (you thought you can escape him for a second? - not in this book!)
3. This novel is not about lesbians
4. Some vague statement about feminism, which is extremely dubious considering that I am having trauma from the Stanley exposure in the book that is supposed to be a story of a great and sensitive and misunderstood female writer.

And the thing is, Shirley Jackson is second to none. She is one of the most outstanding and brilliant writers in the history of literature period. She had an extremely difficult life, that pushed her to the brink of a total breakdown and ultimately killed her, and still she managed to leave a stunning mark, transcending form and genre. She deserved and deserve to be revered, to be front and centre of her own biography. Her whole life she tried to escape the clutches of her marriage; making her book so overwhelmingly about the husband was the most disappointing stance a biographer could have taken, in my opinion.

I am so mad I bought this book. Don’t buy it. Don’t reference it, find another biography to read or get familiar with Shirley’s autobiographical brilliant novels ‘Life Among the Savages’ and ‘Raising Demons’. As women, readers, and researchers we should do better by Shirley Jackson. She was so much more than a set of circumstances around her.

FUCK Stanley Hyman.

[Susan · Rating 5 out of 5]

I have long been a fan of Shirley Jackson’s writing and was intrigued to read her latest biography. To my shame, this has been on my TBR list for ever and I am so glad that I finally managed to get to it. I have read a previous biography of Jackson – “Private Demons: The Life of Shirley Jackson,” by Judy Oppenheimer and it seems odd that there was no other attempt to look at her life, and work, since that volume, in the late 1980’s. Thankfully, both the biographies I have read have been excellent and this one is certainly well researched, well written and looks at both her life, and writing, in depth.

Ruth Franklin looks at Jackson’s family history, before moving on to the marriage of Shirley’s parents. Shirley had a very difficult relationship with her mother, Geraldine, throughout her life. Her relationship with her mother was a central one, as was her relationship to her husband, Stanley Hyman. Franklin does a good job of explaining how Geraldine’s constant belittling of her daughter, conditioned Shirley to accept aspects of her marriage which she found difficult – including Stanley’s womanising.

Throughout her life, Shirley was full of conflict and contradictions. She wrote novels, and stories, which readers found disturbing and scary. Yet, she also wrote two volumes of family memoirs, which were comparably light-hearted and self-effacing. She loved her children, but chafed at the demands society made upon her as a wife and mother. She met Stanley in 1938 and he was very much a man of his time –unable even to make coffee and leaving the brunt of the housework (something which bored Shirley terribly) and childcare to his wife.

Although Stanley was a critic and book reviewer, as well as a successful teacher, Shirley out-earned him from a fairly early stage in their marriage, which suggested their household was not quite as typical as the times demanded. Also, for anyone who thinks that ‘the good old days,’ were full of charm and neighbourly companionship, then Jackson’s life, as well as her writing, will disabuse you of this idea. There are mentions of children throwing stones at Jackson, as she pushed a baby carriage, and even of someone hitting Shirley and Stanley’s son with a car, as the couple were viewed with disfavour by locals. Anti-Semitism, racism, unpleasant letters (reminiscent of pre-internet trolls), bullying teachers, locals who stick together – and turn their backs on their neighbours – show clearly where some of Jackson’s inspiration came from.

I really found this a fascinating book and feel it really helped me to understand Jackson’s work. I have refrained from reading all of her books, and stories, as I am loathe to finish them all. Without doubt, “We have always lived in the Castle,” is my favourite Jackson novel and I think she was simply brilliant – sharp, witty and delightfully dark. If you have already read the Oppenheimer book then be assured that this does have new material; including some very insightful correspondence that Jackson had with fans of her books, friends and family. Overall, I am very glad that I have read this and look forwards to reading, and re-reading, more by Jackson herself.

[Carla Remy · Rating 5 out of 5]

08/2022

A powerful biography, emotional. I suppose that's why it's subtitled A Rather Haunted Life.
Jackson's story The Lottery appeared in the New Yorker in 1946. It is about tradition and superstition. But the tradition is stoning a person to death, and it outraged or confused people. Imagine a short story being so famous that it haunted her to her death (in 1965).
She also had at least one 1950s bestseller writing about raising children. People would always comment on how someone could write such light family entertainment and then adult novels really delving into darkness.
Her marriage to Stanley Hyman was good (they had a real intellectual connection and 4 kids). .but it was also horrible (he didn't believe in monogamy). I never knew that they were close friends with Ralph Ellison. The two of them, Shirley and Stanley, were fat. Drinking, cigarettes, the kind of pills docs would prescribe in the 60s. Shirley also had worsening anxiety and developed agoraphobia for a while.

