I have been working on a new kind of story, hoping that it might turn out to be practical. The one I am doing will be about thirty pages long; I like it, but wonder if anyone can buy it. The general state of mind I am in has me convinced that there’s no use in finishing it and it is just a waste of time but I keep telling myself that that is not really a terribly constructive attitude and anyway I have nothing else to do.
I have just read this letter over and it does sound like a Bennington College freshman—the kind who either ends up in the infirmary with mononucleosis, or gets referred to the psychiatric counselor because of suicidal tendencies. I will be sure to let you know which I decide on.
Best,
Shirley
* * *
—
Bernice announces her retirement, after seven years as Shirley’s agent. She is replaced immediately by Carol Brandt, of Brandt & Brandt, Literary Agents.
[To Bernice Baumgarten]
December 18 [1957]
Dear Bernice,
I am so very awkward over the phone at things like saying goodbye—difficult to do, I find, in any form—that I can only write a most inadequate note. I feel bereaved, as I suppose most of your friends do, and tell myself resolutely that you are going to have breakfast in bed every morning, you are, you are, and who could be heartless enough to quarrel with your living blissfully in Virginia raising racehorses or tobacco or whatever they do in Virginia, where I will also go on believing it is warm all the time. But it is going to be very strange getting along without you. I am also very awkward at saying how deeply aware I am of all the generous help you have given me during these years and the many kind things you have done. “Thank you—goodbye” seems inadequate somehow.
Now at least you can have all the kittens you want, and I will start saving them for you. I hope you will keep in touch with us, and the very best of everything to you.
Love,
Shirley
• • •
[To Carol Brandt, Brandt & Brandt Literary Agents]
January 8 [1958]
Dear Carol,
Many thanks for your letters and for returning LOUISA; I shall try that beastly story once more (I don’t know why she stayed with Paul; I personally think the girl was feeble-minded but shall try to make her snap out of it and look alive) but I don’t know when I can get to it. I am up to the neck in poltergeists right now, for the first book for Viking; did I tell you the title? THE HAUNTING. Poltergeists, I now know more about than anyone.
I am extremely distressed by receiving this morning a copy of a letter sent you by George deKay,*17 announcing that I was going to send them sample material for SPECIAL DELIVERY and then the agreement would go through; this was never my understanding and I would certainly not agree under any circumstances to doing the work before there was any contract, and am sure that this was Bernice’s view too. What I did say was that after the agreement was made (and the money paid!) I would start the writing and send several pieces along to them to see if the general tone and style was what they wanted. If they want to hire me to do a job I will do it the way they like, but until they do hire me I don’t work. This kind of thing always makes me uncomfortable because I am always such a dear innocent jerk listening to these guys talk and thinking how nice we are all going to do a book together and how exciting it all is, isn’t it, and then I turn around and discover that they have gone off with the impression that I am a dear innocent jerk.
For Pat Covici,*18 on the other hand, I am anxious to write many many books; he was so sweet and so horrified at the idea that he might “edit” any book I wrote. I could not even bring him to promise to correct my grammar. Poor man; wait till he sees what I do with conjunctions.
It was such fun meeting you, and I came home full of enthusiastic ideas about writing all sorts of things.
Best,
Shirley
• • •
[To Geraldine and Leslie Jackson]
january 14 [1958]
dearest mother and pop,
let me begin right off by asking a favor. do you remember the winchester house?*19 and can you, do you think, get me any information about it? or pictures and information (particularly pictures) of any other big old california gingerbread houses?
the reason for this is my new book; it is to be about a haunted house, and i can’t seem to find anything around here; all the old new england houses are the kind of square, classical type which wouldn’t be haunted in a million years. i have half a dozen sketches of california houses which look right, but remember the winchester house as a good type house for haunting.
i am all wound up in houses right now, and spent yesterday in the library reading old architecture books. it occurred to me that perhaps mother might have, somewhere, some of my grandfather’s old books,*20 but i suppose it isn’t very likely. it is so exciting; i may end up taking courses in architecture at the college.
we are finally beginning to settle down again after christmas. the children are back in school, without much enthusiasm, and we finally got some snow. stanley’s school is closed until march, and he is trying to get some articles written and some plans made for writing his book, which he does next year during his sabbatical. and i am collecting houses.
