What JCO book are you reading now?

Here's a place to note the JCO work you are reading now and any comments about it. Or, perhaps, you might be reading a book about JCO. . .

I am reading her journals -- snatches here and there -- they are way interesting, and some entries take time to digest.

-jim

The most recent two that I have read (in March and April) were:

Dear Husband: Stories

This latest Oates' collection is fourteen stories mostly about family dynamics. Several of the stories were mesmerizing, others darkly humorous, but each are strangely perceptive. A good number of the stories are told from the view point of children, whether that child be nine years of age or twenty two. Some of my favorites are "Special", the story of a nine-year-old named Aimee who had a sister with special needs. "In the Zacharis household there were two daughters: Sallie Grace and Aimee. . . . Sallie Grace had been born first and had sucked up all the oxygen in the household as she had sucked up all Dadda's and Momma's love in her greedy way of devouring food. . . " In "The Blind Man's Sighted Daughters" a difficult father, possibly a murderer, now elderly and blind, is dependent on his two grown daughters for his care. In "A Princeton Idyll" , a story told in epistolary form, a young woman gets more than she bargains for when she makes contact with her grandparents' housekeeper in hopes of being enlightened about her grandfather's mysterious death.
Darkly humorous are "The Gravers" and "Suicide by Fitness Center". The final story and the title story, "Dear Husband" reimagines the story of Andrea Yates who drowned her children in 2001. The story is told as a letter written by Lauri Lynn (Yates' fictional stand-in) to her husband after the act.

In each story, Oates reaches into the human heart and finds its edgiest parts, the place of secret thoughts and unborn actions, and probes it. The result is provocative and eerily insightful.

And The Female of the Species: Tales of Mystery and Suspense.

The cover design of the hardcover edition of this collection should be a clue as to what this collection is all about. We can see a portion of the Caravaggio painting "Judith Beheading Holofernes" (1599) and this, along with the title, tells us exactly what these stories are all about --- the female of the species can be very, very dangerous. Most of these stories fall under the mystery or suspense category, although at least one, I think, would be classified as horror (you will never look at those mirrors in the store dressing rooms quite the same way again...). My favorite story of the collection is about a young girl who is haunted by rabbits in cages in the basement; however, while there are indeed cages in the basement where they live, they are empty. I found it interesting to read a series of stories where the women or girls are dangerous. And really, isn't it all about power? This is a good, outside-the-box sort of collection.

I have just finished

Middle Age: a Romance

This was my first Oates, and I chose it as my starting point purely because I wanted to read something of hers and this turned up first in the second-hand shop.

Salthill-on-Hudson is a small town in New York state, inhabited by a glorious collection of rich, bored, beautifully turned-out middle-aged (but younger looking, please!) wives straight out of Stepford and, at the weekend, their complacent banker/lawyer/businessman husbands, back from New York. The novel opens with the accidental death of Adam Berendt, possibly the one person accepted into this superficially perfect society without being expected to follow all its rules. Whereas difference, non-conformity, in others is suspicious, in Adam it was accepted, cherished, even -- Adam Berendt, the one-eyed sculptor with the enigmatic past.

Adam was many things to many people (the women were all in love with him, each consoling herself with the thought that even if he didn't return her love, at least she was his "closest woman friend"; for the men, he seems to have been the man they would dream of being, had they not had to conform), and his death sets off a transformation across the town as all the individuals connected to him (each persuaded that they had been the most important person in the dead man's life) re-assess their lives in some quite startling ways.

The first 200 pages or so deal with the town as a whole, Berendt's death and funeral and so on, and this I enjoyed. Then come sections devoted to the transformations of one individual character (or couple) before all the ends are tied up in the final 30 pages. When I started reading this a couple of months ago I got fed up in the first of the individual accounts; the character here, Marina Troy, turned out to be the only one that I really didn't care for (or about), and I found that the pace dragged so I gave up. The other day I picked up where I left off, and after the Marina Troy pages the rest of the book almost read itself.

It's a good story very well-told, but what I most appreciated was the way Oates treats her characters. She doesn't pull her punches -- she shows them in all their self-absorbed ridiculousness and she can be viciously funny in her descriptions of them, yet (with the exception, for me, of Marina Troy)they all come across as likeable (very) human-beings.

I will be starting my second Oates novel tonight - The Gravedigger's Daughter. Shall report back later.

Going to begin Uncensored: Views and (Re)views later today. I'll probably jump straight to her treatments of Doctorow and Ishiguro, then Alice Sebold, and then just meander.

>6 Fullmoonblue: I just read the essay on Wuthering Heights in that collection. Very interesting. It seems to be one of those kind of books that I pick up from time to time and meander through (good word for it, thanks!).

