i hated chicago; i loved the city but the university is a mess. they were very nice to me but the schedule was so wearing that i thought i wouldn’t make it; they want an awful lot for their money.
because the little morris was beginning to be kind of shaky i went down to the car store a few days before we left and bought a brand new mg sedan, bright red, and we took it on the trip; that was the nicest thing of all, because although the car is officially a sedan it is really a sports car, and drives like one. on those long flat midwestern roads i had a wonderful time. also all our expenses were paid and we made enough in lecture fees to pay for the car. everyone at syracuse was very full of hints and suggestions, because although it is an official secret everyone knows that they are giving me an arents medal in june; i got the official announcement just before we left. they give three medals and it is the occasion of our class’ twenty-fifth reunion. what they don’t know is that i would have to be out of my mind to go and get it; i wouldn’t go back to that reunion for anything. also such an acknowledgement from syracuse after all these years is not really as much of a compliment as they seem to think it is. they want me to show up in formal clothes at a banquet and all kinds of reunion events and i am writing to say no thanks.
we left two college girls with sally and barry while we were gone and everything went fine except that barry badly needs a haircut; the college girls couldn’t persuade him.
corinne is here for a week with the kids, laurie coming this weekend, they are all fine but glad to get out of the city for a while. laurie is not at all happy in his job and is trying hard to get something else, but without much luck. both children are getting so big and so handsome, and miles is going to nursery school in the fall. gretchen is very pretty and looks very much like corinne.
can you imagine: dinner at the home of the president of chicago university, twelve people, lovely table setting, and the hostess announces that oh, she is very sorry, but there isn’t enough roast beef; anyone who really wants a second helping can take scraps from the platter.
i have to write them a thank-you letter.
we went to places like columbus ohio, which is a crazy city, full of wild architecture, and for some reason a mining town in west virginia which was ghastly, and we were at elmira new york, about three hundred miles from home, when the heat finally got to both of us and we gave up and checked into a motel and turned the air conditioner on full and just sat there. and we got caught one day driving along the banks of the allegheny which we mistakenly supposed would be a resort area but was instead deserted and uninhabited and finally came to a horrid little joint called peg’s tavern and motel, six pink stucco motel units and a roadside tavern, and had to stay there and it was incredibly clean and the air conditioning was new and very strong so the room was like a refrigerator but otherwise very primitive and we spent the evening sitting at the bar in the tavern with peg and her husband al, talking about pennsylvania and vermont and raising kids and cats and peg took some hamburger out of the freezer and made us dinner. it was a better dinner than the president’s, and i am going to write peg a thank-you letter.
i am supposed, again as part of my resident lecturer bit, to write a confidential report on what i thought of chicago and the students and their life. i am afraid that if i did write such a report they would not be pleased; i never saw such dull drab creatures as those students; we are spoiled by the bennington girls who are full of ideas and enthusiasm; these kids in chicago only wanted to get their papers written and their homework done so they could get out of the place. they rarely see their teachers, have enormous classes with no individual attention, and during their first two years at least they are not encouraged to do any individual work; one of the girls said she wanted to write and i said then why didn’t she and she said if she wrote a story there was nothing to do with it; no one to read it, no one to criticize, she would have to leave it in a desk drawer. and i asked another if there was any student rebellion, as there has been in every other college we have visited, kids up in arms about civil rights and such, and these kids just stared at the idea, completely apathetic. it was really bad to see them without any excitement or enthusiasm at all. and no interest in anything.
well, as you can see i disliked chicago. no child of mine will ever go there. neither will I ever go there again.
but i must write them thank-you letters. right now. the laundry has piled up while we have been gone and i can’t find anything in the kitchen and i am supposed to be writing a book. back to work.
love from all,
s.
• • •
“There’s an old proverb says I cannot dismount.”
[To Libbie Burke]
June 14, 1965
Dear Lib,
The eye doctor said I needed bi-focals. So instead I got two pair of glasses, one near- and one far-seeing, and now I have to change glasses to look up a number in the telephone book.
We were sorry we missed your dinner party and even sorrier to miss you before you left, but surely we will get together soon? Everyone said your dinner was lively and gay, which is certainly more than one could say about our entertainment at Bard, although the students were most earnest and sincere and had lots of real good questions to ask. We stayed in a boys’ dorm and after we were put in for the night I was not allowed outside the door, although the Clay-Liston fight was being broadcast in the room across the hall. By the time Stanley managed to sneak me in the fight was over.