i keep thinking that nothing ever happens, but then i realize that at least for me there have been great changes in the last few months; my whole professional environment has changed and it is like starting out all over again with a first book. first of all my agent, who is the wife of j.g. cozzens, who wrote “by love possessed,” decided that since her husband had finally come into some money with his book, it was time for her to retire, after nearly forty years. the head of the agency died, and his wife and son took over, and i now find myself with a new agent, although the same agency. also, one of the last things bernice did was something she had been promising me for a long time, which was to break my contract with farrar and straus and sign me up with a new publisher, so I am now, after fifteen years, signed up with viking with a fine contract paying me fifteen thousand dollars for my next three books. unfortunately, they won’t give me the money all at once—even bernice couldn’t manage that—but are going to dole it out to me over the next three years, during which time i am supposed to write three books, although i told them i won’t. i am promising to write three books in the next five years, and have started docilely on the haunted house.
january 16 (two days later)
the first copy of sundial arrived yesterday and one reason i left this letter was to sit down and read it. only two mistakes, which is pretty good, and neither of them serious. wait till you see the jacket. it is wild.*21 more copies will be along in a day or so and i will send one right off to you. i keep getting sad little letters from people around farrar and straus saying how they are so sorry i am leaving them, but adding bravely that they hope sundial will be an enormous success, and i write sad little letters back which read like lee’s farewell to his troops although actually i am delighted to be leaving them and i bet they are just as happy to see me go, since we have been fighting for fifteen years. what happened was that we needed money, and i asked bernice to ask roger straus for money, which i have been doing with moderate success for a long time, and roger said flatly no. demons did very poorly, he was unable to sell the reprint rights for either demons or sundial, and the whole book publishing business was gone to pieces, and he had no money. it made me mad because i had been fighting with him over the advertising for demons, which he did very poorly, and one reason it didn’t sell was because of no ads. so bernice—one reason she was the best agent in the business—said well, would he give us money as an advance on a new book, as yet unwritten, and roger said no, so bernice very slyly said if i wrote him an outline of a new book and promised to deliver it by a certain time—since he knows i always have—
would he give us some money then, and roger still said no, and bernice said well, then, that automatically broke my contract with them under the clause she had carefully put in saying if they declined to give me an advance on a new book the contract was broken; she told me this in the morning and by afternoon had gotten me an advance from viking. they told me at viking that every time my option with roger came up on each new book they had been asking bernice to see if i would consider switching to them but there had never been a chance because each time roger took the new book without any hesitation.
the result of all this was that on new year’s day stanley and i with laurie tagging along at the last minute packed up and went to new york. we left the three younger kids with the two feeley girls, and had four fine days. i went in and saw my new agent, whose name is carol brandt, and who is one of those terribly well-dressed, self-possessed women i always seem to tangle with in new york; they always decide at once (which is very probably true) that i am altogether helpless, completely unable to get across a street by myself, and they immediately settle down to make all my telephone calls for me, and see that someone will watch over me until they can get me on the train home again. carol arranged for me to have lunch with the viking people, and witnessed my signature on the contract, and even called me afterward at the hotel to see if i had gotten back safely. the viking people took me to lunch in a fancy french restaurant and we talked about san francisco and old houses. my editor there is named pat covici, an old old man who is tremendously respected in publishing and has the fanciest office i ever saw. i met him once many years ago and he was old then.
i did a lot of shopping for a lot of stuff i didn’t need, and was very pleased to find that all my charge accounts all over town are still open. we did a lot of eating and drinking too, and saw a lot of people and got back to find everyone had enjoyed themselves while we were gone. a most successful trip. my first vacation in a long time. and no diet.
laurie has been playing a lot, almost every friday and saturday night, at dances and sometimes at a couple of local roadhouses.*22 he is playing now with several different groups. since the bands he plays with are all professionals, laurie will soon have to join the union. also, his life at present is extremely complicated by jennifer feeley. after years of our saying why don’t you ask that nice jennifer to the dance? he has suddenly discovered jennifer. We only knew that we never saw him any more; he would come home from school just in time for dinner and then go out again and come home late in the evening, and then one evening helen feeley informed me that we were going to have to tell laurie to stop coming over every night because jennifer wasn’t getting any homework done. so we have put laurie on a curfew and the feeleys have put jennifer on a curfew and so now they can only spend afternoons together and weekend evenings, so they spend the rest of the time on the phone.