>5 amandameale: It's bleak, but then again, poverty is bleak, but I liked it.

I picked Zombie up last night and couldn't put it down until I was halfway through. Creepy, horrible, but somehow compelling.

Just finished Missing Mom.

In the middle of reading Mysteries of Winterthurn, a terrific modern Gothic set in the late 19th century.

Just started A Bloodsmoor Romance.

>10 avaland: - glad to hear you are enjoying Mysteries of Winterthurn. I thought it was a great read.

>11 Jargoneer: It's splendid gothic stuff! I'm about halfway through, but my concentration around pleasure reading has not been what it should be lately, so it is taking me a long time to get through it.

She says in this book, that of her gothic trilogy (3 or 4 books...?), this one is her favorite. Apparently she has infused a bit of herself into young Xavier.

I've just started listening to Black Girl White Girl.

I'm reading the latest, Little Bird of Heaven. The title comes from a Bluegrass song. So far, I'd say it was good, but not fabulous - but I'll reserve further judgment until I finish.

I am still reading Mysteries of Winterthurn which I love; however, I seem to want to read it slowly and in short stints - a few chapters at a time; and read other things inbetween. I'm not sure I've done this with any other book and am not sure why I'm doing it with this one. I suppose I couldn't pull this off if Winterthurn wasn't so decidedly different.

Just finished Winterthurn (finally), it is terrific and I'm glad I drew it out for so long - really.

Just finished Little Bird of Heaven. Another great read. Will post a review at some point.

Well, I think it might be a little early to call myself a fan of JCO, since I've only read about 5 of the stories in the anthology High Lonesome: New and Selected Stories 1966-2006, but I am certainly intrigued by her. So far all of these stories seem to center around traumas and secrets that come out after family traumas - the things we learn about our loved ones after they die, etc. She's certainly dark but not in a sensationalistic way.

>17 fannyprice: She does write proper horror occasionally.

My comments on Little Bird of Heaven (the title comes from a bluegrass song).

Zoe Kruller, a beautiful young mother and bluegrass singer, is found brutally murdered in her apartment which she shared with a woman friend. Taken into custody and questioned as "persons of interest" are her estranged husband, Delray, and her married lover, Eddie Diehl. As the investigation continues, neither are arrested and charged with the murder, and a cloud of suspicious hangs over both men which shapes their lives from thereon in.

JCO loves tragedy, she considers it the highest form of art, and here again she explores it, like a knife probing an open wound. Not everyone is up for such a read, but I find her stories a bit like the equivalent for the brain, of rubbing a crisp, fresh, cotton towel across my skin - it's rough and hurts a bit, but ultimately is refreshing and invigorating.

Little Bird of Heaven is told in basically two parts. The first is by Krista Diehl, now grown daughter of the murdered woman's lover. She tells the story beginning well before the murder and her voice seems to move back and forth from the little girl who adoringly loves her daddy to a teenager and back to adult. (Oates often tells her stories from the viewpoint of children and teens, it's an interesting discussion point... why?). While reading this I could not help but think about how unreliable our memories are, how we shape them and rewrite as we grow older.

The other half of the book is told by Aaron Kruller, the son of the murdered woman and Delray, the other suspect. It is Aaron who finds his mother's naked dead body in the apartment and in his shock covers it with talcum powder. Aaron also begins his story well before the murder, and we see how the little boy Aaron becomes the troubled teen know as "Krull." It is a story of the fathers, the families, but it is more a story of the two children, imo, and both of these stories are mesmerizing in themselves. Despite each child being convinced that the other man, not their father, was the murderer, I found myself shifting my suspicion back and forth between the men. Both men's lives are slowly worn down and destroyed by just that, constant suspicion.

There's so much in this book one could talk about. As I mentioned before, reading this is a lot like probing an open wound. There is violence and passion and oftentimes the two are so mixed as to be indistinguishable. The tragedy of the story seems almost classical, the ending cathartic. The reader cannot help be shaken — and stirred.

And my comments on Mysteries of Winterthurn:

It had not seemed like an entirely quixotic plan to write a sequence of "genre" novels linked by political, cultural, and moral (especially "feminist") themes, set in a long-ago/mythic America intended to suggest contemporary times: a Gothic family saga, a nineteenth-century 'romance," a saga of Gothic horror . . . and a "novel of mystery and detection." It had not seemed quixotic — but then, it never does, for otherwise we would not have outsized and unclassifiable works of art, of any kind — to hope that there might be readers for such novels, that seek to transform what might be called psychological realism into "Gothic" elements . . .
-----Joyce Carol Oates in the Author's Afterword for Mysteries of Winterthurn.

