Joyce Carol Oates is an American author. Oates published her first book in 1963 and has since published over fifty novels, as well as many volumes of short stories, poetry, and nonfiction. Her novel
themThem by Joyce Carol Oates is the third novel in The Wonderland Quartet, first published in 1969.-Plot:Them explores the complex struggles of American life through three down-on-their-luck characters—Loretta, Maureen and Jules—who are attempting to reach normality and the American dream through...
(1969) won the
National Book AwardThe National Book Awards are a set of American literary awards. Started in 1950, the Awards are presented annually to American authors for literature published in the current year. In 1989 the National Book Foundation, a nonprofit organization which now oversees and manages the National Book...
, and her novels
Black Water-Plot introduction:Kelly Kelleher, a twenty-six-year-old magazine writer, meets a United States Senator on whom she wrote her thesis at a Fourth of July party. "The Senator," as he is referred to in the novel , plans to take her to his hotel for a romantic rendezvous, but a car accident plunges...
(1992),
What I Lived For (1994), and
BlondeBlonde is a bestselling 2000 historical novel by Joyce Carol Oates that chronicles the inner life of Marilyn Monroe, though Oates insists that the novel is a work of fiction that should not be regarded as a biography. It was a finalist for the National Book Award...
(2000) were nominated for the
Pulitzer PrizeThe Pulitzer Prize is a U.S. award for achievements in newspaper and online journalism, literature and musical composition. It was established by American publisher Joseph Pulitzer and is administered by Columbia University in New York City...
.
As of 2008, Oates is the Roger S. Berlind '52 Professor in the Humanities with the Program in Creative Writing at
Princeton UniversityPrinceton University is a private research university located in Princeton, New Jersey, United States. The school is one of the eight universities of the Ivy League, and is one of the nine Colonial Colleges founded before the American Revolution....
, where she has taught since 1978.
Early life and education
Oates was born in
LockportLockport is a city in Niagara County, New York, United States. The population was 21,165 at the 2010 census. The name is derived from a set of Erie canal locks within the city. Lockport is the county seat of Niagara County and is surrounded by the town of Lockport...
,
New YorkNew York is a state in the Northeastern region of the United States. It is the nation's third most populous state. New York is bordered by New Jersey and Pennsylvania to the south, and by Connecticut, Massachusetts and Vermont to the east...
to Carolina Oates, a homemaker, and Frederic Oates, a tool and dye designer. She was raised
CatholicThe word catholic comes from the Greek phrase , meaning "on the whole," "according to the whole" or "in general", and is a combination of the Greek words meaning "about" and meaning "whole"...
but is now an atheist. Oates grew up in the working-class farming community of
MillersportMillersport, New York is an unincorporated hamlet in the town of Clarence in Erie County, New York, USA. It is the namesake of the Millersport Highway, known legally as New York State Route 263.-References:...
, New York, and characterized hers as "a happy, close-knit and unextraordinary family for our time, place and economic status". Her paternal grandmother, Blanche Woodside, lived with the family and was "very close" to Joyce. After Blanche's death, Joyce learned that Blanche's father had killed himself and Blanche had subsequently concealed her Jewish heritage; Oates eventually drew on aspects of her grandmother's life in writing the 2007 novel
The Gravedigger's DaughterThe Gravedigger's Daughter is a 2007 novel by Joyce Carol Oates. It is her 36th published novel. The novel was based on the life of Oates's grandmother, whose father, a gravedigger settled in rural America, injured his wife, threatened his daughter, and then committed suicide...
. A brother, Fred Junior, was born in 1943, and a sister, Lynn Ann, who is severely autistic, was born in 1956.
At the beginning of her education, Oates attended the same
one-room schoolOne-room schools were commonplace throughout rural portions of various countries including the United States, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, United Kingdom, Ireland and Spain in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. In most rural and small town schools, all of the students met in a single room...
her mother attended as a child. She became interested in reading at an early age, and remembers Blanche's gift of
Lewis CarrollCharles Lutwidge Dodgson , better known by the pseudonym Lewis Carroll , was an English author, mathematician, logician, Anglican deacon and photographer. His most famous writings are Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and its sequel Through the Looking-Glass, as well as the poems "The Hunting of the...
