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The Journal of Joyce Carol Oates: 1973-1982
On New Year's Day 1973, Joyce Carol Oates began keeping a journal, which she maintains to this day. Already a well-established literary force by the age of thirty-four, Oates had written three books that had been named finalists for the National Book Award (in 1968, 1969, and 1972), and her novel them won the award in 1970; she had also received a number of O. Henry Awards, in addition to many other honors. Despite the warm critical reception from the literary world, however, the young author was naturally reticent about her personal life and would remain so throughout her career.
The Journal of Joyce Carol Oates, edited by Greg Johnson, offers a rare first glimpse into the private thoughts of this extraordinary writer. This volume focuses on excerpts from the journal written during the crucial first decade, 1973-1982, one of the most productive of Oates's long career. Housed in her archive at Syracuse University, the journals themselves run to more than 5,000 single-spaced typewritten pages. Far more than just a daily account of a writer's writing life, these intimate, unrevised pages candidly explore Oates's friendship with other writers, including John Updike, Donald Barthelme, Susan Sontag, Gail Godwin, and Philip Roth, among others. Oates also describes, in vivid and captivating detail, her university teaching, her love of the natural world, her rural background, her vast reading, her critics, her travels, and, predominantly, the "silent, secret" life of the imagination.
What emerges is a fascinating portrait of the artist as a young woman, fully engaged with her world and her culture—a writer who paradoxically thought of herself as "invisible" while becoming one of the most respected, honored, discussed, and controversial figures in American letters.
The Journal of Joyce Carol Oates, edited by Greg Johnson, offers a rare first glimpse into the private thoughts of this extraordinary writer. This volume focuses on excerpts from the journal written during the crucial first decade, 1973-1982, one of the most productive of Oates's long career. Housed in her archive at Syracuse University, the journals themselves run to more than 5,000 single-spaced typewritten pages. Far more than just a daily account of a writer's writing life, these intimate, unrevised pages candidly explore Oates's friendship with other writers, including John Updike, Donald Barthelme, Susan Sontag, Gail Godwin, and Philip Roth, among others. Oates also describes, in vivid and captivating detail, her university teaching, her love of the natural world, her rural background, her vast reading, her critics, her travels, and, predominantly, the "silent, secret" life of the imagination.
What emerges is a fascinating portrait of the artist as a young woman, fully engaged with her world and her culture—a writer who paradoxically thought of herself as "invisible" while becoming one of the most respected, honored, discussed, and controversial figures in American letters.
528 pages, Hardcover
First published October 1, 2002
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1308 people want to read
About the author
Joyce Carol Oates
859 books9,696 followersJoyce Carol Oates is an American writer. Oates published her first book in 1963, and has since published 58 novels, a number of plays and novellas, and many volumes of short stories, poetry, and nonfiction. Her novels Black Water (1992), What I Lived For (1994), and Blonde (2000), and her short story collections The Wheel of Love (1970) and Lovely, Dark, Deep: Stories (2014) were each finalists for the Pulitzer Prize. She has won many awards for her writing, including the National Book Award, for her novel Them (1969), two O. Henry Awards, the National Humanities Medal, and the Jerusalem Prize (2019).
Oates taught at Princeton University from 1978 to 2014, and is the Roger S. Berlind '52 Professor Emerita in the Humanities with the Program in Creative Writing. From 2016 to 2020, she was a visiting professor at the University of California, Berkeley, where she taught short fiction in the spring semesters. She now teaches at Rutgers University, New Brunswick.
Oates was elected to the American Philosophical Society in 2016.
Pseudonyms: Rosamond Smith and Lauren Kelly.
Oates taught at Princeton University from 1978 to 2014, and is the Roger S. Berlind '52 Professor Emerita in the Humanities with the Program in Creative Writing. From 2016 to 2020, she was a visiting professor at the University of California, Berkeley, where she taught short fiction in the spring semesters. She now teaches at Rutgers University, New Brunswick.
Oates was elected to the American Philosophical Society in 2016.
Pseudonyms: Rosamond Smith and Lauren Kelly.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 49 reviews
June 4, 2025
The genius of JCO.
Her darkness is a misconception. She is dark and light.
Her transcendent consciousness-she calls this journal her "experiment with consciousness" and is always asking herself what is her identity? JCO. Joyce Carol Oates. Mrs. Smith. Joyce Smith. Professor, writer, wife, artist.
Her ability to conjure and channel her characters, tune in and listen to them with a fine detail that borders on obsession. But you feel it in her characters. It's like they have souls of their own.
She is both mystical and reluctant to be mystical. She is doggedly agnostic on one page but on another page she muses on what the soul is, what God is and I think the mystic would agree with her.
What makes her different as a writer is that she defies genre and uses it on her terms only. She follows her Unconscious when she decides what she needs to write. At times, she shivers at her own darkness that comes out and yet her writing never flinches.
The mystic--in the inability to describe enlightenment--such is Oates' ability to achieve prescience in her storytelling. Her stories feel so intense-through her finely tuned gaze into the inner life of the characters. Oates knows the secrets of the sages-and she isn't telling-but she brings herself back to earth. Closes the door to the temple. And goes back to work on another story. She pours forth into her novels-and experiences the agony and the ecstasy of creation. The ecstasy is in the Art itself. The agony is the misunderstandings, misperceptions of others-of this being too intense for most of us, most of the time.
Her darkness is a misconception. She is dark and light.
Her transcendent consciousness-she calls this journal her "experiment with consciousness" and is always asking herself what is her identity? JCO. Joyce Carol Oates. Mrs. Smith. Joyce Smith. Professor, writer, wife, artist.
Her ability to conjure and channel her characters, tune in and listen to them with a fine detail that borders on obsession. But you feel it in her characters. It's like they have souls of their own.
She is both mystical and reluctant to be mystical. She is doggedly agnostic on one page but on another page she muses on what the soul is, what God is and I think the mystic would agree with her.
What makes her different as a writer is that she defies genre and uses it on her terms only. She follows her Unconscious when she decides what she needs to write. At times, she shivers at her own darkness that comes out and yet her writing never flinches.
The mystic--in the inability to describe enlightenment--such is Oates' ability to achieve prescience in her storytelling. Her stories feel so intense-through her finely tuned gaze into the inner life of the characters. Oates knows the secrets of the sages-and she isn't telling-but she brings herself back to earth. Closes the door to the temple. And goes back to work on another story. She pours forth into her novels-and experiences the agony and the ecstasy of creation. The ecstasy is in the Art itself. The agony is the misunderstandings, misperceptions of others-of this being too intense for most of us, most of the time.
