Joyce Carol Oates: Letters to a Biographer
In this generous selection of Joyce Carol Oates’s letters to her biographer and friend Greg Johnson, readers will discover a never-before-seen dimension of her phenomenal talent.
Butcher
From one of our most accomplished storytellers, an extraordinary and arresting novel about a women’s asylum in the 19th century, and a terrifying doctor who wants to change the world.
Don’t You Trust Me?
This occurred early in the second year of The Edict, when the first wave of arrests, fines and imprisonments, and frequent deaths had run their course; and all but the most desperate women were likely to accept the new conditions, and have their babies, as The Moral Law of The Land decreed.
A Darker Shade of Noir: New Stories of Body Horror by Women Writers
The stories not only bleed across the categorical boundaries they have been assigned, but also expand the scope of what is terrifying about the body—living or dead, human or nonhuman—in the first place.
Parole Hearing, California Institution for Women, Chino, CA
Because you gaze upon me with pity and contempt, thinking—Oh she is a monster! She is nothing like me.
But I am like you. In my heart that is without pity, I am you.
Against Nature
“Still, the earth is your place. A tidy grave site measured to your size. Or, from another angle of vision, one vast democratic grave.”
Zero-Sum: Stories
“Pushing things to extremes is Oates’ literary modus operandi, especially when it comes to the myriad betrayals of the mind and body. In her latest collection of macabre short stories, she extends the traditions of Edgar Allan Poe and Shirley Jackson in her own unique arias performed by characters assailed by mental illness and intent on destruction…. High-pitched, unnerving, and incisive.”
Joyce Carol Oates on Cormac McCarthy
“he is a titan of literature fierce & indomitable as a tornado”
In Rough Country I: Cormac McCarthy
Blood Meridian and the Border Trilogy are counterpoised: the one a furious debunking of the legendary West, the other a subdued, humane, and subtle exploration of the tangled roots of such legends of the West as they abide in the human heart. Whereas Blood Meridian scorns any idealism except the jeremiad—“War is god”—the interlinked novels of the Border Trilogy testify to the quixotic idealism that celebrates friendship, brotherhood, loyalty, the integrity of the cowboy-worker as one whose life is bound up with animals in a harsh, exhausting, and dangerous environment.
Mysteries of Winterthurn
Mysteries of Winterthurn is a work of haunting intensity, brilliantly conceived and executed, a terrifying portrait of a fallen world. And yet, as one senses the presence of light in the empirical datum of darkness, this phenomenology of the demonic hints at a mysterious presence of quite another kind, the ultimate paradox that shatters all finite categories of reason.
My Heart Laid Bare
Oates paints a dark vision of America as a land where love of money is the root of everything and people are doomed to repeat their crimes. Oates, who rarely falters throughout this epic, does offer glimmers of justice and hope. But ultimately she has written an American tragedy.
48 Clues into the Disappearance of My Sister
So much more than the kind of standard-issue unreliable narrator, Georgene is a vastly complex character whose every word, every use of parentheses and italics, must be examined closely for intent. A thematically and stylistically ambitious novel that displays the author’s literary gifts to their maximum effect.
Babysitter
Oates paints an unflinching portrait of 1970s upper-middle-class America, touching on issues of racism, classism, and institutional abuse while exploring society’s tendency to value women solely in relation to the role they fill—be it wife, mother, or sexual object. A searing work of slow-burning domestic noir.
Extenuating Circumstances: Stories of Crime and Suspense
Oates typically leads her readers to focus on one plot element, while subtly rearranging the emotional landscape, leaving them in exhilaratingly uncharted territory. Spanning the first 30 years of Oates’s writing career, these stories aren’t for the faint of heart, but they’re a joy for anyone who appreciates the work of a master storyteller.
The Buck
This is such a terrible story. It’s a story I have told a dozen times, never knowing why. Why I can’t forget it, I mean. Why it’s lodged so deep in me … like an arrow through the neck.
The Ruins of Contracoeur and Other Presences
The six stories in the collection show Oates’ mastery of the form, across grisly body horror, experimental reflection, deep character study and sharp revenge fantasy. Across widely varying tone, from black comedy to utterly chilling, Oates is a writer utterly in command of her voice.
Celestial Timepiece 