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Private Demons: The Life of Shirley Jackson, by Judy Oppenheimer
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- Sales Rank: #515116 in Books
- Published on: 1988-07-13
- Released on: 1988-07-13
- Ingredients: Example Ingredients
- Original language: English
- Number of items: 1
- Dimensions: 6.28" h x 1.22" w x 9.32" l,
- Binding: Hardcover
- 304 pages
From Publishers Weekly
A porpoise born to a tenacious goldfish (in the words of one of her sons), Shirley Jackson (1916-1965) early rejected the torch of her family's gracious country-club conventionality. "She would laugh at it, flaunt it, rebel against it. But she would carry her mother within her, an unexorcised demon," throughout her short life. This sympathetic biography confirms that the meeting of Jackson (a loner, whose route led her inward) and Stanley Edgar Hyman ("a bearded, loud-mouthed communist Jew" who thrived on having an audience) set her firmly on her career path. Famous above all for "The Lottery," she wrote plays, short stories, light novels, gothics and science fiction, while Hyman produced some of the most brilliant criticism of his time. For 25 years, surrounded by a coterie of creative people at colleges in New York and Vermont, this improbable couple taught, wrote, argued, emoted, smoked and drank to excess (Jackson alone ate a pound of butter a day)and died too young. They left a mixed legacy: four troubled, "somewhat reclusive" children, and some of the most lively writing of mid-century America. Photos not seen by PW.
Copyright 1988 Reed Business Information, Inc.
From Library Journal
Although scholarly and well researched, this biography is made highly entertaining by its numerous anecdotes, collected in extensive personal interviews with friends and family of Shirley Jackson. Combining critical analysis with a discussion of her life, this first biography of Jackson reveals how the author of a chiller like The Haunting of Hill House can be the same woman who, in her Life Among the Savages , was a forerunner of Erma Bombeck. It further reveals how Jackson's own volatile lifestyle and diverse personality contributed to her early death, a tragedy not so unlike the frightening conclusion of her widely known story "The Lottery." Sandra Dayton, Homer Community Lib., Ill.
Copyright 1988 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Most helpful customer reviews
28 of 30 people found the following review helpful.
Well-written and insightful
By Mike Christie
Most people find out about Shirley Jackson through her famous story "The Lottery", but her many fans will tell you there is much more to her than that one, admittedly wonderful, story. "We Have Always Lived in the Castle" and "The Haunting of Hill House" are compulsory reads for any Jackson fan, and Oppenheimer's book should be on the must-read list too.
Jackson wrote some fine horror, and some wonderfully funny "women's magazine" humour: "Life Among the Savages" and "Raising Demons". This book makes it easier to understand the woman behind the two very different kinds of work she produced. Oppenheimer has gathered enough detail to paint a picture of a talented, not very pretty, but determined young woman. There are plenty of details about Jackson's work--including, for example, quite some detail about the creation of "The Lottery", which Jackson's husband, the critic Stanley Hyman, apparently recognized at once for the masterpiece it was.
However, the children are as interesting as the books. If you have read Jackson's collections of stories about her children, these portraits will be among the most fascinating parts of the book. Oppenheimer follows up somewhat on the children's lives after Shirley's death, helping to fill in the picture--the youngest, Barry, was only twelve when she died.
Recommended.
20 of 26 people found the following review helpful.
My review is the opposite of the others; months to prepare this.
By David Seaman
Addendum: Ruth Mitchell will release a new biography of Shirley Jackson with Liveright Publishing in September of 2016.
Judy Oppenheimer is the only person to have written a biography of America's most important writer, Shirley Jackson. It is aggressively titled "Private Demons" playing not only off of her reputation as a writer of Gothic supernatural fiction (which is a tiny fraction of her catalog) and what Ms Oppenheimer has decided was a life that was heavily peppered with misery, fear and mental illness. If one were to interview the people surrounding Judy Oppenheimer's life and then select only the trials and difficulties about which to write her own biography could be titled, "The Tormented Biographer." How do I know this? Because we are all the same and the same could be said of your own biography.
