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Judy Oppenheimer
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Private Demons: The Life of Shirley Jackson Paperback – May 27, 1989

by Judy Oppenheimer (Author)
4.3 4.3 out of 5 stars 33 ratings
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A portrait of gifted author Shirley Jackson reveals her less-public life, including her horrifying descent into madness, and describes her work with the doctor who helped her back to sanity
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  1. Print length
    304 pages
  2. Language
    English
  3. Publisher
    Ballantine Books
  4. Publication date
    May 27, 1989
  5. ISBN-10
    0449904059
  6. ISBN-13
    978-0449904053
  7. See all details
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Product details

  • Publisher ‏ : ‎ Ballantine Books; First Thus edition (May 27, 1989)
  • Language ‏ : ‎ English
  • Paperback ‏ : ‎ 304 pages
  • ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0449904059
  • ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0449904053
  • Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 13.6 ounces
  • Customer Reviews:
    4.3 4.3 out of 5 stars 33 ratings

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Judy Oppenheimer

Judy Oppenheimer

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Customer reviews

4.3 out of 5 stars
33 global ratings

Customers say

Customers find the book well-written and compulsively readable. They describe the biography as fine and thorough.

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Customers find the book well-written and compulsively readable. They say it's a great read for current and future Shirley Jackson fans.

"This is the most compulsively readable and thorough biography of Shirley Jackson as anyone could hope to find...." Read more

"...This is a well written book and a must read for Shirley Jackson fans." Read more

"A great read for current and future Shirley Jackson fans..." Read more

"Great book..." Read more

3 customers mention "Biography"3 positive0 negative

Customers find the biography fine, compulsively readable, and thorough.

"This is the most compulsively readable and thorough biography of Shirley Jackson as anyone could hope to find...." Read more

"A fine biography of Shirley ("The Lottery") Jackson, with enough of the psychobiography to give it insight and enough feminism to give it..." Read more

"Interesting biography of an unusual writer. I prefer this out-of-print book to the 600 page biography that was written in 2016." Read more

Top reviews from the United States

Anne Salazar
5.0 out of 5 stars A BRILLIANT BIOGRAPHY ABOUT A BRILLIANT WOMAN
Reviewed in the United States on October 31, 2011
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This is the most compulsively readable and thorough biography of Shirley Jackson as anyone could hope to find. The author, Judy Oppenheimer, apparently had enthusiastic help from everyone she was able to contact in Jackson's life, including Jackson's children, because the resulting book is just fabulous. She made a very complex woman knowable and likeable.

Shirley Jackson was a complicated woman who wrote both comedy and drama and was first and foremost a writer. She was a fascinating partner and a loving and devoted wife. She was a sweet mother who wanted the world for her children and did her utmost to give it to them in ways they were able to see, fully aware that she would also protect them as any lioness ever protected her cubs. I have always liked Shirley Jackson's books and stories, but I am even more impressed with her as a woman, and I am also impressed with Oppenheimer's ability to sort it all out and make Shirley Jackson real and sympathetic.

Shirley Jackson was an especially expressive person, and I fully understand how difficult she could be after reading the myriad of details in this book, but at heart I see her as a brilliant woman forever looking for love, understanding, acceptance in every area of her life, as we all do. However, this is harder for some poeple, and it would appear that she was one of those who had more trouble with life than most. I am so sorry that her children lost her before they could find a protective coating for themselves, and isn't it interesting that her husband found his comfort with a friend of Shirley's eldest daughter. Oh, men and the way so many of them deal with personal problems in the same age-old way, maybe especially a man like Stanley Hyman who shared his wife's brilliance but apparently not her survival instincts. For although she died young I can still easily see the survivor in her, and the tremendous strength it took to fight off all her demons for all of her life.

I loved this book because it gave me such insight into a woman whose books I have always enjoyed. I think the reason for that may be one I hadn't realized until now: there was not a mean bone in her body and this is wonderful in the 21st century where meanness has crept into so much of our collective lives.
23 people found this helpful
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Bubbles Corday
5.0 out of 5 stars A great read for current and future Shirley Jackson fans
Reviewed in the United States on December 8, 2013
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I was first introduced to Shirley Jackson's work when I was in junior high school and we studied her famous short story, The Lottery. On the strength of that piece, I later ordered Life Among the Savages, Raising Demons, We Have Always Lived In the Castle, and several other of her books, all very different, but all fascinating. Private Demons helped to reconcile my muddled image of Ms. Jackson, who seemed variously to be a writer of comedy, of horror, and of psychological vagaries, some of which clearly reflected her own. Learning about the private demons that haunted her troubled life is an eye-opener that will make current Shirley Jackson fans appreciate her genius even more, while those who aren't yet familiar with her writing will surely be inspired to check it out.
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Amazon Customer
5.0 out of 5 stars like The Haunting of Hill House
Reviewed in the United States on February 1, 2018
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I became a fan of Shirley Jackson when I was 18-19 years old with Raising Demons and Life Among the Savages--the rest of her books followed --I admired her so much--; what I admired MOST about Shirley Jackson is that she could write humor or something hair raising, like The Haunting of Hill House. I was so pleased thar two of her children have been publishing so much of Shirley's unpublished works.
Sandra Smith
ps I am now 77 so I have been a fan of Shirley's for many years.
.
14 people found this helpful
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Allen Smalling
5.0 out of 5 stars "Charles? There's no Charles in our Kindergarten"
Reviewed in the United States on October 5, 2017
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A fine biography of Shirley ("The Lottery") Jackson, with enough of the psychobiography to give it insight and enough feminism to give it oomph. This amazingly prolific author did not have an easy life, and in fact died before her 50th addiction due in no small part to amphetamines, liquor and obesity. This book helps us understand why. I actually prefer PRIVATE DEMONS to a later biography that came out a year ago. Should be available quite cheaply.
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David Seaman
1.0 out of 5 stars My review is the opposite of the others; months to prepare this.
Reviewed in the United States on September 26, 2012
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Addendum: Ruth Franklin has released a new biography of Shirley Jackson with Liveright Publishing in September of 2016. My review will come both here and in Improper Bostonian.