Our big news right now is that our young Sally has sold her first story, for $250 to something called The Gentleman’s Quarterly. She wrote the story when she was fourteen—sixteen now—and it is a good start. I sold my first story for $25; there is a moral in there somewhere.
We are still pursuing Lake Shaftsbury;*36 it is so beautiful and so perfect and so possible that we are very excited; you are interested, are you not? Stanley will keep you posted on our progress.
Commencement week, with parties, parents, and papers, is upon us. Our Jai stage-managed “The Balcony,” which was well stage-managed, but my, what a lousy play. Towards the end of the first act it occurred to me suddenly and vividly that if i heard the word “illusion” or the word “function” once more I was very likely going to be publicly sick, and then I realized that if I was publicly sick I would no doubt be regarded as part of the play’s action, so I got up and fled to the open air and never went back. The rest of our crew stayed till the very end and said it got worse and worse. But it was very well stage-managed.
I must start making lunch now, which means I must change my glasses.
Love from all to all.
Best,
S.
• • •
[To Carol Brandt]
June 8 [1965]
Dear Carol,
If nothing goes amiss, we expect to be in New York the week of June 20th. Any chance of seeing you? Ought I to write Cork Smith?
Working hard.
Best,
Shirley
• • •
[To Carol Brandt]
August 2 [1965]
Dear Carol,
Sorry that neither Sally nor I has been in touch with you; Sally has been sick and all her plans for coming to New York are kind of in abeyance. I am still hoping to bring her down for a day or two during August, but if this is not possible—and I am afraid it may not be—we will have to try sometime during the late fall.
In any case, we both hope to see you sometime; everything this summer seems to have been conspiring to keep me from working, but I do make progress.
Best,
Shirley
* * *
• • •
Six days later, on August 8, 1965, Shirley Jackson went upstairs to take her customary afternoon nap. When S
tanley came to wake her, she was unresponsive. He called Sally and Barry, who also tried to wake her. Shirley was dead, at the age of forty-eight.
Her biographers have reported that there was one last letter written by Shirley to Carol saying that she was soon leaving alone on a wonderful journey and would meet many new people. That letter was received by Carol a day or two after Shirley died, and was shown to at least one member of the family, but it has since disappeared.
* * *
—
Taped to Shirley’s wall above her typing desk was a handwritten note:
Skip Notes
*1 An early form of credit card. Shirley preferred to charge things in stores whenever possible.
*2 The Republican governor of Vermont then was F. Ray Keyser, Jr. He lost the election that November 6 to Democrat Philip H. Hoff.
*3 Shirley’s first children’s book, published in 1963 by Crowell-Collier, with illustrations by Lorraine Fox. It was republished in 2001 by Farrar, Straus & Giroux, with illustrations by Shirley’s artist grandson, Miles Hyman.
*4 Arlene Francis was a popular radio and TV talk show host.
*5 The Sheik, a tiny Lebanese restaurant on Twenty-ninth Street in New York, was greatly favored by Stanley; he and Shirley became good friends with the owner-chef.
*6 Bernard and Ann Malamud were close friends and the families visited often.
*7 Famous Sally, published posthumously by Harlan Quist (1966).
*8 Miles Biggs Hyman is born September 27, 1962.
*9 Ben Belitt, well-known poet and translator, taught literature at Bennington and delighted in bringing rare and unusual films for College Movie Night every Saturday.
*10 Shirley’s childhood friend Dorothy Ayling.
*11 President John F. Kennedy had announced the Cuban Missile Crisis.
*12 Wife of the college president, William Fels; Shirley was close friends with her and the couples socialized.
*13 Shirley started calling three-week-old Miles “Big Mo” or “Big Moey” after Moe Hyman.
*14 Shirley and Stanley are thinking of buying a small lake, with others, and are considering Lake Shaftsbury.
*15 Arnold Ehrlich was an editor at Holiday magazine.
*16 Ship of Fools by Katherine Anne Porter (Little, Brown, 1962) was the Book of the Month Club selection, and its film rights were immediately sold for $500,000 ($4,226,073 adjusted for inflation).
