Yesterday would've been the 90th birthday of author Shirley Jackson. Author of "The Lottery" and "The Haunting of Hill House," she died of an apparent heart attack back in 1965 at the age of 45. Jackson wrote good gothic, but could also crank out light-hearted, slice-of-slice books about the chaos of raising four kids. She loved writing because it was one of the few times during the day she got to sit down.Unlike my laborious method of writing draft after draft until the right words finally appear, Jackson would mull a story over for a long time, then sit down and bang it out almost print ready. (Very similar to the Paul Rugg style .-:)) My favorite Jackon short story involved an older New York couple who decided to spend the winter upstate at their summer home and learned the locals could be deadly if you overstayed your welcome.
And that was this moment in Shirley Jackson history.
5 comments:
Heavens, how can you leave out my personal favorite- We Have Always Lived In the Castle? It is the perfect example of lighthearted yet steady descent into madness. Group madness, at that, until Uncle Julian dies. A masterpiece.
Thanks for remembering one of my early mentors. Not enough gets said these days about her charming and disconcerting style.
I enjoyed "Castle" as well.
No one quite does it like her. Very unique.
That was my style as a journalist too -- lie in bed mulling it over until an hour or so before it had to be in, then get up and bash it out. The longer I put it off, the better the results were.
In my early days, I only had half an hour to get interviews and write the article there at the race track each week. Usually my copy was taken by an assistant editor, but one day, my actual boss took the copy.
He read it while I was on the phone to verify that the 300-baud modem transmission was successful.
Then he asked, "How much are we paying you?"
I answered with the figure.
"I think we can raise that," he said.
Sixteen column-inches bashed out in about 15 minutes, flawless, on a Tandy laptop that only let me see four rows of 40 columns at a time. He didn't have to change a single letter. That was surprising to him.
Those were the days. Ten years later, I'd be making only about half of what he had raised me to.
Keeper,
Fascinating stuff.
Who were you covering the horses for?
No one, for it was cars and occasionally motorcycles.
The Santa Cruz Sentinel. I did that from 1990 through last year. Had to give it up because of my move to Nevada for my "day job".
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