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Shirley Jackson on Not Getting It
Filed under: The Katharine Wheel: On Fiction Tagged: newyorker.com, Shirley Jackson
The Poynter Institute's blog on journalism published an interesting column by Roy Peter Clark last month on the hazards of satire. The column's real topic had to do with the infamous Obama cover, but contained some fascinating material from Shirley Jackson on responses from New Yorker readers to her story, "The Lottery," whose 60th anniversary of publication was just the other day.
From Clark's column:
[Jackson's] essay called "Biography of a Story" begins this way: "On the morning of June 28, 1948, I walked down to the post office in our little Vermont town to pick up the mail. ... I opened the box, took out a couple of bills and a letter or two, talked to the postmaster for a few minutes, and left, never supposing that it was the last time for months that I was to pick up the mail without an active feeling of panic. ... It was not my first published story, nor my last, but I have been assured over and over that if it had been the only story I ever wrote or published, there would be people who would not forget my name."
The column goes on from there, and makes for hair-raising reading for anyone who has faith in the intelligence of the average reader. (But see Paul Morris' vision of what her story would've looked like it if it had gone through rewrite today.)
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Other writing by Emily Gordon
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- Report: Learning to read with comic books--that are edited by Françoise Mouly (for Print)
- Interview: Designer Eleanor Grosch (for Print)
- Proposal: a better-designed Metrocard (for A Brief Message)
- Review: Charles Addams: A Cartoonist's Life by Linda H. Davis (for Newsday)
- Review: King's Gambit: A Son, a Father, and the World's Most Dangerous Game by Paul Hoffman (for Newsday)
- Review: Does a New Republic redesign mean a change of tune? (for Print)
- Interview: James Surowiecki on what's next for the wisdom of crowds (for Assignment Zero)
- Report: Eustace Tilley spruces up for The New Yorker's website redesign (for Print)
- Feature: Muslim immigration iconography in the Netherlands, and an interview with Ayaan Hirsi Ali (for Print)
- Micro-essay: on saving time through inspiration (for A Brief Message)
- Review: books about various New Yorker cartoonists by Liza Donnelly and Iain Topliss (for Newsday)
- Profile: screenwriter and novelist Joe Keenan (for Newsday)
- Review: The Complete New Yorker (for Print)
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Comments
I have read no fiction by Jackson other than "The Lottery," but I have read that essay, and it made a tremendous impression on me.
I gotta look it up.