785-802_Jackson_LOA

Biography of a Story

n the morning of June 26, 1948, I walked down to the

post ofﬁce in our little Vermont town to pick up the

mail. I was quite casual about it, as I recall— I opened the box,

took out a couple of bills and a letter or two, talked to the

post master for a few minutes, and left, never supposing that it

was the last time for months that I was to pick up the mail

without an active feeling of panic. By the next week I had had

to change my mailbox to the largest one in the post ofﬁce, and

casual conversation with the post master was out of the ques-

tion, because he wasn’t speaking to me. June 26, 1948, was the

day The New Yorker came out with a story of mine in it. It was

not my ﬁrst published story, nor my last, but I have been as-

sured over and over that if it had been the only story I ever

wrote or published, there would be people who would not for-

get my name.

I had written the story three weeks before, on a bright June

morning when summer seemed to have come at last, with blue

skies and warm sun and no heavenly signs to warn me that my

morning’s work was anything but just an other story. The idea

had come to me while I was pushing my daughter up the hill

in her stroller— it was, as I say, a warm morning, and the hill

was steep, and beside my daughter the stroller held the day’s

groceries— and perhaps the effort of that last ﬁfty yards up the

hill put an edge to the story; at any rate, I had the idea fairly

clearly in my mind when I put my daughter in her playpen and

the frozen vegetables in the refrigerator, and, writing the story,

I found that it went quickly and easily, moving from beginning

to end without pause. As a matter of fact, when I read it over

later I decided that except for one or two minor corrections, it

needed no changes, and the story I ﬁnally typed up and sent

off to my agent the next day was almost word for word the

original draft. This, as any writer of stories can tell you, is not a

usual thing. All I know is that when I came to read the story

over I felt strongly that I didn’t want to fuss with it. I didn’t

think it was perfect, but I didn’t want to fuss with it. It was, I

thought, a serious, straightforward story, and I was pleased

The Library of America • Story of the Week

From Shirley Jackson: Novels & Stories (Library of America, 2010), pages 787–801.

Reprinted by arrangement with Viking, a member of the Penguin Group (USA), Inc.,

ith the permission of the Estate of Shirley Jackson c/o Linda Allen Literary Agency.

SHIRL EY JACKS ON

Are you receiving Story of the Week each week?

won’t miss a single story!

and a little surprised at the ease with which it had been written;

I was reasonably proud of it, and hoped that my agent would

sell it to some magazine and I would have the gratiﬁcation of

seeing it in print.

My agent did not care for the story, but— as she said in her

note at the time— her job was to sell it, not to like it. She sent

it at once to The New Yorker, and about a week after the story

had been written I received a telephone call from the ﬁction

editor of The New Yorker ; it was quite clear that he did not

really care for the story, either, but The New Yorker was going

to buy it. He asked for one change— that the date mentioned

in the story be changed to coincide with the date of the issue

of the magazine in which the story would appear, and I said of

course. He then asked, hesitantly, if I had any particular inter-

pretation of my own for the story; Mr. Harold Ross, then the

editor of The New Yorker, was not altogether sure that he

understood the story, and wondered if I cared to enlarge upon

its meaning. I said no. Mr. Ross, he said, thought that the

story might be puzzling to some people, and in case anyone

telephoned the magazine, as sometimes happened, or wrote in

asking about the story, was there anything in particular I

wanted them to say? No, I said, nothing in particular; it was

just a story I wrote.

I had no more preparation than that. I went on picking

up the mail every morning, pushing my daughter up and

down the hill in her stroller, anticipating pleasurably the check

from The New Yorker, and shopping for groceries. The weather

stayed nice and it looked as though it was going to be a good

summer. Then, on June 26, The New Yorker came out with my

story.

Things began mildly enough with a note from a friend at

The New Yorker: “Your story has kicked up quite a fuss around

the ofﬁce,” he wrote. I was ﬂattered; it’s nice to think that

your friends notice what you write. Later that day there was a

call from one of the magazine’s editors; they had had a couple

of people phone in about my story, he said, and was there any-

thing I particularly wanted him to say if there were any more

calls? No, I said, nothing particular; anything he chose to say

was perfectly all right with me; it was just a story.

I was further puzzled by a cryptic note from an other

788 a p p e n d i x

friend: “Heard a man talking about a story of yours on the bus

this morning,” she wrote. “Very exciting. I wanted to tell him

I knew the author, but after I heard what he was saying I de-

cided I’d better not.”

