On June 26, 1948, the New Yorker published a now-famous story about a fictional rural town. This unnamed village has a square between the post office and the bank; men "speaking of planting and rain, tractors and taxes"; and wives "wearing faded house dresses and sweaters" who share gossip. It has boisterous schoolchildren, a one-size-fits-all events officiant and a venerated Old Timer. The town also has a tradition of choosing one person each year — by way of an old-fashioned lottery — to stone to death. Overnight, "The Lottery" put its author, Shirley Jackson, on the literary map. And while her fictional town is presented as an insular, tradition-oriented Anytown, USA, the story was written in the small southern Vermont town of North Bennington. Jackson and her husband, Stanley Edgar Hyman, moved to North Bennington in 1945, when Hyman took a teaching position at Bennington College. Or, as literary critic Paul Theroux wrote in his review of the collected Jackson works, Let Me Tell You, they "rusticated themselves." Jackson lived there until her death in 1965 at the age of 48. During her life, she produced many more short stories, memoirs and neo-gothic novels — one of which, The Haunting of Hill House, has twice been adapted by Hollywood. According to biographer Ruth Franklin, Stephen King considers it one of the greatest horror novels of all time. Over the past decade, Jackson's reputation has gained considerable momentum worldwide, but traces of her legacy in North Bennington remain faint. Jackson's son Barry Hyman has lived close to the town for most of his life. "There's no plaque; there's really no concrete, official evidence of Shirley Jackson in North Bennington at all," he told Seven Days by phone, "and most of the people who knew her are gone." According to Hyman, projects currently in the works related to Jackson or her writings include a movie, a TV series and a ballet. Jackson's grandson* Miles Hyman is at work on a graphic-novel version of "The Lottery." In the catalog for the Shelburne Museum's upcoming exhibition "Grandma Moses: American Modern," Stanford art historian Alexander Nemerov uses Jackson to frame his discussion of place and cultural inheritance. The Shirley Jackson Estate, Barry Hyman said, earned more money in 2015 than any other year. (That estate is managed by his brother, Jackson's eldest child, Laurence Jackson Hyman, who lives in northern California.) "Her legacy is very…
On June 26, 1948, the New Yorker published a now-famous story about a fictional rural town. This unnamed village has a square between the post office and the bank; men "speaking of planting and rain, tractors and taxes"; and wives "wearing faded house dresses and sweaters" who share gossip. It has boisterous schoolchildren, a one-size-fits-all events officiant and a venerated Old Timer. The town also has a tradition of choosing one person each year — by way of an old-fashioned lottery — to stone to death. Overnight, "The Lottery" put its author, Shirley Jackson, on the literary map. And while her fictional town is presented as an insular, tradition-oriented Anytown, USA, the story was written in the small southern Vermont town of North Bennington. Jackson and her husband, Stanley Edgar Hyman, moved to North Bennington in 1945, when Hyman took a teaching position at Bennington College. Or, as literary critic Paul Theroux wrote in his review of the collected Jackson works, Let Me Tell You, they "rusticated themselves." Jackson lived there until her death in 1965 at the age of 48. During her life, she produced many more short stories, memoirs and neo-gothic novels — one of which, The Haunting of Hill House, has twice been adapted by Hollywood. According to biographer Ruth Franklin, Stephen King considers it one of the greatest horror novels of all time. Over the past decade, Jackson's reputation has gained considerable momentum worldwide, but traces of her legacy in North Bennington remain faint. Jackson's son Barry Hyman has lived close to the town for most of his life. "There's no plaque; there's really no concrete, official evidence of Shirley Jackson in North Bennington at all," he told Seven Days by phone, "and most of the people who knew her are gone." According to Hyman, projects currently in the works related to Jackson or her writings include a movie, a TV series and a ballet. Jackson's grandson* Miles Hyman is at work on a graphic-novel version of "The Lottery." In the catalog for the Shelburne Museum's upcoming exhibition "Grandma Moses: American Modern," Stanford art historian Alexander Nemerov uses Jackson to frame his discussion of place and cultural inheritance. The Shirley Jackson Estate, Barry Hyman said, earned more money in 2015 than any other year. (That estate is managed by his brother, Jackson's eldest child, Laurence Jackson Hyman, who lives in northern California.) "Her legacy is very…