[Teenie · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book was too slow paced and boring. I wanted to know so much more about Shirley Jackson. She was such a unique person and a brilliant writer. The author just didn’t do it for me. She went on and on about her husband Stanley. She also had a lot to say about various family members of Shirley. I didn’t care for all that extra gibberish and I found it painfully dull.

[Daniel Chaikin · Rating 5 out of 5]

Shirley Jackson was fascinating and led a much too short but very crazy life, raising four kids and supporting the family with her income from publishing stories, parenting memoirs, and deeply complex novels. Her husband, Stanley Hyman, a professional critic, was as much a complication as a support. A free thinker, atheist, with Communist leanings, he was also a proponent of free love, spending college chasing other women, and telling Shirley about it. Then, when older, overweight, notably unattractive, and teaching at an all-women's college, he continued to search for other women (although apparently not on campus). He was also the first to discover Shirley, claiming, based off a Syracuse University newspaper short story, that he would marry that author. He was ultimately her best critic, and a decent posthumous promoter, for the few years he outlived her. Shirley Jackson, also overweight and with underdiagnosed health problems, died in 1965, age 48. Her youngest son was 13. Stanly died in 1970, he was 51.

One of the nice things that comes out of this biography is Jackson's development of her themes. All her work has underlying themes of fear and anxiety, and much of it touches on multiple personalities - things Jackson herself was dealing with in real life (albeit she was not schizophrenic). In a diary she wrote,

"I am writing about ambivalence but it is an ambivalence of the spirit, or the mind, not the sex...It is not a he or a she but the demon in the mind, and that demon finds guilts where it can and uses them and runs mad with laughing when it triumphs; it is the demon which is fear...We are afraid of being someone else and doing the things someone else wants us to do and of being taken and of being used by someone else, some other guilt-ridden conscience that lives on and on in our minds, something we build ourselves and never recognize, but this is fear, not a named sin. Then it is fear itself, fear of self that I am writing about...fear and guilt and their destruction of identity. Why am I so afraid?"

The writing process, at least with novels where she would continually rework them, would actually drive her to limits of sanity...but not judgment. As she developed, she ignored Stanley's criticism more and more, so he complained she listened to her daughter's criticism more than him, a professional critic (while she was writing [We Always Lived in the Castle]). Another cool thing was to see what kind of parent she was. Left to do all the parenting on her own, she was overwhelmed and yet a sincerely warm loving parent. (no Pearl Tull).

This biography is thorough, maybe too thorough. It's all here and covers about everything we know about her. It's not a perfect biography, but I'm really grateful to have listened to it.

-----------------------------------------------

66. Shirley Jackson: A Rather Haunted Life by Ruth Franklin
reader: Bernadette Dunne
published: 2016
format: 19:25 audible audiobook (608 pages in hardcover)
acquired: November 24
listened: Nov 24 – Dec 30
rating: 3
locations: San Francisco, New York, New Hampshire, Vermont
about the author: An American literary critic, former editor at The New Republic and an Adjunct professor at New York University's Arthur L. Carter Journalism Institute.

[Beth Bonini · Rating 5 out of 5]

Throughout her writing career, Shirley Jackson's output tended to take seemingly quite disparate forms: either domestic comedy, as exemplified by Life Among the Savages and the many short pieces she wrote for women's magazines during the late 1940s and 1950s, or the psychologically probing 'horror' stories responsible for her enduring literary fame. During her lifetime, many reviewers (and presumably readers) were apparently confused by her ability to switch between these genres; what biographer Ruth Franklin does so admirably is unify the two sides of Jackson's writing (ergo, personality).

