Shirley (2020, Josephine Decker, director)

There was a school movie of Shirley Jackson’s story, “The Lottery”. My older brother saw it in junior high was really shocked by it. I saw it in school myself a few years later. Maybe his talking about it had ruined the surprise ending, but I was so used to TV violence, I couldn’t see what the big deal was.

This came up in conversation recently. He's still unnerved by the memory.

I’ve read a couple of stories by Shirley Jackson. For some reason, I didn’t think of her as a horror writer.

The movie Shirley is about a young couple who move in with Shirley Jackson and her university professor husband. Turns out, if this movie is to be believed, she was a morbid, socially aggressive eccentric.

I don’t know why that surprises me. I guess I had this vague picture of her as a sort of Erma Bombeck.