Read
November 7, 2021I read this book as I read Son of the Morning, one of the novels that Oates is writing as she keeps these journals. I'd recommend reading the two together or Bellefleur, another novel she talks about in the journals.
Reading the two together helped me as a writer. I especially liked reading about her process. It amazed me how committed she is to the art of writing. At least during these years, she wrote every single day, often in marathon sessions. I wish I had the time to do that -- and dedication, as I often get distracted when I sit down to write.
One of the things that helped me most was witnessing the freedom Oates gave herself in her journals. If she felt like ranting, she ranted. She talked about her sadness when beloved friends passed away. She wrote about her anger and confusion when interactions with colleagues went awry. She talked about her hopes and her dreams and she did so in a way that made sense for her. Reading her method of journaling gave me freedom as I approach my own journals.
It's rare that we get to read the journals of a living writer and I appreciate that Oates chose to share them with us.
Reading the two together helped me as a writer. I especially liked reading about her process. It amazed me how committed she is to the art of writing. At least during these years, she wrote every single day, often in marathon sessions. I wish I had the time to do that -- and dedication, as I often get distracted when I sit down to write.
One of the things that helped me most was witnessing the freedom Oates gave herself in her journals. If she felt like ranting, she ranted. She talked about her sadness when beloved friends passed away. She wrote about her anger and confusion when interactions with colleagues went awry. She talked about her hopes and her dreams and she did so in a way that made sense for her. Reading her method of journaling gave me freedom as I approach my own journals.
It's rare that we get to read the journals of a living writer and I appreciate that Oates chose to share them with us.
August 10, 2009
I read this journal as inquiry into one writer's craft. And I enjoyed it. Read it as a ersatz biography, and you'll wind up disappointed. In his review in the New York Times, James Campbell, author of the excellent "Syncopations, seemed to want more dishy stuff. (http://bit.ly/UFWSb) But Joyce never wanted her journal to read as a tell-all. To her, the journal is a process book, a record of getting from one place to the next.
The practical nature of what she was aiming to record can make this have a same-day feeling to it. Years pass by and you barely know it's the 70s. In fact, Oates acknowledges, "If I rarely say anything about the larger world in this journal it’s because, here, I can escape it."
I found many insights into her creative process that I was able to take away. She would write down pieces of advice, lessons and questions. She said that she wanted to be forever, "in media res." It's an accurate way of describing her prolific writing life.
The practical nature of what she was aiming to record can make this have a same-day feeling to it. Years pass by and you barely know it's the 70s. In fact, Oates acknowledges, "If I rarely say anything about the larger world in this journal it’s because, here, I can escape it."
I found many insights into her creative process that I was able to take away. She would write down pieces of advice, lessons and questions. She said that she wanted to be forever, "in media res." It's an accurate way of describing her prolific writing life.
September 1, 2024
https://kansasbooks.blogspot.com/2024...
"A journal as an experiment in consciousness. An attempt to record not just the external world, and just the vagrant, fugitive, ephemeral thoughts that brush against us like gnats, but the refractory and inviolable authenticity of daily life, daily-ness day-ness, day-lightness, the day’s eye of experience.
So rarely reread it. As I rarely, if I can help it, never reread old letters of mine. To revisit the past in this way is somehow so excruciating, I haven’t the words to guess why."
Tal como cuenta Joyce Carol Oates en un momento dado de este diario, contar en un diario el día a día con sus pequeños detalles domésticos o laborales viene a ser muy aburrido, porque realmente un diario debería ser una experiencia más subjetiva, reflejar en él todo esto que en el día a día no se ha podido expresar o incluso liberar, tu Yo más subjetivo liberado en el papel, así que esto es lo que hace aquí, liberarse, conversar con ella misma para lo bueno como para lo malo. De esta forma nos viene a decir que su diario no es representativo de su vida sino de lo que piensa , de su proceso a la hora de liberar sus ideas cuando se queda solas con ella misma.
"There are moments when I'm afraid I will wear out, simply wear out, with this pace... with the projects I am working on... even the books I should or want to read... the people I should or want to see. And yet: the week pass, the years pass, and nothing changes greatly so far as intensity is concerned. Content, yes. But form, rarely. Mi life is a roller coaster over an abyss. My public life, I mean."
Y en este aspecto este diario para los admiradores de esta autora viene a ser como un milagro por tener el lujo de que podamos penetrar en su proceso como escritora: cómo se expresa a la hora de enfrentarse a sus textos, como surge el proceso de escritura, obsesivo casi siempre cuando está sumergida en una novela o en un relato, cómo se desahoga cuando no puede equilibrar su vida más privada e íntima, con su figura pública, un equilibrio difícilmente soportable cuando está sumergida en la escritura de una novela… son tantas y tantas las cuestiones que surgen aquí de la mano de esta autora, que realmente suponen un lujo para los que de verdad nos maravillamos con sus textos. No le gusta releerse, ni sus cartas, ni lo escrito en un diario, y aunque yo nunca he llevado un diario, me siento muy identificada cuando refleja que no es nada nostálgica a la hora revisitar el pasado, incluso insoportable en una forma de regodearse en un tiempo que ya pasó, porque tanto esas viejas cartas o esas páginas de diario, ya no tienen sentido una vez que nos hemos sumergido en el pasaje del tiempo y ya casi nos hemos convertido en otras personas: “Nostalgia doesn't appeal to me. Looking back over my shoulder with a tear in my eye doesn´t appeal to me.”
“It ocurrs to me that I always live in several tenses: the present, the past, the future in terms of a book. Melancholy the inevitable and ineluctable passage of time is always assuaged by my sense that this passing is necesary so that a book can be brought to completion.”
Joyce Carol Oates comienza este diario en el invierno entre 1972 durante un año sabático que pasa en Londres con su marido, un año muy duro porque echó mucho de menos su casa, así que comienza este diario para deshogarse de alguna forma y el diario se extendió a través de los años, aunque este volumen que nos ocupa se para en 1982, cuando ella ya tenia 44 años y ya se había convertido en una figura pública. Este volumen es una recopilación del diario original que sumaba más de 5000 páginas y que se encuentra en el archivo de la Universidad de Syracuse. Y tal como expresa ella en un momento dado, no le gusta releerse y mucho menos un diario, asi que es una versión sin revisar, con extractos elegidos por su editor. Independientemente de sus reflexiones más íntimas, también explora con mucha franqueza su amistad con otros escritores, su adorada Susan Sontag, o John Updike, Philip Roth, Donald Barthelme (con este último no compartían el entusiamos por sus obras mutuas, pero sin embargo, eran muy amigos), no se corta un pelo a la hora de ironizar sobre la pedantería, por ejemplo, de Mary McCarthy y de algún escritor más, siempre en su estilo elegantísimo e irónico. Y por su supuesto es una delicia leerla cuando habla de otros escritores clásicos, James Joyce, DH Lawrence, Proust, Faulkner… y su disgusto por el término literatura femenina:
"My dis-interest in what people speak of as women's problems, women's literature. Have women special sensibility? No. There are individuals uniquely talented and uniquely equipped to interpret the complex symbolism of the world but they are certainly not determinef by gender. The very idea is astonishing.
