Let Me Tell You: New Stories, Essays, and Other Writings Page 2
Jackson, too, considered herself at least a part-time housewife, and the life of a house—what is required to make and keep a home, and what it means when a home is destroyed—is important in just about all of her novels. (“I love houses” is the opening line of “The Ghosts of Loiret,” a humorous take on Jackson’s real-life search for a haunted house she could use as a model for Hill House.) But the organized linen closet was more a fantasy than a standard she strived to uphold. More often than not, housekeeping done too perfectly in a Jackson story is a sign that something is wrong. In “Mrs. Spencer and the Oberons,” it is the disagreeable Mrs. Spencer whose kitchen is “immaculate, dinner preparing invisibly”; the bustling hospitality of the unconventional Oberons, which Mrs. Spencer cannot appreciate, signals comfort and cheer. As the nonfiction collected here demonstrates, Jackson made no pretense of being a flawless housekeeper, “trim and competent”; unlike her neighbors, she inevitably found herself as she does in “Here I Am, Washing Dishes Again”—with the dishpan heaped high, inventing stories to carry her through the task. Close readers of “The Lottery”—Jackson’s tale of a ritual stoning carried out in an ordinary village, which was written around the same time as that essay—will remember that one of the main characters arrives late to the village square because she was finishing her dishes. Another echo of “The Lottery,” and its warning about the dangers of conformity, appears in the unlikely setting of “Mother, Honestly!,” a humor piece about raising a pre-teenager. In Jackson’s hands, the classic adolescent complaint—“Everyone else is allowed to”—becomes an alarming sign of groupthink: Even to write the phrase “everyone else,” she confesses, gives her “a little chill.”
A highlight of this collection, especially for aspiring writers, is the craft lectures, in which Jackson, via anecdotes and analyses of her own work, shares succinct, specific advice about creating fiction. Her diversity of themes notwithstanding, Jackson’s style remained consistent from her earliest stories to her late novels. One of its hallmarks is her uncanny ability to seize the telling detail—what she calls, in the lecture “Garlic in Fiction,” the accent that when used “sparingly and with great care” gives a little extra emphasis to certain moments in a story. In “The Arabian Nights,” the way a couple pick up and set down their cocktail glasses tells us everything we need to know about their marriage; in “Paranoia,” the light-colored hat worn by the man following Mr. Beresford takes on its own malevolent power. Jackson explains that she generated credibility for Eleanor, the protagonist in Hill House, by carefully layering symbols—the cottage with the white cat on the step, the little girl who insists on drinking out of a cup painted with stars—to ease the transition from “the sensible environment of the city to the somewhat less believable atmosphere of the haunted house.” (“This was hard,” she admits.) In “Memory and Delusion,” she emphasizes that the writer’s intelligence must be constantly alert: “I cannot find any patience for those people who believe that you start writing when you sit down at your desk and pick up your pen and finish writing when you put down your pen again; a writer is always writing, seeing everything through a thin mist of words, fitting swift little descriptions to everything he sees, always noticing.” For the writer, “all things are potential paragraphs,” but their emotional valence remains to be determined. When a green porcelain bowl on the piano suddenly shatters during a bridge game, Jackson keeps the image of the scattered pieces in her memory storeroom, waiting for the right moment to deploy it: as a symbol of destruction (“what I can remember is the way the little pieces of the bowl lay there so quietly after they had been for so long parts of one unbroken whole”), or as an illustration of a sudden shock, or to represent the loss of a treasured possession. This image would appear, in different form, in We Have Always Lived in the Castle, her last completed novel, when one of the characters discovers the family’s heirloom sugar bowl—an important symbol—in pieces.
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Let Me Tell You contains a multitude of Shirley Jacksons. The whimsical fantasy of pieces like “Six A.M. Is the Hour” (about a poker game played by the Norse gods in which the jackpot is Earth) and “Bulletin” (a science fiction depiction of how a future society will understand life in 1950) may surprise readers who are expecting more fiction in the suspenseful mode of the Kafkaesque tale “Paranoia.” Some of the pieces here are alternate versions of published material: “Company for Dinner,” in which a man accidentally comes home to the wrong house, anticipates the more complex spin Jackson would give to a similar theme in “The Beautiful Stranger,” and both “Still Life with Teapot and Students” and “Family Treasures” are variations on scenes she would develop differently in Hangsaman, her second novel. A notable absence from the fiction in this collection is the interest in the supernatural that would characterize so much of her work: There is nothing here along the lines of “The Daemon Lover,” her retelling of the James Harris legend, in which a woman is jilted by a fiancé who may or may not actually exist. Only “The Man in the Woods,” a fable incorporating different strands of mythology, hits some similar notes.
