Let me tell you
Subtitle: new stories, essays, and other writings
By: Shirley Jackson ; edited by Laurence Jackson Hyman and Sarah Hyman DeWitt
Contributors: Hyman, Laurence Jackson, editor; DeWitt, Sarah Hyman, editor
Published: 2015
Language: eng
Number of pages: 416
ISBN-13: 9780812997668
Work titles: Works
Description: Shirley Jackson is one of the most important American writers of the last hundred years. Since her death in 1965, her place in the landscape of twentieth-century fiction has only grown more exalted. As we approach the centenary of her birth comes this compilation of 56 pieces--more than forty never before published. Two of Jackson's children co-edited this volume, culling through the vast archives of their mother's papers at the Library of Congress, selecting only the very best for inclusion. Let Me Tell You brings together the deliciously eerie short stories Jackson is best known for, along with frank, inspiring lectures on writing; comic essays about her large, boisterous family; and whimsical drawings. Jackson's landscape here is most frequently domestic: dinner parties, household budgets and commutes, children's games and neighborly gossip. But this familiar setting is also her most subversive: She wields humor, terror, and the uncanny to explore the real challenges of marriage, parenting, and community--the pressure of social norms, the veins of distrust in love, the constant lack of time and space. This collection showcases Jackson's radically different modes of writing side by side, showing her to be a magnificent storyteller, a sharp, sly humorist, and a powerful feminist.--Adapted from book jacket.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references.
Table of contents: title: Sudden and unusual things have happened : unpublished and uncollected short fiction; title: I would rather write than do anything else : essays and reviews; title: When this war is over : early short stories; title: Somehow things haven't turned out the way we expected : humor and family; title: I'd like to see you get out of that sentence : lectures about the craft of writing.