The Letters of Shirley Jackson

by Shirley Jackson

  by the way, yesterday i got a call from new york from elizabeth young*13—remember her? she is visiting in new york this week, and wanted me to come in and see her, but i used my only blouse going to see franchot and so i persuaded her to come out here. she is coming tomorrow, for the day, and it will be nice to see her again. she always sounds so sad, and i suppose she has every right to be, living all alone and working and trying to bring up her little girl.

  we all wish you would plan to come soon again. and i’m glad you liked the book.

  we all send lots of love.

  s.

  • • •

  [To Bernice Baumgarten]

  Friday, June 1, 1951

  Dear Bernice,

  Hope these are OK. And that the treasures of Egypt are to be poured into our laps.

  As I said yesterday on the phone, without this money I’d be in desperate financial trouble, but if there’s any way to get it honestly, like from story sales, I’d love to go with you when you are able to tell Hakim in a few terse words what you think of his business deals.

  The whole thing is entirely yours, and any decision you make is OK with me, particularly a decision to have H. eat these contracts word by word while you and I jump up and down on his stomach.

  We entertained the Farrars yesterday with fancy dinners and whatnot, and Stanley says it ought to put at least another thousand on the next advance.

  If I have my baby before these contracts are worked out I will name him Franchot.

  Best,

  S.

  • • •

  [Note: To Ann Harding, undated, but probably June 1951]

  Dear Miss Harding,

  Thank you for your kind and explanatory letter. Although I am very enthusiastic, and can see great possibilities in your plan, I still have a few questions.

  1. To what extent would technical television knowledge be necessary on my part? As you know, I have no experience with television whatsoever, and know very little about any form of dramatic presentation.

  2. Do you want to use those stories you mentioned (such as Daemon Lover; I should think you could do a marvelous job with that) as plays, adapted for television, or do you want, rather, new and original stories? I think that, on the whole, the stories already written might be better, particularly since you see several of them as “plays” already. The Tooth occurs to me, along with The Daemon Lover and one I should like to send you, as the most promising ones to start work from. The one I should like to send you was not in the book, but appeared in the Woman’s Home Companion last year; it is called The Magician (although they called it Kitchen Magician) and is a much lighter and gayer story than the others and would be, I think, valuable as a sort of comic relief, if it could be done at all.

  3. As you know, I have a great interest in the almost-supernatural and the sort of dream-like plot; would you think that any such would work out? I think that television would be an amazing medium for such effects; what do you think? I am, as I say, excited by the whole idea and hope that we can work out something together.

  The device of making thoughts audible seems like a good one (perhaps using a narrator?) but wouldn’t it be possible, too, in a visual medium like television, to use as much action as possible in substitution for thoughts? That is, in Daemon Lover, for instance, a series of nervous maneuvers with the clock might be much more vivid than a series of heard statements about the time; a certain amount of the audible thought would be necessary, of course, but, if I understand your plans correctly, we ought to avoid the “arty” and “experimental” sort of thing as much as possible. I do not know the extent to which a camera may be manipulated in a television program (or in anything, for that matter; my work has always been directly with a typewriter and a sheet of paper) but it seems to me that imaginative camera work could do as much as anything to create the effects of indecision and fear. As far as other characters are concerned (I am thinking of The Tooth, for instance) they could be suggested rather than portrayed by a sort of stylized pattern—the dentist’s office, say, is a familiar enough sight to everyone not to require any time spent introducing it, so that a very brief total-effect picture of a dentist’s office, emphasizing mainly his ghastly tools, would be adequate to create a whole atmosphere of dentistry and would need then the dentist only as a voice, speaking in that horrible familiar tone dentists use.

  These are, of course, only timid attempts to discover what possibilities there might be in a substitution of television for fiction. I see stories as in paragraphs and pages, and find it bewildering, but fascinating, to try to translate them into pictures.

  Sincerely,

  Shirley Jackson

  • • •

  [To Geraldine and Leslie Jackson]

  june 22 [1951]

  dearest mother and pop,

  i’ve delayed a long time in writing because i’ve been trying to get some stuff done and maybe make some money. now that hangsaman is out i can hit the publishers for a new advance; no stories have sold since the first of this year, and the only excuse is that it’s the worst year for fiction they have ever known; no books are selling, no magazines are selling, and so no one is buying anything to print. they blame it on television, of course. lottery is being done again on television, by the way, on cameo theatre, so keep an eye out for it. it is as atrocious a production as i have ever seen.