One of the most terrifying aspects of publishing stories and

books is the realization that they are going to be read, and

read by strangers. I had never fully realized this before,

although I had of course in my imagination dwelt lovingly

upon the thought of the millions and millions of people who

were going to be uplifted and enriched and delighted by the

stories I wrote. It had simply never occurred to me that these

millions and millions of people might be so far from being up-

lifted that they would sit down and write me letters I was

downright scared to open; of the three-hundred-odd letters

that I received that summer I can count only thirteen that

spoke kindly to me, and they were mostly from friends. Even

my mother scolded me: “Dad and I did not care at all for your

story in The New Yorker,” she wrote sternly; “it does seem,

dear, that this gloomy kind of story is what all you young

people think about these days. Why don’t you write something

to cheer people up?”

By mid-July I had begun to perceive that I was very lucky

indeed to be safely in Vermont, where no one in our small

town had ever heard of The New Yorker, much less read my

story. Millions of people, and my mother, had taken a pro-

nounced dislike to me.

The magazine kept no track of telephone calls, but all letters

addressed to me care of the magazine were forwarded directly

to me for answering, and all letters addressed to the magazine

— some of them addressed to Harold Ross personally; these

were the most vehement— were answered at the magazine and

then the letters were sent me in great batches, along with car-

bons of the answers written at the magazine. I have all the

letters still, and if they could be considered to give any accu-

rate cross section of the reading public, or the reading public

of The New Yorker, or even the reading public of one issue of

The New Yorker, I would stop writing now.

Judging from these letters, people who read stories are

gullible, rude, frequently illiterate, and horribly afraid of being

laughed at. Many of the writers were positive that The New

b i o g r a p h y o f a s t o r y 789

Yorker was going to ridicule them in print, and the most cau-

tious letters were headed, in capital letters: not for publica-

tion or please do not print this letter, or, at best, this

letter may be published at your usual rates of pay-

ment. Anonymous letters, of which there were a few, were de-

stroyed. The New Yorker never published any comment of any

kind about the story in the magazine, but did issue one pub-

licity release saying that the story had received more mail than

any piece of ﬁction they had ever published; this was after the

news papers had gotten into the act, in midsummer, with a

front-page story in the San Francisco Chronicle begging to

know what the story meant, and a series of columns in New

York and Chicago papers pointing out that New Yorker sub-

scriptions were being canceled right and left.

Curiously, there are three main themes which dominate the

letters of that ﬁrst summer— three themes which might be iden-

tiﬁed as bewilderment, speculation, and plain old-fashioned

abuse. In the years since then, during which the story has been

anthologized, dramatized, televised, and even— in one com-

pletely mystifying transformation— made into a ballet, the tenor

of letters I receive has changed. I am addressed more politely,

as a rule, and the letters largely conﬁne themselves to ques-

tions like what does this story mean? The general tone of the

early letters, however, was a kind of wide-eyed, shocked inno-

cence. People at ﬁrst were not so much concerned with what

the story meant; what they wanted to know was where these

lotteries were held, and whether they could go there and

watch. Listen to these quotations:

(Kansas) Will you please tell me the locale and the year

of the custom?

(Oregon) Where in heaven’s name does there exist

such barbarity as described in the story?

(New York) Do such tribunal rituals still exist and if so

where?

(New York) To a reader who has only a ﬂeeting knowl -

edge of traditional rites in various parts of the country (I

presume the plot was laid in the United States) I found

the cruelty of the ceremony outrageous, if not unbeliev-

790 a p p e n d i x

able. It may be just a custom or ritual which I am not fa-

miliar with.

(New York) Would you please explain whether such

improbable rituals occur in our Middle Western states,

and what their origin and purpose are?

(Nevada) Although we recognize the story to be ﬁc-

tion is it possible that it is based on fact?

(Maryland) Please let me know if the custom of which

you wrote actually exists.

(New York) To satisfy my curiousity would you please

tell me if such rites are still practiced and if so where?

(California) If it is based on fact would you please tell

me the date and place of its origin?

(Texas) What I would like to know, if you don’t mind

enlightening me, is in what part of the United States this

organized, apparently legal lynching is practiced? Could

it be that in New En gland or in equally enlightened re-

gions, mass sadism is still part and parcel of the ordinary

citizen’s life?

