JCO Miscellany: One

“What is the worst thing that can happen?”

Lisa, from the long-running TV show The Simpsons, imagines herself in prison on the March 23, 2008 episode. The guard arrives with the book mobile …

Lisa: “Got any Joyce Carol Oates?”
Guard: “Nope, it’s all Danielle Steele.”

 

Now that’s a rough prison. (Thanks to TVRecapMatt)

Woundedness, Rejection and Inspiration

Tammy Ayer reports on Joyce Carol Oates’s visit to Sanibel Island, Florida for the News-Press: “Oates’ hectic schedule didn’t surprise Tom DeMarchi, an instructor in the department of language and literature at Florida Gulf Coast University … I said to her, ‘You are so prolific. You must write eight hours a day to do all you do.’ She looked at me in almost a pitying way and said, ‘Oh, that would be a short day.’” Ayer notes that JCO’s current project is “The Writer’s (Secret) Life: Woundedness, Rejection and Inspiration,” featur[ing] her essays on famous authors and the many kinds of rejection they suffered, not only from skeptical publishers but also from family, friends and fellow authors.”

Six-Word Memior

Smith Magazine is publishing a book of “six-word memoirs” by “famous and not-so-famous folks,” including JCO’s contribution, which can be found all over the web:

“Revenge is living well, without you.”

Smith Magazine offers the “Story behind the Six: Joyce Carol Oates.”

Ontario Review Retires after 34 Years

With the passing of its editor, Raymond J. Smith, Ontario Review itself will cease publication with the forthcoming Spring 2008 issue. Smith began Ontario Review in 1974 in Windsor, Ontario, with his wife Joyce Carol Oates as associate editor; the Review later moved with its editors to Princeton, NJ.

Smith wrote about the impetus for Ontario Review:

I was simply intrigued by the idea of a little magazine. Not a glossy magazine—never—but a little magazine. (Not too little: the original Kenyon Review, say. Remember those gorgeous covers?) I was fascinated from about the age of eighteen onward by the notion, the abstract, almost Platonic notion, of a physical thing that was at the same time a communal phenomenon. That is, one picks up a magazine, weighs it in the hand, it appears to be a thing, but in fact it isn’t a thing at all. It’s a symposium. A gathering. A party. —“On Editing The Ontario Review”

Reviewing the literary magazine for Library Journal in 1976, Bill Katz commented, “the style is as relaxed as it is meaningful, and the review is not burdened with dense scholarly prose whose primary appeal is to the expert. No, this is [for] the average intelligent reader who seeks a professional, honest approach to the arts … and for once there is a solid balance between ‘names’ and lesser known figures of equally high standards.” Katz returned his attention to Ontario Review on its 15-year anniversary, noting, “Little wonder this is one of our best reviews.”

Little wonder Ontario Review, like its editor, will be sorely missed.

p.s. — A partial listing of contributors to Ontario Review, from its web site:

Alice Adams, Jane Anderson, Margaret Atwood, Russell Banks, Donald Barthelme, Saul Bellow, Pinckney Benedict, Earle Birney, Joseph Brodsky, Hayden Carruth, Raymond Carver, Annie Dillard, Rita Dove, Margaret Drabble, Stuart Dybek, Carlos Fuentes, Tess Gallagher, Albert Goldbarth, Nadine Gordimer, Eaman Grennan, Donald Hall, William Heyen, Ted Hughes, Josephine Jacobsen, Jill Krementz, Maxine Kumin, Irving Layton, Doris Lessing, Alistair MacLeod, W. S. Merwin, Mary Morris, Barry Moser, Gloria Naylor, Joyce Carol Oates, Alicia Ostriker, Jay Parini, Stanley Plumly, Reynolds Price, Ned Rorem, Philip Roth, Dave Smith, Gary Soto, Elizabeth Spencer, William Stafford, Mark Strand, Deborah Tannen, Melanie Rae Thon, Chase Twichell, John Updike, David Wagoner, Robert Penn Warren, Tom Wayman, Theodore Weiss, C. K. Williams, and Charles Wright