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 we 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 may love this sensationalistic 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 DylanThomas. 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 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 invented. A bonus of writing about yourself is that you have the licsence to change events to better suit the story.) "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. At best.

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 own knowledge of 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.

Barry Hyman, Jackson's youngest son said, "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 may 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 depression of anxiety? Has a friend or family member suffered thus? This is a medical illness and was not what created the brilliant works of Shirley Jackson. To toss around words such as "mad" or "insane" is a testament to what we do not know about the workings of the mind. In a hundred years behavioral medicine and physical medicine will fall under the same catagory and we will feel 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 1973 and "The Lottery" in 1975. 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 dominating often cruel 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.) 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 as a central character. 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 while pleasing her husband unquestioningly. 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 married woman with children 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.) Protecting sources insures your future work. Oppenheimer failed this.

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, 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. ("Come Along With Me" 1968)

"Private Demons" was published in 1988 during a time when Jackson had faded into some obscurity. Now, however, there are more literary critics writing about her work and she has been celebrated 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 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."
28 people found this helpful
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Top reviews from other countries

Guardian of the Scales
5.0 out of 5 stars Utterly engrossing
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on April 9, 2009
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Shirley Jackson(1916-1965) was a writer whose work includes the very famous short story "The Lottery" and the novels "The Haunting of Hil House" and "We have Always Lived in the Castle". She also wrote many lesser-known works of similarly high quality, and deserves to be much more widely-read than she is, imo.
The present volume(published in 1988) tells the life story of Mrs. Jackson, who was marked out as different from her earliest years. She was the daughter of a shallow, status-obsessed mother, whose disastrous attempts to mold Shirley in her own image led to a lifelong undercurrent of hostility between the two. From a young age Shirley spent long hours alone in her room, writing, and this habit intensified during her lonely adolescence. After flunking out of college she suffered some manner of breakdown, followed by months of depression. Eventually, she convinced her parents to let her go to Syracuse University to study writing.

Possibly the most important event in Jackson's life occured while she was at Syracuse; that is, meeting Stanley Hyman with whom she quickly began a relationship and later married. He was a literary critic, convinced of her genius, and with his encouragement she began to get stories published, culminating in fame or notoriety with the publication of "The Lottery".
Jackson was a prolific writer while also a dedicated, though unorthodox, mother to her four young children. Her deep neuroses were kept at bay by constant activity and the abuse of prescription drugs. She also smoked and drank heavily, and ate to excess, making her increasingly overweight.
In the six or so years before her death her mental state worsened as she became increasingly frightened to leave the house and was apparently morbidly fearful of the inhabitants of the small town to which she and her family had relocated. This fear is reflected in her last published novel "We Have Always Lived in the Castle". She was unable to leave the house for long periods, and unable to write.
At the time of her death she appeared to be overcoming her problems to some extent but unhealthy habits caught up with her, and she died of cardiac arrest at age 48.

This is the only real biography of Shirley Jackson in existence, as far as I know, so it is fortunate that it is a good and comprehensive one. One huge factor in this is the fact that all four of Shirley's children were forthcoming about their mother's life, as well as thoughtful and articulate. Also Shirley wrote a lot, documenting her existence from her teenage years to her late breakdown. It seems that the author has interviewed all available witnesses(Stanley Hyman had died five years after Shirley) and done all the research and what emerges is an utterly engrossing, transfixing tale of a woman haunted by her past, her insecurities, and her fear of the outside world, happy only when in the intimate confines of her home, or within the confines of her mind, from which she could compose the works of uncategorisable weird genius that helped her to exorcise her demons, for a time at least.

I have long been fascinated by the work of Shirley Jackson and this book is an absolutely spellbinding account of a unique and turbulent mind. I found it unputdownable and worthy of its subject. There is only one biography of Shirley Jackson, but there is no need of another.
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