Just an Ordinary Day - Hardcover

Jackson, Shirley

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0553103032 ISBN 13: 9780553103038

Publisher: Bantam, 1996

Synopsis

The stories in this edition represent the great diversity of her work, from humor to her shocking explorations of the human psyche. The tales range, chronologically, from the writings of her college days and residence in Greenwich Village in the early 1940s, to the unforgettably chilling stories from the period just before her death. They provide an exciting overview of the evolution of her craft through a progression of forms and styles, and add significantly to the body of her published work.



Just an Ordinary Day is a testament to how large a talent Shirley Jackson had and to the depth, breadth, and complexity of her writing. Though this remarkable literary life was cut short, Jackson clearly established a unique voice that has won a permanent place in the canon of outstanding American literature, and remains a powerful influence on generations of readers and writers.


From the Trade Paperback edition.

About this title

From the Inside Flap

in this edition represent the great diversity of her work, from humor to her shocking explorations of the human psyche. The tales range, chronologically, from the writings of her college days and residence in Greenwich Village in the early 1940s, to the unforgettably chilling stories from the period just before her death. They provide an exciting overview of the evolution of her craft through a progression of forms and styles, and add significantly to the body of her published work.



Just an Ordinary Day is a testament to how large a talent Shirley Jackson had and to the depth, breadth, and complexity of her writing. Though this remarkable literary life was cut short, Jackson clearly established a unique voice that has won a permanent place in the canon of outstanding American literature, and remains a powerful influence on generations of readers and writers.


From the Trade Paperback edition.

Reviews

From the hilarious first story in this treat of a collection, in which a college girl tricks the devil (horns, hoofs and all) into selling her his soul, we know we are in Jackson territory-the Jackson of the classic short story "The Lottery" and the novel The Haunting of Hill House. For Jackson devotees, as well as first-time readers, this is a feast: more than half of the 54 short stories collected here have never been published before. The circumstances that inspired the volume are appropriately bizarre. According to Jackson's children, "a carton of cobwebbed files discovered in a Vermont barn" arrived in the mail one day without notice; along with the original manuscript of her novel, the box contained six unpublished stories. Other pieces, culled from family collections, and from archives and papers at the San Francisco Public Library and the Library of Congress, appeared in print only once, in various magazines. The stories are diverse: there are tales that pillory smug, self-satisfied, small-town ladies; chilling and murderous chronicles of marriage; witty romantic comedies; and tales that reveal an eerie juxtaposition of good and evil. The devil, who can't seem to get an even break, makes several appearances. Each of Jackson's ghost stories-often centered around a child, missing or dead-is beautifully anchored in and thoroughly shaped by a particular point of view. A few pieces that qualify as humorous takes on the predicaments of modern life add a relaxed, biographical element to a virtuoso collection. (Dec.) FYI: Jackson, who died in 1965 at age 48, is poised for a literary revival: the BBC is releasing a biography in the fall, and a new film version of The Haunting of Hill House is currently in production.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.

A patchwork collection of 54 (mostly brief) stories, all previously uncollected and/or unpublished, by the late (191965) author of The Lottery, The Haunting of Hill House, and other classics of contemporary supernatural fiction. Jackson's talent was to find the ghoulish and disturbing just beneath the surface of the commonplace (her work has significantly influenced Stephen King's). Accordingly, a majority of these stories portray marital or domestic crises, cunningly raised to high levels of tension and, very often, terror. Though Lucifer himself shows up in a few (most memorably, ``The Smoking Room,'' where he's outwitted by a calculating coed), Jackson's evil figures are, much more often, enigmatic men who prey on or otherwise disappoint the women who adore them (``The Honeymoon of Mrs. Smith''), children who intuit odd occurrences and presences their elders cannot perceive (``Summer Afternoon''), and nice old ladies whose charming eccentricities mask their darker purposes (``The Possibility of Evil''). There's rather a lot of inchoate work here (such as a weak piece of romantic medievalism, ``Lord of the Castle''), and many of the bland titles were obviously only preliminary. Of the unpublished stories, best are such Saki-like models of compact menace as ``The Mouse,'' ``What a Thought,'' and ``Mrs. Anderson''--as well as two of Jackson's most amusing pictures of embattled motherhood (``Arch-Criminal'' and ``Alone in a Den of Cubs''). The uncollected pieces, many of them first published in popular magazines, are nevertheless generally much stronger. They feature several ingenious premises (``The Wishing Dime,'' ``Journey with a Lady,'' and especially ``The Omen,'' a complex chiller beautifully developed from its fairy-tale-like beginning), vividly realistic characterizations (``Mrs. Melville Makes a Purchase''), and at least one indisputable classic: ``One Ordinary Day, with Peanuts,'' in which Jackson records with virtuosic understatement the cruel and unusual avocation shared by a devoted suburban couple. Even at a bit below the level of her best work, it's nice to have Jackson back again. -- Copyright ©1996, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

The late author of "The Lottery," a short story found in nearly every anthology and never to be forgotten once read, left behind several published novels and story collections. She also left many unpublished story manuscripts as well as several stories that were published in magazines but never gathered in book form; now her children have selected 54 of these stories for inclusion in this posthumous collection, all of which they believe are "up to Shirley Jackson's finely tuned standards." Artistic development is obvious as we read through her career's worth of writing, from her salad days in college (when she was already demonstrating considerable talent) to the flowering of her mastery of the short story form in the 1960s, the last decade of her life. Not all of them are dark in the fashion of "The Lottery" ; some are light and funny. One of the most delightful is one of the unpublished pieces, "Maybe It Was the Car," about a woman--writer, wife, and mother--who one day walks out on frying the supper hamburgers in a moment of self-assertion. An important addition to fiction collections. Brad Hooper

This collection by Jackson (1919-1965), known to friends as the "Virginia Werewolf of Seance Fiction" for works like The Haunting of Hill House (1959), includes unpublished and uncollected pieces.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Edition details

• Publisher: Bantam
• Publication date: 1996
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0553103032
• ISBN 13: 9780553103038
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 388