Shirley Jackson: A Rather Haunted Life
Shirley Jackson: A Rather Haunted Life book cover

Shirley Jackson: A Rather Haunted Life

Hardcover – Deckle Edge, September 27, 2016

by
Price
$19.00
Format
Hardcover
Pages
624
Publisher
Liveright
Publication Date
ISBN-13
978-0871403131
Dimensions
6.6 x 1.6 x 9.6 inches
Weight
2.31 pounds

Description

"With this welcome new biography Franklin makes a thoughtful and persuasive case for Jackson as a serious and accomplished literary artist. . . . [Franklin] sees Jackson not as an oddball, one-off writer of horror tales and ghost stories but as someone belonging to the great tradition of Hawthorne, Poe and James, writers preoccupied, as she was, with inner evil in the human soul." ― Charles McGrath, New York Times Book Review "Ruth Franklin’s sympathetic and masterful biography both uncovers Jackson’s secret and haunting life and repositions her as a major artist whose fiction so uncannily channeled women’s nightmares and contradictions that it is ‘nothing less than the secret history of American women of her era.’" ― Elaine Showalter, Washington Post "Franklin is a conscientious, lucid biographer, and her book is never less than engaging." ― Blake Bailey, Wall Street Journal "Franklin's research is wide and deep, drawing on Jackson's published and unpublished writings including correspondence and diaries, as well as interviews….Franklin has shown the interplay between the life, the work, and the times with real skill and insight, making this fine book a real contribution not only to biography, but to mid-20th-century women's history." ― Katherine A. Powers, Chicago Tribune "Masterful…Taut, insightful, and thrilling, in ways that haunt, not quite as ghost story, but as a tale of a woman who strains against the binds of marriage, of domesticity, and suffers for it in a way that is of her time as a 1950s homemaker, and in a way that speaks to what it means to be a writer, an artist, and a woman even now." ― Nina MacLaughlin, Boston Globe "A Shirley Jackson biography seems especially timely today, even though Jackson, as with many of her stories, remains somewhat mythically timeless….Franklin’s is both broader in scope and more measured in its analysis….[A] masterful account." ― Jane Hu, New Republic "Comprehensive…Jackson’s lifelong interest in rituals, witchcraft, charms and hexes were, Franklin convincingly maintains, metaphors for exploring power and disempowerment…Franklin situates Jackson’s conflicted relationship with coercive postwar US domesticity within the context that would give rise in 1963 to Betty Friedan’s attack on ‘the feminine mystique’…[A] sympathetic and fair-minded biography." ― Sarah Churchwell, The Guardian "[ Shirley Jackson ] strongly affirms the American author’s powerful collection of stories, novels and memoirs. . . . Magisterial and compulsively readable." ― Lauren LeBlanc, Minneapolis Star Tribune "[ Shirley Jackson: A Rather Haunted Life ] represents the latest and most concerted attempt to reclaim the writer’s reputation. It’s also a fresh effort to frame her as an artist with extraordinary insight into the lives, the concerns, and―above all―the fears of women…Gender is not the only prejudice that has kept us from acknowledging the brilliance of Shirley Jackson, but Franklin’s biography is a giant step toward the truth." ― Laura Miller, Slate " Shirley Jackson: A Rather Haunted Life deftly narrates the influences, experiences and reputation of the author of the famously enduring story ‘The Lottery.’ As a history of the literary culture of the 1940s and ’50s, it teases out the daily lives of people who displayed James Joyce’s ‘Ulysses,’ Wilhelm Reich’s ‘The Function of the Orgasm’ and James George Frazer’s ‘The Golden Bough’ on their coffee tables. And as a chronicle of American life in the Eisenhower era, it reminds us of a time when people with too many books could be considered subversive…Much of Jackson’s writing is a weird, rich brew, and Franklin captures its savor." ― Seth Lerer, San Francisco Chronicle " Shirley Jackson: A Rather Haunted Life . . . lifts its subject out of the genre ghetto and makes a convincing case that Jackson was a courageous woman in a male-dominated field whose themes resonate strongly today." ― Jeff Baker, Seattle Times "To truly reclaim a legacy, it generally helps to have a big, penetrating biography, one that takes into consideration everything that’s come before and pushes forward a new and improved interpretation. Ruth Franklin’s excellent Shirley Jackson: A Rather Haunted Life is all that and more…Franklin proves to be a supple biographer." ― Kate Bolick, Bookforum "This meticulous biography tackles the work of Shirley Jackson with the kind of studied seriousness some might give to a male titan of history like Robert Moses. And thank goddess for that, as Ruth Franklin wisely rescues Shirley Jackson from any semblance of obscurity. Despite her well-documented magnetism (and dalliances in the dark arts) Jackson's work was often dismissed as mere genre nonsense or, worse yet, women's fiction and Franklin's sensitive, witty and rigorous work makes an airtight case for just why this isn't right. The ire Jackson's short stories inspired in New Yorker readers is only a hint of the drama and intensity that characterized her short but beguiling life, with Franklin captures with a hefty dose of wit and suspense. One of the best literary biographies I've ever encountered." ― Lena Dunham "Ruth Franklin is the biographer Jackson needed: she tells the story of the author in a way that made me want to reread every word Jackson ever wrote." ― Neil Gaiman "Ruth Franklin has written the ideal biography of a figure long and unjustly neglected in the history of twentieth-century American literature. By restoring Shirley Jackson to her proper stature as one of our great writers, Franklin has in a stroke revised the canon." ― James Atlas, author of Bellow: A Biography "Franklin’s biography takes us beyond the chilling stories that made Shirley Jackson’s name into the dilemmas of a woman writer in the 1950s and ’60s, struggling to make a career between the pressures of childcare, domesticity, and her own demons. It’s a very modern story, and a terrific read." ― Mary Beard, author of SPQR "With her account of an emblematically American literary life, Ruth Franklin reminds us that her subject was far more than the writer of classy ghost stories. On the contrary, Shirley Jackson was the harbinger of profound upheavals both societal and literary. This is a brilliant biography on every level, but it is especially astute on Jackson's ground- and genre-breaking work, which I will now reread immediately." ― Tom Bissell, author of Apostle "A perfect marriage of biographer and subject: Ruth Franklin’s portrait of Shirley Jackson restores to herxa0rightful place a writer of considerable significance, and draws a rich intellectual portrait of the age." ― Claire Messud, author of The Woman Upstairs "A biography that is both historically engaging and pressingly relevant, Ruth Franklin’s absorbing book not only feelingly creates a portrait of Shirley Jackson the writer but also provides a stirring sense of what it was like to navigate (and sometimes circumvent) the strictures of American society as a wife, mother, artist, and woman." ― Meg Wolitzer, author of The Interestings Ruth Franklin is a book critic and frequent contributor to The New Yorker , Harper’s , and many other publications. A recipient of a New York Public Library Cullman Fellowship and a Guggenheim Fellowship, she lives in Brooklyn, New York.