I include the excerpt above because the author herself does a fine job of describing this superb novel. Mysteries of Winterthurn is a collection of three inter-related stories - mysteries - cases 'solved' by the renowed American detective Xavier Kilgarven. Our narrator is a private collector of "Murder", as he puts it, an amateur expert, looking back upon the time of these 'cases' in the late 19th century. He tells the tales with a wonderful, heightened language and much omniscience (considering he is just a 'collector'). He leads the reader down a merry path (ok, 'merry' may not be the right word here) with many a short excursion hinter and yon. It's delightfully frustrating when the reader is anxious about the fate of our hero, or the verdict of a jury.

Winterthurn is a small city, full of large family estates with their pedigreed occupants (the Kilgarvens are but one of them), and all of the other things a bustling American city of the late 19th century might have (i.e. mills, millworkers, boarding houses, cottages, churches . . .). Xavier is a young man who has not yet left the city to find fame and fortune in Manhattan in the first tale, and middle-aged in the last. There is something that plagues him internally about these mysteries in his home town.

There is certainly a lot I could say about why I so enjoyed Winterthurn — in short,it is an wonderfully entertaining, thought-provoking novel. In the afterward, Oates talks briefly about why we are attracted to classic Gothic tales, a sort of acting out of an inner reality (my paraphrase). I find myself mulling that from time to time and really enjoying the mull when I do!

Strangely, I read this book over the course of about two months. I would read a chapter or two and then set it aside while I read something else. I'm not sure why I did that, it certainly was not out of disinterest, but I don't regret reading it in such a way. This is a not-for-everyone novel, I suppose, but it has become, I think, my favorite Oates work.

I've taken up Childwold now and I have resorted to jotting down the characters to keep them straight!

Since Childwold, I have read Black Water, First Love, I Lock My Door Upon Myself,The Triumph of the Spider Monkey and a novella called "The Corn Maiden" in Transgressions, Vol. 4 edited by Ed McBain. I was endeavoring to read all of her novellas. I will have to go back and check the list, but I think I have just one more, The Rise of Life on Earth.

Of the novellas, certainly I Lock My Door Upon Myself is my favorite.

What have you been reading?

Still working through High Lonesome - I love short stories, but I can't read too many of them by the same author at once or they get diluted for me. JCO's especially are proving so intense that I read one and need a break.

I'm reading A Bloodsmoor Romance for my "tome read" in Club Read. This is another of her American Gothic novels, written in the elevated voice and moral tone of a female narrator this time around. It will take me at least another month as I seem to read other books along the way (the Oates is the "upstairs" book, meaning I read it when lounging in or on the bed). It's definitely not one you can tuck into a purse.

>24 avaland: OMG, Oates is bloody brilliant! I loved A Bloodsmoor Romance. It's part homage, part satire...there were parts I just had to read out loud to my husband for both of us to chortle over. I've left comments on the book's page.

I'm also picking from In Rough Country: Essays and Reviews her latest collection of nonfiction.

I read A Bloodsmoor Romance several years ago...and loved it, as well. She certainly turned the Gothic genre on it ear...in terms of tone and nuance. Then I tried to read Bellefleur....which is a cat-of-a-different-color....very dark and overloaded with "creepy" characters. I liked what I read..but couldn't finish the journey (or the book). Maybe I'll track down a copy and give it another shot

;-}

>26 jdthloue: I thought Bloodsmoor less Gothic than Winterthurn, but she certainly manages to include every possible Victorian trope available! I have Bellefleur but may save it for later in the year or possible next. I already read something like 7 Oates books already this year, I don't want overdo! (the other day was I in a mood and thought I might need to read something light and I remember thinking, oh maybe I should look over the JCO shelf and see what I haven't read yet (then I thought about how funny that was!...you know, looking to JCO for something "light")

>27 avaland: Seven JCO books in one year?? You are tougher than I...one per year is all I can manage..And "JCO Lite" just sets me to howling with glee...who woulda thunk??

;-}

>28 jdthloue: well, a good number of them were novellas (I was trying to read all her novellas...I think I have one more to go, if she doesn't write another before the year is out!

I have her forthcoming collection, too. Sigh.

I recently finished reading Joyce Carol Oates, The Falls, and l loved it! I think it is one of her best.

I started I'll Take You There last week. I haven't been able to get very far because of other things I'm working on, but I can't get over how well JCO can pull me into a different world. And there's something about her books that make me die for a good cup of tea - which is strange on my part, I'll give you that.

I've finished recently both The Tattooed Girl and The Rise of Life on Earth. Both are about damaged women and the way the terrible anger deep within them gets expressed. That is an oversimplification, of course. That latter is a novella, more or less a character study; the former is a novel that is much more complex and explores other things like inheritance, anti-antisemitism...etc (and, oh, what a tragedy!)