As her biographer, the question constantly on my mind is which Shirley Jackson was—as one of the pieces here is titled—“The Real Me.” This collection alone offers a multitude of possibilities. The professional who stood at the lectern, delivering confident advice to her rapt audience? The housewife dreaming up a paean to her fork? The mother who laughs over her children’s idiosyncrasies even as she chides them for their bad behavior? The amateur witch who lovingly enumerates her collection of curiosities (“I have a crystal ball and a deck of tarot cards and a lot of tikis and eleven Siamese gambling house tokens and a book by Ludovico Sinistrari listing all the demons by name and incantation”) and writes only half-jokingly of digging for mandrakes in the backyard? The engaged parent who cheerfully creates and produces a play for her children’s school, or the semi-recluse who confesses at one point, “I don’t think I like reality very much”? In an early diary, Jackson once referred to “this compound of creatures I call Me.” Of course, they are all one—which is the central mystery of any personality.
In the end, I return to the mental image of Jackson that has come to me over the years I have spent examining her papers. I imagine her at her overstuffed desk, its surface crowded with all the usual tidbits: an old postcard or two, drafts of three different stories, part of an unfinished letter. She might have only a few minutes—perhaps the children are about to arrive home from school, or her husband might call out from his study to ask for her opinion on something, or she has to start dinner. Absently she pulls out a note from the pocket of her dress and examines it. Then she rolls a blank sheet of yellow paper into her Royal typewriter and begins.
* * *
RUTH FRANKLIN is a book critic and author of A Thousand Darknesses: Lies and Truth in Holocaust Fiction, which was a finalist for the 2012 Sami Rohr Prize in Jewish Literature. She has written for many publications, including The New Republic, The New Yorker, The New York Review of Books, The New York Times Magazine, Bookforum, and Granta. She is at work on a biography of Shirley Jackson.
I
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Sudden and Unusual Things Have Happened
Unpublished and Uncollected Short Fiction
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“I have never liked the theory that poltergeists only come into houses where there are children, because I think it is simply too much for any one house to have poltergeists and children.”
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Paranoia
Mr. Halloran Beresford, pleasantly tired after a good day in the office, still almost clean-shaven after eight hours, his pants still neatly pressed, pleased with himself particularly for remembering, stepped out of the candy shop with a great box under his arm and started briskly for the corner. There were twenty small-size gray suits like Mr. Beresford’s on every New York block, fifty men still clean-shaven and pressed after a day in an air-cooled office, a hundred small men, perhaps, pleased with
themselves for remembering their wives’ birthdays. Mr. Beresford was going to take his wife out to dinner, he decided, going to see if he could get last-minute tickets to a show, taking his wife candy. It had been an exceptionally good day, altogether, and Mr. Beresford walked along swiftly, humming musically to himself.
He stopped on the corner, wondering whether he would save more time by taking a bus or by trying to catch a taxi in the crowd. It was a long trip downtown, and Mr. Beresford ordinarily enjoyed the quiet half hour on top of a Fifth Avenue bus, perhaps reading his paper. He disliked the subway intensely, and found the public display and violent exercise necessary to catch a taxi usually more than he was equal to. However, tonight he had spent a lot of time waiting in line in the candy store to get his wife’s favorite chocolates, and if he was going to get home before dinner was on the table he really had to hurry a little.
Mr. Beresford went a few steps into the street, waved at a taxi, said “Taxi!” in a voice that went helplessly into a falsetto, and slunk back, abashed, to the sidewalk while the taxi went by uncomprehending. A man in a light hat stopped next to Mr. Beresford on the sidewalk, and for a minute, in the middle of the crowd, he stared at Mr. Beresford and Mr. Beresford stared at him as people sometimes do without caring particularly what they see. What Mr. Beresford saw was a thin face under the light hat, a small mustache, a coat collar turned up. Funny-looking guy, Mr. Beresford thought, lightly touching his own clean-shaven lip. Perhaps the man thought Mr. Beresford’s almost unconscious gesture was offensive; at any rate he frowned and looked Mr. Beresford up and down before he turned away. Ugly customer, Mr. Beresford thought.