's
Alice's Adventures in WonderlandAlice's Adventures in Wonderland is an 1865 novel written by English author Charles Lutwidge Dodgson under the pseudonym Lewis Carroll. It tells of a girl named Alice who falls down a rabbit hole into a fantasy world populated by peculiar, anthropomorphic creatures...
as "the great treasure of my childhood, and the most profound literary influence of my life. This was love at first sight!" In her early teens, she devoured the writing of
William FaulknerWilliam Cuthbert Faulkner was an American writer from Oxford, Mississippi. Faulkner worked in a variety of media; he wrote novels, short stories, a play, poetry, essays and screenplays during his career...
,
Fyodor DostoevskyFyodor Mikhaylovich Dostoyevsky was a Russian writer of novels, short stories and essays. He is best known for his novels Crime and Punishment, The Idiot and The Brothers Karamazov....
,
Henry David ThoreauHenry David Thoreau was an American author, poet, philosopher, abolitionist, naturalist, tax resister, development critic, surveyor, historian, and leading transcendentalist...
,
Ernest HemingwayErnest Miller Hemingway was an American author and journalist. His economic and understated style had a strong influence on 20th-century fiction, while his life of adventure and his public image influenced later generations. Hemingway produced most of his work between the mid-1920s and the...
,
Charlotte BrontëCharlotte Brontë was an English novelist and poet, the eldest of the three Brontë sisters who survived into adulthood, whose novels are English literature standards...
, and
Emily BrontëEmily Jane Brontë 30 July 1818 – 19 December 1848) was an English novelist and poet, best remembered for her only novel, Wuthering Heights, now considered a classic of English literature. Emily was the third eldest of the four surviving Brontë siblings, between the youngest Anne and her brother...
, whose "influences remain very deep". Oates began writing at the age of 14, when Blanche gave her a typewriter. Oates later transferred to several bigger, suburban schools, and graduated from
Williamsville South High SchoolWilliamsville South High School is a high school located in Williamsville, New York, a suburb of Buffalo, New York. South is one of three high schools in the Williamsville Central School District, along with Williamsville North High School and Williamsville East High School.-Origins, 1853-1892:In...
in 1956, where she worked for her high school newspaper. She was the first in her family to complete high school.
Oates won a scholarship to attend
Syracuse UniversitySyracuse University is a private research university located in Syracuse, New York, United States. Its roots can be traced back to Genesee Wesleyan Seminary, founded by the Methodist Episcopal Church in 1832, which also later founded Genesee College...
, where she joined
Phi MuPhi Mu is the second oldest female fraternal organization established in the United States. It was founded at Wesleyan College in Macon, Georgia. The organization was founded as the Philomathean Society on January 4, 1852, and was announced publicly on March 4 of the same year...
. Oates found Syracuse "a very exciting place academically and intellectually", and trained herself by "writing novel after novel and always throwing them out when I completed them." It was not until this point that Oates began reading the work of
D. H. LawrenceDavid Herbert Richards Lawrence was an English novelist, poet, playwright, essayist, literary critic and painter who published as D. H. Lawrence. His collected works represent an extended reflection upon the dehumanising effects of modernity and industrialisation...
,
Flannery O'ConnorMary Flannery O'Connor was an American novelist, short-story writer and essayist. An important voice in American literature, O'Connor wrote two novels and 32 short stories, as well as a number of reviews and commentaries...
,
Thomas MannThomas Mann was a German novelist, short story writer, social critic, philanthropist, essayist, and 1929 Nobel Prize laureate, known for his series of highly symbolic and ironic epic novels and novellas, noted for their insight into the psychology of the artist and the intellectual...
, and
Franz KafkaFranz Kafka was a culturally influential German-language author of short stories and novels. Contemporary critics and academics, including Vladimir Nabokov, regard Kafka as one of the best writers of the 20th century...
, though, she noted, "these influences are still quite strong, pervasive." At the age of nineteen, she won the "college short story" contest sponsored by
MademoiselleMademoiselle was an influential women's magazine first published in 1935 by Street and Smith and later acquired by Condé Nast Publications....
. Oates graduated Syracuse as valedictorian in 1960, and received her M.A. from the
University of Wisconsin–MadisonThe University of Wisconsin–Madison is a public research university located in Madison, Wisconsin, United States. Founded in 1848, UW–Madison is the flagship campus of the University of Wisconsin System. It became a land-grant institution in 1866...
in 1961.
