Thoughtful critics suggested Shirley Jackson‘s oeuvre was a little slender for a Library of America volume. After all, she’s mostly famous for a single short story.
Some think the Library of America is running out of ideas. I mean, really. American Food Writing: An Anthology with Classic Recipes? Poems from the Women’s Movement?
Over at When Falls the Coliseum, Ricky Sprague wanted to offer a few ideas of his own. Think Snooki, if you can. Think William Shatner.
He also suggests a special volume for Rotten Tomatoes, including such RT selections as “Give up your career as a ‘critic’ or die!”
Check it out here.
Author: Cynthia Haven
Cynthia Haven has written for The Times Literary Supplement, The Nation, The Virginia Quarterly Review, The Washington Post, The Los Angeles Times, The San Francisco Chronicle, World Literature Today, and other publications. Her work has also appeared in Le Monde, La Repubblica, The Kenyon Review, Quarterly Conversation, The Georgia Review, Civilization, and others. She has been a Milena Jesenská Journalism Fellow with the Institut für die Wissenschaften vom Menschen in Vienna. Peter Dale in Conversation with Cynthia Haven was published in London, 2005. Her Czestaw Mitosz: Conversations was published in 2006; Joseph Brodsky: Conversations in 2003; An Invisible Rope: Portraits of Czestaw Mitosz was published in 2011 with Ohio University Press / Swallow Press. She is currently a visiting scholar at Stanford. Her biography René Girard, A Life will be published next year.
Join me at twitter: @chaven
View all posts by Cynthia Haven
It’s a little late to leave this comment, but on the remote chance someone might read: I disagree vehemently that Shirley Jackson’s fame rests on one slender story. She’s also justly famous for The Haunting of Hill House and We Have Always Lived in the Castle. And really, indirectly comparing her to William Shatner and Snooki is just such a snobbish, pretentious little jibe. Unworthy of you.
These weren’t my own remarks, Trish. I was citing remarks across the ‘Net, which, as you know, thrives on snark. But I’ve come to agree with you about Jackson, and have posted on her more recently. Her oeuvre should be better known. (And I think the Shatner/Snooki jibe, which isn’t mine, refers to the recent Library of America offerings, not to Jackson.)