Don't get me wrong: you will enjoy this book. Calling it non-fiction is a bit of a stretch.
The thrill of writing a biography is the level to which the author can manipulate the material; it is very easy to combine the words of several different interviews to allow a questionable thesis to come out. That said, you will love this book, even if you're not a fan of Shirley Jackson. Jackson's life is really not that different than most of our lives, particularly the life of one of the few woman writers of serious literature in the first half of the 20th century. Her house was filled with people like Nemerov, Ellison, Salinger, even Dylan Thomas. (Ralph Ellison is the godfather to her youngest son, Barry.) Oppenheimer takes a rumor of a sexual tryst between Dylan Thomas and Jackson and elaborates upon it to great length despite the fact that she must concede that the only people who know exactly what happened are Shirley Jackson (a woman who was entirely devoted to her husband and family) and Dylan Thomas. Both writers wrote of their meeting but neither suggested anything other than literature discussion took place.) Jackson's short story "The Visit" is dedicated to Dylan Thomas but even that fictionalized story (and anyone who writes fiction knows that plots or events may well come from reality, but with the license of fiction they must be peppered with untruths and the unvented.) "The Visit" was not the title her story was originally published under: a different title without the dedication. Her husband, Stanley Edgar Hyman, re-published the story after her death with the original title and dedication back in place. It is known that the two spent about a half hour alone on Jackson's North Bennington porch but nothing more is known. By thinking about what we know of Shirley Jackson it is far more likely that she and Thomas discussed poetry and the difficulties of fame. To pass on the gossip of many speculators of that event is the work of a second rate biographer.
Judy Oppenheimer reprinted every bit of gossip and speculation that Jackson's friends and colleagues spit out twenty years after her death. And it is this very thing that makes her book great fun. It is clear that Oppenheimer did ample research: she interviewed all four of Jackson's children, every friend, teacher, childhood friend and spent countless hours at the Library of Congress going through box after box of Jackson's personal papers, all of which were donated to the LOC by Stanley Hyman in 1968 according to the wishes of Ms Jackson. When a biographer is sitting with countless bits of interview, quotes, published stories, it is similar to a jigsaw puzzle in putting together a life, at the same time, this is a jigsaw that has pieces made of smooth rounded edges; elements can be left out, the commentary of the author in between factual quotes can be written in any form. The truth is that art- all art - is about manipulating an audience. To prove that, look at my review. It is not at all appropriate to write a critical review in first person, yet due to my passion about Jackson as a writer I am deeply aware that by personalizing the experience I had in researching for this review my essay will carry more power to you, the reader, by learning of the extremes that I personally went to to prepare this review. However it is no more manipulative than writing a piece of music the subject of which is sad and finishing on the I chord; open and spread, the root below the F clef, the third a tenth higher and the fifth a tenth above that. (Db, F, Ab) The elements I use as a composer are all tools but can be seen as forms of manipulations so that the audience will hear a simple ending, open and hollow; in short, sad.
Just one week ago, in an email exchange this critic had with Barry Hyman, the youngest of Jackson's children, Barry had this to say: "Do not believe anything you read in the SJ biography Private Demons. The author was more suited for malicious gossip columns than serious literary biography..."
Again, I repeat, anyone will enjoy reading this book and the truth is the same with any and all biographies. The author has great power to manipulate the facts to create the story he wants. The emotional breakdown of Jackson described by Oppenheimer isn't much different than the breakdown that William Styron wrote of in his autobiographical book "Darkness Visible: A Memoir of Madness." About 25% of the population has suffered the hell that Jackson suffered in her anxiety and depression and the effect that it had on her family is no different than the effect that it has on the loved ones of anyone fighting depression and anxiety. Stop and think: Have you suffered from de[pression of anxiety? Has a friend or family member suffered thus? This is a medical iollness and was not what created the brilliant works of Shirley Jackson. To toss around words such as "mad" or insnane" is a testament to what we do not know about the medicine of the mind. In a hundred years behavioral medicine and physical medicine will fall under the same catagory and we will fell as guilty about how we've spoken of Sylvia Plath and Shirley Jackson as we now feel about the burning of the depressed in the 15th century for their possession by demons. (Is this not what nearly all of Jackson's work was about?)