Evelyn Shrifte, president of the
Vanguard PressThe Vanguard Press was a United States publishing house established with a $100,000 grant from the left wing American Fund for Public Service, better known as the Garland Fund. Throughout the 1920s, Vanguard Press issued an array of books on radical topics, including studies of the Soviet Union,...
, met Oates soon after she received her master's degree. "She was fresh out of school, and I thought she was a genius," Shrifte said. Oates' first book, the short-story collection
By the North GateBy the North Gate is a collection of short stories by Joyce Carol Oates. It was the author's first book, first published by Vanguard Press in 1963.It was last published in 1971 by Fawcett...
, was published by Vanguard in 1963.
Literary career
The Vanguard Press published Oates' first novel,
With Shuddering FallWith Shuddering Fall is the first novel by Joyce Carol Oates. It was published by Vanguard Press in 1964.The novel tells the story of two people, Shar and Karen, and their disastrous love affair....
(1964), when she was 26 years old. In 1966, she published "
Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?"Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?" is a frequently anthologized short story written by Joyce Carol Oates. The story first appeared in the Fall 1966 edition of Epoch Magazine. It was inspired by three Tucson, Arizona murders committed by Charles Schmid, which were profiled in Life magazine...
", a short story dedicated to
Bob DylanBob Dylan is an American singer-songwriter, musician, poet, film director and painter. He has been a major and profoundly influential figure in popular music and culture for five decades. Much of his most celebrated work dates from the 1960s when he was an informal chronicler and a seemingly...
and written after listening to his song "
It's All Over Now, Baby Blue"It's All Over Now, Baby Blue" is a song written and performed by Bob Dylan and featured on his Bringing It All Back Home album, released on March 22, 1965 by Columbia Records . The song was originally recorded on January 15, 1965 with Dylan's acoustic guitar and harmonica and William E. Lee's bass...
." The story is loosely based on the serial killer
Charles SchmidCharles Howard 'Smitty' Schmid, Jr. , also known as "The Pied Piper of Tucson," was an American serial killer. His crimes, profiled in the March 4, 1966 issue of Life Magazine, are the basis for "Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?," a short story by Joyce Carol Oates...
, also known as "The Pied Piper of Tucson". The story was frequently anthologized and was adapted into the 1985 film
Smooth TalkSmooth Talk is a 1985 drama film, loosely based on Joyce Carol Oates' 1966 short story Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?, which was in turn inspired by the Tucson murders committed by Charles Schmid. The protagonist and main character, Connie Wyatt, is played by Laura Dern...
, starring
Laura DernLaura Elizabeth Dern is an American actress, film director and producer. Dern has acted in such films as Smooth Talk , Blue Velvet , Fat Man and Little Boy , Wild at Heart , Jurassic Park and October Sky...
. In 2008, Oates said that of all her published work, she is most noted for "Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?". Another noted early short story, "In a Region of Ice" (1967), dramatizes the drift into protest against the world of education and sober, established society of his parents, depression and eventual murder-cum-suicide act of a young, gifted Jewish-American student. Like a number of other novels and short stories in her body of work, this was inspired by a real-life incident, and Oates had been acquainted with the model of her protagonist. She revisited this subject in the title story of her collection
Last Days (1985).
Oates's novel
themThem by Joyce Carol Oates is the third novel in The Wonderland Quartet, first published in 1969.-Plot:Them explores the complex struggles of American life through three down-on-their-luck characters—Loretta, Maureen and Jules—who are attempting to reach normality and the American dream through...
(1969) received the
National Book AwardThe National Book Awards are a set of American literary awards. Started in 1950, the Awards are presented annually to American authors for literature published in the current year. In 1989 the National Book Foundation, a nonprofit organization which now oversees and manages the National Book...
in 1970; it is set in Detroit during a time span from the 1930s to the 1960s, most of it in black ghetto neighborhoods, and deals openly with crime, drugs, and racial/class conflicts. Again, some of the key characters and events were based on real people whom Oates had known or heard of during her years in the city. Since then she has published an average of two books a year. Frequent topics in her work include rural poverty, sexual abuse, class tensions, desire for power, female childhood and adolescence, and occasionally the supernatural. Violence is a constant in her work, even leading Oates to have written an essay in response to the question, "Why Is Your Writing So Violent?" In 1990 she discussed her novel,
Because It Is Bitter, And Because It Is My Heart, which also deals with themes of racial tension, and described “the experience of writing [the novel]” as “so intense it seemed almost electric”. She is a fan of
poetA poet is a person who writes poetry. A poet's work can be literal, meaning that his work is derived from a specific event, or metaphorical, meaning that his work can take on many meanings and forms. Poets have existed since antiquity, in nearly all languages, and have produced works that vary...
and novelist
Sylvia PlathSylvia Plath was an American poet, novelist and short story writer. Born in Massachusetts, she studied at Smith College and Newnham College, Cambridge before receiving acclaim as a professional poet and writer...
