Life Among the Savages

"Yes, this is where that line between Jackson’s reality and fiction became incredibly blurred. She was writing about her children, and giving them pseudonyms. She’s the narrator, and the extent to which she’s fictionalising herself or not is very much up for debate. She writes about a house “with two children and 5000 books”. She refers to a husband, and otherwise just “the husband.” “Jackson enjoys and relishes in the darkness of children” The way she talks about her children reminds me of Dr Spock; there’s lots in here about child psychology . But rather than attempting to diagnose or temper her children, she’s always relishing in their strangeness. One of her daughters keeps telling this story that she herself has a daughter of the same name. The family just lives within this fantasy of hers to make life easier. Laurie, the son who went on to edit the collection of letters, tells stories of a naughty boy at school called Charles—but it becomes clear very quickly that Laurie is Charles, and he’s admitting what he’s up to at school through the guise of this naughty friend. So I suppose the book is about the mythologies and fantasies that you end up living, when you live with children. When you interact with them all the time, you become absorbed into their worlds—an unreality which is as real as any other world. Shirley Jackson enjoys and relishes in the darkness of children. Yes, if you want to learn more about Shirley Jackson, this book is a good place to go: Bernice Murphy’s edited collection of essays Shirley Jackson: Essays on the Literary Legacy . It’s a comprehensive analysis of Jackson’s most prominent works. It might be nice to look at this, to find a framework for exploring her work. There’s a lot in this collection of essays that points to how innovative and dynamic Shirley Jackson’s books were. The editor, Murphy, has been so key to the revival and reclamation of Jackson’s work, and in situating her within a wider literary landscape. If you if you want more, clearly, Jackson, this is a nice way to go. But also, if you if you’re interested in finding out more about if you’re interested in reading Jackson for the first time or, you know, expanding your reading, then it might be nice to have a look at this and provide some frameworks for exploring her works. Murphy co-edited those letters with Laurence Hyman, so she was part of the revival not only of Shirley Jackson’s fiction, but of her as an icon. If one person picks up The Lottery as a result of this interview, I’ll be happy."