Recent Reading: Let Me Tell You by Shirley Jackson

 

After watching Josephine Decker's movie Shirley, I wanted to read some Shirley Jackson. Being a frugal citizen and property owner and taxpayer, I went to my local public library to see what I could find. And there I found a posthumously published (2015) collection titled Let Me Tell You. I just finished the book a few minutes ago and really enjoyed almost all of it. It is a very enjoyable book.

Let Me Tell You is a collection of shorter and lesser known pieces that Jackson wrote -- as opposed to her novels and better known stories that have been anthologized elsewhere. It also includes a few original drawings that Jackson did which I tried to reproduce here in this essay. The book is divided into five sections. Let me say a few words about each section.

 

The first section is called Sudden and Unusual Things Have Happened Unpublished and Uncollected Short Fiction. I rather liked these stories, My personal favorite was the first story in the section which is titled "Paranoia." It is about a man who decides to buy a birthday present for his wife and becomes convinced that someone is following him. When he gets home:

"Is there something wrong?" she was asking anxiously, fussing over him, loosening his tie, smoothing his hair. "Are you sick? Were you in an accident? What has happened?"

He realized that he seemed more tired than he really was, and was glorying in all this attention. He sighed deeply and said, "Nothing. Nothing wrong. Tell you in a minute."

"Wait," she said. "I'll get you a drink."

He put his head back against the soft chair as she went out. Never knew that door had a key, his mind registered dimly as he heard it turn. Then he was on his feet with his head against the door listening to her at the telephone in the hall.

She dialed and waited. Then: "Listen," she said, "listen, he came here after all. I've got him" (p. 14).

It is rather Twilight Zone in its ending.

As I said, this was my favorite story in the section.

 

 

The second section is called I Would Rather Write Than Do Anything Else Essays and Reviews. This section includes the essay, "A Garland of Garlands." It gives you some idea of what it might have been like for Jackson to live with her husband Stanley Edgar Hyman, who was also a writer. Unlike his wife, Shirley Jackson who continues to be read to this day Hyman has largely been forgotten. But Hyman taught at Bennington College, wrote several books, and was a well-regarded critic in his day. Here, in this essay, Jackson gives some idea of the intellectual give and take in their marriage of two writers.

My husband reviews books for a living, and I would like to enter a protest. I know things are pretty hard these days, with the girls hanging around snatching the eligible males right out of the high school graduating classes, but I don't think I deserved a book reviewer. My mother raised me better, that's all.

I realize now, thinking back over the events of the last few years, that people marry book reviewers with the expectation that it is a temporary thing, that sooner or later the poor dear is going to find himself a better niche in life, such as selling vacuum cleaners. Book reviewing is just nothing for a healthy young woman to be married to. In the first place, a girl gets to reading. And then of course, there's everything else -- "Reviewers Complaint," "The Eamarked Pen," "The Development of the Theory of Universality in Art," and all the rest. 

In case there are any eager young women hanging on my every word, and even in case there are not, I'd better go right ahead and bore all you people who have head this before many times, and give out with the warnings. Let me, for instance, give you a rough idea what we are up against, we reviewer wives....

The final piece in this section, "Well?" gives another perspective on the likely intellectual give and take between Jackson and Hyman. Here it is in its entirety.

"Well?" asked Stanley finally.

"I think that's the end," I said doubtfully. 

"Aren't you sure?"

"Ye-es."

"Have you anything more to say?" Stanley inquired.

"No."

"Have your characters anything more to say?"

"Only," I giggled, "that they are very glad they met you."

Stanley shook his head. At last: "Well, it had a plot," he said.

"Stanley!"

"Yes?"

"I wonder which of us really wrote this."

"I refuse to take the blame," said Stanley.

"Well, it's yours, anyway. You practically wrote it."

"I might have written it."

"I'll give it to you."

"Don't want it," Said Stanley nastily.

"Love, with this tawny marigold ..." I began. Stanley stared at me.

"I'll dedicate it to you," I added.

We both laughed (p. 253).

 

The third section is called When This War Is Over Early Short Stories. I do not have much to say about this section. I found the stories competent but lacking somehow. In my opinion, it takes time and experience to become a better writer. I am glad that Jackson kept working and kept publishing because her later stories and novels are quite good. So, if there are any early career writers out there who have self-doubts, keep writing!

 

The fourth section is called Somehow Things Haven't Turned Out Quite the Way We Expected Humor and Family. The essay titles give a pretty good idea of both the content and tone of this section: "Here I am, Washing Dishes Again," "In Praise of Dinner Table Silence," "Questions I Wish I'd Never Asked," "Mother, Honestly!" "How To Enjoy a Family Quarrel," "The Pleasures and Perils of Dining Out with Children," "Out of the Mouths of Babes," "The Real Me," "On Girls of Thirteen," "What I Want To Know Is, What Do Other People Cook With?"

The final essay is Jackson's ode to her cooking fork. She opens it by talking about the many uses it has.

I have an electric mixer and an electric blender and a timer on the oven and an electric skillet and an electric can opener, but what I really cook with is a fork. It is about five inches long, four-tined, with a black wooden handle, and my mother gave it to me when I was married. ... I use my little fork to scramble eggs and to turn meat and to get muffins out of the toaster ... and to poke at potatoes to see if they're done and to turn corn fritters in the pan and to hook doughnuts out of the fryer and to weasel waffles out of the waffle iron and to prick the tops of pies and to stir rice. I could not begin to start making a meal without my fork (p. 265).

The fifth and final section is called I'd Like To See You Get Out of That Sentence Lectures About the Craft of Writing. It has what might be my new favorite essay title, "Garlic in Fiction." Jackson's point in this essay that symbols or images can liven up a story, but like garlic in a meal, a little bit is enough.

This section has a fun essay titled, "On Fans and Fan Mail: A Lecture." Allow me to quote:

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 poising, they probably wouldn't remember that I was in asking about it (pgs 383-384).

So, that is Shirley Jackson's Let Me Tell You.

Continuing with other books, today I picked up another Shirley Jackson book from the public library: Life Among the Savages. I look forward to starting it tomorrow.