, describing Plath's sole novel
The Bell JarThe Bell Jar is American writer and poet Sylvia Plath's only novel, which was originally published under the pseudonym "Victoria Lucas" in 1963. The novel is semi-autobiographical with the names of places and people changed...
as a "near perfect work of art"; but though Oates has often been compared to Plath, she disavows Plath's romanticism about suicide and among her characters, she favors cunning, hardy survivors, both women and men. Oates' concern with violence and other traditionally masculine topics has won her the respect of such male authors as
Norman MailerNorman Kingsley Mailer was an American novelist, journalist, essayist, poet, playwright, screenwriter, and film director.Along with Truman Capote, Joan Didion, Hunter S...
. In the early 1980s, Oates began writing stories in the Gothic and horror genres; in her foray into these genres, Oates said she was "deeply influenced" by Kafka and felt "a writerly kinship" with
James JoyceJames Augustine Aloysius Joyce was an Irish novelist and poet, considered to be one of the most influential writers in the modernist avant-garde of the early 20th century...
.
In 1996, Oates published
We Were the MulvaneysWe Were the Mulvaneys is a novel written by Joyce Carol Oates and was published in 1996. We Were the Mulvaneys was featured in Oprah's Book Club in 2001.The Mulvaneys, a family living in the small, rural town of Mt...
, a novel following the disintegration of an American family, which became a best-seller after being selected by
Oprah's Book ClubOprah's Book Club was a book discussion club segment of the American talk show The Oprah Winfrey Show, highlighting books chosen by host Oprah Winfrey. Winfrey started the book club in 1996, selecting a new novel for viewers to read and discuss each month. The Club ended its 15-year run, along with...
in 2001. In the 1990s and early 2000s, Oates wrote several books, mostly mystery novels, under the pen names "Rosamond Smith" and "Lauren Kelly."
For more than twenty-five years, Oates has been rumored to be a "favorite" to win the
Nobel Prize in LiteratureSince 1901, the Nobel Prize in Literature has been awarded annually to an author from any country who has, in the words from the will of Alfred Nobel, produced "in the field of literature the most outstanding work in an ideal direction"...
by oddsmakers and critics. Her papers, held at Syracuse University, include seventeen unpublished short stories and four unpublished or unfinished novellas. Oates has said that most of her early unpublished work was "cheerfully thrown away."
One review of Oates's 1970 story collection
The Wheel of Love characterized her as an author "of considerable talent" but at that time "far from being a great writer."
Teaching career
Oates taught in
BeaumontBeaumont is a city in and county seat of Jefferson County, Texas, United States, within the Beaumont–Port Arthur Metropolitan Statistical Area. The city's population was 118,296 at the 2010 census. With Port Arthur and Orange, it forms the Golden Triangle, a major industrial area on the...
,
TexasTexas is the second largest U.S. state by both area and population, and the largest state by area in the contiguous United States.The name, based on the Caddo word "Tejas" meaning "friends" or "allies", was applied by the Spanish to the Caddo themselves and to the region of their settlement in...
, for a year before moving to Detroit in 1962, where she began teaching at the University of Detroit. Influenced by the
Vietnam warThe Vietnam War was a Cold War-era military conflict that occurred in Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia from 1 November 1955 to the fall of Saigon on 30 April 1975. This war followed the First Indochina War and was fought between North Vietnam, supported by its communist allies, and the government of...
, the 1967
Detroit race riotsThe 1967 Detroit riot, also known as the 12th Street riot, was a civil disturbance in Detroit, Michigan, that began in the early morning hours of Sunday, July 23, 1967. The precipitating event was a police raid of an unlicensed, after-hours bar then known as a blind pig, on the corner of 12th and...
, and a job offer, in 1968 Oates moved with her husband across the river to
OntarioOntario is a province of Canada, located in east-central Canada. It is Canada's most populous province and second largest in total area. It is home to the nation's most populous city, Toronto, and the nation's capital, Ottawa....
