The Letters of Shirley Jackson

by Shirley Jackson

  These are all trifles, however. I do think the jacket is delightful, quite as good as Savages.

  The Ivy novel, which was to be a long short story, got itself badly jammed in the middle and won’t unwind. After working on one page for three days I put the whole thing tenderly into a filing folder, labelled it neatly, and set it in the center of my desk. In order to justify my existence I tried the first scene of the college novel, which came out fine, and which S. thinks should be set up as a short story. I shall type it and send it to you. I give you this dreary history just to let you know that I am not spending all my time hanging around the barber shop.

  Best,

  Shirley

  • • •

  [To Geraldine and Leslie Jackson]

  august 8 [1956]

  dearest mother and pop,

  i have been extremely lazy about writing anything so far this summer, particularly letters, because the weather has been rainy and cold and depressing. it’s started to warm up now, though, and i have gathered myself together and taken the cover off the typewriter.

  i have also spent most of my working time signing things. between the movie and the new book i do nothing but sign documents and chase off to the college notary. i don’t even try to read them; my agent passes them and says it’s okay to sign. stanley says my signature is unreadable by now, but after writing my name about a thousand times on a thousand different things, i don’t care what it looks like.

  at any rate, things keep moving without my writing a word except my name. the landmark witchcraft book is announced for next month; demons is due january 2, although we will see copies sooner.

  The kids are all fine, though we all have the feeling that we are kind of waiting for the summer to start. laurie and jannie, of course, go swimming whether the weather is good or not, and jannie is so tan it’s amazing. she went to camp for a week, a 4H camp about twenty miles from here, and had a wonderful time; sally has not done anything all summer except lie in bed and read, and get up around noon and make herself something to eat; if it is raining she goes back to bed.

  laurie has been playing baseball, with very little success. he is out of the little league and in a tri-town intermediate league. he can’t pitch the longer distance, and can’t hit the pitching, so he is quite depressed about it. he still loves jazz and his trumpet more than anything, and a couple of weeks ago we gave a party and he decided to come because one of our guests was a pianist who ordinarily plays respectable concert material, but can play jazz. he and laurie got to talking and the first thing we knew laurie had brought down his trumpet and they had a fine jam session, laurie playing considerably better than we thought he could. of course playing with someone who is good makes him surpass himself. since most of our guests were people with children laurie’s age i felt really quite smug.

  he has also gotten a break which i hope will work out. we are about sixty miles from tanglewood, the big music center around here. from tanglewood territory came, recently, a gentleman named barber, who had heard that stanley taught a course in folk music, using some jazz. barber runs a place called the music inn, about half a mile from tanglewood, and during july and august he runs a series of jazz concerts, so that music lovers can hear classical music in the afternoon and good jazz at night. barber has his own auditorium (open air, with a tent over it, and blessedly cool) and is really doing well with his concerts and the inn. he wanted stanley to come down for three lectures, each one to discuss jazz and folk music, and each one to be given in combination with an appropriate musician, who would perform in illustration. on one of the three stanley is to be on a panel with someone named the reverend kershaw,*2 who won the $64,000 question on jazz. stanley was interested, and last saturday barber called and said pack up the kids and our bathing suits and drive down to the music inn and look it over. they had someone named sarah vaughn (laurie says she is a far-out bop singer, too cool for him) giving a concert. so on sunday we drove down, having arranged to stay over and go back monday morning, and laurie got out of the car in front of the music inn and decided on the spot that this was where he planned to spend the rest of his life.

  it’s a fairly fancy place, college boys for waiters, a very informal arrangement for guests, and everything music, preferably jazz. the staff of the inn runs the concerts, too, so the waiters turn up at the concerts as ushers, and turn up on the beach as lifeguards, and play pingpong with the guests, and sunday night after the concert the staff was all off in the auditorium having a jam session. the general handy man is a jazz pianist. he drives guests back and forth to the trains, announces the concerts, takes over the bar when necessary, and spends the evenings in the inn lounge playing boogie-woogie. barber plays the clarinet and his wife plays the guitar. nothing but music, everywhere, and laurie’s eyes began to pop. we were the guests of the barbers, so we stayed in their house, and laurie then discovered that barber is a former stage manager, and had amused himself by setting up an incredible lighting system in his house, with a central board controlling a series of spotlights which will light any given spot in the room and a central skylight which holds a pink spot and can be raised or dimmed to give you any kind of sunlight effect you prefer. since laurie’s other dear love is stage design, he and barber spent a wonderful hour playing with the spotlights.

  the result of all this was that barber asked laurie if he would like a job at the inn next summer. he said that laurie could take the job of watching over the sports equipment. in the evenings he could help with the lighting in the auditorium for the concerts, and learn about stage lighting. he could then go to all the jazz concerts, live with the other boys at the inn, and sit in on jam sessions. laurie nearly fainted, and if it works out and barber is serious it would be the most wonderful summer possible for laurie.