I'm reading Them currently and am about a quarter of the way through it. Has anyone else read it?

It's bleak, but also mesmerizing. It's the story of one family living in the slums of Detroit during the 30s-early 60s. It's based on the life of a student JCO had when she taught evening classes in the early 60s.

I read it ages ago, loved it...yes, it's very bleak, but her writing is so amazing (mesmerizing) that it's hard to put it aside. It still haunts me in that special way her work does. I will read it again some day, but will read it along with it's companions in the "Wonderland Quartet". It was one of my mom's all time favorite books, whenever I mentioned that I'm reading a book by JCO she always said the same thing: "I like her, that book 'Them' was a good one. It was weird...but I liked it."

>34 LauraJWRyan: There is certainly lots of angst in it (well, I should be accustomed to that, shouldn't I? this is an Oates novel after all). I read somewhere that this book was notable because it gave voice to people on the margins of society which was being done with other writers from the 60s. I think it's affecting my sleep and dreams!

I'm reading "Expensive People" (for the first time), I'm almost finished (I started it not long after my post above about "Them".) It's a dark social comedy with well-off suburbia as a stage and a cast of unlikeable characters who appear to be regular folks, but are monsters of their making. I really like her early work more than her most recent, at the same time they're brilliant, complex, and spellbinding, there's that rawness about them that is just...brutal. I think one of the things I really love about her writing as a whole is it's all fearless, she digs in to tell it like it is (even when the "like it is" is so horrible it's unbelievable)...I strive to be that brave with my own work (being a writer is not for the faint of heart.)

Laura, I've not read that one either (well, there's so many I haven't read!). I've been reading old essay in her (woman) Writer: Occasions and Opportunities but I have the distinct feeling I may have read some of these before. I also picked up an old volume of lit crit discussing the tragic vision of her early work. 1978, I think. It mentions Them but it isn't included in most of the criticism. I'd have to look, but I think I've only read her first collection in that era (60s, and early 70s). Still, I was able to read the first 2/3rds of the 1st chapter which is pretty much a general introduction to what she has to say about Oates' early work.

I'm holding off on everything until the new novel is out, next week, I think.

Reading Mudwoman now, about 100 pages in. It has my attention but I'm not sure I like it yet...so, the jury is still out.

>38 avaland: Finished Mudwoman. Not my favorite, but oddly compelling generally. Will write more after it percolates in my head longer.

>>38 avaland:-39 So often what I start out feeling with JCO, but then waves of it come back into my memory and my feelings change. Look forward to hearing more of what you think about Mudwoman, it is lurking in my Amazon basket.

>38 avaland:-39 and 40 Yes, I have to second that feeling, there are some of her books that I felt, "this is okay, I'm not in love with it..." but then later on it's still rolling around in my head, perking responses long past reading. Man Crazy wasn't my favorite while I read it, and We Were the Mulvaneys sort of went that way with me as well, and I've gone back to both to re-read bits and pieces to confirm my memory of events and I always rediscover treasures. I think one of the reasons why I love her work so much is because of that gnawing feeling that lingers long after the fact. I haven't picked up Mudwoman yet, but I'm sure it will be coming my way as a birthday present next month!

I wrote a rather piecemeal review of Mudwoman - it's on the book's page. While thinking back on it, I kept thinking of the David Copperfield quote: Whether I shall turn out to be the hero of my own life, or whether that station will be held by anybody else, these pages must show.

So often in her stories Oates shows us no more than mere survivors, but in this story the woman becomes the hero of her own story. One spends a lot of time in the character's head and some of that I found tedious, but then again, I'm sure someone in my head for any length of time might find it equally tedious. Although it seems the story could have been told fundamentally with a male protagonist, it struck me as particularly poignant and timely that it be a singular woman's story.

It's provides some interesting looks at academia also. Overcoming personal dislikes in order to work with everyone. Having to entertain and woo big financial donors whom she doesn't agree with politically. Dealing with campus problems while having a "vision" for the future. Juggling the personal and public. We're in her head so we hear all the conflicting things going on in it.

Just finished her Carthage and left a rather choppy review on the book's page. It's a bit exhausting being in so many characters' heads - especially those who are overly anxious or mentally ill, but I'll say that there are things in the book that have stuck with me and it is quite thought-provoking at times. It won't displace my favorites but a very good read nonetheless.

Reading The Accursed, a few pages a night. Stephen King is correct in saying it is "compulsively readable," although compulsive is sometimes difficult when the eyes are closing...

I do love her Gothics.

Just read her 1974 collection The Hungry Ghosts: Seven Elusive Comedies. Very good.

Thought it would be fun to post. It's like wandering around in an empty old mansion ...