Synopses & Reviews
Uncensored: Views & (Re)views is Joyce Carol Oates's most candid gathering of prose pieces since
(Woman) Writer: Occasions & Opportunities. Her ninth book of nonfiction, it brings together thirty-eight diverse and provocative pieces from the
New York Review of Books, the
Times Literary Supplement, and the
New York Times Book Review.
Oates states in her preface, "In the essay or review, the dynamic of storytelling is hidden but not absent," and indeed, the voice of these "conversations" echoes the voice of her fiction in its dramatic directness, ethical perspective, and willingness to engage the reader in making critical judgments. Under the heading "Not a Nice Person," such controversial figures as Sylvia Plath, Patricia Highsmith, and Muriel Spark are considered without sentimentality or hyperbole; under "Our Contemporaries, Ourselves," such diversely talented figures as William Trevor, E. L. Doctorow, Kazuo Ishiguro, Michael Connelly, Alice Sebold, Mary Karr, Anne Tyler, and Ann Patchett are examined. In sections of "homages" and "revisits," Oates writes with enthusiasm and clarity of such cultural icons as Emily Brontë, Ernest Hemingway, Carson McCullers, Robert Lowell, Balthus, and Muhammad Ali ("The Greatest"); after a lapse of decades, she (re)considers the first film version of Bram Stoker's Dracula, and Americana, Don DeLillo's first novel, as well as the morality of selling private letters and the nostalgic significance of making a pilgrimage to Henry David Thoreau's Walden Pond.
Through these balanced and illuminating essays we see Oates at the top of her form, engaged with forebears and contemporaries, providing clues to her own creative process: "For prose is a kind of music: music creates 'mood.' What is argued on the surface may be but ripples rising from a deeper, subtextual urgency."
Review
"It's useful to know what good writers are reading and thinking about...[Oates] seldom disappoints." Kirkus Reviews
Review
"Utterly at home in literature, she writes naturally about books with vigor and pleasure." Booklist
Review
"This collection shows a lovely appreciation for the value of a finely written book. Highly recommended..." Library Journal
Review
"...Uncensored provides ample instruction and welcome provocation. It's good to catch up with Oates's reading, even if you can never hope to keep up with her pace." New York Times
Review
"[A] gripping collection..." BookReporter.com
Review
"A fine complement to the author's cultural metafictions....This is the kind of assured, authoritative writing-on-writing that turns the secondhand buzz derived from a good book into a great real all on its own." Time Out (New York)
Synopsis
This rich collection of essays, reviews, and criticism calls attention to a wide array of books and writers, from Emily Bronté to Mary Karr to Don DeLillo.
Synopsis
Uncensored: Views & (Re)views is Joyce Carol Oates's most candid gathering of prose pieces since (Woman) Writer: Occasions & Opportunities. Her ninth book of nonfiction, it brings together thirty-eight diverse and provocative pieces from the New York Review of Books, the Times Literary Supplement, and the New York Times Book Review.
Oates states in her preface, "In the essay or review, the dynamic of storytelling is hidden but not absent," and indeed, the voice of these "conversations" echoes the voice of her fiction in its dramatic directness, ethical perspective, and willingness to engage the reader in making critical judgments. Under the heading "Not a Nice Person," such controversial figures as Sylvia Plath, Patricia Highsmith, and Muriel Spark are considered without sentimentality or hyperbole; under "Our Contemporaries, Ourselves," such diversely talented figures as William Trevor, E. L. Doctorow, Kazuo Ishiguro, Michael Connelly, Alice Sebold, Mary Karr, Anne Tyler, and Ann Patchett are examined. In sections of "homages" and "revisits," Oates writes with enthusiasm and clarity of such cultural icons as Emily Bronte, Ernest Hemingway, Carson McCullers, Robert Lowell, Balthus, and Muhammad Ali ("The Greatest"); after a lapse of decades, she (re)considers the first film version of Bram Stoker's Dracula, and Americana, Don DeLillo's first novel, as well as the morality of selling private letters and the nostalgic significance of making a pilgrimage to Henry David Thoreau's Walden Pond.
Through these balanced and illuminating essays we see Oates at the top of her form, engaged with forebears and contemporaries, providing clues to her own creative process: "For prose is a kind of music: music creates 'mood.' What is argued on the surface may be but ripples rising from a deeper, subtextual urgency."
Synopsis
In thirty-eight diverse and provocative pieces, Joyce Carol Oates freely speaks her mind on some of literature's greatest modern authors. Writing at the top of her form, she offers lively opinions and cogent analysis of the works of Sylvia Plath, E. L. Doctorow, Kazuo Ishiguro, and Anne Tyler, to name but a few. With illuminating thoughts on the state of fiction and the future of the short story, Oates demonstrates once again that she is not only one of our most talented contemporary novelists but also a superb critic of serious literature as well -- enthralling us with her art, her keen intelligence, and the incomparable power of her words.
About the Author
Joyce Carol Oates is a recipient of the National Book Award and the PEN/Malamud Award for Excellence in Short Fiction. She has written some of the most enduring fiction of our time, including the national bestsellers We Were the Mulvaneys and Blonde, which was nominated for the National Book Award. She is the Roger S. Berlind Distinguished Professor of the Humanities at Princeton University and has been a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters since 1978. In 2003 she received the Common Wealth Award for Distinguished Service in Literature and the Kenyon Review Award for Literary Achievement.
Table of Contents
Preface
I. "Not a Nice Person"
Uncensored Sylvia Plath
"Restoring" Willie Stark
Catherizing Willa
Merciless Highsmith
"Glutton for Punishment": Richard Yates
"Not a Nice Person": Muriel Spark
II. Our Contemporaries, Ourselves
Irish Elegy: William Trevor
"Our Cheapened Dreams": E.L. Doctorow
"Despair of Living": Anita Brookner
An Artist of the Floating World: Kazuo Ishiguro
"City of Light": Robert Drewe's The Shark Net
L.A. Noir: Michael Connelly
Ringworm Belt: Memoirs by Mary Karr
Evolutionary Fever: Andrea Barrett's Servants of the Map
"New Memoir": Alice Sebold's Lucky
Property Of: Valerie Martin's Property
Programmed by Art: David Lodge's Thinks...
Ghosts: Hilary Mantel
An Endangered Species: Short Stories
News from Everywhere: Short Stories
Mythmaking Realist: Pat Barker
Crazy for Love: Scott Spencer's A Ship Made of Paper
Amateurs: Anne Tyler's The Amateur Marriage
Memoirs of Crisis: Ann Patchett's Truth & Beauty
III. Homages
Emily Brontë's Wuthering Heights
"Tragic Mulatta": Clotel; or, The President's Daughter
Ernest Hemingway
"You Are the We of Me": Carson McCullers
Remembering Robert Lowell
"About Whom Nothing Is Known": Balthus
In the Ring and Out: Jack Johnson
Muhammad Ali: "The Greatest"
IV. (Re)Visits
The Vampire's Secret: (Re)viewing Tod Brown's Dracula after Forty Years
Don DeLillo's Americana (1971) Revisited
Them Revisited
A Garden of Earthly Delights Revisited
On the Composition of I Lock My Door Upon Myself
Private Writings, Public Betrayals
Pilgrimage to Walden Pond: 1962, 2003
Acknowledgments