Our reading for February will be "The Lottery" by Shirley Jackson.
"The Lottery” is a classic in modern literature. It was published in the June 26, 1948, issue of The New Yorker and it became the most controversial short story in its history. Soon after the piece was published, angry letters poured in to The New Yorker. Many readers canceled their subscriptions and sent hate mail throughout the summer. And while many of them claimed they didn’t understand the story, the intense reaction indicated they understood it all too well.
“The Lottery” is considered to be the paradigm of a perfectly crafted narrative. While the tale begins on a sunny, summer day, it builds at a ferocious pace, from daydream to nightmare. The writing is tight and compelling, and the story is impossible to forget. As author Jonathon Lethem puts it, “It now resides in the popular imagination as an archetype.”
Authors including Stephen King, Nigel Kneale, Richard Matheson, and Neil Gaiman all credit Shirley Jackson as a source of inspiration, and for decades, “The Lottery” has been taught in middle schools and high schools across America. As author A.M. Holmes pointed out, the story is introduced to students when they are “just waking up to the oddity of things, and the terror that is in everyday life.”
It is said that “The Lottery” did more in nine pages than most novels do in nine chapters. Here’s how Shirley Jackson outraged a nation with fewer than 3,500 words:
(Taken from the Wikipedia and Book and Literature.)
No comments:
Post a Comment