Author: Shirley Jackson
Shirley Jackson's short story collection - The Lottery and Other Stories -- delves into the feelings, lives and disjointed experiences of those people who live outside the norm. I was pleasantly surprised by this collection of stories. I expected little snippets of ghostly encounters or maybe a bit of light horror.....but I didn't expect a look into the lives of The Separate. I really wanted to read The Lottery. I'd heard of the story so many times, but had never taken the time to actually read it. I'm trying to turn over a new leaf. Instead of saying "Oh, I'd really love to read that'' and then forgetting entirely about the great book or story that caught my interest, I am actually taking the time to read what interests me. So, I initially checked out this book just to read The Lottery. It is, of course, the final story in this collection....and I couldn't just skip over 200+ pages of Shirley Jackson's work to get to one story. If I want to experience the author more fully, I need to spend time with a wide selection of her writing, not just the most famous or well-known bits. At first I found the stories weird. I reacted like I do to literary nose-in-air overdone fiction.....oh dear....more stories that make no sense but literature majors love to assign some ethereal meaning to in order to impress tired professors who no longer care. But as I read more.....it turned to "These stories....these people are Weird!'' Weird. Different. Living in the same cities, towns and world as all of us.....but seeing and feeling things differently. A girl who relishes the idea of the end of the world. A man who fixes dinner for a woman who doesn't care if he's alive or not. A woman who finds her job at Macy's ridiculously complicated. The boy who meets a strange old man on the train. A woman who finds herself unable to take back items stolen from her by another. It's the emotion that's important.....the peek into the life of The Separate. In a way it is horror.....society and each of our places in it is pretty scary. Imagine if you really didn't have a place...or if you did, but never found it. Or if you just couldn't function within your parameters at all. Lovely dark stories. I read each one and thought about how it made me feel, what I thought of the characters and their lives, before I moved another story closer to The Lottery.
Shirley Jackson's writing is subtle. It makes you think. She throws emotions and situations out, and then lets them settle into a reader's brain. It's up to each reader to figure out what is significant. I think the story that packed the most punch for me is Like Mother Used To Make. David Turner lives alone. His apartment is Just So....everything in its place, nothing out of order. He cooks lovely meals. He lives a peaceful life. His existence is orderly and tidy. His neighbor Marcia, however, is messy, haphazard and so different from David. But he likes her. So he cooks dinner for her. In the end, he finds himself down the hall from his own warm, orderly apartment, cleaning Marcia's mess while the woman enjoys the company of a co-worker in David's own house, while she pretends the meal and the nice apartment are hers. Wow.....it's really in human nature to wish for what we can't have, to aspire to things either out of our league, out of reach, or even beneath us. David is orderly, but he's drawn like a moth to flame to disorder. He wants Marcia....but she doesn't even really see him. She uses him. And poor David ends up cleaning up her mess instead of receiving any thanks, caring or consideration. The epitome of unappreciated. But yet something prevents him from standing up for himself. He just allows himself to be used. I think every adult has been in a situation where they allowed themselves to be used. Maybe not to the extent that David Turner did.....but a loss of self pride nonetheless. Do those moments always stem from grasping at things (or people) that are beyond our reach, things that don't fit into our lives, things we really can't possibly have/achieve/fulfill? Opposites attract? And after that initial attraction, they often rip our lives up trying to escape. I have an ex-husband who was my Marcia......Lord have mercy, I wish I had left that man alone. But I was determined to have what didn't fit into my life. Whammo! I was left cleaning up the mess just like poor old David Turner.
I read and enjoyed the first 24 stories in this book....and then finally, there it was.......The Lottery. I'm so glad I finally read it!! This story has definitely inspired so many other authors over the years. Jackson definitely packed a lot of chilling dread into just 11 pages. It's a tale of sacrifice, the power of tradition and mistaken human beliefs. Loved it!
All in all, a strangely creepy, chilling collection of strange little tales. A trip into the weird. I loved this book!
Shirley Jackson wrote six novels and many short stories during her writing career. She passed away in 1965.
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