The sensibility of a Virginia Woolf, for instance. It's her own, it's uniquely hers. Not because she is a female but because she is, or was, Virginia Woolf. Not more sensitive than Henry James or Proust or James Joyce, consequently not more feminine in the narrow and misleading sense people use that term today…"
Aunque los diarios reflejan sus pensamientos entre los años 70 y principios de los 80, y ya hayan pasado cuarenta años, sus reflexiones siguen estando muy vigentes, sobre todo cuando se refiere a los roles de género, al feminismo exacerbado que le disgusta, en este sentido nunca ha querido pertenecer a un grupo, ese sectarismo políticamente correcto al que hay que pertenecer dependiendo de la época. Joyce Carol Oates siempre ha ido por libre, y aunque se queja de que ha sido muy criticada por las feministas cuando realmente es un aspecto contradictorio en el sentido de que ha llegado a tocar temas “nada femeninos”, incluso se la cuestionó por escribir historias sobre gente desarraigada viviendo en suburbios, pero tal como ella misma dice “¿qué otra cosa se puede hacer dada la condición de la época en que vivimos? Escribo sobre lo que existe”. Y se la cuestiona por ser también una autora tan prolífica, como si no fuese serio para el establishment literario... escribir como si te fuera la vida en ello, y parir libros porque su vida es escribir..., continuamente cuestionada por no ceñirse a las reglas, por ir por libre…
“To be a literary personality one must take care not to publish too often: a novel every five or six years but no more frequently. I seem to be concerned with my actual work more than I a m with my public reputation which I believe to be more or less finished by now. Since about 1970 i've given up on that public aspect of Joyce Carol Oates; I hope dont really expect to be understood or taken seriously except by a ver few people. Since I am a woman, and quite realistic, I must accept the fact that in choosing to write about subjects generally claimed by men I will be violently resented by many people, men and women both.
“One would like to think that a woman novelist who chose to write about traditionally unwomanly subjects might be valued by someone even by feminists... but that doesnt seem be the case. And then too the issue of female/male becomes so tiresome... Personality, not gender; invidivuality; voice; stamina, audacity, the capacity to be humiliated.”
Where once I was sympathetic with feminism I find it all very tiresome now.... What has happened to the freshness of the Movement...Two or three or fouir ideas expressed again and again in different form. That men colonize women, that men are imperialists, etc, etc, the dull dead-end of polemics, of insensitive people incapable of registering nuances of feeling and thought... I had better keep my distance form [the ideologues]: they see only black and white.”
Este diario se hace todavía más fascinante cuando ella habla de sí misma, de su conflicto entre querer estar aislada del mundo y escribir, y su vida social en Princeton, su vida social como figura pública, como escritora cada vez más solicitada. En este aspecto está continuamente haciendo una diferenciación entre JCO, la figura pública, la autora, y Joyce Carol Oates, la mujer que se quiere aislar, que se quiere quedar en casa escribiendo, es como una mujer fragmentada intentando encontrar el equilibrio, creando, batallando con su arte. De alguna forma quiere ser invisible, al igual que lo fue Emily Dickinson en su momento, pero era otra época y ella es una figura pública así que necesita encontrar el equilibrio entre esta invisibilidad (deseada) y la vida social (que acepta pero en la que no es ella misma)
"Social life is a mysterious thing. One has an instinctive yearning for it, yet most of the time is unsatisfying. Only Friendship, only relationships over an extended period of time, have a meaning .Even then, so much of our lives are eclipsed, secret... how can we know each other easily...?
Gradually, more social life... but with a very few people. Cannot handle crowds, not even in theory.
Companionship, friendship, relationships of any kind are demolished in crowds, no matter how gay and riotous they are."
Invsibility. Visible to others, invisible to ourselves. Our paradox. What is indeciprable to us maby readily available to others, even to strangers.
Odd, the sudden pockets of loneliness, at large gatherings. My sense of apartness; distance, dejavu. Alone by myself, I am incapable of feeling lonely or bored, if writing isnt available, reading is.
I am infatuated with the private life, and with anonymity; perhaps even invisibility.
Silence, exile, cunning. To which I must add my favourite: invisibility.”
Oates describe con detalles luminosos, reveladores, su escritura, sus personajes, sus paseos, su vida académica en Princeton que le da tantas alegrías, su origen rural, lo que piensa sobre el mundo que se despliega ante ella, y surge un retrato fascinante de una mujer totalmente comprometida no solo con el mundo sino con ella misma, coherente. Iluminadoras son sobre todo sus reflexiones sobre la maternidad, sobre la elección de no ser madre, un tema siempre controvertido para las mujeres sobre todo por la presión social, incluso hoy en día: “and one ought not to have children simply to express oneself, to fulfill one's own personality, the life force moves independent of individuals and individual considerations.”
"In reading about Sylvia Plath´s odd obsessive desire to have a lots of children, though she feared childbirth and seems not to have actually liked children, I am baffled simply: why did so intelligent a young woman think that marriage and children were not only inevitable but desirable? Having children, is after all, not something one does for one's own development, or as a badge of normalcy (in the eyes of others).”
Este diario refleja quizás el momento clave en la vida artistica de Joyce Carol Oates, justo el momento en que dejó de ser una escritora de minorías, hasta que en 1980 con la publicación de Bellefleur (el primer libro de su saga gótica), se convirtió en una autora conocida y reclamada, Bellefleur se convirtió en su libro más vendido hasta la fecha. Coincidió con el cambio de editorial, pero además y tal como se refleja en su diario, el proceso de Bellefleur un libro de casi mil páginas viene a ser la versión gótica de lo que es la lucha de clases sazonado con un realismo mágico fascinante. Yo descubrí a Joyce Carol Oates precisamente con Bellefleur y todavía sigue siendo mi favorito, quizás por todo lo que se desplegó ante mí durante su lectura. Con Bellefleur y los cuatro títulos restantes de la serie gótical Oates sigue reflejando su tema más recurrente, ver a Estados Unidos a través del miscroscopio, analizando, escarbando pero esta vez a través de sus géneros más populares, un gótico posmoderno. En definitiva, una delicia de diario, sobre todo para conocer a una Joyce Carol Oates más íntima.
