Story #22: Pattern recognition

Three-of-a-kind, a pair and antimeta-what?

We’re deep into Shirley Jackson territory, and this week we’ll look at how she uses parallelism and patterns to elevate her writing.

If you’ve been following along, you’ll be familiar with how Jackson uses underlying structure to guide and surprise readers. She writes in patterns to lull us into a sense of complacency, before breaking that pattern to draw our attention to an unexpected or deeper truth. (This is especially obvious with the third example in Story #21, in which a single word alerts the reader that her punchline is coming.)

This week, we’ll zero in on a few more examples—and we’ll also look at one passage that puzzles me.

The story

Faculty wives

About halfway through Raising Demons, Jackson’s four children are old enough to be in some form of school. This prompts a shift in how she sees herself, and she explores what it means to be a faculty wife. What’s notable, of course, is that throughout the book, Jackson (purposely?) defines herself relative to her family responsibilities—first as mother to her children, and then as wife to her husband, who’s just started teaching at a girls’ college.¹

On page 148, as she muses over her new status as a faculty wife, she says:

The three big thorns in the faculty wife's ointment are her husband, her husband's colleagues, and her husband's students.

This is textbook parallelism. First, she tells us how many things she’s going to put in the list, with “three big thorns,” and then she gives us a list of three. Of course, the list focuses on her husband first, and then she starts to attach things to him like he’s a coat rack. The repetition of “her husband” drives home the point that while his entourage is annoying, it’s all to do with him.

Did you notice the mixed metaphor? Normally you’d say “thorn in my side” or “fly in the ointment” but here, Jackson is talking about the “thorn in the ointment.” I think this is too obvious a gaffe to be an accident—rather, this is Jackson’s dry humour. Had she used either cliché, it would have read, well, like a cliché. Instead, she’s mixed them up to make the same point, and made a joke at the same time.²

Incidentally, and separate from our discussion of parallelism, the rest of this passage is equally hilarious, as well as useful as it illuminates why Jackson is so irritated—not so much at being a faculty wife, but at her husband as faculty:

Naturally a husband presents enormous irritations no matter what he is doing, and I think it is unreasonable to regard a teaching husband as necessarily more faulty than, say, a plumbing husband, but there is no question but what the ego of a teaching husband is going to be more vividly developed, particularly if he teaches in a girls’ college.

The first phrase is funny, period, and you have to feel some sympathy for her belaboured husband. But Jackson offers him some charity when she implies he is no more faulty than a plumber (no offense to any plumbers out there), which also gives us the wordplay of faculty/faulty. Finally, we get clarity about why she’s so irritated: the outsized ego that comes with a male professor in a girls’ college.

Unnecessary words

This next passage comes from the story where Jackson is expecting a visit from her husband’s friend, Sylvia. We looked at part of the Sylvia story in the last issue, in which Jackson resentfully cleans the house from top to bottom, stressing herself out (and probably everyone around her) and taking out passive-aggressive revenge in the form of a leaking fountain pen.

The morning of Sylvia’s visit, it’s raining and everyone is grumpy. On page 223, Jackson writes:

Without employing an unnecessary word I plugged in the coffeepot and sent Barry up to wake his brother and Sally up to wake her sister, and I let the dog out and the cats in.

This passage is held together by some subtle, sophisticated threads.

First: “sent Barry up to wake his brother and Sally up to wake her sister” has the alliteration of Barry/brother and Sally/sister. It also sets up a pair between the siblings, with Barry/Sally, and then each going upstairs to wake his or her corresponding sibling.

Second: “I let the dog out and the cats in” has the mirrored structure of dog/cat, out/in, and then the double-whammy of dog out/cats in.

Third: Jackson’s strategic use of prepositions. She sends Barry and Sally up, lets the dog out and the cats in. These tiny words telegraph movement and direction, in a spare sentence where every word has a job. It’s a masterful example of word economy, which we talked about way back in Story #6, when we looked at Ted Chiang’s short stories.

Finally, Jackson’s judicious use of punctuation means there’s only one comma in this sentence. You might expect one in the first phrase, after word, but it doesn’t come—instead, she barrels ahead and plugs in the coffeepot.