  my movie career moves on slowly. turns out that franchot, who loves a dollar better than his right eye, finally brought himself to sign a contract saying that they would pay me two thousand dollars in two installments if they couldn’t find any possible way of getting out of it. one thousand has already been paid, franchot doing everything but counting it out penny by penny, and arguing every minute (my agent said that up till the last minute she thought they were going to stop payment on the check, and that even after it had been deposited and mailed to me they were still calling her trying to get more concessions on the contract, and trying to make us pay for their lawyer) and the second payment is due on june 25th, if franchot doesn’t shoot himself in despair over it. poor bernice, my agent, has put more energy into this contract than into anything else in years. both bernice and i were ready to quit the whole thing half a dozen times, but every time it sounded like we were ready to quit franchot would give in quick and we’d start all over. anyway, the first draft is done, and they seem to like it. we carefully fixed it, bernice and i, figuring that a little plotting on our part was indicated, so that although they own the first draft, no one can possibly enlarge it into a screen play except me. the whole thing is set up so that the characters have to be developed exactly right in order to hold it together, and bernice made it perfectly clear to franchot that i had mountains of notes which would explain exactly how to do this, but of course this would cost money. franchot apparently turned pale and went off to lie down. but we paid part of our bank loan and our taxes, and if they come through with the rest we won’t be in bad financial shape, particularly not if good old john farrar comes through with three thousand dollars advance for the new novel. bernice and i have now become the most mercenary pair alive, having learned from franchot. anyway, we’ve been having a fine time. hakim, the business manager, who read the script first, came to bernice with tears in his eyes and said that miss jackson was a really sincere author, one with true heart, and that for the first time isadora had become real to him. considering that i did the script in two evenings, i’m proud of getting that much heart in it.

  hangsaman is selling as well as might be expected these days. the first edition is not quite sold out, and it doesn’t look like there will be any second edition; again, they blame publishing conditions, since the reviews were almost all enthusiastic. i have been getting a good deal of fan mail on it, which of course is flattering, and several letters from college girls, saying that the same
thing has happened to them. i have to answer them all, of course, and i have no idea what to say to the college girls, except that they’ll probably outgrow it.

  no day without some excitement. just had a phone call from a guy who said he was from the curtis publishing company, and that the ladies’ home journal was running a story of mine this week; i said they were? not remembering that they bought the story a year ago and probably just got around to it. he said he had been searching indian hill road for a sign saying jackson and finally went down to our local drug store, where no one knew who i was (i am only in there seven times a day, and mr and mrs baer both know me perfectly well; they must have thought he was a bill collector.) until mrs baer caught my son and asked him what his mother’s name was, and he thought she was crazy and said his mother’s name was mrs hyman, of course, and they asked him if i wrote stories and he thought and thought and finally said yes, he believed i did. so they immediately called me and we got it straightened out; they wanted to see me about publicity, and i told them how to get here, so they just came. they have it all set i should appear on a connecticut radio show and a connecticut television show next week. stanley kept trying to keep a straight face, and i kept sort of saying weakly oh no not television, but it has been settled, and so next week, if it becomes final and definite, which it still please heaven may not, i got to go to new haven to be on a local television program on a channel we don’t get, and then i got to go to bridgeport to be on a radio program at ten in the morning on a station i bet we don’t get either. and when laurie comes home for lunch i am going to beat his head in.

  we’ve been going to the beach nearly every day, and we are all nice and sunburned, except for joanne, who has her usual beautiful tan. joanne got promoted to the first grade, and laurie got promoted to the fourth. joanne of course did not get a report card, but laurie’s card was exceptionally good; he has improved in everything, having lost so much ground after his accident, and in art has showed unusual progress. he is very proud of himself. he and stanley had an awful fight in the barber shop yesterday, because laurie got in ahead of stanley and told the barber he wanted his hair indian style, with a long ridge down the center and shaved off completely on the sides. the barber was reluctant, and checked with stanley, and stanley nearly lost his voice, although fortunately not entirely. laurie took the position that it was his head and he was going to do what he liked with it. stanley took the position, which i don’t think was quite tenable under the circumstances, that so long as he paid for the haircut he could say what it would be like. stanley won, of course, but not by convincing anyone.

  as i said, no day without excitement. since i wrote the last line, we have managed to pack the morning full. turns out that what laurie bought at the store was not gum, but marshmallows and matches (is mrs baer crazy, do you think, to sell matches to laurie and three of his small friends?) and the kids built a campfire in the field next to our house and began to roast marshmallows but of course the fire got out of control and they came screaming into the house and stanley had to go out with the fire extinguisher and put it out; he was so frightened he wasn’t even mad at first, but after he got the fire out he sent laurie’s friends home and then gave laurie what must be the worst whipping laurie has ever had and the way it stands now laurie is in bed for the day and probably for the rest of the summer. in the middle of laurie’s whipping good old bernice called me to say that the way franchot is talking now they intend to go right into the screen play—more money for me, tra-la—and would i like to go to paris for three weeks? she said she told them i wouldn’t go without my husband and they said they would talk it over among themselves. she also remarked that she had made a small sale—a magazine named woman’s day has bought a story for seven hundred and fifty, which makes a substantial difference in everything. anyway laurie’s punishment got much lighter when i came in and told stanley—instead of being shut up in his room for the whole summer he may be able to come out around the middle of july.

