Flannery O’Connor

Joyce Carol Oates adds to her many writings on Flannery O’Connor in the April 9 New York Review of Books with The Parables of Flannery O’Connor, a review-essay around Brad Gooch’s biography of O’Connor. JCO, a great admirer of O’Connor’s work, speaks of  her “cartoon art” (but this term is desrciptive, not derogatory):
Is the art [...]

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Sylvia Plath

With the recent death by hanging of Nicholas Hughes, son of Sylvia Plath, the New York Times asks “Why the Plath Legacy Lives”? Joyce Carol Oates notes,
The suicide of Sylvia Plath was and is obviously of enormous cultural significance because Plath was a brilliant poet—at the time of her death she was already considered a [...]

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Man Booker Shortlist

Joyce Carol Oates is among the contenders this year for the biennial Man Booker International Prize, recognizing one writer for their achievement in fiction. Previous winners were Chinua Achebe in 2007 and Ismail Kadare in 2005. 
The Man Booker International Prize echos and reinforces the annual Man Booker Prize for Fiction in that literary excellence will be its sole [...]

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Fifty Years

Joyce Carol Oates published her first “professional” work fifty years ago this year.
When she was a junior at Syracuse University, JCO entered her short story “In the Old World” in the Mademoiselle College Fiction Competition. The story was selected as co-winner of the competition (two winners each year) and was published in the August 1959 [...]

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Art For My Sake

The Guardian asks Joyce Carol Oates and others whether writing for a living is a joy or a chore; JCO suggests don’t trust anybody’s answer:
Recall that DH Lawrence warned us to trust the tale, not the teller – the teller of fictions is likely to be a liar. Darwinian evolutionary psychology suggests that none of [...]

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