Let Me Tell You

by Shirley Jackson

  The act of remembering is in itself an odd thing, of course. I had not thought of that green bowl for weeks, until I wanted a vivid image to explain how all things are potential paragraphs for the writer. I have been struggling against an odd memory effect for quite a while now; perhaps if I describe it, it may show more clearly what I mean when I say that nothing is ever useless, and certainly is never lost.

  I was talking casually one evening recently to the husband of a friend of mine, and he mentioned his service in the Marines. I said, “Oh, yes, your rifle number was 804041,” and then we kind of stared at each other dumbfounded, since one does not usually just happen to know the rifle numbers of the husbands of friends. We finally remembered that some months before, during a similar conversation after another bridge game, he had mentioned his Marine service, and remarked that one thing he would never forget was his rifle number, 804041. Well, it was reasonable for him never to forget his rifle number, but hardly likely that I would remember it. However, I couldn’t forget it. I caught myself reciting it to myself over and over again, wondering why on earth I bothered.

  I was having a good deal of trouble at the time, working over a new novel that somehow refused to go together right. I could not make my central character sound true, somehow; there was something basically at odds between her personality as I saw it and the actions she was called on to perform. One night I gave up; I shoved the typewriter away and kicked the dog and snarled that I was giving up on the book and would never write another, and furthermore it was hopeless and I might better be doing anything else in the world and who would choose such a nerve-racking profession anyway, and I was going to bed. So I stamped upstairs and went to bed, somehow forgetting to set the alarm clock.

  When I came rushing downstairs the next morning, half an hour late for school, and scrambled wildly around the kitchen trying to get everybody dressed and washed, and also feeling very bad-tempered, I did not go at once into the study. As a matter of fact, it was not until much later in the morning that I went near my desk, but when I did, I got one of the really big shocks of my life. A sheet of paper had been taken from the pile of copy paper and put directly into the center of the desk, right where it would be most visible. On this sheet of paper was written, in large figures, and in my own writing with my own pencil, 804041.

  Now, I have walked in my sleep frequently, particularly when I am under pressure with a book, and have often done odd things in my sleep, but I have rarely taken to writing notes to myself, and particularly not in code. What I finally did was what I should have done long before, which is get myself another cup of coffee and sit down quietly and think. Clearly, I was remembering this number as a clue to something else, and it must be something from the conversation when I first heard the number—or at least that seemed the likeliest place to start. I tried to reconstruct the conversation exactly. I could not remember what we had been talking about; I remembered the bridge table and the cards on it and that we had been waiting for the four at the other table to finish a rubber, and I remembered that except for our voices, which were low, the room was so quiet that I could hear my daughter’s radio going upstairs. But I could not remember what we had been talking about. All I could remember was 804041.

  I assumed that we had talked about the cards, and the game we had just finished, and then what? What do people usually talk about when they are killing time with conversation? Their children…small incidents that have happened…gossip…And then of course I had it, and I knew just why I had had such trouble remembering it. The former Marine had met an old friend of ours in New York, had run into him casually on the street, and had gone to have a drink with the old friend and his new wife, an Italian girl who had been in an anti-Fascist organization and had been caught and tortured. He had made some remark about being sick when he looked at her hands, and I had stopped him from saying anything more, but he had gone on to say that she spoke frankly about her experiences and particularly about a kind of schooling she had gone through to teach her to undergo torture without yielding, a schooling that trained her to withdraw her mind from her body, so that the physical pain was remote and could, by an act of superlative willpower, be endured. He had gone on from this to refer to his own war experiences, and had then remarked that he would never forget the number of his rifle, 804041.

  When I remembered all of this and went back to my book again, I found that the trained ability to separate mind and body, a deliberate detachment, was the essential characteristic I had been looking for for my heroine, and was what I had been trying to tell myself by saying the number over and over again. I had made myself forget the woman’s frightful experiences because the thought of them was horrible, but the important lesson, the one I needed, was there. What bothers me now is that I still can’t forget 804041; I wonder what else he said?

  That is one half of writing, of course. The lower depths, as it were. The other half is what I might delicately call information. Henry James got the idea for The Spoils of Poynton from a single remark heard at dinner, but he also had to find out somehow what lovely possessions looked and felt and smelled like, the tapestries splendidly toned by time, the thrilling touch of the old velvet brocade.

  Among other invaluable items of useless information, I recall a book written by an English lady of the eighteenth century, which dwelt long and lovingly on the evils of education for women. This lady deplored the growing desire among the girls of her time to be educated and learn to read and write; her theory was that once a girl started filling her mind with facts instead of fancy embroidery methods and seven easy tunes on the harp, she would turn into an attic storehouse of miscellaneous knowledge, tending to decrease her matrimonial value and rendering her almost useless as a wife and mother, and even, possibly, delusional.

