Book Review: Despite the recent renewal of her reputation (all her major work seems to be in print) Shirley Jackson is one of the most underrated authors of the 20th Century, so I much anticipated this new biography by Ruth Franklin. Unfortunately, I was disappointed and this is not the definitive volume I hoped for. To paraphrase Franklin herself: I am impressed by "the amount of work that has gone into the book, but am underwhelmed by its argument."
Shirley Jackson: A Rather Haunted Life reads as if Ruth Franklin wanted to write a biography of Jackson's husband, critic Stanley Hyman, found no takers, so decided to turn it into a biography of Jackson. There are still, however, long stretches devoted solely to Hyman, and Franklin is his strong defender despite his obvious cruelties to his wife. There are large chunks of the book in which Jackson is only an afterthought, as Hyman and other of Franklin's preoccupations are discussed. This could have been a better and more effective biography of Jackson at 300 to 350 pages, cutting the irrelevant bits (ironic, as she notes Jackson's advice to "avoid anything extraneous to the narrative"). Although Franklin fails to acknowledge the prior major biography of Jackson, Private Demons: The Life of Shirley Jackson by Judy Oppenheimer (1988), in the text (it's mentioned in the notes), that book is warmer, more alive, more affectionate, and more satisfying; Franklin also fails to include some of the invaluable revelations about Jackson contained in that volume. As this book was written with significant help from Jackson's children, it's unclear how much she chose not to publish because of that assistance (she states they read the manuscript before publication, but "ceded approval of its final version"). Despite Franklin's own interviews and access to new documents, the book ends suddenly, leaving questions unanswered, and it's unclear whether Franklin tried to answer them. There are curious silences in this book (there is no bibliography or list of supplemental commentaries or references).
At times it seems this was too big a project and the writing suffers for it, perhaps more editing was needed. Some stories are repeated two or three times, and the many detours away from Jackson's story are distracting and unhelpful. Plot summaries of Jackson's works can be inaccurate, or plots given only a single interpretation, when other views are equally likely. The author often makes value judgments and conjectures wildly about rape, bigotry, and the like, providing little or no evidence to support her opinions and theories. Better to let the reader decide, rather than merely speculate. At one point Franklin asks, "What is witchcraft, after all, but the desire to generate fear in others and instill their obedience?" Well, that is not my understanding of witchcraft. Later Franklin writes, "Witchcraft ... was important to Jackson for what it symbolized: female strength and potency." Female strength is generating fear and instilling obedience?
Franklin's take on situations is frequently questionable. In one novel, when a mentally disabled girl seeking art to decorate their shabby house accidentally orders pornographic pictures, Franklin finds this to be one of the books "wonderful moments of humor." Mocking the disabled is not what Jackson, always sensitive to outcasts, would find humorous. But admittedly Franklin finds much more levity (as opposed to incisive satire) in Jackson's writing than I do. She finds Jackson's novel about multiple personality disorder her "most overtly comic novel," but another novel is her "funniest." In yet another, a character I only found annoying and offensive, is described as "comic relief." I know I don't have a great sense of humor, but this is puzzling if you've read all Jackson's novels. At one point after a large meal together, a friend of Jackson and Hyman wrote that "They got up hungry." Franklin, doubting, asks, "How could he know" this? What? Gosh, maybe they said, "I'm still hungry" when they rose from the table. Later, a Catholic girl "probably did not consider abortion." Why speculate if you don't know? At some points Franklin takes Jackson's statements at face value, and other times notes that Jackson took "liberties with the factual record." There's also a constant reliance on Betty Friedan as the only feminist writer worth quoting (nine times in the index), though she later criticizes Friedan as myopic. Her take on Ralph Ellison is also arguable.
There are spots where the writing seems immature. Serious biographers rarely rely on exclamation points to make a point. After one of Hyman's repeated infidelities, Jackson refrains from sending him an angry letter and then suffers a throat infection. Franklin writes, "the metaphorical connection is too rich to ignore ... after choking back the words ... she fell ill with a swollen throat!" But it was a letter she failed to send, there's no mention of a conversation. At another point Franklin notes that Jackson "no longer had to fight for her turn at the typewriter. Of course, she also had a baby to take care of!" Was that a surprise? But then Franklin undercuts her own excitement by saying, "she also seemed to have derived imaginative energy from the constraints" of being a housewife. Franklin will also provide a quote, and then tell us what we should think about that quote, that it was "not especially kindly," "wrote sourly," "wrote sadly," "commented, unhelpfully," "wrote insultingly," "wrote cheerfully," "wrote snidely," a "snide line," "condescending caption," "responded huffily," "unkindly described," etc.etc. But when reading the quote, these statements were not necessarily sad, snide, sour. Again, better to let readers think for themselves, because sometimes her adverbs seem askew.
A careful, thoughtful reader of this book will find much to question. All of these points may seem minor individually, but so many flawed opinions and dubious value judgments can make the reader doubt the lens through which the narrative was filtered, challenge the reporting and interpretation. A close reading shows that the author's preferences are never far from the surface and considered equally important as Jackson herself, or why so many tangents away from the subject.
Franklin also tries to pigeonhole Jackson's writing, with which Jackson would have disagreed, as her concerns were broader and more universal, investigating "the demon in the mind," the damaged psyche. Jackson wrote that her work was "one long documentation of anxiety." But despite major reservations, although I didn't enjoy it, I'm still glad I read A Rather Haunted Life. Together with Judy Oppenheimer's biography, it's a contribution to our knowledge and understanding of the too much underappreciated Shirley Jackson; it just isn't the definitive summation that Jackson deserves. What is still needed, what I'd hoped to read, is something like the controversial but wonderful biography of poet Anne Sexton by Diane Wood Middlebrook (1991). [3 Stars]
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