  jannie has had a kind of a job this summer. tom brockway’s mother, who is over eighty, is staying with them this summer. she has been very sick and cannot be left alone, so one evening the brockways called here and asked if laurie would come and sit with her. laurie was out, so jannie volunteered, and was a great success. old mrs brockway was pleased with her because she liked to listen to mrs brockway’s stories about when she was a girl; she was born in turkey and her family were missionaries, and of course jannie was fascinated. jannie has been on call for mrs brockway for the past month. she and old mrs brockway play scrabble, or talk, or read “little women” together, and have a fine time. the first time jannie went she was wearing shorts, and old mrs brockway asked her very politely if she would mind wearing a dress, since shorts were not proper for young ladies, so whenever jannie goes over now she puts on one of her best dresses and her best shoes, and marches off feeling like a lady. she has her heart set right now on being a nurse and she tiptoes around the brockways’ house pretending to be nurse joanne.

  stanley is writing his speech on the blues and jazz and folk music for the music inn, and very cross.

  i can’t believe that the summer is nearly over and school will start in a month. barry is going to kindergarten, and laurie will be in high school and taking latin. the evil day approaches when i must take everyone into bennington and buy them all shoes.

  stanley says the temperature has gone up to eighty-three, so i will stop this and take the kids swimming.

  love from all. write soon.

  s.

  • • •

  [To Geraldine and Leslie Jackson]

  october 4 [1956]

  dearest mother and pop,

  plenty of time before the world series game on television, so i can write a letter.

  i sent you a copy of the witchcraft book, which finally arrived. i think the illustrations are terrible. i gave a copy to the local library, and so far one person has read it. i also, at jannie’s urgent request, sent a copy to the sixth grade at the school, for their class library. also i discover from p
ublishers weekly that i am in the best short stories of 1956, which came as something of a shock. the story was one i had written for (golly) fantasy and science fiction, for which i was paid by a lifetime subscription to the magazine. i am also in a science fiction anthology with a story i wrote for the companion many years ago.

  my agent writes that a magazine called AUTO ANTICS OF 1957 is using three pages from lifeamongthesavages, which makes things even more confusing. i hope auto antics does not insist on giving me a lifetime subscription. i have a story in the current woman’s day, by the way, and one in the companion. others due next month in mccalls and mademoiselle. and another in the companion. and a review in the new york times, savages has re-sold in england and the english publishers have taken demons for sometime next year. no word on the movie. when i add it all up it sounds like i have been working hard, but i haven’t. spent all the money, too.

  aside from this feverish literary activity, things are much as usual here. i am enjoying a small spiteful triumph. did i tell you about the article i did for the bennington alumnae magazine? helen feeley edits it, and she asked me to do an article on being a faculty wife. it turned out quite well, without too much venom, and apparently everyone liked it, until i found out, from about twelve well-meaning friends, that all copies of the magazine had been hidden for commencement weekend for fear some visiting parent might see the article. which made me very sore indeed. usually the alumnae magazines are kept displayed in the administration offices, and in the library, and around the college store, and all the other issues were, and are, neatly in place, but the one with my article is not in sight. i was mad enough to stay away from all the commencement activities which i was supposed to attend, and to make it clear that any literary connection between me and the college was ended. yesterday the admissions director called me; she said that she had just heard that i was annoyed at some fancied slight to my article, and she wanted me to know that there was nothing to be angry about; she personally had instructed that the article be kept out of the hands of visitors and prospective students because it mentioned student drinking and that was bad publicity for the college. i said the article mentioned drinking only once, and that was to say that the students served a punch made out of sweet vermouth, vodka, and cold cocoa. she said well it gave a bad impression of the college and she hoped i wouldn’t think they had anything against the article or were trying to censor it or anything, but no copies of it would be displayed at the college at all. it was the middle of the second inning of the ballgame and i wanted to get back so i suppressed all the things i wanted to say and only told her as sweetly as i could that that was too bad, i was terribly sorry, and i hoped she wouldn’t be angry, but i had given mademoiselle permission to reprint the article, and had even written in a few extra paragraphs for them. stanley says i was spiteful, which i guess i was. every college student in the country reads mademoiselle.

  i just got the mail and there is a royalty statement from my publishers, with a three hundred dollar check. i like royalty statements because it is so nice to find that, for instance, hangsaman sold eleven copies in the last six months. birds nest sold twenty-two. and road through the wall, poor little stepchild, sold five. road has been reprinted again by the way and if you see it don’t touch it. they changed the title, put a vivid series of untruths on the cover, and wrote me that their standards of good taste were very high, as high as they could be and still sell books.