“Sucess in a public sense is a punishment, not a reward. For it drains our energies, diffracts our attention. What I want is to write: to write something strong, lasting, surprising, original… something that is, in any case, my own. My own language.”
"What, however, is stoicism? The stoic spirit? Is It genuine; or is it a helpless reaction against Fate? (Not against Fate but against the helplessness itself) Do I appear to be accepting of my fate because I truly am accepting it, or because I know there's nothing I can do?
"I seem to be detached from myself. What is the self... I suppose I am detached from my finite, personalized self: I identify with another, deeper region of being."
"What is this business, after all, of personality? Of being obliged to care passionately about the personal appearance and the status and the ego-inflation of a particularized self? It seems so futile, somehow, to care about one's status in the competitive world.
♫♫ ♫Superwoman - Alicia Keys♫♫ ♫
"A journal as an experiment in consciousness. An attempt to record not just the external world, and just the vagrant, fugitive, ephemeral thoughts that brush against us like gnats, but the refractory and inviolable authenticity of daily life, daily-ness day-ness, day-lightness, the day’s eye of experience.
So rarely reread it. As I rarely, if I can help it, never reread old letters of mine. To revisit the past in this way is somehow so excruciating, I haven’t the words to guess why."
Tal como cuenta Joyce Carol Oates en un momento dado de este diario, contar en un diario el día a día con sus pequeños detalles domésticos o laborales viene a ser muy aburrido, porque realmente un diario debería ser una experiencia más subjetiva, reflejar en él todo esto que en el día a día no se ha podido expresar o incluso liberar, tu Yo más subjetivo liberado en el papel, así que esto es lo que hace aquí, liberarse, conversar con ella misma para lo bueno como para lo malo. De esta forma nos viene a decir que su diario no es representativo de su vida sino de lo que piensa , de su proceso a la hora de liberar sus ideas cuando se queda solas con ella misma.
"There are moments when I'm afraid I will wear out, simply wear out, with this pace... with the projects I am working on... even the books I should or want to read... the people I should or want to see. And yet: the week pass, the years pass, and nothing changes greatly so far as intensity is concerned. Content, yes. But form, rarely. Mi life is a roller coaster over an abyss. My public life, I mean."
Y en este aspecto este diario para los admiradores de esta autora viene a ser como un milagro por tener el lujo de que podamos penetrar en su proceso como escritora: cómo se expresa a la hora de enfrentarse a sus textos, como surge el proceso de escritura, obsesivo casi siempre cuando está sumergida en una novela o en un relato, cómo se desahoga cuando no puede equilibrar su vida más privada e íntima, con su figura pública, un equilibrio difícilmente soportable cuando está sumergida en la escritura de una novela… son tantas y tantas las cuestiones que surgen aquí de la mano de esta autora, que realmente suponen un lujo para los que de verdad nos maravillamos con sus textos. No le gusta releerse, ni sus cartas, ni lo escrito en un diario, y aunque yo nunca he llevado un diario, me siento muy identificada cuando refleja que no es nada nostálgica a la hora revisitar el pasado, incluso insoportable en una forma de regodearse en un tiempo que ya pasó, porque tanto esas viejas cartas o esas páginas de diario, ya no tienen sentido una vez que nos hemos sumergido en el pasaje del tiempo y ya casi nos hemos convertido en otras personas: “Nostalgia doesn't appeal to me. Looking back over my shoulder with a tear in my eye doesn´t appeal to me.”
“It ocurrs to me that I always live in several tenses: the present, the past, the future in terms of a book. Melancholy the inevitable and ineluctable passage of time is always assuaged by my sense that this passing is necesary so that a book can be brought to completion.”
Joyce Carol Oates comienza este diario en el invierno entre 1972 durante un año sabático que pasa en Londres con su marido, un año muy duro porque echó mucho de menos su casa, así que comienza este diario para deshogarse de alguna forma y el diario se extendió a través de los años, aunque este volumen que nos ocupa se para en 1982, cuando ella ya tenia 44 años y ya se había convertido en una figura pública. Este volumen es una recopilación del diario original que sumaba más de 5000 páginas y que se encuentra en el archivo de la Universidad de Syracuse. Y tal como expresa ella en un momento dado, no le gusta releerse y mucho menos un diario, asi que es una versión sin revisar, con extractos elegidos por su editor. Independientemente de sus reflexiones más íntimas, también explora con mucha franqueza su amistad con otros escritores, su adorada Susan Sontag, o John Updike, Philip Roth, Donald Barthelme (con este último no compartían el entusiamos por sus obras mutuas, pero sin embargo, eran muy amigos), no se corta un pelo a la hora de ironizar sobre la pedantería, por ejemplo, de Mary McCarthy y de algún escritor más, siempre en su estilo elegantísimo e irónico. Y por su supuesto es una delicia leerla cuando habla de otros escritores clásicos, James Joyce, DH Lawrence, Proust, Faulkner… y su disgusto por el término literatura femenina:
"My dis-interest in what people speak of as women's problems, women's literature. Have women special sensibility? No. There are individuals uniquely talented and uniquely equipped to interpret the complex symbolism of the world but they are certainly not determinef by gender. The very idea is astonishing.
The sensibility of a Virginia Woolf, for instance. It's her own, it's uniquely hers. Not because she is a female but because she is, or was, Virginia Woolf. Not more sensitive than Henry James or Proust or James Joyce, consequently not more feminine in the narrow and misleading sense people use that term today…"
Aunque los diarios reflejan sus pensamientos entre los años 70 y principios de los 80, y ya hayan pasado cuarenta años, sus reflexiones siguen estando muy vigentes, sobre todo cuando se refiere a los roles de género, al feminismo exacerbado que le disgusta, en este sentido nunca ha querido pertenecer a un grupo, ese sectarismo políticamente correcto al que hay que pertenecer dependiendo de la época. Joyce Carol Oates siempre ha ido por libre, y aunque se queja de que ha sido muy criticada por las feministas cuando realmente es un aspecto contradictorio en el sentido de que ha llegado a tocar temas “nada femeninos”, incluso se la cuestionó por escribir historias sobre gente desarraigada viviendo en suburbios, pero tal como ella misma dice “¿qué otra cosa se puede hacer dada la condición de la época en que vivimos? Escribo sobre lo que existe”. Y se la cuestiona por ser también una autora tan prolífica, como si no fuese serio para el establishment literario... escribir como si te fuera la vida en ello, y parir libros porque su vida es escribir..., continuamente cuestionada por no ceñirse a las reglas, por ir por libre…
“To be a literary personality one must take care not to publish too often: a novel every five or six years but no more frequently. I seem to be concerned with my actual work more than I a m with my public reputation which I believe to be more or less finished by now. Since about 1970 i've given up on that public aspect of Joyce Carol Oates; I hope dont really expect to be understood or taken seriously except by a ver few people. Since I am a woman, and quite realistic, I must accept the fact that in choosing to write about subjects generally claimed by men I will be violently resented by many people, men and women both.