(Georgia) I’m hoping you’ll ﬁnd time to give me fur-

ther details about the bizarre custom the story describes,

where it occurs, who practices it, and why.

(Brooklyn, N.Y.) I am interested in learning if there is

any particular source or group of sources of fact or leg-

end on which and from which the story is based? This

story has caused me to be particularly disturbed by my

lack of knowl edge of such rites or lotteries in the United

States.

(California) If it actually occurred, it should be docu-

mented.

(New York) We have not read about it in In Fact.

(New York) Is it based on reality? Do these practices

still continue in back-country En gland, the human sacri-

ﬁce for the rich harvest? It’s a frightening thought.

(Ohio) I think your story is based on fact. Am I right?

As a psychiatrist I am fascinated by the psychodynamic

possibilities suggested by this anachronistic ritual.

(Mississippi) You seem to describe a custom of which I

am totally ignorant.

b i o g r a p h y o f a s t o r y 791

(California) It seems like I remember reading some-

where a long time ago that that was the custom in a cer-

tain part of France some time ago. However I have never

heard of it being practiced here in the United States.

However would you please inform me where you got

your information and whether or not anything of this na-

ture has been perpetrated in modern times?

(Pennsylvania) Are you describing a current custom?

(New York) Is there some timeless community existing

in New En gland where human sacriﬁces are made for the

fertility of the crops?

(Boston) Apparently this tale involves an En glish cus-

tom or tradition of which we in this country know

nothing.

(Canada) Can the lottery be some barbaric event, a

hangover from the Middle Ages perhaps, which is still

carried on in the States? In what part of the country does

it take place?

(Los Angeles) I have read of some queer cults in my

time, but this one b others me.

(Texas) Was this group of people perhaps a settlement

descended from early En glish colonists? And were they

continuing a Druid rite to assure good crops?

(Quebec) Is this a custom which is carried on some-

where in America?

(A London psychologist) I have received requests for

elucidation from En glish friends and patients. They

would like to know if the barbarity of stoning still exists

in the U.S.A. and in general what the tale is all about and

where does the action take place.

(Oregon) Is there a witchcraft hangover somewhere in

these United States that we Far Westerners have missed?

(Madras, India) We have been wondering whether the

story was based on fact and if so whether the custom de-

scribed therein of selecting one family by lot jointly to be

stoned by the remainder of the villagers still persists any-

where in the United States. The New Yorker is read here

in our United States information library and while we

have had no inquiries about this particular article as yet,

792 a p p e n d i x

it is possible we shall have and I would be glad to be in a

position to answer them.

(En gland) I am sorry that I cannot ﬁnd out the state in

which this piece of annual propitiatory sacriﬁce takes

place. Now I just frankly don’t believe that even in the

United States such things happen— at least not without

being sponsored by Lynching Inc. or the All-American

Morticians Group or some such high-powered organiza-

tion. I was once offered a baby by a primitive tribe in the

center of Laos (Indochina) which my interpreter (Chi-

nese) informed me I had to kill so that my blood lust was

satiated and I would leave the rest of the tribe alone. But

not in the United States, please.

(Connecticut) Other strange old things happen in the

Appalachian mountain villages, I’m told.

As I say, if I thought this was a valid cross section of the

reading public, I would give up writing. During this time,

when I was carrying home some ten or twelve letters a day,

and receiving a weekly package from The New Yorker, I got

one letter which troubled me a good deal. It was from Califor-

nia, short, pleasant, and very informal. The man who wrote it

clearly expected that I would recognize his name and his repu-

tation, which I didn’t. I puzzled over this letter for a day or

two before I answered it, because of course it is always irritat-

ing to be on the edge of recognizing a name and have it escape

you. I was pretty sure that it was someone who had written a

book I had read or a book whose review I had read or a story

in a recent magazine or possibly even— since I come originally

from California— someone with whom I had gone to high

school. Finally, since I had to answer the letter, I decided that

something carefully complimentary and noncommittal would

be best. One day, after I had mailed him my letter, some

friends also from California stopped in and asked— as everyone

was asking then— what new letters had come. I showed them

the letter from my mysterious not-quite-remembered corre-

spondent. Good heavens, they said, was this really a letter from

him? Tell me who he is, I said desperately, just tell me who

he is. Why, how could anyone forget? It had been all over the

b i o g r a p h y o f a s t o r y 793

California papers for weeks, and in the New York papers, too;

he had just been barely acquitted of murdering his wife

with an ax. With a kind of awful realization creeping over me

I went and looked up the carbon of the letter I had written

him, my noncommittal letter. “Thank you very much for

your kind letter about my story,” I had written. “I admire your

work, too.”

