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Sebastian Ritscher
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LET ME TELL YOU

Sarah Hyman DeWitt Laurence Jackson Hyman Shirley Jackson

New Stories, Essays, and Other Writings

Shirley Jackson is one of the most important American writers of the last hundred years. Since her death in 1965, her place in the landscape of twentieth-century fiction has grown only more exalted. Let Me Tell You brings together the deliciously eerie short stories Jackson is best known for, along with frank, inspiring lectures on writing; comic essays about her large, boisterous family; and whimsical drawings.
Shirley Jackson is one of the most important American writers of the last hundred years. Since her death in 1965, her place in the landscape of twentieth-century fiction has grown only more exalted.

As we approach the centenary of her birth comes this astonishing compilation of fifty-six pieces—more than forty of which have never been published before. Two of Jackson’s children co-edited this volume, culling through the vast archives of their mother’s papers at the Library of Congress, selecting only the very best for inclusion.

Let Me Tell You brings together the deliciously eerie short stories Jackson is best known for, along with frank, inspiring lectures on writing; comic essays about her large, boisterous family; and whimsical drawings. Jackson’s landscape here is most frequently domestic: dinner parties and bridge, household budgets and homeward-bound commutes, children’s games and neighborly gossip. But this familiar setting is also her most subversive: She wields humor, terror, and the uncanny to explore the real challenges of marriage, parenting, and community—the pressure of social norms, the veins of distrust in love, the constant lack of time and space.

For the first time, this collection showcases Shirley Jackson’s radically different modes of writing side by side. Together they show her to be a magnificent storyteller, a sharp, sly humorist, and a powerful feminist.

This volume includes a Foreword by the celebrated literary critic and Jackson biographer Ruth Franklin.

Shirley Jackson was born in San Francisco on December 14, 1916. She first received wide critical acclaim for “The Lottery,” which was published in The New Yorker in 1948 and went on to become one of the most anthologized stories in American literature. She is the author of six novels, including The Haunting of Hill House and We Have Always Lived in the Castle; four collections of short stories and essays, including Just an Ordinary Day; and two family memoirs, Life Among the Savages and Raising Demons. For many years she lived in North Bennington, Vermont, with her husband, the renowned literary critic Stanley Edgar Hyman, and their four children. She died on August 8, 1965.

Laurence Jackson Hyman, the eldest child of Shirley Jackson and Stanley Edgar Hyman, has spent most of his professional life in publishing: as writer, photographer, editor, art director, and publisher. He is the author, editor, or co-editor of dozens of books and monographs.

Sarah Hyman DeWitt is the third child of Shirley Jackson and Stanley Edgar Hyman. She is a performer, folksinger, and artist.

Ruth Franklin is a book critic and the author of A Thousand Darknesses, which was a finalist for the 2012 Sami Rohr Prize for Jewish Literature. She has written for many publications, including The New Republic, The New Yorker, The New York Review of Books, The New York Times Magazine, Bookforum, and Granta. She is at work on a biography of Shirley Jackson.
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Book

Published 2015-08-01 by Random House

Book

Published 2015-08-01 by Random House

Comments

Remember the chilling excitement of reading Jackson’s ‘The Lottery’ for the first time? You’ll have that same experience over and over again with this new collection.

[A] stunning volume of newly collected stories and essays.

Jackson’s wry observations about keeping house in the 1950’s (collected here along with essays, letters and stories) are as spot-on today as they were when she wrote them.

A master of uncanny suspense, Jackson wrote sentences that crept up on the reader, knife in hand. Throughout these previously unpublished pieces, whether short stories about Main Street murders or Jackson’s description of her own eerie writing process (sleepwalking and ghosts helped), the author’s mordant wit and nuanced prose are often shiver-inducing.

Who knew that the author of the creepy classic short story The Lottery was such a hilarious commentator on the domestic life?

Unpublished and uncollected work by the celebrated author of The Haunting of Hill House (1959) and other neo-Gothic chillers. It's fitting that this gathering by Jackson, who died half a century ago, should open with a perfectly crafted little story called ‘Paranoia.’ Unfolding with the to-the-second pacing of a Twilight Zone episode. . . . [H]er stories never fail to deliver. For fans of midcentury suspense, it doesn't get much better than this.

The whole of the book offers insights into the vagaries of her mind, which was ruminant and generous, accommodating such diverse figures as Dr. Seuss and Samuel Richardson… Read more...

Italy: Adelphi, UK: Penguin Classics

Jackson, an inspiration to writers from Stephen King to Joyce Carol Oates, dared to look on the dark side and imagine the unimaginable, as demonstrated in this volume of her uncollected and unpublished work. . . . [A] multifaceted portrait of the artist as wife, mother, commentator on the comfortable middle class, and pioneer. . . . Line drawings, quotations, and a Foreword by biographer Ruth Franklin enhance this reminder of why Jackson’s reputation flourishes 50 years after her death.

[A]s you read her stories, you understand the possibility of laughter keeps most of us from a very long fall. And, despite her early death and her uneasy life, it kept Jackson up, too, long enough to show the rest of us that the world really is—unbelievably, irresistibly funny.

Some of (the essays) bubble over with the sort of earnest intelligence that feels like sitting down for a cup of coffee with Jackson herself. . . . But like any good Shirley Jackson story, the sense of unease is what keeps us reading.