The Letters of Shirley Jackson
Page 60
I do love the house, though. It’s a real house, decorations and all, an inn near London. Someday I will stay there.
Are we ever going to see you? It’s been so long. Love from all,
Shirley
Part of my current writing block is a complete inability to write letters; I can barely manage.
• • •
[To Geraldine and Leslie Jackson]
nov. 4 [1963]
dearest mother and pop,
i imagine by the time this reaches you, you will be home and tanned and relaxed from your trip.
pictures of your great grandson enclosed. he celebrated his first birthday the end of september, and the following week his father celebrated his twenty-first, so we had some fine partying.
everyone here is well and as usual working hard. i have been doing some book reviewing for the new york herald tribune, and am now hopelessly involved in a review of the new critical parody about winnie the pooh, which has had me reading winnie the pooh for the last few days; before that i did dr. seuss, so i seem to be reading nothing but children’s books. stanley’s book of essays was published this week, to very good reviews, and he is quite pleased. you will have a copy soon.
laurie and corinne are doing well. corinne has left college because she simply couldn’t manage with the baby, and is now learning to cook. she is doing fine, too. she has borrowed some of my cookbooks and she keeps turning out all kinds of delicacies.
joanne loves bennington college, although right now she seems to us to be rather more boy-crazy than education-crazy. she has a charming roommate and several very nice friends; they come here to dinner once a week.
sally, unfortunately, could not make a go of it at school. she came home last week and will not go back. we are very sorry, but at the same time we are convinced that she is better off at home. she is now going to the same doctor that i do, and is already considerably more calm. she is back in the north bennington high school, does not like it, but is working hard. the important thing, of course, is getting her to college in three years, and i think that the combination of hard work and the doctor will do it for her.
barry is growing up very fast. his two great interests now are boy scouts and his weekly dancing class, which he loves. he is getting so big and so busy that we hardly ever see him; he is home long enough to do his homework.
i just got a letter from a young actress wanting to know if i could help her get the lead part in the play of CASTLE. i had to write her telling her she had as much influence as i did. they are planning to start rehearsals early in january, which means the play should open in february. i am very curious about it, and am hoping to see the script. sorry this is such a short letter; i must get back back to winnie the pooh. but i did want to say welcome home, and to send you the pictures.
much love from all,
s.
• • •
[To Carol Brandt]
November 7 [1963]
Dear Carol,
I am in the disagreeable position of being most eager to get to work, with nothing at all to work on. If I do not find an idea soon I will have to steal one.
Best,
Shirley
• • •
[To Carol Brandt]
December 2 [1963]
Dear Carol,
I promised Pat that I would try his system of writing just anything at all for an hour or so every morning, so I will. He swears something will come of it, and I am ready to try anything.
I am heartbroken at the probability that I will not after all be able to come to New York this winter; I was looking forward to coming, but it does not seem possible to make arrangements.
Best,
Shirley
• • •
[To Carol Brandt]
February 21 [1964]
Dear Carol,
Stanley and I got home this morning from Indiana, and I got your telegram and letters. I am thrilled and happy over the story, and feel back in business again. Wonderful, wonderful; now I will write more.
Thanks for arranging things with Barbara Lawrence; I am happy to be seeing her again. We used to know each other quite well many years ago. And lunch at the Four Seasons awes me; I have never been there and would love to see it.
Stanley lectured at the University of Indiana, and because we are Professional People they gave us a tour of the Kinsey sex archives; I have never encountered such a mass of pornography in my life. (In all my varied experience!) Some of the material would make an interesting book; you couldn’t show it to your mother but my, wouldn’t it sell.
Best,
Shirley
• • •
[To Geraldine and Leslie Jackson]
tuesday [spring 1964]
dearest mother and pop,
everyone here is well, and looking forward to your coming in may. the weather should be lovely then and it will be just fine to see you. i will reserve rooms in the motel for you; i know our guest room bothers mother, with animals around.
there has been a man here taking my picture for the saturday evening post. i know it will turn out to be just as awful as my pictures always do, but they insisted. i have done an article which they are running probably in june, on the unpleasantness of european travel. of course i have never gone to europe so that made me the proper person to write it; i talked to everyone i could find who had gone, and made up a lot of interesting things and the post loved the article except they said it was too authentic; it sounded as though i had really been and was pretending not, so i had to go through and put in all kinds of disclaimers. if what i said sounds true i never want to go. i have also sold a story to the ladies home journal; these are the only things i’ve written this spring so i am selling one hundred percent. i am getting back to work very slowly; the doctor keeps urging me and so does stanley, but it is very hard to start again. things keep moving in spite of me, though; my agent found an old old story*25 and sold it to vogue and it has now been picked up for the best short stories of 1964; considering that it was written somewhere in the fifties it does sound silly. and my last book is being translated into french and things are coming out in paperback all the time.