The second major theme which dominates the letters is

what I call speculation. These letters were from the people

who sat down and ﬁgured out a meaning for the story, or a

reason for writing it, and wrote in proudly to explain, or else

wrote in to explain why they could not possibly believe the

story had any meaning at all.

(New Jersey) Surely it is only a bad dream the author

had?

(New York) Was it meant to be taken seriously?

(New York) Was the sole purpose just to give the reader

a nasty impact?

(California) The main idea which has been evolved is

that the author has tried to challenge the logic of our so-

ciety’s releasing its aggressions through the channel of

minority prejudice by pres enting an equally logical (or

possibility more logical) method of selecting a scapegoat.

The complete horror of the cold-blooded method of

choosing a victim parallels our own culture’s devices for

handling deep-seated hostilities.

(Virginia) I would list my questions about the story

but it would be like trying to talk in an unknown lan-

guage so far as I am concerned. The only thing that oc-

curs to me is that perhaps the author meant we should

not be too hard on our presidential nominees.

(Connecticut) Is The New Yorker only maintaining fur-

ther its policy of intellectual leg-pulling?

(New York) Is it a publicity stunt?

(New Orleans) I wish Mrs. Hutchinson had been

queen for a day or something nice like that before they

stoned the poor frightened creature.

(New York) Anyone who seeks to communicate with

the public should be at least lucid.

794 a p p e n d i x

(New Jersey) Please tell me if the feeling I have of

having dreamed it once is just part of the hypnotic effect

of the story.

(Mas sa chusetts) I earnestly grabbed my young neph -

ew’s encylopedia and searched under “stoning” or “pun-

ishment” for some key to the mystery; to no avail.

(California) Is it just a story? Why was it published? Is

it a parable? Have you received other letters asking for

some explanation?

(Illinois) If it is simply a ﬁctitious example of man’s in-

nate cruelty, it isn’t a very good one. Man, stupid and

cruel as he is, has always had sense enough to imagine or

invent a charge against the objects of his persecution: the

Chris tian martyrs, the New En gland witches, the Jews

and Negroes. But nobody had anything against Mrs.

Hutchinson, and they only wanted to get through

quickly so they could go home for lunch.

(California) Is it an allegory?

(California) Please tell us it was all in fun.

(Los Angeles Daily News) Was Tessie a witch? No, witches

weren’t selected by lottery. Anyway, these are pres ent-

day people. Is it the post-atomic age, in which there is in-

sufﬁcient food to sustain the population and one person

is eliminated each year? Hardly. Is it just an old custom,

difﬁcult to break? Probably. But there is also the uncom-

fortable feeling that maybe the story wasn’t supposed to

make sense. The magazines have been straining in this

direction for some time and The New Yorker, which we

like very much, seems to have made it.

(Missouri) In this story you show the perversion of

democracy.

(California) It seems obscure.

(California) I caught myself dreaming about what I

would do if my wife and I were in such a predicament. I

think I would back out.

(Illinois) A symbol of how village gossip destroys a

victim?

(Puerto Rico) You people print any story you get, just

throwing the last paragraph into the wastebasket before

it appears in the magazine.

b i o g r a p h y o f a s t o r y 795

(New York) Were you saying that people will accept

any evil as long as it doesn’t touch them personally?

(Mas sa chusetts) I am approaching middle age; has se-

nility set in at this rather early age, or is it that I am not

so acute mentally as I have had reason to assume?

(Canada) My only comment is what the hell?

(Maine) I suppose that about once every so often a

magazine may decide to print something that hasn’t any

point just to get people talking.

(California) I don’t know how there could be any con-

fusion in anyone’s mind as to what you were saying;

nothing could possibly be clearer.

(Switzerland) What does it mean? Does it hide some

subtle allegory?

(Indiana) What happened to the paragraph that tells

what the devil is going on?

(California) I missed something here. Perhaps there

was some facet of the victim’s character which made her

unpopular with the other villagers. I expected the people

to evince a feeling of dread and terror, or else sadistic

plea sure, but perhaps they were laconic, unemotional

New En glanders.

