Adventure on a Bad Night by Shirley Jackson
Andrew Gulli has done it again! Gulli, whose literary detective work over the years has unearthed previously unpublished stories from the likes of John Steinbeck, Ernest Hemingway, Raymond Chandler, Louisa May Alcott, Agatha Christie and Tennessee Williams, is releasing two newly discovered short stories from Shirley Jackson today in the latest issue of The Strand Magazine, where he is managing editor.
The magazine had released another previously unpublished story by Jackson called “Adventure on a Bad Night” back in 2020, which featured an encounter between a woman running some errands and a pregnant immigrant who needs help sending a telegram. In typical Jackson fashion, however, it is about more than just that. Our reviewer Jon Land described it as “all show, no tell” and praised its “sparseness and simplicity” and “vivid understatement.”
The two pieces in the current issue, “Charlie Roberts” and “Only Stand and Wait,” are very brief in length but just as deep in subtext, revealing the lauded author’s storytelling economy and skill in depicting complex emotional and societal relationships between people.
TWO SHORT STORIES THAT LINGER LONG AFTER
In “Charlie Roberts,” Jackson focuses a magnifying glass on a recently reconciled married couple discussing plans for a dinner party. The author walks a tightrope between the jovial familiarity of the two characters’ conversation and the insecurities, frustrations and resentments roiling just below the surface. We are never privy to the central issue that has created the tension between the spouses, but their dialog fixates around a third character, Charlie Roberts, and the pocketknife that he left at their home while the couple had been separated. The conversation circles back to it time and again in a dance of implication and innuendo tinged with undercurrents of distrust.
The second piece, “Only Stand and Wait,” is also quite subtle. A man who has been blind all his life is recovering from surgery that will restore his vision. He is in the doctor’s office preparing for the bandages to come off and asks the doctor what to expect: “What’s it like to see?” The doctor’s reply, while helpful and thoughtful, has an unintended effect on the patient, who succumbs to what could be described as “fear of the known.”
In his insightful introductions to the pieces, Gulli writes that Jackson “was born too early for the kinds of books and short stories she liked to write, and her works have proven to be far more suited to a later generation of readers than to those of her own time. Maybe it’s due to the introspective nature of modern readers or our deeper cynicism as a society. … It’s no wonder she has been reevaluated by a new generation of critics and is now seen as one of the most influential authors of the twentieth century.”
The Shirley Jackson issue of The Strand Magazine is available for purchase on the publication’s website.
