The only thing I know about Shirley Jackson is the short story The Lottery but she also wrote a very wickedly funny account of her family life in rural Vermont, Life Among the Savages. It is quite funny. It was written in the days when you spent ten days in the hospital reading and smoking after having a baby, when everyone walked from room to room with their ashtray and their cigarettes, where the new baby rode in the front seat of the car. There is no sentimentality or simpering over the children----each child is treated as an equal--a wily combatant to be reckoned with. What makes this all especially poignant is that Shirley Jackson died when she was only 48 and that apparently she and her family endured a lot of anti-semitism in this little bucolic town----makes you wonder who the savages she is referring to really are.
No comments:
Post a Comment