* * *
—
january 17 (another day later)
sally is doing fine. almost all of her difficulty from last year is gone; she loves her new teacher and is doing better in her work, although never as well as she did before last year. she has always been just as fiery and wild as joanne is gentle, so she still gets into wild fights, particularly with some of the boys who walk up this way, but we have found a way out of that, which amuses everyone except the unfortunate boys involved. laurie and stanley have set up a murder incorporated organization, so he gets a quarter for telling off one of these boys, fifty cents for scaring him silly without actually hurting him, and a dollar for beating him up—although the dollar job has not yet turned up.
barry steams along in his own fashion. he is learning to read and write. he has learned just enough to be able to sound out almost anything. he went out the other day all by himself and made a snowman, in the odd way he does things, taking advice only from the gardener next door, who told barry about the snowmen he used to make. it also entertained old mrs. welling next door, who is, of course, unable to get outside in this weather and who relies a lot on our children’s activities for something to watch, so she was watching from the window. his greatest playmate right now is bix, the great dane puppy, who is still a puppy but about four times the size of any other dog in the world. bix is extremely fond of barry and they make a very odd pair, because barry is still quite small. when bix goes out to meet him after school he is very apt to knock barry down and then barry, in a snowsuit, cannot get up again and someone has to go out and persuade bix to stop licking barry in the face and let barry get up.
two characters from new york came up to see me about a month ago, because they had worked out a theory that they should find a suitable audience and then get a book written for it, and they have decided that there was no light, cheerful book for mothers of new babies, particularly first babies. they want something which will be reassuring and yet not emphasize things which turn up in standard baby handbooks. half the book is to be anthology pieces and cartoons and such, and the other half—about fifteen thousand words—i write. i can do it in a week, actually. they wanted to put my name on the book, as author-editor, but viking raised such a howl, because the book is for another publisher, that i will only be in small letters somewhere inside, which is all right with me.
stanley wants to know if you keep my letters because someday you will have to publish them. it should be quite an editing job, with no dates on them.
everyone sends love, and please feel well so you can come east soon. lots and lots of love, and thanks again for all the fine presents.
s.
• • •
[To Carol Brandt]
February 5 [1958]
Dear Carol,
Due to a most unpleasant and enduring virus infection which I caught from my beastly children, I have been held up for the past week in work on the baby book. It is a little better than half done, however, so I truly hope it will not be long now.
Meditations upon the proper bringing up of children have been further interrupted by my Great Dane puppy, who is at eight months the size of a Volkswagen bus and who chose to enter the house hurriedly by way of the front window, causing a good deal of noise and shatter, and scaring the daylights out of Barry. the dog cut his foot badly, and fled in panic from room to room, pursued by Barry and by me, and leaving bloody footprints on all the floors and particularly on the light green rug. I do not know why I bother. I simply do not know why I bother. Barry was enormously entertained, Stanley stood by saying things like “well I certainly think you should train that dog not to come through windows; a dog who always comes through the window is—”
Local people tell me that there is a house in a little town about fifty miles away which is haunted. The people there see the ghost and talk to her. They do not ordinarily encourage visitors but everyone thinks that if I wrote them and told them I was doing a book they would invite me to come and meet their ghost. I am not going to do it because I am scared.
Best,
Shirley
• • •
[To Ralph Ellison]
[undated, probably winter 1958, handwritten]
Dear Ralph,
I have been trying to draw your house and cannot—Is there any possible way of getting photographs? Particularly the front—the ballroom—and the hall?
Would be enormously grateful—
Thanks again for a most pleasant visit & too much whisky.
Love,
Shirley
• • •
[To Carol Brandt]
February 26 [1958]
Dear Carol,
I gave up doing family pieces partly because the magazines seemed over-full on the subject—not to mention the book lists—and too many other people were working the same pitch; and partly because there just didn’t seem to be any good ideas left any more. I have, on several occasions, however, done some particular pi
eces as definite assignments. If Mr. Fischer*23 is interested in making some definite suggestions I’d be glad to try my hand at it.
Would he like a short, semi-fictional, piece on ghosts? I think of nothing but haunted houses these days, and have gotten as far back as Freud, who says such nasty things about people who have psychic experiences that I think I shall not try to see any ghosts of my own.
Best,
Shirley
• • •
[To Carol Brandt]
February 26 [1958]
Dear Carol,
Although I had set March first as the starting point for the haunted house book so I would have time to do revisions on the baby book, I couldn’t wait and sneaked off last night while Stanley was arranging coins and wrote the first ten pages. He was very much annoyed, because I was supposed to spend this two weeks making brownies and nut cake and potato pudding, and even doing a little cleaning around the house. I always prepare for a new book by reading all my old books over again, and he even sank so low as to hide Hangsaman.
The Letters of Shirley Jackson Page 38