Without employing an unnecessary word I plugged in the coffeepot and…

We get a sense of military precision and a tightly choreographed sequence of action. Tick, tick, tick, tick. More to the point, this is classic text-painting: “without employing an unnecessary word,” Jackson gives a sentence that…doesn’t use any unnecessary words.³

School’s out for summer

And then we arrive at our third passage, which takes place earliest in the book. On page 113, Jackson says:

Father's Day was duly observed; the weather grew warm; the incredible day arrived and school was out for the summer. Sally's nursery school had a little party for the old ones who were graduating into kindergarten the next fall. Jannie was promoted to the third grade. Laurie was promoted to the sixth grade. My husband was invited to teach at the girls' college just outside our town, and accepted, planning to start in the fall when Jannie went into third grade and Laurie into sixth grade and Sally into kindergarten.

I like how Jackson marks the passage of time—a topic we’ll look at in more detail in future issues—by referencing multiple milestones. Father’s Day and the end of school are calendar events; the weather is a natural event; the children’s growing up is a constant human reminder of how steadily time is ticking on. 

But this passage is curious to me.

In the first part of the paragraph, Jackson works through chronological order with the kids, from youngest to oldest. In case we’ve forgotten their ages, she adds the detail of which grades they’re going in. Sally, Jannie, Laurie. She gives us a middle landing spot with her husband, and then works her way back out with the kids: Jannie, Laurie, Sally.

Do you see the problem? I would have expected Jackson to work back out to the kids in the opposite order she introduced them. Here’s what that would look like (my changes in bold):

Father's Day was duly observed; the weather grew warm; the incredible day arrived and school was out for the summer. Sally's nursery school had a little party for the old ones who were graduating into kindergarten the next fall. Jannie was promoted to the third grade. Laurie was promoted to the sixth grade. My husband was invited to teach at the girls' college just outside our town, and accepted, planning to start in the fall when Laurie went into sixth grade and Jannie into third grade and Sally into kindergarten.

Doing so would give us the pattern of Sally / Jannie / Laurie / husband / Laurie / Jannie / Sally, which seems awfully satisfying. The technical term for this kind of parallelism is antimetabole. It’s an A B B’ A’ pattern. Basically, you introduce a pattern and then you invert it.⁴

Shuffling the order of kids would also be more logical. They’re introduced in chronological order, from youngest to oldest, which makes sense. But on the way out, it starts with Jannie (middle child of this group), Laurie (oldest) and then zips back to Sally (youngest). The lack of order draws attention to itself, like an unfinished ending.

I’ve looked at this paragraph a lot, trying to figure out if there is some other logic that I’m missing. So far, nothing. Which raises the possibility that maybe, just maybe, Jackson missed this in editing. And as we’ll talk about shortly, I find that reassuring.

Why it works

These passages highlight the decisions that Jackson has made, and in particular, in setting her underlying structure.

The three big thorns in the faculty wife's ointment are her husband, her husband's colleagues, and her husband's students. (p 148)

In the first, she’s chosen to lean into threes. A list of three is standard rhetorical technique. There’s something pleasing about three, maybe because it’s the minimum number to let us know there’s a pattern. The first introduces the idea, the second reinforces it and the third is the kicker—it lets us know the repetition isn’t an accident, that it is intentional.

Threes also show up a lot in folk tales and children’s stories.⁵ Think about Goldilocks—there are three bears, and Goldilocks repeats her actions three times (trying the bears’ porridge, chairs and finally, beds). Given that folk tales started as an oral tradition, the repetition and pattern of threes makes it easier for the storyteller to remember and tell the tale; it’s also easier for the audience to follow along. Similarly, the repetition makes sense for children’s stories, especially for little kids who can’t read yet.

All to say, the pattern of threes is both familiar and comforting to us as readers, and when Jackson gives us this list—amplified by the repetition of her husband—it feels satisfying.

Without employing an unnecessary word I plugged in the coffeepot and sent Barry up to wake his brother and Sally up to wake her sister, and I let the dog out and the cats in. (p 238)

In this second passage, Jackson switches from triplets to pairs. The connections between the pairs hold the sentence together like a taut fabric, which enables Jackson to use the bare minimum of words. In using pairs, she can also reference the similarities and differences between the pairs: Barry/Sally, Barry/brother, Sally/sister, dog/cat, out/in, dog out/cat in.

Importantly, she’s chosen pairs that all interlace with each other, which allows the passage to take on more depth. Had she only given us one or two isolated pairs, this wouldn’t knit together as nicely.