In a chapter called "Garlic in Fiction," Franklin refers to the title of a lecture that Jackson gave about using symbols or motifs strongly but sparingly . . . rather like using a bit of garlic to flavour a dish. Franklin has used her own motifs in this biography: mothers, houses, witches and means of escape. Franklin argues, with unprecedented access to Jackson's private notebooks, letters and manuscripts, that these are the themes that formed Shirley Jackson - both as a person and an artist. I was very interested in Jackson as a person, but if you are interested primarily in the work there is plenty of insightful analysis of both in this biography.

Jackson was a huge personality and talent, both strong-willed and charismatic, but she had the misfortune in life of being undermined by the two people who ideally should have been her biggest supporters: her mother and her husband. One gets a strong sense of Jackson as a force of nature with a mother who would really prefer her to be slim, well-coiffed, submissive and just the same as everyone else. Jackson was way too big, in every sense, to be the ideal housewife and mother of the 1950s. Throughout their lives - and Jackson's mother would outlive her - mother and daughter were in constant touch, but never achieved an authentic relationship. On one occasion, after her mother had criticised a publicity photograph of her, Jackson wrote a scathing retort - a kind of eff-off letter - but she never sent it. It is one of two unsent letters, the other being a letter to Jackson's husband explaining why their marriage would end, which just tore at my heart. Despite her success as a writer and a mother, despite her many friendships and her appetite for life, there was much anger in Jackson's life - and she turned almost all of it inwards, where it manifested itself in anxiety and depression, or she channelled into her work.

Ruth Franklin does her best to give an impartial view of Jackson's husband, literary critic and Bennington professor Stanley Hyman. He and Jackson were clearly intellectual equals, and he was a big believer in her writing talent. They also shared many other interests, book-collecting for one, and food, and jazz. Franklin is at pains to show that Hyman was a hugely talented and caring teacher - even a legendary one - but as a husband, he was pretty awful. He cheated repeatedly on jackson, with both students and friends; he expected her to do all of the housework and childcare; and most astonishingly of all, he tightly controlled the money in the household despite the fact that Jackson out-earned him nearly all of their married life together. They were both lavish spenders, particularly on their passions (food and books), and tended to outspend their earnings. I found it extremely upsetting, though, that Hyman constantly pressurised Jackson to write - and resented any writing that wasn't commercial in intent.

Franklin is quite adroit at fixing Jackson - and her sexist marriage - within the context of mid-century America. One gets the feeling that Jackson may have even worked up the courage to leave Stanley if she had lived longer. Shockingly, and tragically, she was only 44 when she died. Franklin also addresses the Cold War fears which were percolating at the time. Despite the snugness and prosperity of 1950s America, there was a lot of corrosive anxiety at work in the internal structure. Again, Franklin places Jackson's life and writing firmly within the time she lived. There is a picture of Jackson that makes me think of my grandmother, both in positive and negative ways. Reading this biography felt very personal to me. It's a familiar landscape, with a generational (or two) remove. It certainly raised my feminist hackles - whilst giving me much compassion and admiration for its subject.

[Lauren · Rating 4 out of 5]

A smoothly written tour through the complex emotional life--and busy outer life--of Shirley Jackson, a particular favorite of mine. Franklin approaches Jackson evenhandedly, with just the little bit of partisanship that it's best for a biographer to have for their subject, and she selects her incidents well. The most dreadful sign in a biography is a lengthy section describing the person's childhood or, worse, the childhood of their great-grandparents, but Franklin handles both Jackson's family history and her earliest years briskly and efficiently and concentrates mostly on the duration of her career and her fascinating marriage to critic Stanley Hyman.

Jackson's career is an intriguing, bumpy story, illustrative of the odd routes writers can take to success. For years, despite the infamy brought to her by the publication of "The Lottery," one of the finest and most chilling short stories ever written, Jackson got most of her money, and a fair bit of her renown, from the "family stories" she published in women's magazines and her funny, sardonic memoirs of hectic housekeeping and motherhood. That combination perplexed and even annoyed some of her contemporaries, and I like that Franklin largely rolls her eyes at that: yes, Jackson could do more than one style very, very well. But that "cross-contamination" followed her throughout her publishing history, with interviews playing up her supposed spookiness or else being shocked by her ordinariness while reviewers took potshots at her "wasting her time" with the family stories, which they considered frivolities. It's probably not Jackson's ability to write across genre lines that's surprising now so much as her ability to make a very good living off short story publications and continue to be regarded as a literary success even though it took multiple novels for her to start earning back her advances, let alone getting royalties.

