I live about 10 miles from where Joyce Carol Oates attended a one-room school house while she was growing up. There are other parallels. Joyce Carol Oates went to the University of Wisconsin-Madison and so did I. Joyce Carol Oates had a friend who committed suicide (she writes about it in “An Unsolved Mystery: The Lost Friend) and so did I. This memoir reveals plenty about a very private person. I appreciated the essays on the books that affected Oates: Alice in Wonderland and Moby Dick. Growing up with few books in the house, Joyce Carol Oates read a lot of Edgar Allen Poe since her father had some of his books. I related to Oates in the exam for a Ph.D. at UW-Madison. I went through similar exams. All in all, this book shows how a poor little girl from Western New York grew up to become one of the most prolific and successful American writers. GRADE: B+
TABLE OF CONTENTS:
Author’s Note
I
WE BEGIN
MOMMY & ME
HAPPY CHICKEN: 1942-1944
DISCOVERING ALICE
DISTRICT SCHOOL #7, NIAGARA COUNTY, NEW YORK
PIPER CUB
AFTER BLACK ROCK
SUNDAY DRIVE
FRED’S SIGNS
“THEY ALL JUST WENT AWAY”
“WHERE HAS GOD GONE”
HEADLIGHTS: THE FIRST DEATH
“THE BRUSH”
AN UNSOLVED MYSTERY: THE LOST FRIEND
“START YOUR OWN BUSINESS!”
THE LOST SISTER: AN ELEGY
NIGHTHAWK: RECOLLECTIONS OF A LOST TIME
II
DETROIT: 1962-1968
STORY INTO FILM
“WHERE ARE YOU GOING, WHERE HAVE YOU BEEN?” AND SMOOTH TALK
PHOTO SHOOT: WEST ELEVENTH STREET, NYC, MARCH 6, 1970
FOOD MYSTERIES
FACTS, VISIONS, MYSTERIES: MY FATHER FREDERIC OATES, NOVEMBER 1988
A LETTER TO MY MOTHER CAROLINA ON HER 78TH BIRTHDAY, NOVEMBER 8, 1994
“WHEN I WAS A LITTLE GIRL AND MY MOTHER DIDN’T WANT ME”
III
EXCERPT: TELEPHONE CONVERSATION WITH MY FATHER FREDERIC OATES, MAY 1999
THE LONG ROMANCE
MY MOTHER’S QUILTS
AFTERWORD
Joyce Carol Oates is one of those writers I just don’t get.
She’s an interesting woman (I’ve heard a couple of interviews) but her writing leaves me cold.
Beth, I’ve seen Joyce Carol Oates interviewed a couple of times. She’s very personable. But, like you, I’m not a huge fan of her fiction. I read all of Oates’s early novels up to about Bellefleur (1980). I like her short stories and essays better than her novels.
In general, I have to agree with Beth. I want to like her stuff but most of the ones I’ve tried just weren’t my cup of tea. I do want to read her book about coping with her husband’s death.
Jeff, I found Joyce Carol Oates’s A Widow’s Story: A Memoir (2011) very moving. But Oates has been criticized for remarrying after her husband’s death.
Huh? Who the hell had the temerity to do that, and why should we care about their opinion? Idiots had the gall to tell her that?
Very strange. I’ll need to read this. I like her novels I’ve read, though I do prefer the shorter ones, and like the short fiction on average better…and the specter of the attempted rape of her as a child does haunt a lot of her most powerful work.
Todd, I prefer Joyce Carol Oates’s early novels and her short stories. She writes excellent essays, too.