PRIVATE DEMONS: The Life of Shirley Jackson

by Judy Oppenheimer ‧ RELEASE DATE: July 17, 1988

A fast-paced, psychologically penetrating biography, by a free-lance journalist, of Shirley Jackson--author of the ""The Lottery,"" the classic horror story about New England life. Jackson's short, complicated life contained the stuff of sensationalist literature: raising four children; writing stories and novels; catering to her husband, critic Stanley Hyman; drinking, smoking, and eating to excess (she weighed well over 200 pounds at her death); popping amphetamines and tranquilizers; practicing witchcraft; suffering from severe nervous disorders; and, finally, dying of cardiac arrest at age 48. Without sidestepping any of it, Oppenheimer manages to be both intimate and respectful as Jackson emerges from the chaos both tragic and triumphant. The haunting stories and novels are covered here as well, soundly grounded in Jackson's psychology and life. Oppenheimer is no literary critic, so Jackson's importance in the history of American fiction will have to await another treatment. She has, however, unearthed some evidence that an experience of molestation in childhood may have been Jackson's door into the evil lying beneath the neatly clipped lawns of placid suburbia. At times Oppenheimer seems a little starry-eyed in her portrayal of the carousing of Jackson and her famous friends (Ralph Ellison, Kenneth Burke, and others), and occasionally her informal, chatty style verges on the mawkish: ""And, as Scheherazade had learned centuries before her, sometimes stories were the best aphrodisiac."" For the most part, however, the author's enthusiasm and sympathy serve her subject well.

Pub Date: July 17, 1988

ISBN: N/A

Page Count: -

Publisher: Putnam

Review Posted Online: N/A

Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 1988

Categories: NONFICTION