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Private Demons: The Life of Shirley Jackson

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She never states her reasons but I assume what made me buy this book are the same reasons that drew the writer, Judy Oppenheimer, to write about Shirley Jackson. It is an effort to try and understand the mind and influences behind such masterpieces as the "Lottery", "We have always lived in the castle" or "Hangsaman". Was she mad? Was she full of fears? What were the influences which worked upon her? Did she - could she - have a normal family life? and how in god's name did she think of all these ideas, were they based on her personal experience?

This is a very good read, partly because of the intriguing heroine and partly due to the good writing (quite dramatic at times). The bottom line is that I did get the answers

to most of my questions. This is a very thorough life story, which even continues after Jackson's untimely death, telling us what happened to all the major people in her life. This account presents Shirley Jackson from every possible angel: a daughter, a wife, a mother, neighbour and friend, and a writer too - but never only a writer. A very troubled person living a life of many contradictions. I guess I never expected her to have been a regular person.

I always wonder about Biographies. Is it all true? It seems that the biographers know more about the person then he knew about himself. We read about Jackson's most intimate details of life (Stanley and Shirley's first night together is just one example), about her inner most thoughts. I believe that the author has had to develop her own theories or choose among the options that were given to her by the many close people surrounding Shirley Jackson ("she made good friends", was one of the things Judy Oppenheimer says about Jackson in her final notes). The writer however presents many seemingly "open" issues as facts. A good example would be the true meaning of Jackson's famous story "The Lottery". There are several versions regarding the creation of this story, a few of them given by Jackson herself. Oppenheimer presents all versions but claims that the "the Lottery" was the purest, most direct expression to Jackson's knowledge of human evil and the painful awareness of anti-Semitism she has acquired over the years. Another example could be Shirley and Stanley marriage which was full of contradictions (he always remained "the important figure" around the house), and many infidelities from Stanley's side. One says you can never tell what goes on between a couple but Oppenheimer seems to be quite confident of her conclusions. I am quite sure she had her sources to term her hypothesis as facts. At other times the writer chooses to take a neutral stand. For example, was Shirley's marriage to Stanley "her greatest fortune or her worst calamity"? we are left to decide for our own.

The book is filled with little details and is based upon dozens of interviews (Jackson's children are a major source). The writer states comments and references made by a host of friends and relatives - no aspect of Jackson's life is left untouched. We learn what she ate, what she drank - how much she drank. What she thought about each of her children, the fights she had with her friends. We learn about her many illnesses, about her high points and her many breakdowns. How her house looked, what she collected - the list is infinite.

Most interesting however are the connections made between he books she wrote and the life she led. Jackson's art was always close to her real life. This connection reached its climax in the book "We have always lived in the castle" - the solution Jackson finds for her heroines is the one she found for herself. Constance and Merricat end living in the castle made to become a fortress, never again leaving it to go out. This was just what happened to Jackson in the time following the publication of the story. This book has also been her reaction to the feeling of withdrawal and rejection she received from the village people amongst which she lived (This is the way I felt every day, she claims). Constance and Merricat were also a portrayal of two parts of herself, and reflected her two daughters. Each book and its major similarities with the life and problems she faced at the time.

At first I used this book more as a reference book I used it to look up Jackson's stories and the books I read through the years. Sort of like comparing or checking my understanding of the story with what the experts says. I was also interested to hear what were the reviews and reactions to these books and stories, especially the ones I liked best.

The story of Jackson life however is too interesting to put down and at times seems as strange and creepy as her books. A very recurrent motif in her books is the battle of the mind itself. This is a motif recurrent in her life too.

I never thought that Jackson's stories were real "horror". They are a very candid portrayal of the evil of human kind. It is interesting to note that a really "bad" character, a murderer in fact, is the very likable heroine of "We have always lived in the castle". Again an example of Jackson's contradictions.

A very interesting book aimed at Jackson's fans or those who appreciate her work.

The book was an engaging read, and one i would recommend, but I was floored by how depressing Shirley Jackson's life was.

I suppose my mistake was reading "Life Among the Savages" and "Raising Demons" before reading the true story behind the funny, anecdotal, pleasant life the other "non-fiction" books presented. I admire her work, and I was saddened to discover the pain in her life - a pain soothed and heightened by alchohol, barbituates, and sleeping pills. An abusive mother (hers, Jackson comes off as a warm loving mother with her moments just like the rest of us), a philandering husband (who saw her genius, and loved her, but still couldn't keep his pants on), and the sad legacy she left behind for her children to cope with. Oppenheimer follows up on their lives, and they appear pretty reclusive and strange (strange can be good, but their brand of strange read as sad).

So, although the book left me saddened, I think it was a fine read- a real page turner at that, and will add new insights into the books of hers I haven't read as well as the ones I have.

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.

Ms. Jackson was a singular writer in 20th century America. However, much of her work is not known outside of literary circles and (before this book) less was known about her life. Ms. Oppenheimer's biography sheds considerable light on the latter subject.

Ms. Oppenheimer's biography is competent because she interviews several primary resources (notably, Shirley's children) and because it is well-written. This material yields several insights into the life and work of a very good writer and a fascinating human being. While Ms. Jackson might not have appreciated this book, I believe she would have respected the workmanship involved. Writers, readers and researchers everywhere should be grateful.

