If some authors write short stories which could be considered more like novels, Shirley Jackson writes short stories which can be considered more like flash fiction. They are sleek, slim and minimalistic. Yet somehow the characters manage to shift from the first impression the give off, that of stick figures, to full-bodied people into the lives of whom we get just a thin glimpse. ‘Afternoon in Linen’ captures the tension between children and adults, focusing on a girl and her grandmother during a social visit. Mrs. Lennon and Harriet are visited by Mrs. Kator and her little boy, Howard. As a reader, the story puzzles me. Mrs. Lennon pushes Harriet to show off her skills: play piano or read a poem written assumingly by herself. But Harriet recoils from each one of her grandma’s gentle pushes. “‘I didn’t write it’, she said. ‘I found it in a book and copied it and gave it to my old grandmother and said I wrote it’”. Of course, Harriet not only needs to perform for and in front of her grandmother. Howard, her schoolmate, also assesses Harriet’s performance. And the question remains, who does Harriet want to impress more and to what lengths she’s willing to go for that.
First published in The New Yorker, 27 August 1943, and available to subscribers to read here. Collected in The Lottery and Other Stories, Farrar, Straus and Company, 1949. Can be listened to here, with an introduction by Kristen Roupenian
A Personal Anthology 