“One would like to think that a woman novelist who chose to write about traditionally unwomanly subjects might be valued by someone even by feminists... but that doesnt seem be the case. And then too the issue of female/male becomes so tiresome... Personality, not gender; invidivuality; voice; stamina, audacity, the capacity to be humiliated.”
Where once I was sympathetic with feminism I find it all very tiresome now.... What has happened to the freshness of the Movement...Two or three or fouir ideas expressed again and again in different form. That men colonize women, that men are imperialists, etc, etc, the dull dead-end of polemics, of insensitive people incapable of registering nuances of feeling and thought... I had better keep my distance form [the ideologues]: they see only black and white.”
Este diario se hace todavía más fascinante cuando ella habla de sí misma, de su conflicto entre querer estar aislada del mundo y escribir, y su vida social en Princeton, su vida social como figura pública, como escritora cada vez más solicitada. En este aspecto está continuamente haciendo una diferenciación entre JCO, la figura pública, la autora, y Joyce Carol Oates, la mujer que se quiere aislar, que se quiere quedar en casa escribiendo, es como una mujer fragmentada intentando encontrar el equilibrio, creando, batallando con su arte. De alguna forma quiere ser invisible, al igual que lo fue Emily Dickinson en su momento, pero era otra época y ella es una figura pública así que necesita encontrar el equilibrio entre esta invisibilidad (deseada) y la vida social (que acepta pero en la que no es ella misma)
"Social life is a mysterious thing. One has an instinctive yearning for it, yet most of the time is unsatisfying. Only Friendship, only relationships over an extended period of time, have a meaning .Even then, so much of our lives are eclipsed, secret... how can we know each other easily...?
Gradually, more social life... but with a very few people. Cannot handle crowds, not even in theory.
Companionship, friendship, relationships of any kind are demolished in crowds, no matter how gay and riotous they are."
Invsibility. Visible to others, invisible to ourselves. Our paradox. What is indeciprable to us maby readily available to others, even to strangers.
Odd, the sudden pockets of loneliness, at large gatherings. My sense of apartness; distance, dejavu. Alone by myself, I am incapable of feeling lonely or bored, if writing isnt available, reading is.
I am infatuated with the private life, and with anonymity; perhaps even invisibility.
Silence, exile, cunning. To which I must add my favourite: invisibility.”
Oates describe con detalles luminosos, reveladores, su escritura, sus personajes, sus paseos, su vida académica en Princeton que le da tantas alegrías, su origen rural, lo que piensa sobre el mundo que se despliega ante ella, y surge un retrato fascinante de una mujer totalmente comprometida no solo con el mundo sino con ella misma, coherente. Iluminadoras son sobre todo sus reflexiones sobre la maternidad, sobre la elección de no ser madre, un tema siempre controvertido para las mujeres sobre todo por la presión social, incluso hoy en día: “and one ought not to have children simply to express oneself, to fulfill one's own personality, the life force moves independent of individuals and individual considerations.”
"In reading about Sylvia Plath´s odd obsessive desire to have a lots of children, though she feared childbirth and seems not to have actually liked children, I am baffled simply: why did so intelligent a young woman think that marriage and children were not only inevitable but desirable? Having children, is after all, not something one does for one's own development, or as a badge of normalcy (in the eyes of others).”
Este diario refleja quizás el momento clave en la vida artistica de Joyce Carol Oates, justo el momento en que dejó de ser una escritora de minorías, hasta que en 1980 con la publicación de Bellefleur (el primer libro de su saga gótica), se convirtió en una autora conocida y reclamada, Bellefleur se convirtió en su libro más vendido hasta la fecha. Coincidió con el cambio de editorial, pero además y tal como se refleja en su diario, el proceso de Bellefleur un libro de casi mil páginas viene a ser la versión gótica de lo que es la lucha de clases sazonado con un realismo mágico fascinante. Yo descubrí a Joyce Carol Oates precisamente con Bellefleur y todavía sigue siendo mi favorito, quizás por todo lo que se desplegó ante mí durante su lectura. Con Bellefleur y los cuatro títulos restantes de la serie gótical Oates sigue reflejando su tema más recurrente, ver a Estados Unidos a través del miscroscopio, analizando, escarbando pero esta vez a través de sus géneros más populares, un gótico posmoderno. En definitiva, una delicia de diario, sobre todo para conocer a una Joyce Carol Oates más íntima.
“Sucess in a public sense is a punishment, not a reward. For it drains our energies, diffracts our attention. What I want is to write: to write something strong, lasting, surprising, original… something that is, in any case, my own. My own language.”
"What, however, is stoicism? The stoic spirit? Is It genuine; or is it a helpless reaction against Fate? (Not against Fate but against the helplessness itself) Do I appear to be accepting of my fate because I truly am accepting it, or because I know there's nothing I can do?
"I seem to be detached from myself. What is the self... I suppose I am detached from my finite, personalized self: I identify with another, deeper region of being."
"What is this business, after all, of personality? Of being obliged to care passionately about the personal appearance and the status and the ego-inflation of a particularized self? It seems so futile, somehow, to care about one's status in the competitive world.
♫♫ ♫Superwoman - Alicia Keys♫♫ ♫
December 4, 2017
Though she'd maintained an earlier journal, which no longer exists, Joyce Carol Oates in 1973 began keeping one more seriously as an "experiment in consciousness." This published decade covers the period when she was teaching at the University of Windsor in Ontario and her move to Princeton in 1978, where she still teaches today.
It's a remarkable record. Her journal is interesting for revealing her ideas on writing and what fiction is. It's a kind of talking to herself, a purpose she explains in one entry. She's discovering, and I suspect this is one of the prime motivations behind the discipline. It's also full of her interactions with other writers. Her friends during this time included Donald Barthelme, Susan Sontag, and Norman Mailer. John Updike was a particular favorite. What she writes about these friendships is interesting, but she doesn't include shocking or disreputable tidbits. She doesn't tell stories out of school. Such material--we're told she does write entries which contain personal and private matters--are squirreled away behind ellipses and brackets.
