Joyce Carol Oates

(Of course, I haven't read any of her novels, so to heck with me.)

But I will admit that my distaste for JCO is based on very scant reading of her work.

"Tyson himself has spoken of the phenomenon of Mike Tyson in gladiatorial terms: the warrior's vow to fight to the death if necessary precludes and makes irrelevant all merely personal motives, all conventional rationalizations for what he does. Boxing is his life, his vocation; his calling. The Roman boast of munera sine missione in the gladiatorial games—no mercy shown—would be perfectly logical to him."
-JCO, from "Mike Tyson"

Can't comment on JCO otherwise, as I can't remember anything I've read. Sorry Anthony.

Um, Write Much?

i like "zombie" a lot. i read because it is bitter... in the fall and thought it was ok but not great (the last third was stupid, the rest was good). what else? i'm afraid i just like books to be as depraved as possible, though. she *does* look like a prune.

Heat is a good collection of short stories (title story is her best), and The Assignation is a good one of super-short stories.

i don't read short stories that much. is the trilogy that begins with garden of earthly delights good? i just ordered that for 11 cents.

the piece she wrote abt her husband's death in last wks nyer is really good

i used to read several of her short story collections -- think i recall really liking "the collector of hearts" horror/grotesque one

She will be reading from the similarly titled Give Me Your Heart at the Mysterious Bookshop on January 12.

she wrote a book of short short stories called "the assignation" which was incredible.

oh I see someone else just recommended it. but I second that. It's one of her more overlooked books (probably not hard since she publishes a book every month)

yummy joyce carol oats

She will be reading from the similarly titled Give Me Your Heart at the Mysterious Bookshop on January 12.

http://www.salon.com/2013/07/05/joyce_carol_oatess_islamophobic_tweets/

i liked her poem in a recent NYer

anyone read 'solstice'?

I thought it was great -- v simple on its surface but theres a lot going on; i also think monica particularly is 1 of the best written female characters ive ever read

1st 80 pages or so/norma's childhood are not so easy to get through, but subsequently 'blonde' is a page-turner & v well-written, i really love it

i went to a book sale and bought every jco book i saw

son of the morning (78)
man crazy ('97)
gravediggers daughter ('07)
the falls ('09)
high crime area: tales of darkness and dread (2014 uncorrected proof)
expensive ppl ('68)
american appetites ('89)
missing mom ('05)
we were the mulvaneys ('96)
do with me what you will ('73)
broke heart blues ('99)

should i become a jco completist is that insane

Martin S is no longer with us, so you can perhaps take up the mantle

should i become a jco completist is that insane

I'd tell you to buy all her books and just go crazy, but that might be misinterpreted.

her jacket photo game is extremely good

http://i59.tinypic.com/2hcg6q1.jpg

wow <3 so much she wrote a widow grandma getting hi horror/realism story

& these are lines from it fyi:

The car radio was tuned now to the Trenton AM station. Blasting rap music, rock, high-decibel advertisements. Fat Joe. Young Jeezy. Ne-Yo. Tyga. Cash Out. She understood how such sound assailing her ears was an infusion of strength, courage.

i read 'american appetites' its v good a revolutionary rd-style meditation slash midlife crisis novel w/ an existentially-experienced murder trial as its main plot o_o

peter capaldi shd def play ian mccullough imo ayo lemme write this adaptation jco

When is Blonde coming out as ebook?

reading 'the lost landscape' - did not know abt her severly autistic sister, whom she named, born on joyces 18th bday

this is also an odd thing i just learned abt independently -https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lyle_Stevik

& i was curious if she knew abt it...seemingly not, as someone just this morning tweeted her abt it

Joyce Carol OatesVerified account
‏@JoyceCarolOates Joyce Carol Oates Retweeted Steven B. Sikes
Very strange! "Lyle Stevick" is a strange appropriation. Joyce Carol Oates added,
Steven B. Sikes @comagine
@JoyceCarolOates You're referenced in this case that sleuths haven't solved: https://features.wearemel.com/the-strange-case-of-the-man-with-no-name-13691028e07e#.aza84nys1 …

finished 'you must remember this' a few days ago and it might be one of the best books ive ever read?

Scorsese talked for a few years about turning it into a movie (probably with De Niro in mind at the time).

hm interesting. im sure deniro prob as the felix (boxer) role

guess she even did some screenplay drafts

http://articles.latimes.com/1991-05-09/entertainment/ca-1994_1_scorsese-s-movies

she came to a benefit for my wife's mfa program a few months ago; she's teaching in berkeley and our friend was asked to drive her and her husband. she was very unpleasant.