The Fifth Avenue bus Mr. Beresford usually took came slipping up to the corner, and Mr. Beresford, pleased not to worry about a taxi, started for the stop. He had reached out his hand to take the rail inside the bus door when he was roughly elbowed aside and the ugly customer in the light hat shoved on ahead of him. Mr. Beresford muttered and started to follow, but the bus door closed on the packed crowd inside, and the last thing Mr. Beresford saw as the bus went off down the street was the man in the light hat grinning at him from inside the door.
“There’s a dirty trick,” Mr. Beresford told himself, settling his shoulders irritably in his coat. Still under the influence of his annoyance, he ran a few steps out into the street and waved again at a taxi, not trusting his voice, and was almost run down by a delivery truck. As Mr. Beresford skidded back to the sidewalk, the truck driver leaned out and yelled something unrecognizable at Mr. Beresford, and when Mr. Beresford saw the people around him on the corner laughing he decided to start walking downtown; in two blocks he would reach another bus stop, a good corner for taxis, and a subway station; much as Mr. Beresford disliked the subway, he might still have to take it, to get home in any sort of time. Walking downtown, his candy box under his arm, his gray suit almost unaffected by the crush on the corner, Mr. Beresford decided to swallow his annoyance and remember that it was his wife’s birthday; he began to hum again as he walked.
—
He watched the people as he walked along, his perspective sharpened by being a man who had just succeeded in forgetting an annoyance; surely the girl in the very high-heeled shoes, coming toward him with a frown on her face, was not so able to put herself above petty trifles, or maybe she was frowning because of the shoes; the old lady and man looking at the shop windows were quarreling. The funny-looking guy in the light hat coming quickly through the crowd looked as though he hated someone…the funny-looking guy in the light hat; Mr. Beresford turned clean around in the walking line of people and watched the man in the light hat turn abruptly and start walking downtown, about ten feet in back of Mr. Beresford. What do you know about that?, Mr. Beresford marveled, and began to walk a little more quickly. Probably got off the bus for some reason; wrong bus, maybe. Then why would he start walking uptown instead of catching another bus where he was? Mr. Beresford shrugged and passed two girls walking together and talking both at once.
Halfway from the corner he wanted, Mr. Beresford realized with a sort of sick shock that the man in the light hat was at his elbow, walking steadily along next to him. Mr. Beresford turned his head the other way and slowed his step. The other man slowed down as well, without looking at Mr. Beresford.
Nonsense, Mr. Beresford thought, without troubling to work it out any further than that. He settled his candy box firmly under his arm and cut abruptly across the uptown line of people and into a shop; a souvenir and notions shop, he realized as he came through the door. There were a few people inside—a woman and a little girl, a sailor—and Mr. Beresford retired to the far end of the counter and began to fuss with an elaborate cigarette box on which was written SOUVENIR OF NEW YORK CITY, with the Trylon and the Perisphere painted beneath.
“Isn’t this cute?” the mother said to the little girl, and they both began to laugh enormously over the match holder made in the form of a toilet; the matches were to go in the bowl, and on the cover, Mr. Beresford could see, were the Trylon and the Perisphere, with SOUVENIR OF NEW YORK CITY written above.
The man in the light hat came into the shop, and Mr. Beresford turned his back and busied himself picking up one thing after another from the counter; with half his mind he was trying to find something that did not say SOUVENIR OF NEW YORK CITY, and with the other half of his mind he was wondering about the man in the light hat. The question of what the man in the light hat wanted was immediately subordinate to the question of whom he wanted; if his light-hatted designs were against Mr. Beresford they must be nefarious, else why had he not announced them before now? The thought of accosting the man and demanding his purpose crossed Mr. Beresford’s mind fleetingly, and was succeeded, as always in an equivocal situation, by Mr. Beresford’s vivid recollection of his own small size and innate cautiousness. Best, Mr. Beresford decided, to avoid this man. Thinking this, Mr. Beresford walked steadily toward the doorway of the shop, intending to pass the man in the light hat and go out and catch his bus home.
