Thursday, March 09, 2006

"Nightmare" by Shirley Jackson

Whether this story is maddeningly funny or maddeningly frightening we leave to the listener to decide. It's a fine spring day in New York City and Miss Toni Morgan has a package to deliver for her boss, but somehow the world around her is not cooperating, or maybe she's just feeling a little paranoid. Read by Scoot. Time 33:09.

Most people (including ourselves) know Shirley Jackson's short story "The Lottery" and her novels We Have Always Lived in the Castle or The Haunting of Hill House, but perhaps not much more of her ouevre, although it includes a great many more stories and books she wrote before her untimely death in 1965. She was married to the critic Stanley Edgar Hyman, with whom she had four children. Somehow we suspect it wasn't the easiest thing in the world, being married to a critic with four kids while trying to write modern gothic tales, because the two memoirs she wrote about her family life were titled Life Among the Savages and Raising Demons. Perhaps she felt a bit persecuted.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Ha! I did a Shirley Jackson yesterday as well... eerie, that: have you been digging around in my psychic space??

Scoot said...

That is truly amazing, miette! We wondered if that would ever happen one day. Maybe it's the effect of Jackson's otherworld. Odd, too, that we both started our podcasts on the same day (although, since you may be in England, your day may have begun earlier). Let's put our psychic abilities to use: May we suggest a new career for us at gambling casinos or seance parlors? We can't wait to hear your offering, since there aren't many more Jackson stories in residence here...

Anonymous said...

I actually happened upon this story a few years ago, in a story anthology: "The Vintage Book of Amnesia"