  elmira and stanley are outside the window playing horseshoes. they play every afternoon, elmira because she wants to take a couple of inches off her waistline and stanley because he likes to play. it looks from here like elmira is winning; she just made a ringer.

  i finally went to the doctor, who is in bridgeport and supposedly a very modern and excellent character; our doctor here recommended him. he turned out to be very nice, and made everything seem so simple and relaxed. i feel fine, have no trouble at all, and have his official permission to drive to canada july 5th; the doc says it’s okay if i stop every couple of hours and have some light refreshment. i said i had never turned down a chance at light refreshment in my life.

  almost time for the ballgame.

  lots of love from all,

  s.

  • • •

  “One thing you gotta have, dear, is exercise. So rock me a little, will you?”

  [To Geraldine Jackson]

  [September 1951]

  dear mother,

  a small letter to let you know that i went to the doc today and everything is very odd indeed. i am in fine shape, but he is very perplexed because according to all figuring the baby should not be due until thanksgiving but according to position and heartbeat and stuff it should be coming along any minute. actually, he said in about two weeks, but then he got very cautious and backtracked; he says i should count definitely on having the baby certainly by the end of october, and probably sooner.*14

  naturally i find this wonderful. imagine saving that month…altogether the doc left me feeling that i could be ready to go to the hospital tonight or on hallowe’en, but it certainly explains why i’ve been feeling so lousy for the last few weeks, if i have been much farther along than i thought, and have been racing around as though it were only about the sixth month. i had the baby stuff ready and my suitcase packed in july. all i’ve got to do is convince stanley, who is nervously figuring world series tickets; he had thought i would still be able to go (that is, if brooklyn plays, which i suppose they will) but that was when he thought i would have a clear month; i suppose laurie will get to go in my place. he and laurie are going to the game on saturday.

  i’ll only be in the hospital five days—the bridgeport hospital. i have five mystery stories in my suitcase, and my fancy nightgowns. the doc asked if i was interested in this childbirth without fear stuff and i told him certainly not. i told him to lay in an extra supply of soothing sedatives and he said take a stiff drink before you leave the house.

  love,

  s.

  • • •

  [To Bernice Baumgarten]

  September 17 [1951]

  Dear Bernice,

  The main thing that concerns me about Mayes*15 and the story he turned down is whether or not the story served to help convince him that my intentions were honest; do you think he found the story enough along their lines, although not quite right, so that he believes I am seriously trying to do one suitable for him? Because I really thought that that story was it, not having perceived the strong moral stand it might offend.

  The Farrars, who are back from their trip, are planning to come up here on Friday, in theory to discuss Abigail,*16 but probably in fact to discuss the Yankees’ chances, a subject upon which John and Stanley disagree violently. I have given some thought to the book, and have a couple of fine ideas for working on it to make everybody happy. If I didn’t need the money so wildly—the price of babies has gone up faster than the price of beef—I’d set it aside for a while, but I hate to postpone a potentially satisfying book, and of course hate to throw away all that work.

  I am still hovering between three and four children, and all my plans are tentative and uneasy. I am not allowed to do so many things that most of what I do do is sit at my desk and snarl, and if anyone crosses me I clutch my stomach and gasp. I’m enthusiastically tired of the whole
project; it’s much worse than having a book. And I still have no fourth baby plot.

  Best,

  Shirley

  • • •

  [To Bernice Baumgarten]

  September 27 [1951]

  Dear Bernice,

  Thanks for The Lie, which looks dismayingly big. I’m afraid that the revisions, although I am anxious to get to them, will have to wait for a while; I find myself not able to concentrate for any length of time, and do things sort of an inch at a time.

  I have gotten to the point where I am taking mystery stories out of my suitcase to read; this is the ultimate resignation.

  Did you hear from the Farrars? They were most discouraging about Abigail, John going so far as to say it was dull, and convinced me that before trying to go on with it I ought to think much more about what I wanted to do with it. As with everything else, I have put it off to solve later, and am meanwhile concentrating on the Savages book.*17 With any luck, you should see it in a couple of months.

  The children no longer believe this nonsense about a new baby. They all sat and laughed when I brought out the old bassinet and washed it and set it up, and the girls figured it was for a doll bed. What has happened to faith?

  Best,

  S.

  • • •

  [To Bernice Baumgarten]

  Oct. 23, 1951

  Dear Bernice,