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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