*17 Fail-Safe by Eugene Burdick and Harvey Wheeler (McGraw-Hill, 1962) was a bestseller and adapted many times for film and TV, starting in 1964.
*18 Ken Ramage and his wife, Gwen; he was a jazz trombonist picked up for a month by Laurie’s band at the Storyville Club in Frankfurt, Germany, but stayed on with the band and accompanied them back for a scheduled recording session in New York.
*19 David Stanley Jacubanis, arrested November 21, 1962.
*20 Other finalists for the award included John Updike, Dawn Powell, and Vladimir Nabokov. The winner was Morte D’Urban, a debut novel by J. F. Powers (Doubleday, 1962).
*21 How prescient Shirley was—David Merrick’s big musical would open and close soon afterward. There were only nine performances, and it was a critical flop. None of the family got to see it.
*22 Barbara Lawrence was a features editor at McCall’s in the 1950s and 1960s.
*23 The first draft of “Notes for a Young Writer,” written for Sally and published posthumously by Stanley in Come Along with Me.
*24 David Merrick’s We Have Always Lived in the Castle.
*25 “Birthday Party.”
*26 Sir Anthony Caro, a modernist British sculptor who preferred to use “found” industrial objects, taught for a year at Bennington College.
*27 The Fair Land of Far (unfinished).
*28 Gretchen Anne Cardinal Hyman was born September 6, 1964.
*29 Martha Foley founded Story magazine in 1931 with her husband, Whit Burnett.
*30 “One Ordinary Day, with Peanuts.”
*31 “The Possibility of Evil” will be published (posthumously) in The Saturday Evening Post in December 1965. It will win the Edgar Allan Poe Award for Best Short Story.
*32 Probably bullfight music, which Shirley loved and could not find in the Bennington record store.
*33 Come Along with Me, unfinished, published by Viking Press in 1968.
*34 “The Possibility of Evil.”
*35 University of Chicago.
*36 Shirley and Stanley are negotiating to purchase nearby Lake Shaftsbury with the Burkes.
To Shirley, for her enduring wit and wisdom
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
• • •
I would like to thank the following people for their help making this book possible:
Cynthia Kane Hyman, for support and encouragement throughout.
Bernice M. Murphy for her insightful scholarship and spirited collaboration.
Murray Weiss of Catalyst Literary Management for years of belief in this project, and for finding a welcoming home for this book.
Caitlin McKenna and Emma Caruso at Random House for helping me shape it.
Benjamin Dreyer for his vital early formatting advice.
Ruth Franklin for her discovery of letters written by Shirley to Jeanne Beatty, Virginia Olsen, Louis Harap, and others.
Sarah Hyman DeWitt for yet one more trip to the Library of Congress and early reading of the letters.
Barry Hyman for locating and photographing more than eight hundred Shirley Jackson drawings at the Library of Congress.
Jai (Hyman) Schnurer Holly for occasional name- and fact-checking.
Nichelle Wyatt-Whyte and Rebekah Thomas for their careful typing of often near-indecipherable pages.
Loretta Deaver, Reference Librarian, Library of Congress, for making scans of the drawings.
Michael Shulman at Magnum Photos, Inc. for help with Erich Hartmann photographs.
Steven Wolff and Ryerson Image Centre Toronto for the photograph by Werner Wolff.
Tanya Kalischer for Clemens Kalischer’s photograph.
PHOTOGRAPH CREDITS
• • •
1 by June Mirken Mintz, 1937
2 © Erich Hartmann, Magnum Photos, courtesy of Michael D. Shulman
3 © Werner Wolff, Black Star, courtesy of Steven Wolff and Ryerson Image Centre, Toronto
4 Courtesy of the Shirley Jackson estate
5 © Erich Hartmann, Magnum Photos, courtesy of Michael D. Shulman
6 © Clemens Kalischer, Image Photos, courtesy of Tanya Kalischer
7 © Laurence Jackson Hyman, 1963
BY SHIRLEY JACKSON
The Letters of Shirley Jackson
The Road Through the Wall
The Lottery and Other Stories
Hangsaman
Life Among the Savages
The Bird’s Nest
The Witchcraft of Salem Village
Raising Demons
The Sundial
The Haunting of Hill House
We Have Always Lived in the Castle
The Magic of Shirley Jackson
Come Along with Me
The Letters of Shirley Jackson Page 62