Joyce Carol Oates
Pumpkin Head in The New Yorker
Joyce Carol Oates has a new story, “Pumpkin Head,” in the January 12, 2009 issue of The New Yorker. This October evening, before the sun had entirely set, a pair […]
Joyce Carol Oates has a new story, “Pumpkin Head,” in the January 12, 2009 issue of The New Yorker.
This October evening, before the sun had entirely set, a pair of headlights turned in to the driveway, some distance away by the road. She was startled into alertness—at first not sure where she was. Then she remembered: Anton Kruppev was dropping by to see her.
Dropping by, he’d said. Or maybe she’d said, Why don’t you drop by?
She couldn’t make out his face. He was driving a pickup truck with white lettering on one side. He climbed down from the driver’s seat in the high cab and lurched toward her on the shadowy path—a tall male scarecrow figure with a misshapen Halloween pumpkin for a head.
Randy Souther
I'm a Reference Librarian at the University of San Francisco's Gleeson Library, and I run the Joyce Carol Oates web site, Celestial Timepiece.
Celestial Timepiece 
I just finished reading this story. She mentions the Iraq war and misconceived notions regarding it as incidents propelling the narrator to the perplexing ending.
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“Dropping by, he’d said. Or maybe she’d said, Why don’t you drop by?” I love when she does this push-pull thing. It’s so ambiguously human.
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Definitely looking forward to reading the current New Yorker.
I noticed today that McSweeney’s 29 has a JCO piece, “Labyrinth,” laid out quite nicely on the endpaper.
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