, and teaching positions at the
University of WindsorThe University of Windsor is a public comprehensive and research university in Windsor, Ontario, Canada. It is Canada's southernmost university. It has a student population of approximately 15,000 full-time and part-time undergraduate students and over 1000 graduate students...
. In 1978, she moved to Princeton and began teaching at
Princeton UniversityPrinceton University is a private research university located in Princeton, New Jersey, United States. The school is one of the eight universities of the Ivy League, and is one of the nine Colonial Colleges founded before the American Revolution....
in
New JerseyNew Jersey is a state in the Northeastern and Middle Atlantic regions of the United States. , its population was 8,791,894. It is bordered on the north and east by the state of New York, on the southeast and south by the Atlantic Ocean, on the west by Pennsylvania and on the southwest by Delaware...
.
In 1995, Princeton undergraduate
Jonathan Safran FoerJonathan Safran Foer is an American author best known for his novels Everything Is Illuminated and Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close...
took an introductory writing course with Oates, who took an interest in Foer's writing, telling him that he had "that most important of writerly qualities, energy". Foer later recalled that "she was the first person to ever make me think I should try to write in any sort of serious way. And my life really changed after that." Oates served as the advisor to Foer's senior thesis, an early version of his novel
Everything Is IlluminatedEverything Is Illuminated is the first novel by the American writer Jonathan Safran Foer, published in 2002. It was adapted into a film by the same name starring Elijah Wood and Eugene Hütz in 2005.-Plot summary:...
, which was published to wide acclaim in 1999.
Personal life
While studying at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, Oates met
Raymond J. SmithRaymond Joseph Smith was for more than thirty years the editor of Ontario Review, a literary magazine, and the Ontario Review Press, a literary book publisher, and for more than 45 years the husband of writer Joyce Carol Oates....
, a fellow graduate student, whom she married in 1961. Smith became a professor of 18th-century literature, and later an editor and publisher. Together the couple founded
The Ontario Review, a literary magazine, in 1974, on which Oates served as associate editor. In 1980, Oates and Smith founded Ontario Review Books, an independent publishing house. In 2004, Oates described the partnership as "a marriage of like minds—both my husband and I are so interested in literature and we read the same books; he'll be reading a book and then I'll read it—we trade and we talk about our reading at meal times[...]it's a very collaborative and imaginative marriage". Smith died of complications from
pneumoniaPneumonia is an inflammatory condition of the lung—especially affecting the microscopic air sacs —associated with fever, chest symptoms, and a lack of air space on a chest X-ray. Pneumonia is typically caused by an infection but there are a number of other causes...
on February 18, 2008. In April 2008, Oates wrote to an interviewer, "Since my husband's unexpected death, I really have very little energy[...]My marriage—my love for my husband—seems to have come first in my life, rather than my writing. Set beside his death, the future of my writing scarcely interests me at the moment." In early 2009 Oates married Professor Charles Gross, of the Psychology Department and Neuroscience Institute at Princeton. who had been married twice previously. Oates met Gross at a dinner party at her home six months after Smith's death.
Oates is devoted to running, and has written that, "[i]deally, the runner who's a writer is running through the land- and cityscapes of her fiction, like a ghost in a real setting." While running, Oates mentally envisions scenes in her novels and works out structural problems in already-written drafts; she formulated the germ of her novel
You Must Remember ThisYou Must Remember This is a novel by Joyce Carol Oates. It tells the story of Enid Maria, a girl who falls in love with her uncle, a professional boxer. It also is about her family, the Stevicks, and their thriving life in Port Oriskany, a fictional industrial city in upstate New York....
(1987) while running, when she "glanced up and saw the ruins of a railroad bridge", which reminded her of "a mythical upstate New York city in the right place".
In 1973, Oates began keeping a detailed journal documenting her personal and literary life; it eventually grew to "more than 4,000 single-spaced typewritten pages". In 2008, Oates said she had "moved away from keeping a formal journal" and instead preserves copies of her e-mails. Oates is a member of the Board of Trustees of the
John Simon Guggenheim Memorial FoundationThe John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation was founded in 1925 by Mr. and Mrs. Simon Guggenheim in memory of their son, who died April 26, 1922...
.
Productivity
Oates writes in
longhandCursive, also known as joined-up writing, joint writing, or running writing, is any style of handwriting in which the symbols of the language are written in a simplified and/or flowing manner, generally for the purpose of making writing easier or faster...