sally and I go to the doctor twice a week, and one of us sits and reads in the waiting room while the other one goes in. he has done simply wonders for sally (for both of us, of course) and it is sometimes hard to remember what she was like six months ago. she is so much more relaxed and happy and cooperative, and quite pleasant. she has been trying to get into more activities around the school, although she hates the place, and her grades have improved. she helped to direct the senior play. she and i have planned an adventure; i am lecturing at new york university next week and am taking sally with me. i still do not dare go many places, particularly new york, alone, and of course sally is delighted to make the trip. we will be there for three days, and will go shopping and see movies and go to strange restaurants.
thanks again to the doctor’s insistence i have accepted lecture dates right through the summer and winter and into next spring, and at the end of the summer i go to the bread loaf writers’ conference as short story lecturer, and i go alone; that is going to be the big test; i will be there for two weeks and stanley will come up to visit but not to stay. we are both visiting lecturers at columbia this summer; we only accepted if they promised to find us an air-conditioned room. and in may i lecture in chicago, to which i will have to travel by plane. stanley has a sabbatical so he will come too and we may spend a few days around chicago; in the meantime stanley has also lectures to do, and whenever possible i will go with him, so we are going to keep busy; each of us has three prepared lectures and they have to be carefully calculated not to overlap. we went to indiana where stanley worked, and we wen
t by train, which was fun; stanley got the upper berth. we also spent two days at indiana being shown around the kinsey sex insititute, which has an enormous library of all kinds of pornography, and was fascinating. all of this i do with great trepidation, and batteries of pills, but i’ve been doing it. i can do almost anything i want at home, and i go to college functions, and out to lunch, and shopping in bennington, by myself; the only place i can’t go is the grand union supermarket because it is so big. each adventure takes a little less pushing from the doctor. i am on a fairly strict diet—it can’t be too strict, on top of everything else—and am losing weight slowly but regularly, so much so that none of my last summer’s clothes will fit me now.
stanley is working very hard, and teaching goes well. his class is still the biggest at the college. we have had his tutees for brunch the last two sundays, four at a time, and they eat everything in sight, and curtsey politely when they leave.
joanne—now known as jai—is very happy at the college, and we seem to hear of her everywhere. she has two roommates, and they share a suite of two rooms which they have decorated with photographs of the beatles. they invited us for cocktails the other day and we had a lovely time, although it is an awful lot of beatles to take at one time. she and sally have become quite close, and sally goes up to visit her often; they still sing together beautifully.
old barry is the busiest of all of them, i think. he rides his bike into bennington to visit a redhead, and goes to all the school dances. his dearest friend right now is a young english boy, the son of a visiting sculptor at the college,*26 and barry has developed an english accent. the most wonderful part of it is that he has been invited to visit timmie in london next august, and it looks like he will go, and he will stay for a month. he has more than enough money saved up to finance the trip.
i am sending you two books. one is for each of you, but you must decide yourselves who gets which.
everyone sends much love, and it will be so good to see you.
love,
s.
• • •
[To Carol Brandt]
May 5 [1964]
Dear Carol,
Sally and I were disappointed at not seeing you in New York last week, but I hope your trip was as pleasant as ours was; we did an enormous amount of shopping and Sally met Pat and was vastly impressed. She almost promised to send him a manuscript. I almost promised too.
Right now it looks as though we will be spending a good deal of time in New York this summer, so I do hope we can get together.
I have a new typewriter, one downstairs now and one upstairs. I can type with both hands.
Best,
Shirley
• • •
[To Carol Brandt]
May 8 [1964]
Dear Carol,
I have a problem. After my lecture at NYU the other day, a lady named Carol Drexler of Doubleday stayed for a few minutes to ask me if I was interested in doing juvenile for them. I was not until she suggested a fantasy, perhaps in the manner of the Oz books (which I confess without shame I love dearly) and this did tempt me. I told her that under no circumstances could I possibly agree to do any book until I had written a novel for Pat, but that I was definitely interested in, say, a year or so. She has now written me confirming her interest and asking if I will continue to think about it for after the novel.
