Month: October 2016

Shirley Jackson’s horror story “The Lottery” is one of the most famous short stories in modern American literature. The disturbing tale, first published in The New Yorker in 1948—to the shock and consternation of many readers—surrounds an annual ritual in a small town, where every member of the community draws lots to determine who among them will be stoned to death.

The story was later adapted for radio, television, and the stage, and while Jackson died of heart failure in 1965, you can still hear the story performed by the author herself. An audio version of “The Lottery” was released by Folkways Records in 1960, with Jackson narrating. As part of the same audiobook, you can also listen to “The Daemon Lover,” a haunting story about a woman searching for her enigmatic fiancé on their wedding day. They were both published in Jackson’s 1949 anthology The Lottery and Other Stories.

Jackson’s work is experiencing a bit of a renaissance, thanks to a new biography of the author by journalist and book critic Ruth Franklin and the June 2016 release of a new collection of her previously unpublished fiction and nonfiction, edited by her children and Franklin. A graphic adaptation of “The Lottery” by Jackson’s grandson, the Paris-based artist Miles Hyman, goes on sale on October 25.

A digital download of the two stories is $7, or you can shell out $17 for a CD or $22 for a cassette copy. If audio isn’t your style, you can read “The Daemon Lover” on Google Books and “The Lottery” here.

Know of something you think we should cover? Email us at tips@mentalfloss.com.

Following 27 hours of surgery, conjoined twins Jadon and Anias McDonald have been successfully separated, CNN reports.

The two brothers, originally from Coal City, Illinois, were born with a rare medical condition known as craniopagus in September 2015. They lived the first 13 months of their lives with the tops of their heads fused together before undergoing surgery at Montefiore Medical Center in New York City on October 13 and 14.

Led by Dr. James Goodrich, 40 doctors were able to disconnect the patients’ skull and brain tissue using advanced imaging technology. At one point during the operation, doctors encountered a 5-by-7-cm area of brain tissue “with no definite plane for dissection,” according to a Facebook post shared by the boys’ mother, Nicole McDonald. She wrote, “Dr Goodrich had to make the call and the final cut based on his instinct.”

Craniopagus is exceedingly rare—occurring just once in every 2.5 million births—and the surgery needed to correct it is risky. A 2006 report co-authored by Goodrich [PDF] that looked at 41 craniopagus surgeries found a 77 percent success rate with multiple-stage operations and 37 percent success with those performed all at once.

The twins’ separation surgery was their fourth procedure. Both boys experienced slight complications following their most recent surgery: Anias had seizures the next day, and Jadon still hasn’t moved his left side. While Jadon’s issue is more worrisome, his father Christian told CNN Goodrich told him “that’s not out of the ordinary.” It took about a month for Jadon and Anias to fully recover from their previous operation, and the family is looking at a similar timeline this time around.

[h/t CNN]
 
Know of something you think we should cover? Email us at tips@mentalfloss.com.