Poetic Titles of Joyce Carol Oates
by Jane Garrison Ward
A Fair Maiden called
Little Bird of Heaven,
My Sister, My Love, who was
The Gravedigger's Daughter, neither
Black Girl / White Girl or one in a
Blood Mask. Rather one
Missing Mom with
The Stolen Heart hurled over
The Falls.
Take Me, Take Me With You she says; it was
Rape: A Love Story of
The Tattooed Girl.
I'll Take You There to the land of
Beasts in the midst of
Middle Age: A Romance set in
The Barrens, where the
Blonde with the
Broke Heart Blues makes a wish that
Starr Bright Will Be With You Soon.
My Heart Laid Bare with
Man Crazy
Double Delight.
We Were The Mulvaneys in our
First Love when the
Zombie called out:
You Can't Catch Me, if you can.
What I Lived For, oh yes:
Foxfire,
Snake Eyes,
Black Water, and
The Rise of Life on Earth. Yet all become my
Nemesis
Because It Is Bitter, and Because It Is My Heart.
I Lock My Door Upon Myself, separating myself from both my
Soul/Mate and my
American Appetites. Somewhere in the
Lives of the Twins
You Must Remember This
Marya : A Life lived on the
Solstice of the infinite
Mysteries of Winterthurn.
A Bloodsmoor Romance tells the story of the
Angel of Light, that
Bellefleur of
Unholy Loves, the
Cybele of our
Son of the Moning.
Childwold ends with
The Triumph of the Spider Monkey, leaving
The Assassins to
Do With Me What You Will in some
Wonderland, where
them
Expensive People live in
A Garden of Earthly Delights, and
With Shuddering Fall.
"Childwold"
This is a book review post that I originally wrote for my family's blog. As it concerns "Childwold" which I just recently read, I figured I would post it here as well.
This 1976 novel is one of Oates's relatively early works and is often analyzed as one of her first experimental novels. Oates uses multiple points of view, juxtaposed sections often jumping from one character's viewpoint to another with no prior warning to the reader. The frequent stream of consciousness narrative style makes it sometimes take awhile to figure out which character is the focalizer of any given passage. Not only does the narrative jump from one head to another, but foreward and backward in time as well.
This is the story of a Western New York farm family from the rural village of Childwold down on their luck due to an accumulation of financial burdens which started at the time of the Great Depression. Fourteen-year-old Laney Bartlett lives in a ramshackle old farmhouse with her mother Arlene, paternal grandfather, married sister Nancy and Nancy's children, and a handful of little brothers and sisters of various ages. Laney's father died several years before in a New Year's Day car accident. Since, Arlene has had a variety of different boyfriends, even having children by some of them. Another prominant protagonist is Fitz John Kasch, a well-to-do local citizen turned recluse, who, in a Lolita-esque turn, falls in love with Laney, though it is not clear whether any physical relationship occurs between the two.
The experimental narrative style attempts to capture the self-essence of each character questing for liberation of self amidst the mysteries of life. The relationship of self and other, a common Oates preoccupation, is explored at length, as when Laney wonders "Even living people, other people, how could they be like you, how could they know what you knew, think what you thought?" A correlating theme is that of the gap between our present and past selves as when Kasch thinks back to his time in high school: "My boyhood, myself: gone. I could, if I wished, summon back the high school; but I could not summon back that boy. He is not only gone, he has never been." Upon several occasions, Oates's personal philosophy of the communal nature of life is expressed. This is basically the idea that the self cannot exist in isolation but must come to terms with it's place in the greater scheme of the external world in order to achieve some sort of transcendence. A highly interesting book in many respects, though not one of my personal favorites.
Childwold as seen through The Journal of JCO
I haven't finished the journal, went on to other things, but one part really caught my attention, the 1975 writings on her novel Childwold. When I first read Childwold, I was very confused. I had trouble figuring out the point of view, which kept shifting. I liked something about it, but I didn't really "get it." I put it back on the shelf and didn't try reading it again.
However, after I read her journal entries from that period, it began to intrigue me. At first she called the novel "Broken Reflections." She talks about the sexual revolution as a disaster for many people.
Girl students are as apprehensive, as miserable, as worried about 'not being loved' as ever before, and perhaps things are even worse now: the offer of marriage still remains THE token of esteem, no matter if they've been living with a young man or not. The emotions seem unchanged, entirely. There is a premature gowing-up of a sexual or physical nature, though. . . .
She goes on to discuss precoucious sexuality as a mark of "relatively uncivilized cultures . . . and constitutes, in species other than man, an evolutionary finesse of some kind" before going on to discuss "Broken Reflections."
Broken Reflections breaks into five points of view certain preoccupations of my own, merged with certain personalities deserving of study, of exploration.
.
That intrigued me, and even though I had picked up on the five points of view, I hadn't understood why she was doing it. I felt I was on to something, beginning to understand one of the least discussed of her many novels.
By July 26, 1975, JCO changed the title to "Childwold: a Romance for Five Voices." She calls it a "prose-poem" disguised as a novel. This again caught my attention! a prose-poem! I loved the idea. No wonder I hadn't understood it! Poetry is more complex than a novel; poetry always requires me to pay more attention to appreciate it fully. She says that the voices haunt her.
Voices. Not even words so much as voices. Laney, her grandfather, Kasch, Arlene, Vale. Five people, five voices. Perhaps they will all be absorbed into one, into the landscape of Eden County itself.
I won't go on to repeat her journal here, but my point is that without her journal, I would never have understood this beautiful work. I began rereading it immediately and found it fascinating it way the voices expressed themselves.
