Joyce Carol Oates on Shirley Jackson

Joyce Carol Oates reviews Shirley Jackson’s We Have Always Lived in the Castle for the New York Review of Books:
Of the precocious children and adolescents of mid-twentieth-century American fiction—a dazzling lot that includes the tomboys Frankie of Carson McCullers’s The Member of the Wedding (1946) and Scout of Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird (1960), the murderous [...]

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Mike Tyson

Joyce Carol Oates attended a screening of James Toback’s documentary Tyson with the director and Iron Mike himself, and participated in a Q & A session, as reported in New York Magazine:
“What’s the experience of watching yourself in this movie?” [Oates] asked. “Do you feel like you yourself are an abstract piece of art?”
“I [...]

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A Woman’s Work

Deborah Solomon interviews Joyce Carol Oates for the New York Times Magazine:
Why do you find violence so alluring as a literary subject?
If you’re going to spend the next year of your life writing, you would probably rather write “Moby Dick” than a little household mystery with cat detectives. I consider tragedy the highest form of [...]

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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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Kentucky Welcomes JCO

Cheryl Truman, books editor of the Lexington Herald-Leader, profiles and interviews Joyce Carol Oates in advance of the Kentucky Women Writers Conference.
Tidbits of interest:
Oates didn’t used to be much of a TV watcher but admits immersing herself in tabloid-news TV to research My Sister, My Love: Bill O’Reilly, Geraldo Rivera and Nancy Grace (“I think sometimes she [...]

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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 [...]

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JCO at Fairfield University

Blogger Elizabeth Howard presents a strangely angry depiction of Joyce Carol Oates’s appearance at Fairfield University on Sunday. The afternoon event is presented as a would-be ambush by Professor “Buttercup,” an “eminent nobody” whose puny attack is casually dismissed by an Olympian JCO. Howard ridicules the presumptuous “man-professor,” academics in general, and any Connecticut resident [...]

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Naughty Chérie is Published

Joyce Carol Oates’s third children’s book, Naughty Chérie, goes on sale today. Illustrated by Mark Graham, all three books involve kitten characters based on real cats who have owned JCO. The cat from the first book in the series, Come Meet Muffin!, has also appeared in JCO’s adult fiction: interviewed about We Were the Mulvaneys, [...]

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JCO Remembers Norman Mailer

Janet Coleman, author, actor, and Cat Radio Café host, speaks with Joyce Carol Oates about the life and work of Norman Mailer. “I have to say that as soon as Mailer died, the kinds of remarks made about him in the press I did not think were helpful, or deep enough, or worthy. I thought [...]

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EW Picks JCO

Jennifer Reese, a director of the National Book Critics Circle, and a critic for Entertainment Weekly, has chosen the 10 Best Fiction Books of 2007, including Joyce Carol Oates’s The Gravedigger’s Daughter at number 7. Reese interviewed JCO earlier this summer about the novel, her grandmother, and her productivity; the interview includes comments from JCO’s [...]

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