Oates, Joyce Carol (Vol. 2) - Oates, Joyce Carol 1938–
Oates, Joyce Carol 1938–
A National Book Award-winning novelist, Miss Oates is also a short story writer, critic, and poet. Her works include them, A Garden of Earthly Delights, and Wonderland. (See also Contemporary Authors, Vols. 5-8, rev. ed.)
Joyce Carol Oates is a strange pale flamingo of a woman with great jeweled eyes and a fate for literature. Word-mad, Irish-Catholic, working-class, she writes with the tip of an emotional tornado that has swept the critics into a limp pile of admiration….
No, her problem is not talent; it is temperament—the defect of her leading virtue. Miss Oates is an obsessive, and obsession is a jockey that runs a talent hard but only in one direction. Something unlived squats on her back: mad and hairy, red in tooth and claw. Her necessity is to obey her demon. But because her self is her subject, the world is distanced. In many of these stories the world is just a warehouse the writer...
[The entire page is 4383 words long]
Join eNotes
Over 3,500 study guides, question and answer forums, literature criticism, reference content, and much more!
Navigate
Related Topics