I've just talked myself into going back to the Journal to find more insights into JCO's work.
From Today in Literature daily newsleter, Sept. 7:
"Joyce Carol Oates’s A Garden of Earthly Delights was published on this day in 1967. It was her second novel and her first hit, in a prolific, award-winning career which has provoked some to lobby for a Nobel nomination. Others, such as the writer of a recent article in Psychology Today — have placed Oates on their list of hypergraphics, the “midnight disease” of compulsive writers. The current tally of her books stands at 118, with three more due out shortly."
I don't know what "hypergraphics" means, but the phrase "compulsive writers" certainly sounds negative. However, I think they were just trying to be cleaver in the blurb at the bottom of the newsletter. There is another more positive piece about Oates on the site (http://www.todayinliterature.com/biography/joyce.carol.oates.asp).
When I read a novel like The Falls, or The Gravediggers Daughter, as I currently am reading, I couldn't care less about how many other books she has written because I am engrossed in the current work. I would expect that most readers are interested in the individual novels, not how many she has written, as they take you inside people in ways that can be very revealing for readers. The problem her "prolific" career has for me is one of not being able to keep up with her. I can't read as fast as she writes. I am always a little behind this group in reading her new novels. However, I don't mind having that problem, as there is always something wonderful to read on my bookshelves.
I scan the used bookstores for older novels that are not readily available. Last month I found a First Edition of American Appetites with J.C. Oates signature! What a find. I have about 10 of her older novels that haven't read yet because I am so busy with her current work.
Perhaps when reviewers mention how many novels she has written, they are not criticizing her so much as revealing how inferior they feel in not being able to read all she's written!
Actually, since I started this email, I read the article in Psycology Today, and it is not a negative thing, just a condition of the brain being in overdrive. Alice Flaherty, who published a book on the subject in 2004 called it The Midnight Disease. "Hypergraphia is abnormal, but it's not necessarily bad," she says. "For us it is mostly pleasurable. You only suffer when you think you're writing badly."
Well, shedoesn't write badly, so I don't think JCO is suffering! :)
Black Water
Recently on Tone Clusters, the Joyce Carol Oates Discussion Group, a young student began a discussion of Black Water, and how the Senator's power was detrimental to the young protagonist, Kelly Kelleher. It was a lively discussion, but we seemed to agree that it is the power, the aura of office, and the charisma of artifice that undoes her. Power is seductive, to those with power and to those near the powerful.
When asked if we think of Kelly as a single hapless victim entranced by the power and prestige of the senator or if we think her slow drowning is more a representation of how American society is lulled and slowly drowning in its own obsessively consumerist culture, the consensus was not as clear. The incident could be a metaphor for society's behavior, but it is also reasonable to say that Kelly is complicit in her own fate, as we all are. However, that being said, there is no way Kelly could have anticipated her specific fate when she got in the car with the Senator. She is the victim of the Senator's ambition, which is so powerful that it prevents him from doing what almost any other individual would have done had his/her passenger been trapped in a car under water. The Senator could have tried to rescue her but chose not to. He could have called for help but chose not to. Kelly must have thought he would return to save her or would at least send someone down into the black water to save her. Anyone in such dire circumstances would continue to hope until the oxygen was depleted enough for them to fall unconscious.
I haven't read Black Water in several years, but the horror that Kelly faced in the cold black water stays with me emotionally, even after I have forgotten most of the details of the story. As I remember the early chapters of Black Water, it seems that JCO wanted us to understand Kelly's intoxication with the Senator and the political world of power, and how vulnerable that left her. Kelly could have exerted control, but she chose to go with the Senator. As far as why she did not try to save herself, I may not remember that part well, because my memory tells me that she did try but was unable to get out of the car. I'll have to read it again to see how that plays out in the book.
This story is different from most of JCO's work in that it is based upon easily recognized historical events. When I read Black Water, I could not stop thinking about the very real person who was left to drown when Ted Kennedy panicked and left Mary Jo Kopechne to drown without getting help. At the time of the historical incident, I was young and idealized the Kennedys and could not reconcile his actions with my idealized vision. I tried to understand how the Senator must have felt, must have panicked and must have blamed himself, must still blame himself (justifiably) for her death. It wasn't until years later, when I read Black Water, that I began to think about how Mary Jo must have suffered before she died from asphyxiation.
JCO has the power to take us places we could never go by ourselves.
Upon the Sweeping Flood
The first time I read Upon the Sweeping Flood, I could not understand
the ending. I now have a hard time reading it, with the crazed
protagonist beating the life out of the boy. Watching the horror on TV
about such things happening on such a massive scale made me think again
about this story. JCO's realistic portrayal of senseless tragedy
captured that sense of horror.
Jane
Psychological Thrillers
First of all, ignore the comment I made about not being able to figure out how to post. As you can see, I finally figured it out.
I've just recently finished reading all nine of JCO's pseudonymous psychological thrillers, the eight Rosamond Smith novels and the first Lauren Kelly one. I get the feeling that these are not quite so popular as her other works and wonder if anyone here has read all of them. I don't want to spoil them for those who haven't read them but I would like to make a few comments. Though the stories are all different, they do all have a common theme: the double. Quite a lot of them deal with twins, and if there aren't any twins there is the idea of soul mates. There are quite a few grotesque character doubles and the frequency of mirrors is striking. These stories strike me as parodies of the thriller genre, being even more sensationalist, and also parodies of psychoanalysis, taking all the clichés of the unconscious and bringing them to life.
I'd be interested in hearing any other comments on the subject.
Happy reading!