There is no illness worse on the planet. But to tie it into her writing, to seek blame in between the quotes is not at all professional. To suggest that Shirley Jackson "willed" herself into death based on a single letter sent to her agent written before her death and delivered after her death is nothing more than a manipulation of specific pitches in a specific key placed on the staff in a specific place. As tears come to your eyes with the final chords of Bernstein's "West Side Story" a reader can just as easily be moved by "Private Demons". "West Side Story" is a work of fiction, but the elements of that story occur every day. In fact, I daresay there is not a soul alive who has not suffered at the hands of love. The difference is that our lives are not underscored. Our day to day actions are not peppered with adverbs and adjectives.
That said, if you want the gossip and if you adore Jackson her written words aren't enough for you then this is an excellent addition. I've been studying the work of Shirley Jackson since I read "Life Among The Savages" in sixth grade (1973) and "The Lottery" in eighth grade. Judy Oppenheimer does manage to capture a thesis of which Jackson would approve: the greatest evil on the planet comes from other people. It is clear that as a woman, married to a man, with immeasurable IQ's failing to fit into the mold of a 1950's housewife while being the bestselling author of that decade, she would definitely suffer the gossip of the townsfolk who live around d her and the third rate news media. A small village in Vermont is prone to hypocrisy and bigotry- the smaller a population the more pronounced its voice becomes (Jackson married the son of an orthodox Jew and at a young age they both embraced the Socialist views of Karl Marx. Anti-Semitism was rampant in the United States then, just as it is now) they raised their children with creative imagination. This isn't all that different from many other families and each and every person in the world feels as though he fails to fit into the social mold of what one should be. That is the cornerstone of American Media: emaciated women with perfect makeup; television shows showing families with whom we can never measure up; fiction that fails to depict the mundane elements of our lives. Common sense, really. And it is unquestionable that the life of Shirley Jackson was just as mundane as all of our lives. Keep that in mind as you read "Private Demons" because this biography is written to make the life of Shirley Jackson seem like one of Jackson's books. We all have private Demons and the only difference here is that Oppenheimer has dragged them kicking into the sunlight. The element that makes Shirley Jackson so unusual is the fact that she managed to be a famous best-selling author and raise a family in a traditional manner. She used her creativity to create wonderful experiences for her children and husband. She wrote after the children went to bed. Stephen King writes in the morning. William Styron wrote from after lunch until cocktail hour. It's impossible to find a control group because other than Flannery O'Connell, what woman was on a par with Shirley Jackson between 1946 and 1962?
A good biographer transcribes every single interview and then sends it to the subject for approval and a second chance to make his/her words clear. A good biographer- or at least a fair biographer- sends the completed manuscript to the main subjects before publication. In this case that would be the four children of Shirley Jackson. This can alter the power a biographer has, even his thesis, but when a writer is claiming to write non-fiction, there are obligations attached. Speculation must be marked as such. Sounds dissapointing? Perhaps, but wait: a biographer who does this can earn much more than the pleasure of having completed a book and that would be the respect of the subject's family. Occasionally that means keeping a family secret about one of America's first female composers at the request of a great nephew now living in Germany. It could mean a gift of an original manuscript from the son of a famous American composer. Even the act of researching a review for someone else's biography can bring new friendships and the thrill to discover that a famous writer's son is a gifted composer and his life work is the same as yours. But what it means mostly is the respect of these people and the eventual respect of scholars who search for truth instead of a biography filled with carefully selected adjectives and adverbs chosen to guide the reader toward following any thesis. (The second draft of any document should involve the removal of as many adverbs as possible.)