Features & Highlights

  • Winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award in Biography Winner of the Edgar Award in Critical/Biographical Winner of the Bram Stoker Award for Superior Achievement in Nonfiction A
  • New York Times
  • Notable Book of 2016 A
  • Washington Post
  • Notable Nonfiction Pick of 2016 An
  • Entertainment Weekly
  • Best Book of 2016 A
  • Time Magazine
  • Top Nonfiction of 2016 A
  • Seattle Times
  • Best Book of 2016 A
  • Kirkus Reviews
  • Best Book of 2016 An NPR 2016's Great Read A
  • Boston Globe
  • Best Book of 2016 A
  • Nylon
  • Best Book of 2016 A
  • San Francisco Chronicle
  • Best Book of 2016 A
  • Booklist 2016
  • Editors' Choice This "historically engaging and pressingly relevant" biography establishes Shirley Jackson as a towering figure in American literature and revives the life and work of a neglected master.
  • Still known to millions primarily as the author of the "The Lottery," Shirley Jackson (1916–1965) has been curiously absent from the mainstream American literary canon. A genius of literary suspense and psychological horror, Jackson plumbed the cultural anxiety of postwar America more deeply than anyone. Now, biographer Ruth Franklin reveals the tumultuous life and inner darkness of the author of such classics as
  • The Haunting of Hill House
  • and
  • We Have Always Lived in the Castle
  • .
  • Placing Jackson within an American Gothic tradition that stretches back to Hawthorne and Poe, Franklin demonstrates how her unique contribution to this genre came from her focus on "domestic horror." Almost two decades before
  • The Feminine Mystique
  • ignited the women’s movement, Jackson’ stories and nonfiction chronicles were already exploring the exploitation and the desperate isolation of women, particularly married women, in American society. Franklin’s portrait of Jackson gives us “a way of reading Jackson and her work that threads her into the weave of the world of words, as a writer and as a woman, rather than excludes her as an anomaly” (Neil Gaiman).
  • The increasingly prescient Jackson emerges as a ferociously talented, determined, and prodigiously creative writer in a time when it was unusual for a woman to have both a family and a profession. A mother of four and the wife of the prominent
  • New Yorker
  • critic and academic Stanley Edgar Hyman, Jackson lived a seemingly bucolic life in the New England town of North Bennington, Vermont. Yet, much like her stories, which channeled the occult while exploring the claustrophobia of marriage and motherhood, Jackson’s creative ascent was haunted by a darker side. As her career progressed, her marriage became more tenuous, her anxiety mounted, and she became addicted to amphetamines and tranquilizers. In sobering detail, Franklin insightfully examines the effects of Jackson’s California upbringing, in the shadow of a hypercritical mother, on her relationship with her husband, juxtaposing Hyman’s infidelities, domineering behavior, and professional jealousy with his unerring admiration for Jackson’s fiction, which he was convinced was among the most brilliant he had ever encountered.
  • Based on a wealth of previously undiscovered correspondence and dozens of new interviews,
  • Shirley Jackson
  • ―an exploration of astonishing talent shaped by a damaging childhood and turbulent marriage―becomes the definitive biography of a generational avatar and an American literary giant.
  • 60 illustrations