  laurie of course is at present in new york, attending the world series. stanley couldn’t go this year, because of a combination of classes, a public lecture to be given on monday, and psychological larangytis, which he gets every year when brooklyn wins the pennant. laurie went down with his friend willie and they are apparently having a wild time. they have a suite at the st. george hotel, where the ballplayers stay, across the street from stanley’s parents. they have breakfast with stanley’s parents, go back to the hotel and go swimming in the hotel pool, take the subway to ebbetts field where they eat hot dogs for lunch, and see the game. then they have dinner with stanley’s parents, which means one of the good steak restaurants in the neighborhood, and apparently stay up all night watching television.

  stanley’s father and his brooklyn friends are getting very superstitious about laurie; he has never yet seen a losing world series game—brooklyn losing, that is. whenever he goes, brooklyn wins. now, he is not going to saturday’s game, and plans to come home on sunday. if brooklyn loses on saturday, there is no doubt whatever that stanley’s father and his friends will knock themselves out getting laurie to sunday’s game, and monday’s and tuesday’s too, if necessary.

  worst of all, he is terribly ashamed of his mother and father. the day he left i stopped in at the record store and bought three rock and roll records for stanley, because stanley had run across a theory that rock and roll was perfect old-time blues speeded up which of course meant that in his folklore course he would have to demonstrate at least a dim knowledge of it. so we played the three records and (shh) we were both crazy about it. when we talked to laurie that night from new york i said by the way, this rock and roll stuff was really the most and laurie said what? i said we dig it, man, and laurie said MOTHER! and there was a long silence and then he said was it possible…did i really mean…had we heard any elvis presley? i said we certainly had and elvis was just the greatest. laurie said he was not ever coming home again. he was going to stay in new york forever. he would live with his grandparents in new york and we could send down his phonograph and his collection of duke ellington records.

  jannie is starting ballroom dancing, which is being taught by a couple of college students. we figure it will be a great help to her to know how to dance well, because the local school has dances every week and by next year she will want to go. she is also back at piano lessons, and sally, for some reason, is mad to learn to play the clarinet. it is just like laurie with the trumpet; we had no idea he was the least bit interested, and yet when he made up his mind nothing would stop him; he is getting better every day.

  we have three new cats, all black, all females and perfectly beautiful. they look exactly alike, and we can’t name them because we can’t tell them apart, so laurie named them, collectively, the blues. they are wonderful with the kids. there is one of them who is determined to civilize stanley, and spends hours every evening trying to get on stanley’s lap. every time stanley puts him down the cat climbs back up again, and stanley, who has never held a cat in his life, is beginning to wear down a little. last night he let it sit on the arm of the chair for a few minutes. naturally during the day they all sleep on his desk, which maddens him, because they shove the ashtray a fraction of an inch past its usual place, and maybe sometimes knock over a paper clip or something and stanley can’t settle down when he comes home until he has straightened up his desk again. they torment the dogs too. we have also had to remove all ashtrays, candy dishes, and ornaments from the living room and particularly the piano, since the cat race course goes from the kitchen through the dining room—preferably over the table—up and along the back of the living room couch, full length down the piano, and back around the study to the kitchen again. the race goes on every evening for about two hours.

  barry is very mixed emotionally about kindergarten. i think he is so used to being the baby of the family, and being the center of attention at nursery school that he can’t settle down to being just one more kid in a class. the kindergarten and the first and second grades get out at eleven-thirty, and some of the bigger boys have been bothering him, so we sent his big brother out to take care of things, and at least at present all is quiet. all our kids have had trouble fighting going back and forth to school, and of course it makes me madder than anything else. usually laurie can take care of kids who bother sally and barry, provided they have no big brothers.

  so they all keep busy. the schedule for each week ranges from sally’s brownies to jannie’s lessons to laurie�
�s rehearsals, not to mention the cats’ appointment at the vets and stanley’s getting to and from the college. we have set up an iron rule about going out to dinner privately every thursday night, just stanley and me—no children. so we go have a lovely quiet fancy dinner in town; golly, how i look forward to thursday!

  paul feeley is traveling in spain, painting, so helen is alone, and sold their car for another which will not be delivered for a couple of months. she has therefore no way to get into bennington to shop once a week, so we arranged that every saturday we would go in together, have lunch in a restaurant, a ladylike clubwoman lunch, with sometimes a cocktail first, and then do our shopping together. it’s wonderful.

  i am going to have to mail this letter in a story envelope. a regular envelope won’t hold it. just reading it should take all morning. and it is time for the world series game to begin.

  lots of love from all of us. write soon and let us know about your house. best of luck to you in it, and we hope to visit you there soon.

  love,

  s.

  • • •