I apologize to Oppenheimer for pulling the rug from beneath her; I am aware of the intense amount of work that goes into researching an entire biography,(Okay, for me it is great fun- touching history first hand through latex gloves and loose leaf paper or adjusting a tape recorder before the descendent of one whom you idolize) but more is owed to truth. "Private Demons" is an important book to read if a scholar of Jackson or Hyman but it must be a small fragment of it. Given how Jackson felt, the best way to study Shirley Jackson is to simply read her books and her stories. This is, after all, a woman who went to her grave without adding a single comment to her culture changing story, "The Lottery." If one requires more than was on the page the only thing to do is re-read the story. Jackson wrote an essay called "The Biography of a Story" about the public's reaction to "The Lottery" and in reading this it is quite clear that Jackson found the nation's reaction humorous. Oppenheimer's quotes of reactions from that essay lead one to believe that she wasn't laughing at all of it. She was. And her quick wit and responses taken in context are very appropriate. This essay is published in "Come Al0ong With Me." Read it if you require proof.
"Private Demons" was published in 1988 and twenty five years ago, Jackson had faded into some obscurity. Now, however, there are more literary critics writing about her work and she has been "outed" as one of the finest writers of English language fiction in history. Jackson is now defined as one of the first "pre-post modernists". This is common, after all, Sondheim's "Follies"- the most celebrated and respected Broadway musical ever written- closed on Broadway in 1970 losing all of its initial investments. In 1988 one could not find most of Jackson's works, long out of print. Today, every word she ever wrote is readily available with new cover art and with rapid sales on Amazon as well as entire shelves at Barnes & Noble. Stephen King- America's most famous writer of what happens inside the human mind- counts Jackson among his favorite writers and, in fact, his 1980 novel "Firestarter" was dedicated to Shirley Jackson. King had nothing to do with the rebirth of Jackson's fame- they fall into two different categories entirely. Jackson is on a par with Henry James, Edgar Allen Poe and James Joyce and was consistently so. Stephen King has written just as brilliantly, but not as consistently and where King appears to be the most prolific writer in history he is third after Agatha Christie and (of course) Shirley Jackson, who wrote more than he in a twelve year period of publishing than during Kings thirty five years of publishing. Judy Oppenheimer can be thanked for keeping Jackson alive and for being the first to risk writing a biography on a mind so brilliant that not even Frued could have kept pace.
So regarding Oppenheimer's "Private Demons" I repeat that you will enjoy reading it but suggest only AFTER you've read every word that Jackson wrote herself. The fact that you can't take "Private Demons" as fact doesn't mean you won't enjoy the book. If you read every other review you will note that all the other critics were taken in by the gossip, the charm and the adverbs and adjectives that Oppenheimer used. They had a good time and walked away feeling a little bit on "the inside." Still, it`s worth closing by repeating Barry Hyman's words regarding this book about his mother: "Do not believe anything you read in the SJ biography Private Demons. The author was more suited for malicious gossip columns than serious literary biography..."
8 of 8 people found the following review helpful.
A WELL-CRAFTED BIO WITH BOTH TRIUMPH AND TRAGEDY
By Allen Smalling
Most people remember Shirley Jackson as the talented author of THE HAUNTING OF HILL HOUSE and WE HAVE ALWAYS LIVED IN THE CASTLE, not to mention the deeply disturbing and still popular short story "The Lottery." Some of us also have lucked onto her two story collections-slash-novels about family life and kids, LIFE AMONG THE SAVAGES (1953)and RAISING DEMONS (1957), books with a surprisingly comedic view of life with four small children, in which Jackson portrays herself as a harried homemaker, not a nationwide celebrity with book contracts and a schedule of (not entirely welcome) speaking engagements.