Customer Reviews

Rating Breakdown

★★★★★
60%
(328)
★★★★
25%
(137)
★★★
15%
(82)
★★
7%
(38)
★
-7%
(-38)

Most Helpful Reviews

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Jackson far More than her Reputation

In this sympathetic biography, Franklin explores Jackson’s life, her family, her successes, and her writings. Her mother loved fashion and glorified attractiveness; from her earliest years, Jackson had little interest in fashion and was never fashion-model perfect. Her mother’s opinions and criticisms – of her appearance, of her choice of a husband, of her housekeeping, of her writing – continued to her death. She was passionately in love with Stanley Hyman, her brilliant but often unsupportive husband, from their first meeting. His story is linked to hers, of course, and he had many successes, including admiration from the literati of their time (’40’s, ’50’s, early ’60’s) and a fine reputation as a critic and professor at Bennington. He was, however, unfaithful periodically and, in contrast to Shirley, relatively unsuccessful as a writer (and breadwinner). Shirley became a sort of chaotic “earth mother,” raising four children in a kind of laissez-faire style, cooking, entertaining, and constantly writing in her “spare” time. She submitted stories to publications of the day, often being rejected, until finally the success of “The Lottery” earned her the reputation (and notoriety) which led to more frequent sales of her many stories and several novels. Over the years she became a sought-after speaker and the primary financial support of the family. Some critics tended to dismiss her as too focused on oddities and witchcraft, but author Franklin makes the point that her primary themes grew out of her unhappy childhood: human nature’s tendency to ostracize and reject, the plight of the mother/housewife, the sense of a personality and sometimes evil in houses (she and Stanley lived in half a dozen), and finally of her desire to escape. In her last years she developed agoraphobia and insomnia. She relied on doctor-prescribed pills to make it through the day, and she died when her youngest child Barry was only 13. She is a very sympathetic character, and her achievement in carefully documented throughout this excellent biography.
39 people found this helpful
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Rich in history, rich in life

I'm a fan of Jackson's writing, but I don't think you need to be a fan to savor this detailed, thoughtful biography. No one can be understood outside of their own time; Franklin knows this and gives the reader an immersive experience in the 1940s through the early 1960s. Franklin's insights into Jackson's stories and novels, too, are tied to the times. (More than once, I saw familiar stories in new ways.) Shirley Jackson comes across as recklessly, passionately alive: as a loving mother, a partner in a high-voltage, troubled marriage, and a writer who wrote for money AND for love. She deserves this brilliant biography, every word of it.
30 people found this helpful
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Recommended for all readers who are the least bit curious about Shirley Jackson and her writing

Review copy

Admittedly, I don't read a lot of biographies. Not my thing. Nothing against them, I just prefer to spend my time reading fiction. That being said, when I saw there was going to be a Shirley Jackson bio, I decided to get out of my comfort zone just a bit.

Shirley Jackson is perhaps most remembered for her short story, THE LOTTERY, and her novel, THE HAUNTING OF HILL HOUSE, but there is so much more to her short life.

