Conversations with Joyce Carol Oates

by Joyce Carol Oates, Lee Milazzo (Editor)

These twenty-five interviews with Joyce Carol Oates from early in her career to the present are the first such collection to be published. In these conversations from sources as diverse as major news magazines and small scholarly journals, Oates candidly talks about her work, her concepts of literature, her methods of writing, and many other topics.Throughout this anthology, Oates discusses how her writing paints a modern panorama of American life. Oates described her vast canvas to an interviewer: "I could not take the time to write about a group of people who did not represent, in their various struggles, fantasies, unusual experiences, hopes, etc., our society in miniature." She also comments upon her responsibility as an artist "to bear witness" to certain aspects of society. In this light, she responds to criticisms that violence seems to dominate her work by noting that "one simply cannot know strengths unless suffering, misfortune, and violence are explored quite frankly by the writer."

In addition to discussing her works---from her first book By the North Gate (1963) to her most popular novel You Must Remember This (1987)---this prolific writer also answers questions about her writing habits. These interviews, spanning nineteen years, reveal a vivid portrait of Joyce Carol Oates writing as the conscience of society, as the creator of memorable prose and poetry, and as the artist deeply committed to a unique vision.

Genres: Nonfiction, Adult

192 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1989

About the author

Joyce 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.

Reviews

[Enyadin]

its really good novel. Joyce Carol's gothic novel