Yet who was this Shirley Jackson? Talented, yes, and accomplished. But the cost of expressing those talents took an already unbalanced individual and set her on the path of multiple doom due to excessive and steady consumption of sweets, cigarettes, brandy and amphetamines. There were many sides to Shirley Jackson, says the author, and she justifies that by offering a warts-and-all bio that is conversant with feminist theory (the book dates from the 1980s) but not under its thumb; knowledgeable about psychobiography but not entirely a psycho-bio of a book, and understanding how Jackson's past influenced her adult life.
We return to Burlingame, California (suburban San Francisco) for Shirley's grammar-school years and to upstate New York for her teen and college years. With every intention otherwise, Shirley was a thorn in her mother's side, a striking but not particularly pretty face and a body that leant itself to obesity. Shirley was also a bright if not totally focused student and early on leant more toward poetry and short-story writing than the graceful suburban airs and superficial beauty that her mother would much rather have preferred.
There is a great deal of truth in the comedies-of-family life LIFE AMONG THE SAVAGES and RAISING DEMONS and a great deal of omission, too. Through those books we gather a picture of her husband, scholar Stanley Hyman, as a reticent and somewhat reserved man; when in fact Stanley Hyman was a political firebrand who loved debating and plain old arguing. When Shirley narrates that she went to bed "with a mystery," there's no mystery now that a portable typewriter, pack of cigs and snifter of brandy probably climbed in too.
This woman of many contradictions fiercely loved her children and was fiercely protective of them, yet was at best a mediocre homemaker who occasionally enjoyed cooking but rarely got the chance or took the chance. What we don't hear--and hear only in this significant biography--was that as the Hyman - Jackson family expanded, so did their standard of living. There were housekeepers some of the time, and generally they didn't work out. But there was also the money for some travel and to send the two middle children--both girls--to prep school out of town.
In some ways, Jackson was a kind of "multiple" personality who found it more and more difficult to reconcile her roles or personae as happy homemaker yet sophisticated party person, a sensible but hard-headed and politically sensitive citizen who did not shy from pursuing justice to get a malfeasant public-school teacher fired, yet a woman who bemoaned the deep gulf between adopted town North Bennington, Vermont's locals and the faculty at the still-newish Bennington College.
Shirley Jackson used all her writerly talents in her letters home to mother, striving for a relentlessly sunny tone, despite being deeply given to depression, especially the "post-partum" type when the artist finishes a significant work. Just a plain old regular harried housewife, as she portrayed herself in SAVAGES and DEMONS, would have found life with four exuberant children and without today's labor-saving devices difficult enough, but with a full-time-plus career as author, her personal life became untenable even as her novels gained ever more acceptance and acclaim -- and she leaned on her crutches ever more.
In essence, as Shirley Jackson continued to expand her work by moving into novels instead of short stories, her crutches became her addictions. She had been taking Amphetamines since the 1950s when they were considered fairly harmless "diet drugs" or "pep pills." Shirley always worried about her weight, in large part occasioned by her fear she was a failure in the eyes of her mother. She died very overweight before her fiftieth birthday, a sad combination of liquor and drugs that would be roundly condemned today, and also without thanks from cigarettes and chocolates. Sadly, only the youngest child, Barry, was home at the time.
What also comes through in this book is the love all four of her children held for their mother, and a much more rounded picture of an author under great psychogical strain who strained even harder to fit a picture of small-town normality. In this book we get to hear how her real life differed from the charming LIFE AMONG THE SAVAGES and RAISING DEMONS; also we get to understand why the back chambers of her tortured soul formed the impetus and inspiration for her very best writing. This is the only full-scale biography of Shirley Jackson we are likely to get, at least anytime soon. While not particularly "academic," the book is excellent and thorough journalism that is a pleasure to read even as we learn of the pain that composed so much of Shirley Jackson's life. Highest recommendation.
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