What most amazed me is how prolific she is. During these years Oates published 8 books, including the beginning of her gothic period. The Assassins, Bellefleur, and A Bloodsmoor Romance fall in this decade, as well as many individual stories and poems. I remember that in one entry she even revealed she has novels she hasn't submitted yet. She worried she was over-exposing herself. Her entries are fascinating in detailing how she's inspired, how she maps out her characters and the novel's scheme, and how she progresses in writing in what she's working on. How quickly she writes is impressive. The speed is a contributing factor in her voluminousness. It's like magic.
I'm not really a Joyce Carol Oates fan--I've read only a couple of novels and a collection of stories. But I'm intrigued by writers' journals, and especially by their reflections on why they write and how they go about it. These published journals are illuminating in that way. And they're thoroughly engaging.
It's a remarkable record. Her journal is interesting for revealing her ideas on writing and what fiction is. It's a kind of talking to herself, a purpose she explains in one entry. She's discovering, and I suspect this is one of the prime motivations behind the discipline. It's also full of her interactions with other writers. Her friends during this time included Donald Barthelme, Susan Sontag, and Norman Mailer. John Updike was a particular favorite. What she writes about these friendships is interesting, but she doesn't include shocking or disreputable tidbits. She doesn't tell stories out of school. Such material--we're told she does write entries which contain personal and private matters--are squirreled away behind ellipses and brackets.
What most amazed me is how prolific she is. During these years Oates published 8 books, including the beginning of her gothic period. The Assassins, Bellefleur, and A Bloodsmoor Romance fall in this decade, as well as many individual stories and poems. I remember that in one entry she even revealed she has novels she hasn't submitted yet. She worried she was over-exposing herself. Her entries are fascinating in detailing how she's inspired, how she maps out her characters and the novel's scheme, and how she progresses in writing in what she's working on. How quickly she writes is impressive. The speed is a contributing factor in her voluminousness. It's like magic.
I'm not really a Joyce Carol Oates fan--I've read only a couple of novels and a collection of stories. But I'm intrigued by writers' journals, and especially by their reflections on why they write and how they go about it. These published journals are illuminating in that way. And they're thoroughly engaging.
April 4, 2012
Oates is not an author I'd choose to read, in terms of her fiction--dark, violent, inscrutable--but I loved this look at her interior life. Fascinating to hear her talk about herself as the personage "JCO," as opposed to the writer and wife, Joyce Smith. Author of more than 60 novels, hundreds of short stories, several plays, she is utterly obsessive about her work, preferring it to almost everything else. She's also borderline anorexic, seemingly frail, although she uses her health as an excuse to skip parties and speaking engagements. Fact is, she never missed a day of teaching in 15 years. Her love of writing, the fascination with her characters and their voices, is contagious. The journal ends with the publication of her latest novel "at about the dread hour the market began to sink. Will it rise again? With libraries closing...bookstores closing or struggling to stay open...the end-of-1982 isn't a very cheery time for literary-oriented people." Thirty years ago!
January 31, 2016
Good lord, this woman is fascinating! Even within her journals. Or perhaps especially within her journals. I'm not a huge fan of much of her impressively prolific fiction (I did, however, love Blonde--but that is almost nonfiction), but she shines within her journals. Among other things, she obliquely addresses her acknowledged anorexia in these early journals. I love her descriptions of teaching--of why she loves it--and of how ephemeral it is compared with writing.
May 4, 2018
<333
känner mig inspirerad & ivrig att leva ett skrivande liv
känner mig inspirerad & ivrig att leva ett skrivande liv
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August 10, 2015" January 23, 2013
Tonight: Worship at the temple of the written word. Tonight to read, tonight to write. I just acquired THE JOURNAL OF JOYCE CAROL OATES: 1973 - 1982 as well as Stanley Elkins' THE LIVING END, the former of the two the pearls of wisdom of which blowing my soul wide open upon skimming (merely skimming) through, the pearls of wisdom of which causing that I want that there be one book written by one of my favorite literary artists, whether that artist's name be Oates, Emerson, Cheever, James, Proust, Eliot, etc., etc., one unending book filled with life saving, life redeeming, life giving, life loving, life affirming, irrationally magical, immortal imaginative truth, a book that is an unending revelation to people that imaginative truth is the only truth that matters, the only truth that there is (the imagination being the sense organ that it is), and I feel that with eyes, ears (listen to the sound of the painting, listen to the music that emits from the written word when it is rendered artistically) and an intuition that thirsts, all books that make me believe that all with whom I have crossed paths, everyone who lives within me, should and will live forever, are essentially the one never-ending manifold history of consciousness to which I am referring. "
Tonight: Worship at the temple of the written word. Tonight to read, tonight to write. I just acquired THE JOURNAL OF JOYCE CAROL OATES: 1973 - 1982 as well as Stanley Elkins' THE LIVING END, the former of the two the pearls of wisdom of which blowing my soul wide open upon skimming (merely skimming) through, the pearls of wisdom of which causing that I want that there be one book written by one of my favorite literary artists, whether that artist's name be Oates, Emerson, Cheever, James, Proust, Eliot, etc., etc., one unending book filled with life saving, life redeeming, life giving, life loving, life affirming, irrationally magical, immortal imaginative truth, a book that is an unending revelation to people that imaginative truth is the only truth that matters, the only truth that there is (the imagination being the sense organ that it is), and I feel that with eyes, ears (listen to the sound of the painting, listen to the music that emits from the written word when it is rendered artistically) and an intuition that thirsts, all books that make me believe that all with whom I have crossed paths, everyone who lives within me, should and will live forever, are essentially the one never-ending manifold history of consciousness to which I am referring. "
September 3, 2015
I was surprised at the depth and breadth of ideas in this journal she wrote for herself, with no intention of publishing it. It's heartening to see her commitment to the hard, isolating work. She also speaks passionately about teaching, though she famously said she doesn't give advice to writers, because she believes writers don't take advice. But she is interested in the exchange of ideas, and in supporting other writers. I would have loved to hear her tales out of school, but she's too noble to gossip.
August 4, 2017
I can't read much while I'm teaching because my quotidian consumes me, but I am reading this one bit-by-bit and it offers one fascinating invitation into the mind of a brilliant writer/teacher after another. It's delicious.
February 19, 2023
It's fascinating to see the streams of thought(s?) of such a prolific and accomplished writer at this time in her life. Life on the outside and inside looks so different, always, but we constantly conflate the two. JCO herself frequently refers to "JCO" as some sort of separate entity, her public identity, a character built by others of her, with whom she doesn't always relate. It's a character she sometimes plays in public, but isn't really her. Or perhaps that's just the safest way to think of it, when really both identities might be closer than you want to let on, even to yourself. Who knows?