(Ohio) A friend darkly suspects you people of having

turned a bright editorial red, and that is how he con-

strued the story. Please give me something to go on

when I next try to placate my friend, who is now certain

that you are tools of Stalin. If you are subversive, for

goodness sake I don’t blame you for not wanting to dis-

cuss the matter and of course you have every constitu-

tional right in back of you. But at least please explain that

damned story.

(Venezuela) I have read the story twice and from what

I can gather all a man gets for his winnings are rocks in

his head, which seems rather futile.

(Virginia) The printers left out three lines of type

somewhere.

(Missouri) You printed it. Now give with the explana-

tions.

(New York) To several of us there seemed to be a

rather sinister symbolism in the cruelty of the people.

796 a p p e n d i x

(Indiana) When I ﬁrst read the story in my issue, I felt

that there was no moral signiﬁcance pres ent, that the

story was just terrifying, and that was all. However, there

has to be a reason why it is so alarming to so many

people. I feel that the only solution, the only reason it

bothered so many people is that it shows the power of

society over the individual. We saw the ease with which

society can crush any single one of us. At the same time,

we saw that society need have no rational reason for

crushing the one, or the few, or sometimes the many.

(Connecticut) I thought that it might have been a

small-scale repre sen ta tion of the sort of thing involved in

the lottery which started the functioning of the selective-

ser vice system at the start of the last war.

Far and away the most emphatic letter writers were those

who took this opportunity of indulging themselves in good

old-fashioned name-calling. Since I am making no attempt

whatsoever to interpret the motives of my correspondents, and

would not if I could, I will not try now to say what I think of

people who write nasty letters to other people who just write

stories. I will only read some of their comments.

(Canada) Tell Miss Jackson to stay out of Canada.

(New York) I expect a personal apology from the

author.

(Mas sa chusetts) I think I had better switch to the Sat-

urday Evening Post.

(Mas sa chusetts) I will never buy The New Yorker again.

I resent being tricked into reading perverted stories like

“The Lottery.”

(Connecticut) Who is Shirley Jackson? Cannot decide

whether she is a genius or a female and more subtle ver-

sion of Orson Welles.

(New York) We are fairly well educated and sophisti-

cated people, but we feel that we have lost all faith in the

truth of literature.

(Minnesota) Never in the world did I think I’d protest

a story in The New Yorker, but really, gentlemen, “The

Lottery” seems to me to be in incredibly bad taste. I read

b i o g r a p h y o f a s t o r y 797

it while soaking in the tub and was tempted to put my

head under water and end it all.

(California; this from a world-famous anthropologist)

If the author’s intent was to symbolize into complete

mystiﬁcation and at the same time be gratuitously dis-

agreeable, she certainly succeeded.

(Georgia) Couldn’t the story have been a triﬂe eso-

teric, even for The New Yorker circulation?

(California) “The Lottery” interested some of us and

made the rest plain mad.

(Michigan) It certainly is modern.

(California) I am glad that your magazine does not

have the popular and foreign-language circulation of the

Reader’s Digest. Such a story might make German, Russ-

ian, and Japanese realists feel lily-white in comparison

with the American. The old saying about washing dirty

linen in public has gone out of fashion with us. At any

rate this story has reconciled me to not receiving your

magazine next year.

(Illinois) Even to be polite I can’t say that I liked “The

Lottery.”

(Missouri) When the author sent in this story, she un-

doubtedly included some explanation of place or some

evidence that such a situation could exist. Then isn’t the

reader en titled to some such evidence? Otherwise the

reader has a right to indict you as editor of willfully

misrep res enting the human race. Perhaps you as editor

are proud of publishing a story that reached a new low in

human viciousness. The burden of proof is up to you

when your own preoccupation with evil leads you into

such evil ways. A few more such stories and you will

alienate your most devoted readers, in which class I— un-

til now— have been included.

(New Hampshire) It was with great disappointment

that I read the story “The Lottery.” Stories such as this

belong to Esquire, etc., but most assuredly not to The

New Yorker.

(Mas sa chusetts) The ending of this story came as quite

a jolt to my wife and, as a matter of fact, she was very up-

set by the whole thing for a day or two after.

798 a p p e n d i x

(New York) I read the story quite thoroughly and con-

fess that I could make neither head nor tail out of it. The

story was so horrible and gruesome in its effect that I

could hardly see I the point of your publishing it.

Now, a complete letter, from Illinois.

