Joyce Carol Oates on JD Salinger

Joyce Carol Oates comments on the death of JD Salinger for the Guardian:

“Salinger’s great, obsessive theme was the moral rootlessness of contemporary American materialism and its corrosive effect upon precocious, highly sensitive children and adolescents whose religious yearnings were both esoteric (eastern, mystic) and sentimental (narcissistic, naively self-regarding).”

Now, the world will eagerly await Salinger’s genuinely posthumous work – which is sure to exist, and sure to be an extraordinary legacy.

Also commenting for this article are Annie Proulx, Dave Eggers, EL Doctorow, and Simon Prosser, publishing director of  Hamish Hamilton.

National Book Critics Circle Lifetime Achievement Award

Joyce Carol Oates has won the 2009 National Book Critics Circle Ivan Sandrof Lifetime Achievement Award.

JCO was an NBCC fiction finalist in 1992 for her novella Black Water; and a rare double-finalist in 2007 for both fiction (The Gravedigger’s Daughter) and autobiography (The Journal of Joyce Carol Oates: 1973-1982).

Previous recipients of the Sandrof Lifetime Achievement Award have typically been critics (John Leonard; Leslie Fiedler), editors/publishers (Bill Henderson; James Laughlin; Barney Rosset; Robert Giroux), and organizations (PEN American Center; Library of America), making JCO’s award all the more singular.