The Accursed: Which Cover is Best?
Joyce Carol Oates’s novel The Accursed has been published with two very different dust jacket illustrations. Ron Charles writes in the Washington Post that they provide “a surprising study in national […]
JCO’s Gothic Quintet Considered
Matthew Surridge, writing for Blackgate.com, consideres each book in Joyce Carol Oates’s “Gothic” series, in preparation for The Accursed, the final book of the series to be published. Bellefleur “Published in 1980, Joyce Carol Oates’ novel Bellefleur is an astonishing gothic tour-de-force, a breathtaking and phantasmagoric book that whirls through generations of an aristocratic New England family. It deals in […]
Joyce Carol Oates on bringing Foxfire back to the big screen
Foxfire: Confessions of a Girl Gang, the film based on a book written in the 1990s about a small town in the 1950s, has its world premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival on Monday night and its theme is more timely than ever, says its author, Joyce Carol Oates.
The Crosswicks Horror: At Last
Admirers of Joyce Carol Oates’s brilliant Gothic novels ( Bellefleur; A Bloodsmoor Romance; Mysteries of Winterthurn; My Heart Laid Bare ) will be pleased to hear that the final book of this thematic series, known for years as “The Crosswicks Horror,” is currently being “revised / recast / rewritten.” The new title is “The Accursed.” View early manuscript images of The Crosswicks Horror (see: […]
Upon the Sweeping Flood at 45
Oates has written many great books, and this one, though not discussed as often as her award-winning novels, is, in my opinion, her best work, and deserves to be mentioned as one of the best collections of stories in the latter half of the twentieth century.
Joyce Carol Oates on shortlist for 2011 International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award
Joyce Carol Oates’s novel Little Bird of Heaven is one of the ten finalists for the 2011 International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award. She has had nine previous novels on the […]
Unethical, Immoral. Crude and Cruel and Unconscionable
On Valentine’s Day, 2011, a well-known critic at a prominent newspaper performed a hatchet-job on Joyce Carol Oates, questioning the reality of her grief, mocking her friendship with Joan Didion, and trivializing the decades-long editorial work of her deceased husband, Raymond J. Smith. How delicately must we tread around this situation?
Life after Ray: JCO in The Atlantic
Joyce Carol Oates contributes to the August 2010 Fiction Issue of The Atlantic a non-fiction piece, I Am Sorry to Inform You, which is most likely an excerpt of her forthcoming […]
The Poisoned Kiss Revealed
The Poisoned Kiss and Other Stories from the Portuguese—Joyce Carol Oates’s numinous and unusual short story collection from 1975—has been considered an anomaly among her books, and something of a mystery.
9 Honey Brook Drive
I am no realtor, but I must question the wisdom of leaving out of this listing such significant facts as this home being inspiration for parts of Bellefleur and American Appetites: surely more concrete and salient data than the elusive jargon of “square footage” and “lots.”
Joyce Carol Oates on Ted Kennedy
As Edward Kennedy is lauded for his tremendous accomplishments as a Senator, Joyce Carol Oates remembers a voiceless victim from his past.
James Toback’s documentary: 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 […]
Sylvia Plath’s Legacy
With the recent death by hanging of Nicholas Hughes, son of Sylvia Plath, the New York Times asks “Why the Plath Legacy Lives”? Joyce Carol Oates notes, The suicide of […]
Fifty Years
When she was a junior at Syracuse University, JCO entered her short story “In the Old World” in the Mademoiselle College Fiction Competition. The story was selected as co-winner of the competition (two winners each year) and was published in the August 1959 issue.
JCO Miscellany: Four
A Hollywood film based on Joyce Carol Oates’s novella Rape: A Love Story is scheduled to begin shooting in June. The film will star Samuel L. Jackson, Maria Bello, and […]
JCO Miscellany: Three
John Ranard We note the death of social-documentary photographer John Ranard last month, best known to Joyce Carol Oates fans for his work included in her book On Boxing. Quoted […]
Celestial Timepiece 