  On Fans and Fan Mail

  A Lecture

  I think that the popular notion of the writer as a person hiding away in a garret, unable to face reality, is probably perfectly true. In my own experience, contacts with the big world outside the typewriter are puzzling and terrifying; I don’t think I like reality very much. Principally, I don’t understand people outside; people in books are sensible and reasonable, but outside there is no predicting what they will do.

  For instance, I went the other day into our local drugstore and asked them how I would go about getting enough arsenic to poison a family of six. I had expected that they would behave as people would in any proper Agatha Christie book; one of them, I thought, would engage me in conversation in the front of the store, while someone else sneaked out back to call the cops, and I was ready with a perfectly truthful explanation about how the character in my book had to buy arsenic and I needed to find out how to go about it. Instead, though, no one really paid any attention to me. They were very nice about it; they didn’t have any arsenic, actually, and would I consider potassium cyanide or an overdose of sleeping pills instead? When I said I had my heart set on arsenic, they said then I had better get in touch with a taxidermist, since no modern drugstore stocks arsenic anymore at all. Now, you have to concede that such behavior is bewildering; if someone turned up with chronic arsenic poisoning, they probably wouldn’t even remember that I was in asking about it.

  I actually wanted to talk, though, about the most irrational and annoying aspect of the outside world that is always infringing on a writer’s life, and that is what is loosely called “fan mail.” I don’t answer many of the letters I get, usually, even though most of them are very kind and polite and say they liked my last book; but there is a certain type of letter that makes me wonder who is crazy these days—me or them. There is the kind of letter that asks if I am the Shirley Jackson who taught fifth grade in Toledo, Ohio, in 1902. There is the kind of letter that says I have stolen the correspondent’s name for one of the characters in a book and I am going to be sued for libel unless I immediately forward all royalty payments. I got a letter recently saying that the correspondent had just noticed a picture of me in a magazine, and the
picture showed me with a dog that was stolen from him several months ago; I was either to send him back his dog or a check for the dog’s sentimental value, which he set at two hundred dollars. Or, consider this letter:

  Dear Miss Jackson,

  I am a sailor on an aircraft carrier in the South Pacific. You are my favorite author and I would appreciate it if you would answer the following questions:

  1. Are you married?

  2. Do you have any children?

  3. Do you have a snapshot of yourself you would send me?

  Hoping you will answer this letter as I enjoy literary correspondence.

  Sincerely yours.

  Of course the only possible answer was:

  Dear sailor:

  I am forty-two years old, and my oldest son is draft age. I am, however, enclosing a snapshot of my sixteen-year-old daughter, who also enjoys literary correspondence.

  Sincerely.

  Someday the English teachers of the world are going to be made to suffer for what they do to writers. Every spring—which is term paper time—I get, and every other writer I know gets, twenty or thirty letters, all of one kind. They vary only in the degree of misspelling, and they typically read:

  Dear Miss Jackson,

  Our high school English class is doing a term paper on its favorite authors. You are my favorite author, so will you please tell me the names of all your books and your best known stories and any television plays or movies you have written and also I would like to know your theories about writing and in general what you are trying to say. Also what you find in your daily life that you can use in books and stories and your likes and dislikes in other writers and if possible a small autographed picture of yourself and anything else you think may be of help to me in my paper. My paper has to be handed in this coming Friday, so I would appreciate a quick reply to this letter. Yours very truly.

  As I say, I get twenty or thirty of these letters every spring, and they go into the wastebasket. In one case I had a follow-up letter from the English teacher of one of the girls who had written me; she was furious because her student had failed English for lack of a term paper. She wanted to know who did I think I was, letting that girl fail? The girl’s original letter had had eleven misspellings; the teacher’s had only three. I did answer several of these when they first started coming, asking to see a copy of the term paper. I finally got hold of one paper. The student had copied my letter word for word.

  I would like to finish by reading you my two favorite fan letters. The first of them was sent not to me but to a friend of mine who writes children’s books. It reads:

  Dear Sir,

  I like to read a lot of books but every time I find one I like best and write the author a letter it turns out he is dead. If you are not dead will you please answer this? I love you.

  Sadly enough, it was signed only “Linda” and gave no address.

  There is one letter I never tire of reading over. It was sent to me shortly after the publication of my story “The Lottery,” and was addressed to The New Yorker, where the story first appeared. It came, naturally enough, from Los Angeles:

  Dear Sirs:

  The June 26 copy of your magazine fell into my hands in the Los Angeles railroad station yesterday. Although I donnot read your magazine very often I took this copy home to my folks and they had to agree with me that you speak straitforward to your readers.

  My Aunt Ellise before she became priestess of the Exhalted Rollers used to tell us a story just like “The Lottery” by Shirley Jackson. I don’t know if Miss Jackson is a member of the Exhalted Rollers but with her round stones sure ought to be. There is a few points in her prophecey on which Aunt Ellise and me don’t agree.

