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 and France
Anne Korkeakivi writes about American literary fiction finding an audience in France. I asked Joyce Carol Oates about her avid French following. For me, the very sound of French spoken is musical, beautiful, subtly cadenced. Her involvement with French language began in high school; as an adult she has taught and published French literature. “This is my background for writing, and my relationship […]
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.
Joyce Carol Oates on Zadie Smith
Joyce Carol Oates reviews Zadie Smith’s NW in the New York Review of Books: In its assiduously detailed evocation of the multicultural neighborhood of Willesden, in northwestern London, where in […]
Is Dickens the greatest of English novelists?
Joyce Carol Oates reviews Charles Dickens: A Life by Claire Tomalin in the New York Review of Books: Is Dickens the greatest of English novelists? Few would contest that he is […]
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: […]
Wild Nights at McCarter!
Princeton’s McCarter Theatre presented readings yesterday of two new one-act plays by Joyce Carol Oates: Wild Nights, about a couple who purchase an android Emily Dickinson to liven up their […]
JCO on Hortense Calisher
The recent passing of Hortense Calisher prompted me to review Joyce Carol Oates’s writings about her. There were mentions in the Journal, and in an essay, “Imaginary Cities: America,” as well as book reviews of Calisher’s The New Yorkers and Mysteries of Motion. Of the latter, JCO writes: This massive, densely plotted novel of the not-very- distant future is Miss […]
My Sister, My Love is John Barth with Heart
Kevin Morris and Glenn Altschuler of The Huffington Post offer a perceptive and entertaining review of Joyce Carol Oates’s My Sister, My Love: “Oates’ intentions are signaled with a quotation that precedes the book. In ‘Aesthetics of Composition’ (1846), we learn, E. A. Pym opined that ‘the death of a beautiful child is unquestionably the most poetical topic in the world.’ […]
JCO on the Fringe
Two Joyce Carol Oates-related events will be presented at The New York International Fringe Festival (FringeNYC) in August: The first is a play based on JCO’s novel Zombie. The play is adapted and performed by Bill Connington, who notes that “by the end of the play … you might feel some empathy for a man who has done horrible things. […]
Celestial Timepiece 