Shirley Jackson: A Rather Haunted Life (83 page)

178
   
“rustling up dinner”
: Andy Logan Lyon to SEH, December 15, 1965, SEH-LOC, Box 46.

179
   
“The baby’s diaper was always full”
: Interview with Walter Bernstein, February 27, 2013.

179
   
Bellow would joke
: Zachary Leader,
The Life of Saul Bellow: To Fame and Fortune, 1916–1964
(New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2015), 255.

179
   
“hatless and wearing”
: RE-LOC, Box I:188.

179
   
“The thing to do”
: SEH, “No Roots at All,”
Negro Quarterly
, Fall 1942.

179
   
“Where Ralph tended”
: Rampersad,
Ralph Ellison
, 159.

179
   
“Myth is neither”
: SEH, “Myth, Ritual, and Nonsense,”
Kenyon Review
11, no. 3 (Summer 1949).

180
   
Hyman also introduced
: Despite SEH’s attempts to keep it going, the relationship between RE and KB would later become strained over KB’s failure to congratulate RE on
Invisible Man
. See Crable,
Ralph Ellison and Kenneth Burke
, chapter 3.

180
   
“going a-blintzing”
: KB to SEH, September 26, 1943, SEH-LOC, Box 4.

181
   
“I am writing a novel”
: Crable,
Ralph Ellison and Kenneth Burke
, 80. In one sense, RE was thanking KB for recommending him for the fellowship that had allowed him to spend time focusing on the novel, but in the context of the letter, the lines can also be read as a statement of his broader intellectual debt to KB.

181
   
“reluctant” . . . “hard covers”
: RE-LOC, Box I:188.

181
   
“This section of the novel”
: RE to SEH, August 21, 1945, SEH-LOC, Box 6.

181
   
Ellison would regularly call upon Hyman
: Rampersad,
Ralph Ellison
, 211, 232; Crable,
Ralph Ellison and Kenneth Burke
, 87.

181
   
Rampersad and others
: RE valued SEH’s judgment enough to name him his literary executor, together with Albert Murray (Albert Murray and John F. Callahan, eds.,
Trading Twelves: The Selected Letters of Ralph Ellison and Albert Murray
[New York: Modern Library, 2000], 82). RE outlived SEH; his wife, Fanny, became his executor. The Ellisons also promised to be guardians of the Hyman children in the event of disaster.

181
   
Jeanou was struggling
: Jeanne Marie Bedel to SJ, December 18, 1944, SJ-LOC, Box 6.

182
   
He would bring her
: Alexander Taylor to SJ, March 22, 1945, SJ-LOC, Box 16.

182
   
“we live quietly”
: SJ to Louis Harap, February 20 [1944], LH-AJA.

182
   
“muscles in his back”
: SJ to Louis Harap, July 16 [1944], LH-AJA.

182
   
“young Samson”
: LJ to SJ, December 22, 1944, SJ-LOC, Box 3.

182
   
“A Fine Old Firm”
: LOA, 153–56.

183
   
“the most terrible day”
: SJ to Harap, July 16 [1944], LHP-AJA.

183
   
“they were chasing her”
:
Soldier Leaving
, SJ-LOC, Box 29.

184
   
a teacher mistakes
: “Henrietta,” SJ-LOC, Box 16.

184
   
a soldier home on leave
: SJ, “The Gift,”
Charm
, December 1944.

184
   
“Trial by Combat”
: LOA, 35–40.

184
   
“As High as the Sky”
:
LMTY
, 299–304.

184
   
“Homecoming”
:
LMTY
, 285–92.

184
   
“When Things Get Dark”
:
JOD
, 227–31.

185
   
“The Possibility of Evil”
: LOA, 714–24.

185
   
“after a while”
: SJ-LOC, Box 19.

185
   
“the acts of criticism”
: Jacket copy for SEH,
The Armed Vision
(New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1948).

186
   
“The general outline”
: KB to SEH, September 26, 1943, SEH-LOC, Box 4.

186
   
Scott Mabon
: Scott Mabon to SEH, September 26, 1941, SEH-LOC, Box 3.

