Local Biographer Reveals The Inner Life Of ‘Domestic Horror’ Master Shirley Jackson

Run — don’t walk — to get a copy of neighbor Ruth Franklin’s latest critically acclaimed biography, Shirley Jackson: A Rather Haunted Life.

Franklin is an award-winning book critic, former editor at The New Republic, and author, whose new literary biography has been called a perfect Halloween read and “a remarkable act of reclamation.” Franklin digs deep into the inner darkness of fiction writer Shirley Jackson (1916 – 1965), a bold and mysterious woman whose themes of psychological horror eerily depicted cultural anxiety in postwar America, and sometimes riled readers into hysteria.

But before you pick up her book, read our Q & A with Ruth Franklin to learn what it was like to turn more than 50 boxes of raw material into a narrative biography — and why she moved to Ditmas Park to complete it.

Why did you choose Shirley Jackson as your biography subject?

Like so many people, I have The Lottery in the back of my mind as a touchstone work of fiction, but I read more of her work recently and got a sense of her wide range, especially for women’s lives and the situations they face — from career women isolated in the city to poisonous suburbs where neighbors plot against each other. Jackson also wrote memoirs about raising four children and a menagerie of pets. She was unique as a woman and an artist; she created a career for herself at a time when women weren’t doing that.

How did you become Jackson’s official biographer? What is that process like?

I contacted her estate — her four children. I wrote them a letter, introducing myself, my interest in her work, and desire to collaborate. They had to learn to trust me; they read my previous work and we met a number of times. I spent 6 years working on this book from start to finish. Over that time I started publishing bits and pieces, which encouraged them that the final product was going to be something they liked.

How did you turn fragmented source material into a narrative biography?

I find biography really absorbing, it requires so many different elements that it was never boring. There were over 50 boxes at the Library of Congress [which included undiscovered interviews and correspondence], her husband had his own archives almost the same size, and a lot of unpublished primary source material not yet accessed by Jackson’s previous biographer. I poured through letters and diaries, which I find fascinating. I spoke to all of her children, a number of friends, colleagues of her husband, students of Bennington College, you have to invite these disparate ingredients into a narrative.

I didn’t want to wait too long to start writing because I had no idea how long the process would take. I really wanted the book to come out this year, on the 100th anniversary of her book, so I couldn’t afford to take too long.I started writing a couple of years into the process, but maybe it was too soon because the rough draft was really rough. In fact, my editor sent back my first draft with rough comments, I had poured a lot of undigested stuff into it and he was pushing me to give it my own narrative voice.

How do you give your own narrative voice to someone else’s story?

I tried to focus on the story that arose from the primary sources. In the story of somebody’s life, there will always be a few major threads, and part of the challenge was to focus on those threads — plots, subplots, storylines.

When there is a big archive, you can drown in all the source material. In Jackson’s archives, I often got distracted by potential tangents. There were things like grocery lists and random notes on scrap paper that made no sense to me when I first came across them [including her potato kugel recipe, “it’s not a real potato pudding unless you grate a couple of knuckles into it.”] But six months later, I would piece it together. I needed a lot of time getting an overview of her life before I saw how the pieces fit together. I had to live with the material for a long time; I ate, drank and breathed Shirley Jackson for a few years.

You were a book critic for many years before embarking on biography, how did you transition between those two formats?

I’ve always been interested in how people write books and why, why a particular person comes to write only the books they can write. Biography is a logical extension of being a book critic. There is a lot of criticism in my biography, the two parts are really inseparable.

Do you have your next subject in mind?

I’m thinking about a couple subjects for my next biography, but I’m more hesitant because now I understand how big of a project it is. You spend a lot of time with this person, trying to get inside their head, it’s important to make the right choice.

Did spending so much time inside Jackson’s head affect your writing style?

She’s a very different kind of writer than me — primarily fiction, I would have hoped that her lucid style would have rubbed off on me by virtue of having read so much. My style is different, but we do have somewhat of a shared sensibility, which is what attracted me to her work.

I developed a deep sympathy; a tendency to view the world as a fundamentally dark place with rare points of light instead of the other way around. A skepticism about human nature. But I also sympathize with her sensibility regarding motherhood — the word ‘parenting’ wasn’t in her vocabulary — her refusal to allow her children to fully subsume her life.

How would you recommend readers start with Jackson’s collection?

Start with The Lottery. Then The Haunting of Hill House, it’s the perfect psychological ghost story in the vein of Henry James’s Turn of the Screw. You’re never sure if it’s real or a figment of the character’s imagination, which is what makes it tremendously scary. Beautifully written.

After The Lottery was first published in The New Yorker in 1948, the magazine received a record number of letters from readers, many of them shocked and angry. Why do you think readers reacted so strongly to Jackson’s story?

It’s an interesting phenomenon. A lot of the letters weren’t as angry as confused, readers wanted someone to explain the story to them. Part of that is her oblique style, it sneaks up and delivers a shocking conclusion.

Another part had to do with the climate in America in 1948, a few years after World War Two and at the cusp of Cold War. People recently learned of the new horrors others were capable of committing against their fellow humans. At the same time, there was a climate of fear in the US about the communists in our midst.

With The Lottery, there was a subconscious sensation of discomfort among the readers, a feeling that they were getting a glimpse of themselves in the mirror, even if they didn’t know that’s what they were reading. Fear was one of Jackson’s fundamental themes, and I think she would have agreed that there isn’t anything scarier than what’s inside your own mind.

What attracted you to Ditmas Park as a place to live and work?

Ditmas Park is a great place to be a writer. We came to Ditmas Park searching for more space, my husband and I both have home offices. And right now my office is full of my foster cats.

Jackson had a series of rambling, falling old mansions, one of which was Victorian. She loved her old houses and described them in great, affectionate detail. Reading that might have affected my decision to buy this house near Brooklyn College in South Midwood. It’s neighborhood whose name has a mysterious origin, it’s not actually south of Midwood, it’s an area just east of Fiske Terrace on the side of Ocean Avenue.

Right after we moved into our house, a big old Victorian, a friend said, “It’s Shirley Jackson’s house!”

Order your copy of Shirley Jackson: A Rather Haunted Life here, read more about Ruth Franklin here, and stay updated with her latest projects on twitter.