Shirley Jackson's the Lottery and the Yellow Wallpaper

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There are threads that bind them and make them kind of stylistically, not even stylistically, but thematically similar. The lottery in particular comes with a ton of other stories from Shirley Jackson. So if there's something about her voice or her, my description of, of her in this podcast that drew you to her, like there's a lot of other stuff there for you to dig into. I guess you don't know why it works. It's just like weird confirmation bias. Right.

We double-dip a bit in this week's show, reading two short stories and proving that you don't have to have a ton of time to read something thought-provoking. The theme is "female authors writing about controversial-at-the-time ideas," and the stories are The Yellow Wallpaper by Charlotte Perkins Gilman and The Lottery by Shirley Jackson.

One is about a misdiagnosed "hysterical" woman slowly going insane through lack of mental stimulation, one is about a seemingly innocuous small town that is slavishly devoted to its own traditions. Both remain subversive and retain their impact even today.

Oh yeah and we also talk about which grocery store animal mascot would win in a fight.

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