  The Exhalted Rollers donnot believe in the ballot box but believe that the True Gospel of the Redeeming Light will become accepted when the prophecey comes true. It does seem likely to me that our sins will bring us punishment through a great scouraging war with the devil’s toy (the atomic bomb). I don’t think we will have to sacrifice humin beings fore atonement.

  Our brothers feel that Miss Jackson is a True Prophet and Disciple of the True Gospel of the Reedeeming Light. When will the next Revelations be published?

  Yours in the Spirit.

  This letter was never answered.

  How I Write

  A Lecture

  I find it very difficult to distinguish between life and fiction. I am of course the kind of writer who, through some incredible series of coincidences, finds herself actually at the typewriter for only a few hours a day, the rest of the time being spent vacuuming the living room rug or driving the children to school or trying to find something different to serve for dinner tonight.

  Most of my time, actually, is spent doing things that require no very great imaginative ability, and the only way to make these mechanical jobs more palatable is to think about something else while I am doing them. I tell myself stories all day long, and have managed to weave a fairy tale of infinite complexity around the inanimate objects in my house, so much so that no one in my family is surprised to find me putting the waffle iron away on a different shelf because in my story it has quarreled with the toaster, and if I left them together they might come to blows; they had quarreled, incidentally, over my getting some of the frozen waffles you drop in the toaster, and the waffle iron was furious. It looks kind of crazy, of course. But it does take the edge off cold reality. And sometimes it turns into real stories.

  I remember one spring morning I was on my way to the store, pushing my daughter in her stroller, and on my way down the hill I was thinking about my neighbors, the way everyone in a small town does. The night before, I had been reading a book about choosing a victim for a sacrifice, and I was wondering who in our town would be a good choice for such a thing. Also I was wondering what would happen if they drew lots by family; would the Campbell boys, who haven’t spoken to each other in nearly twenty years, have to stand up together? And I was wondering what would happen about the Garcia boy, who had married a girl his parents couldn’t stand—would she have to be admitted as a member of their family? I was so fascinated by the idea of the people I knew in such a situation, I thought that when I got home I might try writing it down and seeing what happened. So after I bought my groceries and pushed my daughter back up the hill and put her in the playpen, I sat down at the typewriter and wrote down the story I had been telling myself all morning. Because I was interested in the method, I called the story “The Lottery,” and after it was printed people kept writing me letters about it, saying what a frightening story it was, and how did I ever think of a horrible thing like that? For a while I tried telling them that I was just thinking about my neighbors, but no one would believe me. Incidentally, no one in our small town has ever heard of The New Yorker, much less read my story.

  One of the nicest things about being a writer is that nothing ever gets wasted. It’s a little like the frugal housewife who carefully tucks away all the odds and ends of string beans and cold bacon and serves them up magnificently in a fancy casserole dish. A writer who is serious and economical can store away small fragments of ideas and events and conversations, and even facial expressions and mannerisms, and use them all someday. It is my belief, for instance, that somewhere in the back of my own mind is a kind of storeroom where there are hundreds of small items I am going to need someday, and when I need them I will remember them. I am also sure that this storeroom must look a good deal like my desk drawers, which also contain all kinds of things I am sure I am going to need someday, such as a pair of roller skates and the curls cut off the children and an old compact and what I think is the inside lining for my heavy winter boots.

  I believe that a story can be made out of any such small combination of circumstances, set up to best advantage and decorated with some use of the imagination; I began writing stories about my children because, more than any other single thing in the world, children possess a kind of magic that makes much of what they do so oddly logical
and yet so incredible to grown-ups. Now that my children are old enough to read and have become more aware of themselves, I find it almost impossible to write about them without sounding artificial, because they are doing things with that unfortunate adult reasoning that takes away all the magic. Once, however, when I had spent all one rainy day wrestling with my old refrigerator, whose doors tended to jam shut, my younger daughter asked why I didn’t open it by magic.

  It was a lot pleasanter to abandon the refrigerator and sit down and write a story about opening it by magic than to go on being sore at it and banging it with my fist; we had to go out for dinner, but of course that’s all right with me anytime. The story, by the way, paid for a new refrigerator, which is certainly better than trying to open the old one without magic. What I am trying to say is that with the small addition of the one element of fantasy, or unreality, or imagination, all the things that happen are fun to write about.

  I am particularly interested in reality right now, because I am writing a novel in which reality is the key issue. It is a novel about a haunted house and a group of people who go to live in it and make observations upon the psychic manifestations to which they are subjected. Now, no one can get into writing a novel about a haunted house without hitting the subject of reality head-on; either I have to believe in ghosts, which I do, or I have to write another kind of novel altogether. I have found that, more than ever before, I am wandering in a kind of fairy-tale world, although right now it is full of ghosts too.

  Before I started writing this, I spent several months reading nothing but ghost stories, going through volume after volume of luminous figures glimpsed floating down the garden path, or mysterious moanings in attics, and perhaps it was not altogether healthy; every now and then I had to go and read a chapter of Little Women again to get back my perspective.