A Joyce Carol Oates Patchwork
You begin your journey on so high an elevation that your destination is already in sight—a city that you have visited many times and that, moreover, is indicated on a traveler’s map you have carefully folded up to take along with you. You are a lover of maps, and you have already committed this map to memory, but you bring it with you just the same.
The tales in this collection are translated from an imaginary work, Azulejos, by an imaginary author, Fernandes de Briao. To the best of my knowledge he has no existence and has never existed, though without his very real guidance I would not have had access to the mystical “Portugal” of the stories …
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.
Celestial Timepiece 