Biography of a Story
O
n the morning of June 26, 1948, I walked down to the
post office in our little Vermont town to pick up the
mail. I was quite casual about it, as I recall— I opened the box,
took out a couple of bills and a letter or two, talked to the
post master for a few minutes, and left, never supposing that it
was the last time for months that I was to pick up the mail
without an active feeling of panic. By the next week I had had
to change my mailbox to the largest one in the post office, and
casual conversation with the post master was out of the ques-
tion, because he wasn’t speaking to me. June 26, 1948, was the
day The New Yorker came out with a story of mine in it. It was
not my first published story, nor my last, but I have been as-
sured over and over that if it had been the only story I ever
wrote or published, there would be people who would not for-
get my name.
I had written the story three weeks before, on a bright June
morning when summer seemed to have come at last, with blue
skies and warm sun and no heavenly signs to warn me that my
morning’s work was anything but just an other story. The idea
had come to me while I was pushing my daughter up the hill
in her stroller— it was, as I say, a warm morning, and the hill
was steep, and beside my daughter the stroller held the day’s
groceries— and perhaps the effort of that last fifty yards up the
hill put an edge to the story; at any rate, I had the idea fairly
clearly in my mind when I put my daughter in her playpen and
the frozen vegetables in the refrigerator, and, writing the story,
I found that it went quickly and easily, moving from beginning
to end without pause. As a matter of fact, when I read it over
later I decided that except for one or two minor corrections, it
needed no changes, and the story I finally typed up and sent
off to my agent the next day was almost word for word the
original draft. This, as any writer of stories can tell you, is not a
usual thing. All I know is that when I came to read the story
over I felt strongly that I didn’t want to fuss with it. I didn’t
think it was perfect, but I didn’t want to fuss with it. It was, I
thought, a serious, straightforward story, and I was pleased
The Library of America • Story of the Week
From Shirley Jackson: Novels & Stories (Library of America, 2010), pages 787–801.
Originally published in Come Along with Me (1968). Copyright © 1968 by Stanley Edgar Hyman.
Reprinted by arrangement with Viking, a member of the Penguin Group (USA), Inc.,
w
ith the permission of the Estate of Shirley Jackson c/o Linda Allen Literary Agency.
SHIRL EY JACKS ON
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