186
   
Hyman was floored
: Alfred A. Knopf to SEH, December 23, 1942, SEH-LOC, Box 3.

186
   
“a swell little piece”
: Alfred A. Knopf to SJ, January 18, 1943, SJ-LOC, Box 43.

186
   
“bold and piratical”
: Geoffrey T. Hellman, “A Very Dignified Pavane,”
The New Yorker
, November 20, 1948.

186
   
“eating squab and drinking god-knows-what”
: SEH to Louis Harap, March 1, 1943, LH-AJA.

187
   
His ambitious plan
: SEH to Alfred A. Knopf, February 11, 1944, AK-HRC.

187
   
“he seems to be writing”
: SJ to Louis Harap, October 18, 1944, LH-AJA.

187
   
“did stanley tell you”
: SJ to Louis Harap, May 11, 1944, LH-AJA.

187
   
“He promised her Money” . . . “all things”
: Joseph Glanvill,
Saducismus Triumphatus: Or, Full and Plain Evidence Concerning Witches and Apparitions
, 3rd ed. (London, 1700), 73, 81.

188
   
called simply “Elizabeth”
: LOA, 119–52.

188
   
Instead, Jackson decided
: The table of contents for this proposed collection is in SJ-LOC, Box 16.

188
   
Harap was critical
: Louis Harap to SJ, March 12, 1945, SJ-LOC, Box 8.

188
   
“if you think”
: SJ to Louis Harap, April 1, 1945, LH-AJA.

189
   
“can’t you just see”
: SJ to Harap, July 16 [1944].

189
   
“illiterate in the arts”
: “Blue Jeans with a Difference,”
Time
, February 3, 1947.

189
   
140 hilltop acres
: Thomas P. Brockway,
Bennington College: In the Beginning
(Bennington, Vt.: Bennington College Press, 1981), 46. The campus now occupies 440 acres.

189
   
“real cows”
: SJ to Harap, October 18, 1944.

7. SIDESTREET, U.S.A.

191
   
“the actual”
: Thomas P. Brockway,
Bennington College: In the Beginn
ing (Bennington, Vt.: Bennington College Press, 1981), 49. For the story of Bennington’s founding, see also Barbara Jones,
Bennington College: The Development of an Educational Idea
(New York: Harper & Brothers, 1946).

192
   
“It was a wild and wonderful place”
: Interview with Barbara Fisher, September 20, 2013.

192
   
“as much a state of mind”
: Susan Cheever,
E. E. Cummings: A Life
(New York: Pantheon, 2014), 116.

192
   
“significant, vital, and representative in the field”
: Brockway,
Bennington College
, 53.

192
   
“Bennington regards education”
: www.bennington.edu/About/traditional-commencement-statement; accessed September 19, 2015.

193
   
“We are not educating”
: Quoted in Betty Friedan,
The Feminine Mystique
(1963; repr., New York: W. W. Norton, 1997), 182.

193
   
“social paternalism”
: Mabel Barbee Lee, “Censoring the Conduct of College Women,”
The Atlantic
, April 1930.

194
   
“It was the kind of place”
: Interview with Marilyn Seide, April 19, 2013.

194
   
“We do count”
: Kathleen Norris,
The Virgin of Bennington
(New York: Riverhead, 2001), 9.

194
   
“very bright”
: Bernard Malamud to Rosemarie Beck, quoted in Janna Malamud Smith,
My Father Is a Book
(Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2006), 164.

194
   
a full-length evening gown
: Interview with Betty Aberlin, September 21, 2014.

195
   
“this wild man”
: Interview with Suzanne Stern Shepherd Calkins, October 16, 2014.

195
   
“The idea was”
: Interview with Fisher, September 20, 2013.

195
   
a golden age
: In terms of artistic star power, the only comparable institution was North Carolina’s Black Mountain College, founded a year after Bennington and according to similar principles. It closed in 1957.

195
   
hired in haste
: Dana Goodyear, “The Gardener,”
The New Yorker
, September 1, 2003.