In addition to the fun of the inside baseball, Franklin also provides valuable analysis of the stories and novels themselves. She takes different critical paths than I would--it's my own folly to be annoyed by biographical criticism while reading a literary biography, so that's on me, at least--and she's sometimes dismissive of genre, and insistent that Jackson "transcends" it, but despite those occasional places of disagreement, I found her approaches interesting and illuminating. She's attentive to the more minor novels and the short stories as well as to the major works, as well, and that gives a fuller sense of Jackson's writing.

The only persistent quibble I had with the book is Franklin's treatment of Jackson's mother, Geraldine, who is essentially never mentioned without a side-swipe at her "carping" or "belittling," and whose remarks are always interpreted in the worst possible light. To be fair, there are a few excerpts from Geraldine's letters to her daughter that are almost cartoonishly awful--mostly concerning Jackson's weight--but they don't seem like enough reason to view the woman's every assertion as passive-aggressive and to constantly link every snobbish woman in Jackson's stories with her mother. Stanley Hyman receives a much fuller and more complex portrait here as a brilliant, loving, and very flawed man who had a firm belief in his wife's art but who nevertheless sometimes belittled and bullied her (in their later years, he remonstrated her for writing letters or anything else that wouldn't bring in money) and cheated on her as a matter of routine. Franklin takes him to task for his faults but celebrates his virtues and his better moments, and there's even a genuine tearjerker in the mention that after Jackson's death, he was unable to continue using the yellow paper they had always shared. Some of that sense of psychological richness and understanding could have rubbed off on Geraldine, as well.

That richness is given over consistently to Shirley Jackson, however, and it makes for a very readable, pleasurable biography, even as Franklin reaches the more difficult passages in Jackson's life, like her onset of agoraphobia and her health problems. The ultimate impression is of a deeply smart woman with deep feelings that she could only sometimes express, either because of innate and trained reserve or because no one was willing to listen. It's our good luck that she was able to translate that sense of dark, disconcerting undercurrents beneath placid ordinariness into some genuinely superb fiction.

[Lee · Rating 4 out of 5]

4.5

'Eleanor awakens in the night to hear a voice babbling in the next room and clutches at the hand of Theodora, sleeping beside her. The voice turns into the cry of a child, sobbing, “Please don’t hurt me. Please let me go home.” She screams; the lights go on, and she sees that Theodora is not next to her after all, but in bed across the room. “God God,” Eleanor says, “whose hand was I holding?”

If this, as Jackson wrote in her notes on one of the drafts, is the “key line” of the novel, what does it mean? The critic Daryl Hattenhauer has argued that Eleanor is holding her own hand, but the novel indicates that this is not the answer: at one point during the scene Eleanor clutches the other hand with both of hers. Another scholar writes, similarly, that Eleanor’s fear comes from her disillusionment: she thought that she had company in the dark, but finds herself alone yet again. An alternate interpretation also seems possible. The people we hold by the hand are our intimates—parents, children, spouses.

To discover oneself clinging to an unidentifiable hand and to ask “Whose hand was I holding?” is to recognize that we can never truly know those with whom we believe ourselves most familiar. One can sleep beside another person for twenty years, as Shirley had with Stanley by this point, and still feel that person to be at times a stranger—and not the “beautiful stranger” of her early story. The hand on the other side of the bed may well seem to belong to a demon.'

[Betty · Rating 2 out of 5]

Too many tangents.
reflections: When I was a teenager, Shirley Jackson was a huge part of my literary upbringing. Back then, I read everything about her as well as by her. So I was eager to read her biography.

The author of Jackson's newest biography gives a too-long chapter: "Foundations" about Jackson's ancestors. The chapter explains why she wrote spooky stories about haunted houses. Her maternal ancestors were architects of mansions in California and fans of the supernatural such as the Ouija board. The fact that Shirley's mother was overly-critical goes on to tell why there are no loving maternal characters in her novels.

