Her writing is fine. Just hated the story and it's cruelty. ( )

Hedonism Goes Off Page

Hedonism, defined in its more vernacular sense as personal gratification regardless of its effect on others, forms the center of Joyce Carol Oates’ novella of young, naive college women falling prey to a pair of svengalis. You might think of it as a modern incarnation of the age old tales, with painfully real consequences for those accused, of demonic possession for sexual purposes, sort of like seventeenth-century Urbain Grandier and the Ursuline nuns of Loudun, France.

An adult Gillian Brauer strolls through the Louvre when she encounters a grotesque totem portraying a maternal figure. She recognizes it as one of the only surviving works of artist/sculptor Dorcas (meant as ironic?) Harrow, wife of her old literature teacher Andre Harrow (harrow, as in a tool to break apart and lay open the soil for seeding; quite clever, given the story). The recognition hurtles her back to her days at a Catamount, a small New England women’s college. She relates in vivid detail how she and many of the women living in her cottage taking Andre’s course in poetry writing come under his spell and how the high purpose he and his wife appear to espouse proves in its extremity to be said hedonism and for the women descent into traumatic degradation. Surfeit to say that the end result of turning oneself over to the pair exhibits in self-destructive behavior and destructive acting out (the fires) as Andre encourages the women to expose all their insecurities, which he mines for his own and Dorcas’ own purposes. And, even as was with poor old Grandier, immolation proves something of a just evening up of the score.

This Oates excursion into the vulnerabilities of lithe young women searching for identity and acceptance is for readers curious about the darker side of humanity and those who stumble into its clutches. ( )

Hedonism Goes Off Page

Hedonism, defined in its more vernacular sense as personal gratification regardless of its effect on others, forms the center of Joyce Carol Oates’ novella of young, naive college women falling prey to a pair of svengalis. You might think of it as a modern incarnation of the age old tales, with painfully real consequences for those accused, of demonic possession for sexual purposes, sort of like seventeenth-century Urbain Grandier and the Ursuline nuns of Loudun, France.

An adult Gillian Brauer strolls through the Louvre when she encounters a grotesque totem portraying a maternal figure. She recognizes it as one of the only surviving works of artist/sculptor Dorcas (meant as ironic?) Harrow, wife of her old literature teacher Andre Harrow (harrow, as in a tool to break apart and lay open the soil for seeding; quite clever, given the story). The recognition hurtles her back to her days at a Catamount, a small New England women’s college. She relates in vivid detail how she and many of the women living in her cottage taking Andre’s course in poetry writing come under his spell and how the high purpose he and his wife appear to espouse proves in its extremity to be said hedonism and for the women descent into traumatic degradation. Surfeit to say that the end result of turning oneself over to the pair exhibits in self-destructive behavior and destructive acting out (the fires) as Andre encourages the women to expose all their insecurities, which he mines for his own and Dorcas’ own purposes. And, even as was with poor old Grandier, immolation proves something of a just evening up of the score.

This Oates excursion into the vulnerabilities of lithe young women searching for identity and acceptance is for readers curious about the darker side of humanity and those who stumble into its clutches. ( )

Romanzo gotico!!

Adesso ho capito che cos'è un romanzo gotico, sarebbe quel racconto che non ti accorgi mai se è notte o giorno, tanto è tenebroso e inquietante, che non riesci a distinguere se sta piovendo sempre o se qualche volta è solo nuvoloso, insomma, quelle atmosfere da cui si sprigiona ottimismo e fiducia nella vita. Bene, detto questo, la storia della Oates mi è piaciuta, bella scrittura e personaggi ben delineati, tranne la protagonista che sembra messa lì apposta per fare la succube. Inquietudine e mistero la fanno da padroni in situazioni che definire angoscianti è un eufemismo, in questo contesto la scrittrice sa fare sicuramente bene il suo lavoro. Ma... pur apprezzandolo, non è decisamente il mio genere, certo una volta ogni tanto si può fare, ma la vita è gia tanto buia di suo... ( )

"But I thought that was what poetry is, Mr. Harrow: circumspect. If it wasn't it would be just talk."

I thought I would enjoy this, and for the first few chapters I found the familiarity of it encouraging. Consider the premise: a young woman at a Bennington-like college, her literary aspirations, the lecherous married professor into whose circle she drifts, the peculiar roommates, her sense of alienation, and the suggestion of something darker lurking at the edges. Because I've had the good fortune to have read Ms. Jackson's (Don't call her Shirley) brilliant, hypnotic, disturbing [b:Hangsaman|131177|Hangsaman|Shirley Jackson|https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1302734503s/131177.jpg|1825944], reading Beasts filled me with a powerful sense of deja vu.

Admittedly, the part of Hangsaman where the heroine, Natalie Waite, befriends and is charmed by a youngish professor and his somewhat unhinged wife makes up only a small part of the novel. It's as if Oates had decided to rewrite the older novel by concentrating only on the relationship with the professor and turning all of the subtext into text.

It might have worked. Oates is definitely a talented enough author to pull it off. Still, I found myself approaching its violent conclusion not with tension or glee but a sense of indifference, a lazy shrug. Maybe it is just the comparison with Hangsaman. Jackson knows how to zig when you think she'll zag, knows how to pull you into her protagonist's headspace as if the text had magic properties.

For all of its modern Gothic gestures, Beasts feels disappointingly linear, it's characters surprisingly flat. When it finally brings on its lurid revelations, they felt like the punchlines to jokes I had already heard.

Interestingly, circumspect means "cautious, prudent, or discreet." I'm still asking myself whether the novel was too cautious or if it would have benefited from some discretion. ( )