She frequently questions whether or not she's successful while at one point admitting she probably has enough money now to live off of forever, and every year someone says she's considered for the Nobel Prize. She bemoans a book advance only being five instead of six figures, or doesn't care either way. This all sounds a bit spoiled maybe but I appreciate the honesty of it.
Success and failure, going this way or that, life essentially never stops feeling like life. Some core feeling of being you and existing the world that is essentially unchangeable. This is the bittersweet revelation of consistent meditation, for example. It's a relieving message to the disturbed, a disturbing message to the comfortable. Which is what some say fiction is for.
Life is inescapable flux and middle ground, of which I need constant reminders. It's also nice, at a time like this in my own life which is quite tumultuous, to export my thinking to the journal of someone else, imagine what it is like to be them in that time period and have their concerns.
Yes, a book I very much enjoyed.
She frequently questions whether or not she's successful while at one point admitting she probably has enough money now to live off of forever, and every year someone says she's considered for the Nobel Prize. She bemoans a book advance only being five instead of six figures, or doesn't care either way. This all sounds a bit spoiled maybe but I appreciate the honesty of it.
Success and failure, going this way or that, life essentially never stops feeling like life. Some core feeling of being you and existing the world that is essentially unchangeable. This is the bittersweet revelation of consistent meditation, for example. It's a relieving message to the disturbed, a disturbing message to the comfortable. Which is what some say fiction is for.
Life is inescapable flux and middle ground, of which I need constant reminders. It's also nice, at a time like this in my own life which is quite tumultuous, to export my thinking to the journal of someone else, imagine what it is like to be them in that time period and have their concerns.
Yes, a book I very much enjoyed.
Read
August 26, 2022Can't really rate a journal, even though it was (strangely) published. (And why? Oates has little but disdain for critics, analysts, and dissertation-seekers, so why publish something so tedious and banal? The layman has no use for this.) Some intriguing thoughts, but not many; most of it is something akin to "Working on X today, enthralled, hours upon hours upon hours at my desk, ah, editing is wonderful, could do it eternally." The best entries are those which are actually about something: a death, kittens, a conversation, an anniversary, a bike-ride, but they are few and far between. Otherwise, she is, as she's described herself, a clear glass of water. I wondered at her prolific nature, but, upon reading some of her short stories and poems, it's not hard to see why. (If this sounds vain and ill-tempered, it's because I have a fever of 103 degrees, and truly found this plodding. I only laughed once (she is not an entertaining journalist), and that was when she soundly dismissed King for writing a book about a boy who can shoot fire from his eyes.)
December 26, 2021
I think some of the other reviewers' advice here is spot on - this should be read while also reading one of the novels that Joyce Carol Oates discusses in these journals. I think that would be a fascinating master class on the writing craft. Otherwise, there's not quite enough personal information to get you through this thick tome, without knowing the novels she's discussing in intimate detail. It is a fascinating book on a feminist history level, as she does discuss being one of the first female writers to receive certain awards and lecture opportunities, but that's not quite enough to sustain you through the whole book.
January 19, 2022
Fascinating to see the inner workings of one of my favorite authors. Left me feeling a little lacking re: my internal life, but heartening to know that even a genius has her ups and downs and mundane moments.
January 24, 2022
I do not know what compelled me to read Oates' diaries. Any such book is bound to be dull, filled with the mundanities of life. It is my own fault. I did not finish it, but that does not mean others will not enjoy it.
August 14, 2023
Rereading my physical bookshelf
March 17, 2009
Slow going, but pretty consistently fascinating, especially as it's moved into the second half. I'll pick up subsequent volumes if it proves to be a series. She's trippy.
Sounds very nice and down to earth, by the way, on a personal level. But peering into her writing life has been the trippy part. Spends a good deal of each novel -- and who knows, of many of her 1.5 million short stories and poems and essays, too -- driving herself into a state of almost ecstatic misery. She produces so much because (duh) she WORKS SO HARD. Pushes on into the night, past headaches and the need for sleep. Can hardly bear to stop to eat ("It takes me so LONG to eat a meal!" she complains...she has some food issues, clearly).
Very consciously (though maybe helplessly) restricted/concentrated life, but also packed. Has a great marriage, though no serious thought ever given to having kids. Her husband's as into art/literature as she is (though I swear she mentions, in a tossed-off comment, that he doesn't read her stuff -- that is, she says at one point, "If Ray read my books, blah blah blah..."). She loves (really loves, takes great pleasure from) teaching. Goes to movies, but probably doesn't have a TV in the house. Lots of dinner parties. And a very devoted student of the piano during this time. Lots of long walks, bike rides, etc. Still and all, everything revolves around her work.
Sounds very nice and down to earth, by the way, on a personal level. But peering into her writing life has been the trippy part. Spends a good deal of each novel -- and who knows, of many of her 1.5 million short stories and poems and essays, too -- driving herself into a state of almost ecstatic misery. She produces so much because (duh) she WORKS SO HARD. Pushes on into the night, past headaches and the need for sleep. Can hardly bear to stop to eat ("It takes me so LONG to eat a meal!" she complains...she has some food issues, clearly).
Very consciously (though maybe helplessly) restricted/concentrated life, but also packed. Has a great marriage, though no serious thought ever given to having kids. Her husband's as into art/literature as she is (though I swear she mentions, in a tossed-off comment, that he doesn't read her stuff -- that is, she says at one point, "If Ray read my books, blah blah blah..."). She loves (really loves, takes great pleasure from) teaching. Goes to movies, but probably doesn't have a TV in the house. Lots of dinner parties. And a very devoted student of the piano during this time. Lots of long walks, bike rides, etc. Still and all, everything revolves around her work.
April 21, 2015
I’ve spent the last year and a half taking small sips from this massive journal. Living inside the author’s mind all that time, I had come to feel (dare I say?) at home there, so much so, I regretted having to eventually finish it. Would that every author got under my skin the way Ms. Oates has.
As always, JCO’s prose is rich, compelling and infused with energy, regardless of the subject matter. There are no wasted words, no trite sentiments, nothing pretentious or held back. She writes as one possessed, with an unflagging urgency that draws this attention deficient reader out of his shell and keeps him engaged. Trust me, that is no mean feat. The journal, moreover, provides an intriguing glimpse into the author’s creative process, and the prodigious body of work generated during the nine years in which these personal entries were recorded. I doubt I could live long enough to read all the novels and stories this lady turned out just in those none years.