I still really like the Assignation though.

i want to read blonde. don't know if that would make a good first oates tho. it's so much longer than most of her books.

joyce carol oatmeal. why has no one made this?

blonde wld be a fine 1st one, its def representative of how she writes imo

sweet, ty

should i become a jco completist is that insane

― johnny crunch, Friday, July 24, 2015 5:55 PM (11 months ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

so this was a yr ago and now i own 38 of her books, mostly all just found @ book sales

an interesting 1 that I don't own but currently have out from my library is The Poisoned Kiss and Other Stories from the Portuguese (1975)

she adopted a portugese persona named Fernandes and the stories are credited to the both of them

https://celestialtimepiece.com/2010/03/11/the-poisoned-kiss-revealed/

how's the girl gang one? almost bought it a couple weeks ago

id say not her best, tho still solid; its in a bit diff style, kinda a shorter "fast" prose; lol I am actually currently in the middle of that one also

Marya had no idea how far away the hospital was. She sat stiff, numbed, her cheeks wet with tears, listening to Else Fein's accented voice (she spoke now disjointedly of interns, the emergency room, the remarkable quick service, she had counted at one time eleven persons, doctors and nurses both, attending to her husband: she had faith that they would save him); watching the slushy street, the damp falling snow, the windshield wipers. None of this could be happening, yet it was happening with the effortlessness of a dream. Or was it in fact far less strenuous than a dream....The two of them making their way through the twilight of a winter morning, in a sleigh of some kind, or was it a boat, a little blue boat, pushing its way bravely forward. She didn't know their destination. She had not been told. She shut her eyes and made her secret wish: that their journey would never end.

I see a 37 word parenthesis, within which are both an embedded colon and a comma splice, and the closing of the parenthesis is immediately followed by a semi-colon that sets apart a sentence fragment. I think this is called suffering for the sake of art.

I liked her piece on Shirley Jackson in the new NYRB: http://www.nybooks.com/articles/2016/10/27/shirley-jackson-in-love-death/

I am a huge Jackson fan and not much of an Oates fan

thx for posting, that gets p grim

"We assumed she had taken a bunch of pills to get even with me," Sally said. "We used to do that kind of mother-daughter stuff."

i read them & mulvaneys

both p underwhelming imo, maybe each trying for too much in scope

each have compelling portions, in 'them' the stretch w jules & nadine works beautifully, has a bonnie & clyde feel

& in 'mulvaneys' near the end the dad, so far gone from alcoholism as to barely be able to think or communicate coherently when his son comes to visit him is incred;

btw i also watched the lifetime movie of 'mulvaneys' which was not great, beau bridges cannot really give the depth of character needed, though i imagine as a lifetime production it wasnt expected either

i don't read short stories that much. is the trilogy that begins with garden of earthly delights good? i just ordered that for 11 cents.

― harbl, Wednesday, May 26, 2010 5:34 PM (seven years ago)

i am finally reading this 11 cent book i got in 2010

It's been on my bookshelf all year without being read. I thought Black Girl, White Girl was terrific and Blonde was a masterpiece, but the last one I read (The Accused, a terrible attempt at a historical gothic campus novel) was dreadful and appears to have put me off.

did I already say she's incredibly unlikable and unpleasant in person? (scanning thread...) yes I did. Just the worst.

tell us every unpleasant thing she did. i'm bored.

eh, she was just really snotty. the program was nice enough to have our friend go give her a ride to this benefit, treated him like a driver (as in, didn't talk to him, ask him questions, etc...this is a young writer, you'd think she'd try to pretend to be friendly); then she came to the benefit, said one thing, and then told him to drive her home. but she didn't really tell him, she waved her hand at him like, "come, servant". he drove her home and she left garbage in his car and didn't say goodbye.

If she married Ta-Nehisi Coates she could be Joyce Carol Oates-Coates

reading a bio on her, p good

Instead she was forced to take dull, poorly taught seminars in Old English and sixteenth-century British literature. In the latter course Joyce was criticized by the professor, Merritt Hughes, for writing an essay on Spenser and Kafka, 'because he hadn't read Kafka; had no idea who Kafka was; but felt quite certain that Kafka wasn't important.' (Kafka, like Nietzsche, remained one of Joyce's literary idols; she later wrote that during her college years, 'I was Franz Kafka for a while.')

finished 'what i lived for'

excellent.. similar to 'blonde' a bit imo w its level of introspection, 1 man's internal monologue & set only over a long holiday weekend; spoiler but not really ~ tragic corky will never collect his winning bets on the '92 jays

heres a good review - https://www.nytimes.com/1994/10/16/books/he-could-not-tell-a-lie.html

this was good btw

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2020/07/06/the-unruly-genius-of-joyce-carol-oates

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2023/07/16/magazine/joyce-carol-oates-interview.html

The only book of hers I've read is an early one, A Garden of Earthly Delights. I thought it got off to a very slow start and gradually picked up steam. I didn't feel compelled to read the rest of the books in the quartet, though. Maybe someday.

I've never read anything of hers but I loved that interview. Very inspiring. Surprising she's not more of a feminist icon — survived two husbands, no kids, life totally devoted to The Work — but maybe her actual writing harms her reputation in that regard.

Whatever I managed to read of hers was usually pretty good, but maybe she just wrote too much and these days is kind of weighing in on matters on social media in a way I don’t need to know about. As I recall Martin Skidmore was a big fan, maybe he appears upthread.

I most remember her for those four early novels - The Garden of Earthly Delights, Expensive People, them, and Wonderland.

There have been so many since, but I don't think I've read any of them except for You Must Remember This and What I Lived For

I like her posts on twitter, they are really heartfelt and as somebody said, swing for the fences

haha I was so harsh on her above, and it's true that she was very unpleasant, but I also love her on twitter (for being unpleasant, half the time).

Joyce Carol Oates’s Relentless, Prolific Search for a Self
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2023/11/27/joyce-carol-oates-profile