Father's Day was duly observed; the weather grew warm; the incredible day arrived and school was out for the summer. Sally's nursery school had a little party for the old ones who were graduating into kindergarten the next fall. Jannie was promoted to the third grade. Laurie was promoted to the sixth grade. My husband was invited to teach at the girls' college just outside our town, and accepted, planning to start in the fall when Jannie went into third grade and Laurie into sixth grade and Sally into kindergarten. (p 113)

Finally, we arrive at the third passage, where I think Jackson missed an opportunity to tie a bow on her paragraph.

Does the paragraph work? Of course it does, and I think it’s a wonderful way to show how her family is changing before her eyes—in every possible way that time is marked. Do I think that the last sentence could have been edited to achieve a more satisfying effect? Yes. Do I forgive Shirley Jackson for it, and in fact, take solace in the possibility she overlooked something? Absolutely.

What we can learn

As always, dear Shirley offers plenty of teachable moments.

First, consider that these passages highlight three different ways to delight readers: a list of three, a series of knitted pairs and the possibility of antimetabole. When used well, these techniques feel satisfying to read and presumably, to write. This is part of the dance of writing and reading—to give the reader just enough to follow along, but without giving away the entire punchline.

Second, and maybe more important, is the missed opportunity in the last passage. When Jackson’s on, she’s ON. (I’ll remind you of the mastery of the sentence I picked apart in Story #17.) Raising Demons is more than 300 pages long, and this is the first example I’ve seen of a sentence that, in my view, could be improved. It’s so uncharacteristic that it makes me wonder if she’s trying to do something else that I’ve missed entirely.

But if we assume that this was, indeed, a missed opportunity, then we can draw comfort from that. There’s inspiration and aspiration in Shirley Jackson the perfect writer, but there is also solace in knowing that she is just a human, albeit a very skilled one.⁶ We’re all just doing our best.

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Share this newsletter like you’d share a shimmy with your favourite K-pop group.

1. As I’ve said before, defining one’s identity relative to others, or relative to a situation, is a recurring theme in Jackson’s work. In her horror fiction, she uses it to explore what happens when that situation changes. For example, in “The Beautiful Stranger” a woman in an unhappy marriage is thrown for a loop when her husband comes back from a business trip a different man—literally. She likes her new husband much better, but the end of the story has her wandering the streets of her neighbourhood, unable to find her own home. There are many interpretations of the story, including the obvious one that I missed, which is that the woman is an unreliable narrator who’s losing her marbles. However, I like the element of her coming unmoored because her identity was rooted in resenting her husband, and that once that resentment disappears, so does her perception of herself as a person.

All that said, as much as Jackson defines herself—or maybe, positions herself?—relative to her children and her husband, there is very much a sense of who she is in her memoirs: whip-smart, sarcastic, observant and empathetic, even if she isn’t always kind. But who is?

2. I tried to find a name for these types of expressions—descriptions of annoying things—and didn’t come up with much. However, in the process I discovered the word katzenjammer, which must be German.

Katzenjammer has three definitions, the last of which ties it to Jackson’s thorn in the ointment. I also appreciate that it has other, quite different meanings, least of all being a synonym for a hangover (definition two).

• A loud and typically discordant noise or sound

• A severe headache or other after-effects caused by drinking an excess of alcohol

• A difficult or tangled situation

3. When I searched my Kindle copy for the keyword unnecessary, I discovered that it appears only five times in the entire book—always in the context of unnecessary word(s) and always associated with the Sylvia story. Given Jackson’s penchant for side comments (see our discussion of “of course” in Story #21), maybe this is her way of convincing herself to hold her tongue.

4. A more expansive, and similar rhetorical technique, is chiasmus. With antimetabole, you use identical words in the inversion. With chiasmus, you don’t have to match the words completely, and that creates opportunities to play a bit more. See more examples here. 

5. Threes show up in other places too, in disciplines as varied as visual art (the rule of three in image composition) or religion (the many instances of triadic deities). 

I have a working thesis about threes being universal to the human condition, and/or being some spiritual constant in the universe, but this is clearly a not-even-half-baked idea that is far outside the purview of this newsletter.

6. I often point to Taylor Swift’s album Lover as an example of a perfectly executed, perfectly produced (if slightly too long) pop album. I loved it from first listen and I still listen to it occasionally, but it’s so squeaky clean that I find myself needing a palate cleanser afterward.

In contrast, her pandemic albums Folklore and Evermore have a scratchy, lo-fi production and more intimate songs, and I find myself hanging out in grooves with these albums in a way that I don’t with Lover.

Long story short, perfection is boring. Flaws are interesting, even if it’s hard for us to admit them to ourselves or show them to others.