The bio covers her childhood, college years (she wasn't a very good student), early published works, novels, family life, her troubles with anxiety and a period of agoraphobia, and ends with her untimely death.

Shirley Jackson was the mother of four. Two boys and two girls. Laurence (Laurie), Joanne (Jannie), Sarah (Sally), & Barry. Each unique in their own way and often fodder for lighter, more humorous stories she wrote, in sharp contrast to her more serious pieces. She also had a sense of humor about the children's misdeeds. One day Laurence, twelve or thirteen years old, balked when she told him to take a bath. Shirley went into the kitchen, came back with an egg, and smashed it on his head. "Now you need a bath," she told him.

Her husband, Stanley Hyman, was a firm believer in polyamorous relationships, much to Jackson's dismay, but despite numerous thoughts of divorce throughout the years, the couple remained married until her death in 1965.

Of the many quotes from Jackson's work included in her biography, there was one which seemed just as relevant today, as it was when written 60+ years ago. From THE WITCHCRAFT OF SALEM VILLAGE.

"We are not more tolerant or more valiant than the people of Salem, and we are just as willing to do battle with an imaginary enemy...The people of Salem hanged and tortured their neighbors from a deep conviction that they were right to do so. Some of our own deepest convictions may be false. We might say that we have far more to be afraid of today than the people of Salem ever dreamed of, but that would not really be true. We have exactly the same thing to be afraid of--the demon in men's minds which prompts hatred and anger and fear, an irrational demon which shows a different face to every generation, but never gives up its fight to win over the world."

The biography is certainly complete, right own to the seemingly most minor of details. As much a treatise on the times and the publishing industry in general as it was on the life of Jackson. Plus, there are a number of wonderful pictures interspersed throughout the book.

Recommended for all readers who are the least bit curious about Shirley Jackson.

Published by Liveright, a division of W.W. Norton & Company, Shirley Jackson: A Rather Haunted Life is available in hardcover, e-book, and audio formats.

From the author's bio. Ruth Franklin is a book critic and former editor at The New Republic. She has written for many publications, including The New Yorker, Harper’s, The New York Times Book Review, The New York Review of Books, and Salmagundi. She is the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship in biography, a Cullman Fellowship at the New York Public Library, a Leon Levy Fellowship in biography, and the Roger Shattuck Prize for Criticism. Her first book, A Thousand Darknesses: Lies and Truth in Holocaust Fiction (Oxford University Press, 2011), was a finalist for the Sami Rohr Prize for Jewish Literature. She lives in Brooklyn, New York.
23 people found this helpful
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A disappointment.

After such anticipation, this work was a let down. Although I did learn, perhaps 3 or 4 new antidotes regarding Jackson, I couldn't help feeling like I was reading a term paper. Way too much wordage in explaining Jackson's written works. Found myself skipping over paragraphs as Franklin went on and on in, seemingly, an attempt to find the right words to make her point.
Judy Oppenheimer's book (1988) much better at informing us of the person Shirley Jackson was. This one was long winded and boring. Of course, if you wish a reading comparing and contrasting Jackson's Works to her person, then perhaps this one is for you.
Franklin does inform us, in more detail, about the man her husband, Stanley Hyman, was. However this book most definitely did not live up to it's hype.
15 people found this helpful
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Interesting if too much about feminism

I wish I could give this book 3 & 1/2 stars. It is fascinating with details about Jackson's life, from her childhood as a fat little girl, messy, whose mother never stopped suggesting that she lose weight, fix her hair, try to look nicer to an adult still being haraunged by her critical mother.
That Jackson could write so many short stories and novels despite this endless torrent of criticism from her mother and the marriage from hell is laudable. She is one of the best writers of any century.
Her husband Stanley grated on me from the start of this book. He was incredibly intelligent but self-centered to the extreme. He cheated on Shirley with glee, bragging about his conquests to her. Sickening.
She was a great Mom, it sounds like and was able to write joyfully about her life with four kids in two books. Her home sounded like a great place to hang out.
It was interesting to read about her difficulties writing, her anxieties about dealing with neighbors, how she wrote to fans.
But I became extremely bored with the constant references to Betty Friedan. This was not supposed to be a book about Frieden and feminism. Jackson was decidedly not a feminist. She was a complicated human being who was also a gifted writer.
Overall, it's a good book. But please, lose the sidetracks on feminism.
6 people found this helpful
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Getting Re-acquainted with Shirley Jackson at the Right Time

