Ruth Franklin

An excerpt of Ruth Franklin’s biography of Shirley Jackson, the author of seventeen books and many short stories including “The Lottery,” the bulk of which were written while she was immersed in raising—and being influenced by—her four children.

For certain elite readers, the best seller is valuable primarily as a means of calibrating literary taste: We know what is good in part by knowing what is bad. But the sheer ubiquity of the best seller makes it impossible to disregard so easily. If some books are good (read: literary) because they don’t sell, others are just as likely to be judged good (read: entertaining) because they do. “If I’m a lousy writer, then a hell of a lot of people have got lousy taste,” Metalious once said.