Can I agree to do the book for her? I do really find the idea fascinating (not a book like the Oz books, but an individual juvenile fantasy) and would love to do it, but am wondering if you will okay it and if any such book ought to be submitted to Pat first; might he even like it instead of a new novel?
Best,
Shirley
• • •
[To Carol Brandt]
June 2 [1964]
Dear Carol,
I am writing that I am happy to grant the extension on the play of CASTLE.
Now I do not know whether this will please you or not. I became so enchanted with the idea of the fantasy book for children that I started making notes and then writing a little and have now started it and like it very much.*27 I would like to go on with it (on assumption that it will not take more than a couple of months to finish) and hope that Pat will want it. Since I do not seem to be writing any other kind of book I thought this might be a good running start. What do you think?
I expect to be in New York the second week in July; hope I can see you then.
Best,
Shirley
* * *
• • •
After Shirley writes the satiric essay “No, I Don’t Want to Go to Europe” for The Saturday Evening Post, she receives a torrent of angry, insulting mail reminiscent of what she received after “The Lottery” was published, sixteen years earlier.
June 25 [1964]
Dear Carol,
We are coming to New York on Sunday July 5, leaving Thursday July 9; I would love to see you any of the days between, whichever suits you; I will hold things open until I see you or hear from you.
Something bothers me. As you must know, I have never paid much attention to letters or reactions on any of my stuff, and generally can ignore nasty letters. The Post piece, however, has given me a very bad three weeks, and I am a little sick. In the first place, they printed my married name and address on the piece, so that every crackpot in the world could write me freely, and I have had letters which it shames me to read, and which are full of the most unpleasant personal abuse. Now the Post appears this week with a column and a half of further letters, not as abusive, but still disagreeable. I do not, heaven knows, think much of the Post’s readership, but I am now feeling that I would never like to be so exposed again. I feel as though my other work is jeopardized by this ugly response. I am really quite upset.
So. I will retreat to my lovely imaginary country.
Best,
Shirley
• • •
[To Geraldine Jackson]
sunday [August 1964]
dearest mother,
we got home from new york last night, to find pop’s letter, and i am so concerned and sad to hear that you are still not well. it is such a miserable thing to have, and so uncomfortable, and stanley and the kids all want me to send you their love and sympathy.
we put barry on the plane for england last thursday, and he looked very small indeed in his new raincoat getting on that enormous jet, but we got a cable saying that he had arrived and loved it, so i guess he is having a wonderful time. stanley and i spent the week at columbia university being visiting lecturers at their writers’ conference, and except for stanley’s not feeling well we had a fine time, meeting people and talking about books and i was made an honorary member of the men’s faculty club and allowed to sign checks there.
no new grandchild yet, although corinne would be just as glad to get it over with. laurie is still up in the air about jobs and moving. he is now working at the race track and enjoying it; stanley and i went to the track one night (i broke even!) and watched laurie paying out vast sums of money and looking efficient.
we keep busy. if stanley is well i am going to the bread loaf writers’ conference on wednesday, where i will lecture and give forth with profound words about Writing, and spend two weeks being cool on top of bread loaf mountain, although perhaps a little stir crazy. it is only about a hundred miles from here, so i can get home without too much trouble.
we spent last weekend at a big fancy home in long island, where i rang the bell beside my bed and the maid brought my breakfast on a tray, and where they had an electrified tree; when they wanted coffee they brought out the coffeepot and plugged it into the tree. we want a tree like that.
please do feel well very soon; i will try to write as soon a
s i can, and in the meantime everyone sends much much love. all our very very best,
s.
• • •
[To Carol Brandt]
September 8 [1964]
Dear Carol,
We were in New York, at Columbia, and left in considerable haste and worry; Stanley was suddenly so sick that it was necessary to get him right home and—we thought—into the hospital. Just to steal some of his thunder, I fell downstairs going all the way sitting down and it is only the last day or so that I have been able to do anything that required sitting, like typing; I take my meals standing and manage to drive with extreme caution. I am now getting back to work, though, and since I did some work on my little book earlier in the summer I am quite optimistic.
We have a new granddaughter,*28 two days old.
Best,
Shirley
• • •
[To Geraldine and Leslie Jackson]
monday [September 1964]
dearest mother and pop,
i have been doing stories for the past couple of weeks and have not had time for much else. it is also a very busy time of year, with school getting under way and the college social season starting. although we are staying far away from most social events right now. we are in a most conservative, bed-by-eleven state.