While my own literary achievement isn’t remotely comparable to hers, I’ve come to see JCO, not as an iconic American writer, but as a person much like myself—someone accessible and unintimidating, with whom I could almost fellowship on equal terms. (The operative word here is “almost.”) Or, as the author describes herself, simply “one who writes.” Truth I, we're galaxies apart.
As always, JCO’s prose is rich, compelling and infused with energy, regardless of the subject matter. There are no wasted words, no trite sentiments, nothing pretentious or held back. She writes as one possessed, with an unflagging urgency that draws this attention deficient reader out of his shell and keeps him engaged. Trust me, that is no mean feat. The journal, moreover, provides an intriguing glimpse into the author’s creative process, and the prodigious body of work generated during the nine years in which these personal entries were recorded. I doubt I could live long enough to read all the novels and stories this lady turned out just in those none years.
While my own literary achievement isn’t remotely comparable to hers, I’ve come to see JCO, not as an iconic American writer, but as a person much like myself—someone accessible and unintimidating, with whom I could almost fellowship on equal terms. (The operative word here is “almost.”) Or, as the author describes herself, simply “one who writes.” Truth I, we're galaxies apart.
November 25, 2012
The Journal of Joyce Carol Oates allows insight mostly into the process by which the details of her 'real' life trickle into her dreams and then onto the pages of her writing. It is obviously a very complex process, but only because Ms. Oates leads an incredibly dense and vivid inner life - her everyday existence mostly revolves around teaching and creating literature.
The journal is at times very similar to her chameleon writing style - a tone poem here, a burst of clear-eyed realism there, and a sense of pervading gothic near-gloom. Her thoughts obviously invite hyphenated words. In my opinion this book is for those interested in the process of creating - of observing the tortures and delights of a master writer at her most obscure, which is, typically for her style, at the same time very revealing.
The journal is at times very similar to her chameleon writing style - a tone poem here, a burst of clear-eyed realism there, and a sense of pervading gothic near-gloom. Her thoughts obviously invite hyphenated words. In my opinion this book is for those interested in the process of creating - of observing the tortures and delights of a master writer at her most obscure, which is, typically for her style, at the same time very revealing.
May 22, 2025
- Thoughts on teaching: she loves to teach and engage with the students
- Working on themes and thoughts in her novels and short stories.
- How much she works, how much she loves to write and read
- On fame and identity: what does it mean to be Joyce Carol Oates as compared to being mrs. Smith?
- Identity over time: on being congratulated on past achievements - the person who wrote the book, is vanished
- Identity in the public eye: who even is HCO and what to do when people get wrong ideas about you?
- Thoughts on her marriage and the love and companionship shared (no wonder she wrote A Widow’s Story: A Memoir when Ray Smith died.
- Huge fan of James Joyce.
- Working on themes and thoughts in her novels and short stories.
- How much she works, how much she loves to write and read
- On fame and identity: what does it mean to be Joyce Carol Oates as compared to being mrs. Smith?
- Identity over time: on being congratulated on past achievements - the person who wrote the book, is vanished
- Identity in the public eye: who even is HCO and what to do when people get wrong ideas about you?
- Thoughts on her marriage and the love and companionship shared (no wonder she wrote A Widow’s Story: A Memoir when Ray Smith died.
- Huge fan of James Joyce.
January 7, 2010
I have held off reading this book for years...fearing the influence that it might have on me as I worked on becoming a writer...well, I shouldn't have worried so much about that, I keep crying out "Look at what you've been missing, silly thing!" I love this book, there is just so much there...it's good to see how alike and unalike I am from JCO...it's been an affirmation that I'm not too off the mark with what I think and what I'm trying to do with my writing...I've learned a lot about JCO and myself as a writer since I started reading it...(love it!)
June 1, 2013
An insightful look into the mind of an author fully engaged in her craft. This part of her journal is from several decades ago, but I nonetheless liked reading her opinions of her contemporaries, especially her respect for John Gardner and her biting criticism of John Berryman and Anne Sexton. I recommend this book be read as a sort of daybook. But keep in mind something: JCO is not a spiritual woman. She's fully secular in her attitude toward life, and fiction, and fictional characters. It's as if the woman looks at the world with blinders on.
January 17, 2016
Wow. I believe Joyce Carol Oates is the epitome of obsessive writing. This journal tells you as much as you can know about the life of an obsessive writer. She wrote a lot, a lot, a LOT! Makes any normal writer feel rather inadequate.
One thing I found tiring was Oates' general disregard to any other piece of writing. Wilde, Shelley, etc. - she always has something negatively critical about what she is writing, except for perhaps John Updike. It makes Oates seem very pretentious, and who likes reading the words of a pretentious person?
One thing I found tiring was Oates' general disregard to any other piece of writing. Wilde, Shelley, etc. - she always has something negatively critical about what she is writing, except for perhaps John Updike. It makes Oates seem very pretentious, and who likes reading the words of a pretentious person?
August 14, 2008
Joyce Carol Oates' journals are a good read for writers. She discusses her writing process-characters and plot ideas, dreams she has, ideas about life. Plus, it's really fun to read about the literary name-dropping-- writers she and her husband dine with, etc..
I got the book from the library, but want to purchase my own copy when it comes out in paperback. There are too many quotes I want to go back to.
I got the book from the library, but want to purchase my own copy when it comes out in paperback. There are too many quotes I want to go back to.
January 30, 2014
“Revisiting the past is like biting into a sandwich in which, you’ve been assured, there are only a few, really a very few, bits of ground glass” (JCO, p. xii) A fascinating companion piece, full of wit, acerbic wisdom, and other delights. Oates is an American treasure, and after reading "The Accursed", I was hungry for much, much more. Her fiction is so luminous, so arresting--and this is surely her, but low-key and personal.
May 20, 2015
Interesting insight into the mind of a prolific writer but reading these journals felt like a slog at times. Her writing process is outlined in detail - the ups and downs of the before, during and after of each piece of writing, often in a very similar cycle. There is a pre-occupation with persona - the difference between 'JCO' the public figure and the 'real' person which is intriguing. There are some gems of wisdom about writing here, but in the end I was relieved to reach the end.
April 4, 2008
I am in love with this book. I love the fact that Ms. Oates did not want her journal to be a dumping ground for gossip and negativity! Gives me permission to journal differently. The journal years coincide with my attending high school, getting married and having 2 daughters. I find it fun to compare my thoughts at that time to what Ms. Oates was thinking. Wonderful read!
January 2, 2011
I felt like picking up this journal to maybe search for hints of how Oates selects the best essays of the century. It was interesting, but i felt like i invaded in someone's privacy while reading this journal, so i became hesitant to reading it at times. It does give me really good insights for how to understand some of her essays now, linking her personal experiences to her professional work.
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