He had not quite reached the man in the light hat when the shop’s clerk came around the end of the counter and met Mr. Beresford with a genial smile and a vehement “See anything you like, mister?”
“Not tonight, thanks,” Mr. Beresford said, moving left to avoid the clerk, but the clerk moved likewise and said, “Got some nice things you didn’t look at.”
“No, thanks,” Mr. Beresford said, trying to make his tenor voice firm.
“Take a look,” the clerk insisted. This was unusually persistent even for such a clerk; Mr. Beresford looked up and saw the man in the light hat on his right, bearing down on him. Over the shoulders of the two men he could see that the shop was empty. The street looked very far away, the people passing in either direction looked smaller and smaller; Mr. Beresford realized that he was being forced to step backward as the two men advanced on him.
“Easy does it,” the man in the light hat said to the clerk. They continued to move forward slowly.
“See here, now,” Mr. Beresford said, with the ineffectuality of the ordinary man caught in such a crisis; he still clutched his box of candy under his arm. “See here,” he said, feeling the solid weight of the wall behind him.
“Ready,” the man in the light hat said. The two men tensed, and Mr. Beresford, with a wild yell, broke between them and ran for the door. He heard a sound more like a snarl than anything else behind him and the feet coming after him. I’m safe on the street, Mr. Beresford thought as he went through the door into the line of people; as long as there are lots of people, they can’t do anything to me. He looked back, walking downtown between a fat woman with many packages and a girl and a boy leaning on each other’s shoulders, and he saw the clerk standing in the doorway of the shop looking after him; the man in the light hat was not in sight. Mr. Beresford shifted the box of candy so that his right arm was free, and thought, Perfectly silly. It’s still broad daylight. How they ever hoped to get away with it…
—
The man in
the light hat was on the corner ahead, waiting. Mr. Beresford hesitated in his walk and then thought, It’s preposterous, all these people watching. He walked boldly down the street; the man in the light hat was not even watching him, but was leaning calmly against a building lighting a cigarette. Mr. Beresford reached the corner, darted quickly into the street, and yelled boisterously “Taxi!” in a great voice he had never suspected he possessed until now. A taxi stopped as though not daring to disregard that great shout, and Mr. Beresford moved gratefully toward it. His hand was on the door handle when another hand closed over his, and Mr. Beresford was aware of the light hat brushing his cheek.
“Come on if you’re coming,” the taxi driver said; the door was open, and Mr. Beresford, resisting the push that urged him into the taxi, slipped his hand out from under the other hand and ran back to the sidewalk. A crosstown bus had stopped on the corner, and Mr. Beresford, no longer thinking, hurried onto it, dropped a nickel into the coin register, and went to the back of the bus and sat down. The man in the light hat sat a little ahead, between Mr. Beresford and the door. Mr. Beresford put his box of candy on his lap and tried to think. Obviously the man in the light hat was not carrying a grudge all this time about Mr. Beresford’s almost unconscious gesture toward his mustache, unless he was peculiarly sensitive. In any case, there was also the clerk in the souvenir shop; Mr. Beresford realized suddenly that the clerk in the souvenir shop was a very odd circumstance indeed. Mr. Beresford set the clerk aside to think about later and went back to the man in the light hat. If it was not the insult to the mustache, what was it? And then another thought caught Mr. Beresford breathless: How long, then, had the man in the light hat been following him? He thought back along the day: He had left his office with a group of people, all talking cheerfully, all reminding Mr. Beresford that it was his wife’s birthday; they had escorted Mr. Beresford to the candy shop and left him there. He had been in his office all day except for lunch with three fellows in the office; Mr. Beresford’s mind leaped suddenly from the lunch to his first sight of the man in the light hat at the bus stop; it seemed that the man in the light hat had been trying to push him onto the bus and into the crowd, instead of pushing in ahead. In that case, once he was on the bus…Mr. Beresford looked around. In the bus he was riding on now there were only five people left. One was the driver, one Mr. Beresford, one the man in the light hat, sitting slightly ahead of Mr. Beresford. The two others were an old lady with a shopping bag and a man who looked as though he might be a foreigner. Foreigner, Mr. Beresford thought, while he looked at the man. Foreigner, foreign plot, spies. Better not rely on any foreigner, Mr. Beresford thought.