Quote: I happened upon this 12-story collection by chance, noticing that a book-eating facebook friend had read it and was impressed. Charles Jackson is a name I mainly knew in connection with his 1940 autobiographical novel about alcoholism, 'The Lost Weekend' (which I haven't read) - made into an Oscar-winning film (which I've seen); somewhat infamous for excising the direct connection between Jackson's drinking and his inner conflict regarding his feelings for men. 

(Jackson would ultimately identify as bisexual - apparently maintaining good relations with his wife and daughters when he finally moved in with his male lover. Not that that made life any easier for him; he would return to being a slave to pills and alcohol. But it does seem to put him in wayward company with Patrick Dennis - minus the humor - and John Cheever - minus the infatuation with the upper-middle class.) 

Somewhat in 'response', perhaps, to works like Henry Bellamann's 'Kings Row' and Edgar Lee Masters' 'Spoon River Anthology', 'The Sunnier Side' puts smalltown-life under the microscope in order to highlight its underbelly. However, being set in the unique mentality of New York, its angst-level appears less chronic than Bellamann's Missouri, Masters' Illinois or even the New Hampshire of Grace Metalious' 'Peyton Place'. 

Still... there's something robotic - and even 'Stepford Wives' - running through Jackson's depiction of everyday folk. People in the town of Arcadia (standing in for where Jackson grew up) are clearly ruled by convention and 'What would people think?, or say?'

This is revealed in the opening story which gives the collection its title. The story opens with a fan letter from a reader praising 'Tenting Tonight' (included in the volume) as a "clean & delightful short story". The fan goes on to 'chastise' Jackson for how he writes elsewhere:

    it does sometimes seem a pity that a man with your gifts should dwell so much on the morbid & sordid, neglecting the sunnier side aforementioned & the wholesome.

Jackson's response to the letter is lengthy. He takes pains (with specific illustrations re: surface respectability) in respectfully pointing out that the fan's perspective on humanity is rose-tinted. It's an admirable and fascinating takedown. 

Seen as a whole, the remainder of the volume is a sequential overview of the years Jackson spent growing up in his family. The result is a bit myopic, as the emphasis (not always direct) is on things both sensual and sexual; the hold of existing in a physical form that we simply can't comprehend. 

That reality is brought most explosively forward in both 'Palm Sunday' (exhibiting the volume's best construction), in which Jackson and a sibling telepathically share the 'experience' they had with the town's choirmaster (why is it always the choirmaster?!) - and 'The Benighted Savage', which has Jackson's father, out of the gate, walking in on and becoming infuriated by his son's act of masturbation:

    "Don't you know what you're doing to yourself! You'll be stunted, finished, an idiot in the crazy house, with ruined health, dead! Feeble-minded, with tuberculosis of the spine or paresis or something!"

Fairly hilarious... and mind-boggling in its cluelessness. (It's no real surprise, later, when Dad ultimately - but mysteriously - disappears from the family.)

Jackson rises above himself when he effectively explores larger issues: the effect of WWI on the town and its two isolated German residents ('How War Came to Arcadia, N.Y.'); the sudden appearance of a sadly neglected / abused uncle ('A Night Visitor'); Jackson's love of language and the world of newspaper publishing ('Sophistication'); and the untimely death of an older sister ('Rachel's Summer'). 

Bottom line: These aren't bad stories. The writing is engaging and flows smoothly. In terms of what he actually published, the writer's output was meager. Jackson is decidedly but not all that justifiably obscure. He had talent - as well as overwhelming personal issues that perhaps only his biographer was able to illuminate. 

NOTE: I read the original publication; not the more-recent reissue, which substitutes a few stories for others.