Type of bind: Paperback
Dewey Decimal Number: 813.54
EAN num: 9780374516819
ISBN number: 0374516812
Label: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Manufacturer: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Quantity: 1
Page Count: 320
Printing Date: May 01, 1982
Publishing house: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Sale Popularity Level: 226252
Studio: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
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The Lottery, one of the most terrifying stories written in this century, created a sensation when it was very first published in The New Yorker. 'Power and haunting,' and 'nights of unrest' were typical reader responses. This collection, the only one to appear during Shirley Jackson's lifetime, unites 'The Lottery:' with twenty-four equally unusual stories. Together they demonstrate Jack son's remarkable range--from the hilarious to the truly horrible--and power as a storyteller.
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Rated by buyers 
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The only bad thing I can say about this collection is that it makes me want to suffer head trauma so that I can forget the stories and read them again in their NEWNESS. Singing Shirley Jackson's praises is like pointing out the blueness of the sky. Just read this. It'll ruin you for all other writers, but in the most divine sense.
Rated by buyers -
As a fiction writer, this is the book I study. I can return to this book again and again, overwhelmed by Shirley Jackon's absolute, subtle brilliance. She writes with a smoothness and an ease that borders on the eerie. I could sing the praises of this book all night.
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My favourite living author of the offbeat, macabre story is Joyce Carol Oates. This prolific woman, who can seemingly pen an entire novel while having a bath, has compiled a formidable opus of stories which Alberto Manguel appropriately describes as Black Water stories. I haven't read any of her many other types of novel and short story, but if I were handing out Nobel prizes, I would grab back any of the prizes handed out in the last twenty years (they seem to be awarded on the basis of some kind of quota system) and give it to Ms Oates. But before Joyce Carol Oates there was Shirley Jackson. We've all read The Lottery in high school, and even though I was intrigued and appalled by this story at the time, I didn't seek out more Jackson for a long time, partly I think because I thought my English teacher would approve. Just as well, because I think I am better able to appreciate her now that I am older and society and life in general has become more suspect for me.
Jackson died when she was 48 years of age, a victim to depression, drink, amphetamines, and chocolate. She was married to a university professor and lived at a time when America was expanding and exporting its robust, cocksure culture to the world. All of the stories in The Lottery and Other Stories were published in the 1940s. New York City was the true capital of North America and fast becoming the capital of the world. In these stories the hypocrisy behind the blithe optimism and manifest destiny of American culture is deftly portrayed. Many conservative, nostalgic thinkers and politicians evoke this time as being a golden age, a time that our current debauched, rudderless culture should aspire to. Jackson, a literary fifth columnist, doesn't appear to have embraced any of it. She skewers the racism, sexism, materialism and violence of the times -the glitter turns out to have been cheap paint after all- and she does so in simple straight forward slice of life stories, and, more devastatingly, in allegorical, nightmarish tales -The Lottery, The Tooth, and The Daemon Lover, etc.
The Lottery -Its about atavism, superstition -about responding to the mystery, insecurity, and danger of life by making human sacrifices to the vulpine forces of nature in order to presumably save the majority through a kind of magical inoculation. This type of thinking is the antithesis of science. It is ancient, 'old brain' thinking and it shares a lot with some 'new age' thinking. I think it is also why we can sometimes justify sending our young people off to die in pointless wars in foreign countries. It is about unthinking adherence to ritual. It is about compartmentalizing our emotions and behaviour -allowing friendship and compassion to co-exist with murderous cruelty, in the same person, in the same community. The veneer of civilization is not that thick or that strong. Civilization is a modern, stylish bungalow, built over a deep, ancient dungeon, where savagery and perhaps evil still walks, and periodically comes up the damp winding staircase -witness the unspeakable atrocities on both sides of recent and current conflicts (e.g. Kosovo, Rwanda, Iraq.) No wonder this story generated the most mail of any story ever published in the New Yorker. It is truly disturbing. Bridge with the girls, or baseball and a few beers with boys wouldn't seem the same after reading this story.
Rated by buyers -
A fantastic critique of the pointlessness of rituals...such as meat-eating...racism...speciesism...homophobia.
The text is available for free on the internet...but Jackson should be in everyone's collection.
Rated by buyers 
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Shirley Jackson is currently one of my favorite authors. (And, incidentily always has been, since elementary school.) She is the author that everyone has some sort of familiarity with, unbeknownst to them. From The Lottery, to The Haunting of Hill House, to We Have Always Lived In the Castle, there is a sort of haunting timelessness in her work. No matter where you grew up, what your background, you will always find a common thread to link you to her world. And in her world, you will find, (if you pay attention) a parable to our times, a guessing game of "could it really?.." and, "did it ever?"... After all of these questions, you will find yourself answering, yes, yes it did...
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