The author goes off on several tangents throughout the book. One example is the description of the Witch Trial years in Massachusetts. True, Shirley wrote about witches, however I felt the author attempted to pad the biography in order to add more pages. Six hundred twenty four pages!

While reading the biography, I also googled to find and read some of Jackson's short stories on the internet. Charles is exactly as I remember it from the first time I read it.

My perspective: a shorter biography would have packed a better punch at describing Shirley Jackson, her life and its influence upon her writings.

[Grady Hendrix · Rating 4 out of 5]

Great biography that tells you everything you ever wanted to know about Shirley Jackson's life and career, but I'm miffed the author leaves out the fact that Stanley Hyman's parents may have rejected him for marrying Shirley, but they became doting grandparents and an essential part of Stanley and Shirley's life afterwards.

[Jeanette]

No rating. The book is decent but it's filled with tangents and more about her husband's work/ onus, IMHO than I have interest to know. Also the core of Shirley's personality and papers is so off-putting to me that I don't find much more of her "depth" or why she is always so defensive- while reading such lengths of her whines and dissatisfaction. She also lead such a privileged life in a time when most were literally starving that I find her blindness to any of her luckier placement realizations just too too.

She didn't fit into her birth family well. She was chronically miserable in her own body quite beyond the mental function states of her own thoughts and emotions. She could write well and especially could describe a dichotomy of self-negation fighting purposeless futility for searching for something she could never define. And I find that I know far more of her from her fiction than from the interpretation of this biography.

Not the fault of the writer. But I need non-fiction that is far more focused by topic than this one was. It's verbose too, and should have been edited. I got to 30% and I did skim read further sections. But I'll not rate it- it's at least a 3 for the first source materials.

Shirley's youth diaries are pitiful, IMHO. As much as she seems searching or at times craving approvals, she's still solidly narcissistic too.

[Nina · Rating 1 out of 5]

It's possible that if I hadn't previously read Judy Oppenheimer's excellent biography, Private Demons: The Life of Shirley Jackson I might have liked this book, but I doubt it. At nearly twice the length of the Oppenheimer book, one would have hoped for even more insight into Jackson, her life and her writings. Unfortunately the extra pages are devoted to what is essentially an unnecessarily extensive co-biography of Stanley Hyman, Jackson's husband, and various extended digressions on subjects ranging from the Salem Witch Trials to the history of Bennington College. Oddly, given the amount of space devoted to Hyman's life and work and the importance of her family to Jackson, the book ends quite abruptly with her death, giving a list of the various people who sent condolences and devoting a mere three paragraphs to the next 4 months in Hyman's life. There is not a single mention of how her children managed afterwards nor any discussion of Hyman's marriage, less than a year after Jackson's death, to one of his students. Do yourself a favor - give this one a skip and read the Oppenheimer instead. It's much more readable and authentic to jackson's memory.

[Bon · Rating 4 out of 5]

I found this super interesting and relatable at times, and it held my attention entirely for its 600+ pages worth of content. The narrator was great.

[Amanda · Rating 4 out of 5]

I really enjoyed listening to the audiobook of this biography. It is organized somewhat chronologically, with each chapter dealing with a work of Jackson's and a general theme in her life. There are lots of spoilers for her works, but that didn't bother me even though I've read nothing by Jackson. This an important work discussing women torn between their identities as workers and mothers because of societal expectations and judgements.

[Susan Albert · Rating 5 out of 5]

My experience of Shirley Jackson began with her two memoirs, Life Among the Savages (1952) and Raising Demons (1957), both genuinely funny, clever, and endearing. I discovered them when I was a young mom with small children, just learning how to write and wanting a writing career. Especially in those books, Jackson seemed like a perfect--and perfectly inspiring--model. I met the "other" Jackson--the Jackson of "The Lottery," The Haunting of Hill House, and We Have Always Lived in the Castle--much later, and found the light and dark aspects of this fragmented, complicated woman very difficult to reconcile.

Ruth Franklin has made sense of Shirley Jackson for me. In a biography that is detailed and nuanced without ever losing the story line, Franklin pulls together all the various dimensions of a multi-dimensional character who doesn't fit the two-dimensional world she lives in. She shows us a writer (also a mother and wife) who is beset by her own personal demons, raised in a culture that can't adequately recognize or value her talents, married to a man who has to belittle his wife in order to boost himself, writing for editors and readers who admired her virtuosity but were bewildered by the meaning of her serious work. Given all these pushing-pulling forces, it is no wonder that Jackson's creative work takes such complex forms or was so little understood in her lifetime--and rather better understood now.