Editor:

Never has it been my lot to read so cunningly vicious a

story as that published in your last issue for June. I trem-

ble to think of the fate of American letters if that piece

indicated the taste of the editors of a magazine I had

considered distinguished. It has made me wonder what

you had in mind when accepting it for publication. Cer-

tainly not the entertainment of the reader and if not en-

tertainment, what? The strokes of genius were of course

apparent in the story mentioned, but of a perverted ge-

nius whose efforts achieved a terrible malformation. You

have betrayed a trust with your readers by giving them

such a bestial selection. Unaware, the reader was led into

a casual tale of the village folk, becoming conscious only

gradually of the rising tension, till the shock of the un-

wholesome conclusion, skillful though it was wrought,

left him with total disgust for the story and with disillu-

sionment in the magazine publishing it.

I speak of my own reaction. If that is not the reaction

of the majority of your readers I miss my guess. Ethics

and uplift are apparently not in your repertoire, nor are

they expected, but as editors it is your responsibility to

have a so under and saner criterion for stories than the

one which passed on “The Lottery.”

Heretofore mine has been almost a stockholder’s

pride in The New Yorker.Ishared my copy with my

friends as I do the other possessions which I most enjoy.

When your latest issue arrived, my new distaste kept me

from re moving the brown paper wrapping, and into the

wastebasket it went. Since I can’t conceive that I’ll de-

velop interest in it again, save the results of your efforts

that indignity every week and cancel my subscription

immediately.

b i o g r a p h y o f a s t o r y 799

An other letter, this one from Indiana.

Sir:

Thanks for letting us take a look at the nauseating and

ﬁction-less bit of print which appeared in a recent issue. I

gather that we read the literal translation.

The process of moving set us back a few weeks, but

unfortunately your magazine and Miss Jackson’s consis-

tently correct spelling and punctuation caught up with us.

We are pleased to think that perhaps her story recalled

happier days for you; days when you were able to hurl

ﬂat skipping stones at your aged grand mother. Not for

any particular reason, of course, but because the village

post master good-naturedly placed them in your hands,

or because your chubby ﬁngers felt good as they gripped

the stone.

Our quarrel is not with Miss Jackson’s amazingly clear

style or reportorial observation. It is not with the strong

motives exhibited by the native stone-throwers, or with

the undertones and overtones which apparently we

missed along the way.

It is simply that we read the piece before and not after

s upper. We are hammering together a few paragraphs on

running the head of our kindly neighbor through the

electric eggbeater, and will mail same when we have un-

tangled her top-piece. This should give your many read-

ers a low chuckle or at least provide the sophisticates

with an inner glow. Also it might interest you to know

that my wife and I are gathering up the smoothest,

roundest stones in our yard and piling them up on the

corner in small, neat pyramids. We’re sentimentalists that

way.

I have frequently wondered if this last letter is a practical joke;

it is certainly not impossible, although I hope not, because it is

quite my favorite letter of all “Lottery” correspondence. It was

mailed to The New Yorker, from Los Angeles, of course, and

written in pencil, on a sheet of lined paper torn from a pad; the

spelling is atrocious.

800 a p p e n d i x

Dear Sir:

The June 26 copy of your magazine fell into my hands

in the Los Angeles railroad station yesterday. Although I

donnot read your magazine very often I took this copy

home to my folks and they had to agree with me that you

speak strait-forward to your readers.

My Aunt Ellise before she became priestess of the

Exalted Rollers used to tell us a story just like “The Lot-

tery” by Shirley Jackson. I don’t know if Miss Jackson is

a member of the Exhalted Rollers but with her round

stones sure ought to be. There is a few points in her

prophecy on which Aunt Ellise and me don’t agree.

The Exalted Rollers donnot believe in the ballot box

but believe that the true gospel of the redeeming light

will become accepted by all when the prophecy comes

true. It does seem likely to me that our sins will bring us

punishment though a great scouraging war with the

devil’s toy (the atomic bomb). I don’t think we will have

to sacriﬁce humin beings fore atonement.

Our brothers feel that Miss Jackson is a true prophet

and disciple of the true gospel of the redeeming light.

When will the next revelations be published?

Yours in the spirit.

Of all the questions ever asked me about “Lottery,” I feel that

there is only one which I can answer fearlessly and honestly,

and that is the question which closes this gentleman’s letter.

When will the next revelations be published, he wants to

know, and I answer roundly, never. I am out of the lottery

business for good.

1960

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