Celestial Timepiece

The Glass Ark is a bibliography of works by and about Joyce Carol Oates covering her entire career, from the 1950s to the present.

Documenting the work of JCO is a task that would daunt even the diligent cartographer Emmanuel Bellefleur, and I make no claims to his thoroughness; consequently, you will find portions of this bibliography to be variously incomplete, inconsistent, and messy. I hope it is nonetheless interesting and useful.

JCO Articles
Stories, poems, essays, etc. authored by Joyce Carol Oates

JCO Books
Novels; novellas; collections of stories, essays, poems; anthologies; etc. authored or edited by Joyce Carol Oates

Criticism on JCO: Articles
Includes literary criticism, interviews, essays, etc. but not book reviews.

Criticism on JCO: Books & Theses
Book-length criticism

Anthologies
Collections that include JCO work (this section is recently added and very incomplete)

Acknowledgements

The Glass Ark incorporates the work of Francine Lercangée and Bruce F. Michelson, whose Joyce Carol Oates: An Annotated Bibliography (1986) is the foundation of JCO bibliography. I am hopeful that this bibliography will eventually resemble their pristine work. I make grateful acknowledgement to the terrifically helpful work by Phil Stephensen-Payne and William G. Contento at Galactic Central, and  the creative commons work at the Internet Speculative Fiction Database.

Notes on missing or incomplete items are appreciated: southerr@usfca.edu (please include verifiable information: photo, scan, pdf of item).

For journalists and scholars who find this bibliography to be of use: acknowledgement is most appreciated.

From Broke Heart Blues:

No matter how many times John had seen The Glass Ark, he was never prepared for its strange glittering beauty.

The Ark was a shock to the eye. Then it was a shock, or at least a puzzle, to the mind: what did it mean? why did it exist?—not a single ark, in fact, for Aaron Leander had added to his original vision, but five arks of approxi­mately the same size. Why had an aging man with no prior interest in art, or in craftsmanship, devoted so many years to piecing these fantastical struc­tures together out of discarded bottles, glassware, strips of shiny metal, tin­foil, “gilt,” stones collected from the beach? How did Aaron Leander Heart, who’d been a problem drinker until the last decade of his life, have the skill to create such elaborate, intricate designs? Had his vision really come from God?—but what was “God”? When they’d all lived in Vegas, John’s rakish cowboy-styled grandpa had applied himself to poker playing and gambling schemes that rarely worked out. He’d been something of a ladies’ man. He’d had an Old Testament temperament (as he liked to boast) but no religion— “Belief is for suckers, kid. The game is, to be what the suckers believe.”

Tildie said, “The Ark is very beautiful this morning, isn’t it? After rain it always sparkles in the sun.”

It was one thing to have a vision, John thought, but The Glass Ark was work.

Image: “Shattered” by Trey Ratcliff