One of the things I like best about Franklin's biography is the way she sets her subject into her time and place. We women who were painfully wedged between the fixed gender expectations of the 1950s and the Second Wave feminism of the uncertain 1960s can recognize ourselves in Jackson's fiction, Franklin says, for it is “nothing less than the secret history of American women of her era.” Jackson's magazine fiction brings us the cheery misadventures of a mom raising four independent-minded children in an impossible-to-manage old house. Her novels and many of her stories offer a macabre Gothic vision in which girls and women are captured (both literally and metaphorically) by houses from which there is no escape, by families in which there is no survival, by desires for which there is no consummation. Between these poles, Franklin asks, where are women to find themselves?

Franklin's biography helped me make sense not only of Jackson's psychological contradictions but of two puzzling decades in my own life, when I was trying to manage the contradictory responsibilities of being a mother, a wife, a student, a writer. For that, and for its clear and consistent reading of Jackson's often baffling work and its appreciation of Jackson's pared-down prose, I am grateful.

Highly recommended.

[Theo Logos · Rating 4 out of 5]

Shirley Jackson is one of the giants of 20th century literature. This wasn’t a fact that was widely acknowledged during her lifetime, despite her fame and success as a writer. She never won any major writing awards or honors. The fact that she wrote bright domestic stories for women’s magazines as well as serious, Kafkaesque fiction constantly confounded the (mostly male) critics, who failed to see the dark shadows in her domestic tales, or the themes that tied all her work together.

Ruth Franklin has written a biography worthy of such an important voice. She highlights Jackson’s importance as a writer emphasizing women’s issues and voices. She delves into her deeply conflicted relationship with domesticity. Her problematic family relationships — a difficult mother she could never please, an unfaithful husband who often ignored her — are linked to the anxiety that haunts all her best work. Perhaps more than most writers, and certainly more obvious than most, Jackson’s life and writing were inseparably linked, and Franklin’s bio captures that brilliantly.

[Diane S ☔ · Rating 3 out of 5]

Thoughts soon.

[Melora]

Okay, on page 114 out of 500 pages of text (not counting the notes), and I'm abandoning this, at least for now. I recently really enjoyed Jackson's short novels, We Have Always Lived in the Castle and The Haunting of Hill House, and of course I read The Lottery when I was in high school, and this biography of the author seemed intriguing. I was interested in the fact that she was famous for her humorous magazine stories about family life, which were published in women's magazines in the 50's (and later gathered in Life Among the Savages and Raising Demons), as well as for her unsettling stories and novels delving into superstitious, cruel aspects of the human psyche. I supposed that this would explore the elements in her life, reading, friendships, etc. that led to such an odd juxtaposition. And maybe it does, but at this point I've been bogged down for what seems like forever in the unappealing details of Jackson's early years with her (not yet) husband, Stanley Hyman, and I can't take any more. The earlier part of this book was somewhat interesting -- I really liked the family history stories involving architects and the strange houses they built, and felt like it gave insight into the weird house in The Haunting of Hill House. Moving on to Jackson's life, though, things became increasingly dull. She does not come across as a pleasant or kind person, but her unappealingness is nothing compared with that of Stanley Hyman. The author, unfortunately, includes excessively intimate details from his letters (as well as one of his truly execrable poems!) in which he describes to Shirley, his then-girlfriend, his sordid sexual exploits. It was at the description of how he kept Shirley's birth control device, a "pessary", while they were apart for the summer, and showed the thing off to friends (I had a horrible fear that I was going to read about how he let the other women he slept with use it, since Franklin explains that such devices were hard to obtain, but either he didn't or at least not yet) that I remembered that I don't have to read any more of this. I bought the dang thing, but at this point I'm wasting time as well as money. So. I may pick this up again sometime, particularly if I enjoy Life Among the Savages, which is in my TBR stack. Jackson is a powerful writer, and perhaps if I try this again I'll skip forward a bit to her family years.