Just discovered the works of Shirley Jackson, although I'd been familiar with The Lottery since high school. Awesome, totally original writer. I will never tire of reading the first paragraph of "The Haunting of Hill House." The sheer skillful power of her writing ... as Stephen King wrote, she never had to raise her voice. Dug out a short, unsatisfying bio of Ms. Jackson by some German academic, then discovered Ms. Oppenheimer's work. A terrific biography, reads like a great story should. I can empathize somewhat with the Jackson offspring, since I, too, had a mother who was a writer and a giant personality and an overindulger in food and drink. But my mother cleaned up her health and lived till age 77 while Ms. Jackson's overworked heart gave out at age 49, truly a shame.

Shirley Jackson is best known as the author of the chilling short story, "The Lottery", which most every high school student is still required to read. Her eerie novels such as "The Haunting of Hill House" have long been beloved of readers of gothic fiction and ghost stories. But the author herself, who died in 1965, was almost forgotten until Judy Oppenheimer's fine biography restored her to public consciousness. Oppenheimer's book is a model of what a literary biography should be! All the threads of Jackson's life story, her conventional upbringing by parents obsessed with respectability and social-climbing, her chaotic but deeply satisfying marriage, her complicated relationships with her children, are skillfully woven together, to show us how each contributed to her art. All this, and the book is a delightful, detail packed read, the often comic images of Jackson's home life brought vividly into focus by Oppenheimer's precise, effortless prose. This book led me to rediscover Shirley Jackson, her work, and the woman herself - - her genius, her struggles, her very humanness. Truly, an achivement for any biographer!

Bizarre, frenzied, unyielding, biting, caring, passionate, imaginative. Shirley Jackson was all of these and even more. She was a robust woman with a dominating energy and an unparalleled mind that enraptured those who admired her and those who loathed her -- those who could not understand her make-up and or blunt and sometimes subtle eccentricities that made her churn out astonishing classical works in the genera of supernatural and reality based horror, i.e. "The Lottery," "The Haunting of Hill House," the Edgar Allan Poe award-winning short story "Louisa, Please Come Home," to a mammoth collection of other stories and novels as well as nonfiction.

"The Lottery," which Jackson is universally recognized for, horrified readers of the prim but stylish New Yorker, angering many but grimly fascinating them in the same process, showing the burning evil in all humanity. What was it about? many wanted to know. In the book, Private Demons: The Life of Shirley Jackson, Judy Oppenheimer gives brief but startling insights as to why she wrote it, Jackson later admitting to a friend that it had to do with the evils of anti-semitism against the Jews, for she saw it seething in the mental inner-workings of the people she encountered in the North Bennington community in Vermont where she resided till her death. Her husband, the noted critic, Stanley Hyman, was a loud, opinionated, womanizing, boozing atheist who dominted Shirley, but in a way, he gave her the love and literary encouragement that nobody else could. They were an odd mix, but their oddities, such as Shirley's interest in witchcraft and casting spells and Stanley's desire to see people fight while adding unnecessary fuel to the fire somehow united them; they were two halves of the same circle. What really made them so right for each other was that they were against convention, the mundane values that their parents tried to imbue in them. However, Shirley Jackson could not let go of the old values, as they were imbedded in her psyche. Those traits are clearly evident in her two family-oriented nonfiction books: Life Among the Savages and Raising Demons. Shirley Jackson's value system clashed together, the new V. the old. That sole problem alone can have astonishing problematic consequences. Shirley Jackson and the Hyman family (which included four children) were neither insiders nor outsiders in their community, and that was why there was always that 'edge' when they were amongst those in the community.

This biography is very pellucid in exploring the duality of Shirley Jackson, her family, her cohorts, her parents (who had a very large part in shaping Shirley's outcome as a writer) and her bucolic environment. No stone is left unturned. The only founded criticism that I can apply as a reader is the writing of this biography. Some parts read like a tabloid celebrity biography. It isn't scholarly in the least, but the narritave is rather gripping. That alone makes it enjoyable and easy to skim through.

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 essay 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 Benninngton College.

Shirley Jackson used all her writerly talents in her sunny letters home to mother, even (or especially) a women desperate to achieve a sunny tone in her letters to mother but in reality 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.

PRIVATE DEMONS is the best biography I've ever read in my life. I first read it years ago when it first came out, and am on my second copy.

Shirley Jackson was an interesting and complex woman with talent to burn. She was comfortable with penning the pyscological/creepy/haunted house types of novels and equally comfortable turning out humorous short pieces about her family life. She was a genius with both.

More than one reader has experienced a little cognitive dissonance when realizing that Jackson wrote both "The Lottery" and "Charles". "THAT'S the SAME author?" is a constant refrain.

Author Judy Oppenheimer does an outstanding job of bringing this tremendous writer to life, as well as doing her fans a great service by bringing Jackson's name and reputation back to the literary forefront. Through skillful writing and research and generous interviews with Jackson's 4 children and many friends, the reader is mesmerized by the too-brief life that was behind Jackson's multifacted talent.

Writing this book could not have been an easy task, since Shirley Jackson contained multitudes, to quote Walt Whitman. PRIVATE DEMONS may be out of print now, but search your secondhand bookstores both in your city and online, and track down this treasure of a biography. You will not be sorry.

Since I was a small child I have been a huge fan of Shirley Jackson's writing, she is amazing. I love the gothic stuff but her humorous writings are wonderful too. This was a really eye-opening biography as I knew very little of her personal life before I read it. It was a sad but engrossing read.