I was eager to read this book because of my love of her work and this biography has been helpful in understanding the author and the context in which the stories, novels, and personal essays were written. The book makes me want to go back and read the stories I know--and to find and the read the novels I missed.After I left college in the mid-seventies, I wanted to write something about her insight into women's lives, but life happened--and I didn't. Sometimes I suspect that I also enjoy biographies of writers because I can live the persistent, creative writing life vicariously, in the way that people enjoy travel writing or adventure. This book has not disappointed me in that regard, either, taking me into a life of books and back to the satisfying sound of a typewriter (even as I'm thankful for the ease of word processing).This is also confirming my current fears of returning to that "perfect" time in history when no outsiders need apply...
6 people found this helpful
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it just was boring to me and while I rarely put a book ...

I got bogged down in the chapters on Jackson's husband and ultimately just put the book down. While I understand he was an integral player in her life, and someone who should be understood to understand his affect on her, it just was boring to me and while I rarely put a book aside without finishing it, this was an exception. I was sad--I had started it with so much excitement. Jackson was an amazing writer.
5 people found this helpful
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" The 1989 biography "Private Demons" was so beautifully written & researched that I wondered if this new ...

Shirley Jackson has always fascinated me, so I was anxious to read "Shirley Jackson" A Rather Haunted Life." The 1989 biography "Private Demons" was so beautifully written & researched that I wondered if this new biography would tell me anything new about my favorite author.

I was ten years-old when I read "Life Among the Savages". I immediately identified with Shirley Jackson's wonderfully strange, creative family. I wanted to BE part of that family. Then my mother brought home "We Have Always Lived in the Castle" by the same author. I dove into it, expecting the same humorous slant--and, well, those of you who are familiar with both books can imagine my surprise. How could the same person have written such diverse material?

But that's the enigma of Shirley Jackson--the ability to find humor in any situation, but also the ability to see evil.

"A Rather Haunted Life" is actually the companion book to "Private Demons." It presents the not-so-wonderful aspects of Shirley Jackson's life, the financial struggles, the unfaithfulness of Stanley Hyman (her husband) & her issues with writer's block & agoraphobia. Ms. Franklin reminds us that Shirley Jackson was successful in an era when women were supposed to be homemakers, not writers.

Long story short, I loved this book. I will probably read it again & again, like "Private Demons." If I have any criticism, it would be that the extensive plot summaries of each Jackson novel seemed unnecessary. Most of us are familiar with the material cited. But GOOD JOB, Ms. Franklin! You showed me a different side of Shirley.
3 people found this helpful
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Hunting for Savage Demons

When Shirley Jackson's name is mentioned, people either think of her haunting horror tales such as, "The Lottery," or The Haunting of Hill House, or her tales of "domestic bliss" gathered in Life among the Savages and Raising Demons. But there is much more to her complicated tale than horror or domestic life. In Shirley Jackson: A Rather Haunted Life, Ruth Franklin tries to open a window on this complicated tale.

Using all the available sources (unpublished diaries, papers, story sketches/drafts, book reviews, publishers records, etc.), Franklin works to bring Shirley Jackson into focus as a fully-rounded person rather than just as a writer. She spends several chapters on Jackson's early life as well as her husband's (Stanly Edgar Hyman), documenting the underlying passions and phobias each would bring to their life together and to their individual literary endeavors. Franklin carefully describes the trials, tribulations, and triumphs that Jackson lived through, breaking the book into chapters based on what book or story collection that Jackson was writing at that time. This structure allows the reader to see how Jackson's life influenced her writing while revealing the effect her writing had on her domestic situation.

Ruth Franklin accomplished her goal of illustrating how domestic issues, the process of writing, and external forces shaped Shirley Jackson's life and literary outpourings. The reader who finishes Shirley Jackson: A Rather Haunted Life will then have more balanced view on what or who haunted Jackson and her tales.
3 people found this helpful
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Brilliant.

This is a stunning biography. I have been familiar with Jackson's writing for decades but knew very little about her. Now, after Franklin's book, I feel like I've spent time with a woman who was far more fascinating that I would have ever imagined. Shirley Jackson lived a life worth living and, despite numerous setbacks and challenges; accomplished a lot before her sad demise.
Ruth Franklin has written one for the ages and, even if you don't know Shirley Jackson's work, if you love biography this is a must read.
2 people found this helpful

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