This short article is perfectly straightforward: Benjamin Dreyer, copy chief at Random House, explains his fondness for the first paragraph of Shirley Jackson’s novel The Haunting of Hill House. He makes a pretty good case for it.
This is what writers who want to be better writers do. When we find something so perfect, we dissect it to see what makes it work, so we can then do similar things. This is good practice whether it’s a sentence, a paragraph, a plot, or a character. And unlike dissecting, say, a frog, knowing how the literary thing works doesn’t kill it. Indeed, it may be more alive than before.
So enjoy Dreyer’s examination of Jackson’s paragraph. But before I go, let me share something else of Shirley Jackson’s with you. It’s the entire text of her reply to someone who wrote to savage one of her stories: “If you don’t like my peaches, don’t shake my tree.” Simple, pithy, and, one presumes, effective.