Oates, Joyce Carol (Vol. 108) - Steven Marcus (review date 8 October 1995)
Steven Marcus (review date 8 October 1995)
SOURCE: "American Psycho," in The New York Times Book Review, October 8, 1995, p. 13.
[Below, Marcus links the main character of Zombie with the recurrent theme of violence in Oates's fiction, faulting the novel's premise.]
Divided into 57 mini-chapters, composed with typographical tics and oddities (many capitalized words, phrases and sentences; italics, ampersands and so forth), featuring crude and often pointless line drawings, Zombie is Joyce Carol Oates's effort to dramatize, in diarylike form, the psychotic, monstrous consciousness of a serial murderer. This creature is simultaneously intensely self-absorbed and extremely depersonalized and derealized. He speaks of himself indiscriminately in the first and third persons and uses his initials to refer to himself most of the time. Apart from his recurrent obsessions and fantasies, he is unable to retain either conscious inner...
[The entire page is 1513 words long]
Join eNotes
Over 3,500 study guides, question and answer forums, literature criticism, reference content, and much more!
Navigate
Related Topics
