Eddie Whitlock's Blog: Reader and Writer - Posts Tagged "joyce-carol-oates"

There are fewer and fewer people I would like to meet. In general, I have been disappointed when I met celebrities. Meeting a politician is like meeting a walking void. If there's a group left I can still respect on whole, it's authors.

I missed my chance to meet Vonnegut. It's probably just as well. I don't think he would have enjoyed the encounter with me - I'd have been a nuisance to his schedule, I am sure. The same is true of other authors who passed away in recent years.

I did get to meet Stephen King thirty years ago, around the time he finished Firestarter. He was great and friendly and - even though this was a sign-the-book event, he took a little time to chat.

Jerzy Kosinski is dead. Richard Braughtigan is dead. Again, neither would want to waste his time with me.

So who is left?

Joyce Carol Oates, that's who.

I swear, that woman writes so many great books, it is hard to believe that she is just one person. For a while there, I was convinced that she was a team of people writing under the name Joyce Carol Oates.

The first thing I read by her was We Were the Mulvaneys, a book about a typical family that suffers tremendously. Reading that one prompted me to look up a high school friend and apologize for something that happened 25 years before. He didn't remember it. Still, I needed to do it. His family were the Mulvaneys in my little world and I had not given him credit for living through that.

I've read several other of her works, including Zombie, a fictionalized story of Jeffery Dahmer. It's a first-person take on a person who is without conscience: another amazing book.

Right now, I am listening to Give Me Your Heart, a collection of short stories. The stories are wonderfully creepy and yet extremely human.

I'm enthralled with this woman's skills as a writer and wonder what it would be like to engage her in an informal conversation. Her ability to elicit such emotions from readers is amazing. I wonder how she keeps that superpower under control in her everyday life.