195
   
“kick around a few notions”
: Interview with Calkins, October 16, 2014.

196
   
“When we had parties”
: Interview with Victoria Kirby, January 22, 2015.

196
   
“It was a model for sexist behavior”
: Interview with Joan Schenkar, June 8, 2012.

196
   
“the little red whorehouse on the hill”
: Norris,
Virgin of Bennington
, 10.

196
   
“More than once”
: Ibid., 12.

196
   
“caricatures” . . . “faculty scalps”
: Interview with Phoebe Pettingell, April 6, 2015.

196
   
“He was as brilliant as Shakespeare”
: Interview with Sandra Hochman, June 4, 2014.

196
   
“learning something” . . . “the stuff”
: SEH to Bernard Smith, July 24, 1945, and January 6, 1946, AK-HRC.

197
   
“the mating combat of male elks”
: Sonya Rudikoff Gutman, untitled memorial tribute to SEH,
Quadrille
7, no. 2 (Winter/Spring 1973), 51.

197
   
“has frequently read”
:
Raising Demons
, 147.

198
   
“Mimosa”
: Interview with Calkins, October 16, 2014.

198
   
excellent potato pancakes
: Interview with Miriam Marx Allen, December 3, 2014.

198
   
“He would invite”
: Telephone interview with Joan Constantikes, August 13, 2014.

198
   
“She was kind of overshadowed”
: Interview with Allen, December 3, 2014.

198
   
“My mother used to enjoy”
: Interview with Sarah Hyman DeWitt, February 21, 2013.

198
   
“always seemed a little annoyed”
: Telephone interview with Marjorie Roemer, September 24, 2014.

198
   
“I sometimes think”
:
Hangsaman
, 123–24.

198
   
“What kind of woman”
: Friedan,
The Feminine Mystique
, 6.

198
   
“By the end”
:
Raising Demons
, 154.

199
   
“The Church of Christ Hyman”
: Judy Oppenheimer,
Private Demons
(New York: Putnam, 1988), 113.

199
   
nothing had been touched
: Much of
Life Among the Savages
is fictionalized, but that particular story meshes with SJ’s descriptions of the house elsewhere.

199
   
“little nest” . . . “we’ve ever seen”
: SJ to Louis Harap, April 1, 1945, LH-AJA.

199
   
“Our house” . . . “a well”
:
Savages
, 1.

199
   
Jeanou, for one
: Jeanne Marie Bedel to SJ, January 28, 1946, SJ-LOC, Box 6. In response, SJ urged Jeanou to settle down.

200
   
“where they do”
:
Savages
, 2.

201
   
“not only knew”
: Ibid., 9.

201
   
“Vermonters generally”
: Malamud Smith,
My Father Is a Book
, 163.

201
   
“Those young ladies”
: Interview with Larry Powers, July 23, 2013.

202
   
“The students were seen”
: Interview with Anna Fels, August 3, 2013.

202
   
“Commies” or “pinkos”
: Interview with Barry Hyman, July 22, 2013.

202
   
“added color to the village”
: Interview with Powers, July 23, 2013.

202
   
“wasn’t your ordinary housewife”
: Interview with Laura Nowak, July 24, 2013.

202
   
one of the canes
: Phoebe Pettingell, introduction to
The Critic’s Credentials: Essays and Reviews by Stanley Edgar Hyman
(New York: Atheneum, 1978), xiii.

202
   
“I would walk”
: Interview with Barry Hyman, July 22, 2013.

202
   
The garbageman gossiped
: Larry Powers,
The Store and Other Stories of North Bennington
([North Bennington, Vt.?]: printed by author, n.d.).

203
   
“Men with Their Big Shoes”
: LOA, 199–206.

204
   
“As a black man”
: Arnold Rampersad,
Ralph Ellison: A Biography
(New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2007), 239. The lecture at Bennington was RE’s first public lecture: “He believed that I had something to say, saw that I was provided a platform from which to say it, and I discovered that I did and could. I’m still paying the rent out of his generous good faith,” RE wrote many years later: RE-LOC, I:188.