The Lottery and Other Stories (FSG Classics)

by Shirley Jackson

Jackson writes with a stunning simplicity; there is a graceful economy to her prose as she charts the smallest of movements, perceptual shifts—nothing pyrotechnic here. Her stories take place in small towns, in kitchens, at cocktail parties. Her characters are trapped by the petty prejudices of people who make themselves feel good by thinking they are somehow better than us all.

Along these lines, Jackson reminds me of the late English author Angela Carter, who was also not bound by genre, who had no interest in distinguishing or separating horror, science fiction, et cetera, from “literature.” Grace Paley once described the male-female writer phenomenon to me by saying, “Women have always done men the favor of reading their work, but the men have not returned the favor.” There is a nether land, a crevasse, to be crossed by women writers who are not writing books for “women” but books for readers.

The Renegade

Everything was quiet and lovely in the sunlight, the peaceful sky, the gentle line of the hills. Mrs. Walpole closed her eyes, suddenly feeling the harsh hands pulling her down, the sharp points closing in on her throat.

She walked quickly around her one-room apartment, with a sureness that came of habit rather than conviction; after more than four years in this one home she knew all its possibilities, how it could put on a sham appearance of warmth and welcome when she needed a place to hide in, how it stood over her in the night when she woke suddenly, how it could relax itself into a disagreeable unmade, badly-put-together state, mornings like

“It’s the men who make dirt on the floor,” Mrs. Anderson would say, regarding the print of a heel. “A woman, you watch them, she always puts her feet down quiet. Men with their big shoes.” And she would flick carelessly at the mark with the dustcloth.

“I think a successful marriage is the woman’s responsibility,” Mrs. Hart said.