shirley jackson a rather haunted life by ruth franklin

Her legacy continues, with the reissue of her novels by Penguin Classics, and a film loosely based on her life, Shirley.Ī Rather Haunted Life by Ruth Franklin, a thrilling and masterful biography, reveals Shirley Jackson as an artist with extraordinary insight. “The Lottery” made Shirley Jackson a literary celebrity. “Bewilderment, speculation, and plan old-fashioned abuse.” She said, “if the letter writers could be considered to give any accurate cross section of the reading public. Jackson received letters as well, and placed them in three piles. After it was published in The New Yorker in 1948, the magazine received letters calling “The Lottery” “outrageous, “gruesome,” and “utterly pointless.” The New Yorker had never received so much mail in response to a work of fiction. Jackson was confronting conformity at a time when the individual wasn’t valued. They were regular people, going about their regular lives in their bucolic village. It was the first story that truly disturbed me the stoning of an innocent woman was a shock. My first encounter with Shirley Jackson was reading “ The Lottery” in junior high. And just as Jackson's work deftly probed the darker recesses of the human psyche - most notably that of women isolated by societal constraints and demands - Franklin's absorbing exploration of the gifted writer is a deeply satisfying portrait of a modern literary luminary.Shirley Jackson: A Rather Haunted Life is a biography of horror fiction writer Shirley Jackson by Ruth Franklin. In this sprawling biography, Ruth Franklin delves deep into Jackson's life - her childhood in California and rocky New England adolescence, her complex marriage to literary critic Stanley Edgar Hyman, her struggle to reconcile motherhood and career, her sometimes crippling battle with fame. Today Jackson is considered a modern master, her canon encompassing such 'domestic horror' masterpieces as The Haunting of Hill House and We Have Always Lived in the Castle, as well as the sly fictionalized family memoir Life Among the Savages. In June 1948, The New Yorker published a 'bombshell' short story about a small-town lottery with a brutal twist, shocking American readers and catapulting author Shirley Jackson to literary prominence. 'I'll just put down housewife,' the clerk told her. As she would tell it, the clerk who admitted her asked her to state her occupation. Four months after 'The Lottery' was published, Jackson arrived at the hospital to give birth to her third child.

Shirley jackson a rather haunted life by ruth franklin