Letters that live

A collection of someone's letters — even if it is someone one greatly admires — might seem like the dullest reading one can experience. You might rather read food labels or all the fine print that comes with your prescription. The Letters of Shirley Jackson (2021), however, are something else again. Reading it is as pleasurable as reading one of her novels.

Jackson, the author of one of America's best-known short stories ("The Lottery") and the novels The Haunting of Hill House and We Have Always Lived in the Castle, was a natural, someone who could make anything interesting. Whether she was writing love letters to Stanley Hyman, her future husband, or letters to her parents (both of whom outlived her) or her literary agent, she was creative, imaginative and usually humorous.

"Shirley loved writing letters as much as she liked to write fiction," says her eldest son Laurence (often the subject of these letters), who edited this book. Her husband, himself a prominent literary critic and author, was the first to recognize their importance, and many of those blessed to receive her letters were encouraged to preserve them for the benefit of future biographers and readers.

In so many of these letters Jackson sounds like a typical New England housewife of her generation. She is occupied with her husband, her four children, preparing the next meal, paying bills between royalty checks and book advances and entertaining houseguests. They are so lively and gay that a reader must be alert for undercurrents suggesting that not everything is joyful and carefree in her life. She ate too much, drank too much, smoked too much and took too many drugs (legal and prescribed by her doctors, but still excessive). At times she was afraid to leave her own house. Only in her letters to Stanley, including those love letters, does she open up about his frequent unfaithfulness.

Like her contemporary, Flannery O'Connor (mentioned in these letters), Jackson was a gifted cartoonist, and many of her cartoons (most at her husband's expense) are included in the book.

The Hyman family seemed to depend on Shirley's sporadic income to survive, even though Stanley had a steady job teaching at Bennington College for most of these years. When a check did come in, they would often splurge on a new car or a new appliance, then wait for the next check. Even in middle age, Shirley was still receiving the occasional check from her parents. Both she and Stanley liked to gamble, perhaps another reason they were so often broke. Her stories usually sold quickly, and Stanley seems to have pressured her to keep churning them out so they could pay their bills. 

Jackson's books, including the humorous ones she wrote about her own family, will be read for years to come. Add to that list this wonderful collection of her letters.