, working from "8 till 1 every day, then again for two or three hours in the evening." Her prolificacy has become one of her best-known attributes;
The New York TimesThe New York Times is an American daily newspaper founded and continuously published in New York City since 1851. The New York Times has won 106 Pulitzer Prizes, the most of any news organization...
wrote in 1989 that Oates's "name is synonymous with productivity", and in 2004,
The GuardianThe Guardian, formerly known as The Manchester Guardian , is a British national daily newspaper in the Berliner format...
noted that "Nearly every review of an Oates book, it seems, begins with a list [of the number of books she has published]".
In a journal entry written in the 1970s, Oates sarcastically addressed her critics, writing, "So many books! so many! Obviously JCO has a full career behind her, if one chooses to look at it that way; many more titles and she might as well... what?...give up all hopes for a 'reputation'?[...]but I work hard, and long, and as the hours roll by I seem to create more than I anticipate; more, certainly, than the literary world allows for a 'serious' writer. Yet I have more stories to tell, and more novels[...]". In
The New York Review of BooksThe New York Review of Books is a fortnightly magazine with articles on literature, culture and current affairs. Published in New York City, it takes as its point of departure that the discussion of important books is itself an indispensable literary activity...
in 2007,
Michael DirdaMichael Dirda , a Fulbright Fellowship recipient, is a Pulitzer Prize–winning book critic for the Washington Post.-Career:Having studied at Oberlin College for his undergraduate degree, Dirda took a Ph.D. from Cornell University in comparative literature. In 1978 Dirda started writing for the...
suggested that disparaging criticism of Oates "derives from reviewer's angst: How does one judge a new book by Oates when one is not familiar with most of the backlist? Where does one start?"
Several publications have published lists of what they deem the best Joyce Carol Oates books, designed to help introduce readers to the author's daunting oeuvre. In a 2003 article titled "Joyce Carol Oates for dummies",
The Rocky Mountain News recommended starting with her early short stories and the novels
A Garden of Earthly DelightsA Garden Of Earthly Delights by Joyce Carol Oates is the first book of "The Wonderland Quartet." It follows Clara Walpole's ill-fated life and the four men who shaped it: Clara’s father, a bitter migrant farm worker; Lowry, who whisks the teenage Clara away and tempts her with love; Revere, a...
(1967),
themThem by Joyce Carol Oates is the third novel in The Wonderland Quartet, first published in 1969.-Plot:Them explores the complex struggles of American life through three down-on-their-luck characters—Loretta, Maureen and Jules—who are attempting to reach normality and the American dream through...
(1969),
WonderlandWonderland is a 1971 novel by Joyce Carol Oates that follows the character Jesse Vogel from his childhood in the Great Depression to his marriage and career in the late 1960s...
(1971),
Black Water-Plot introduction:Kelly Kelleher, a twenty-six-year-old magazine writer, meets a United States Senator on whom she wrote her thesis at a Fourth of July party. "The Senator," as he is referred to in the novel , plans to take her to his hotel for a romantic rendezvous, but a car accident plunges...
(1992), and
BlondeBlonde is a bestselling 2000 historical novel by Joyce Carol Oates that chronicles the inner life of Marilyn Monroe, though Oates insists that the novel is a work of fiction that should not be regarded as a biography. It was a finalist for the National Book Award...
(2000). In 2006,
The TimesThe Times is a British daily national newspaper, first published in London in 1785 under the title The Daily Universal Register . The Times and its sister paper The Sunday Times are published by Times Newspapers Limited, a subsidiary since 1981 of News International...
listed
them,
On Boxing (1987),
Black Water, and
High Lonesome: New & Selected Stories, 1966-2006High Lonesome: New and Selected Stories, 1966–2006 is a collection of short stories by author Joyce Carol Oates. First published by Ecco in 2006, it is the author's largest collection of short stories....
(2006) as "The Pick of Joyce Carol Oates". In 2007,
Entertainment WeeklyEntertainment Weekly is an American magazine, published by the Time division of Time Warner, that covers film, television, music, broadway theatre, books and popular culture...
listed their Oates "favorites" as
Wonderland,
Black Water,
Blonde,
I'll Take You ThereI'll Take You There is a 2002 novel by Joyce Carol Oates.-Plot summary:A smart student, Anellia, joins a sorority in Syracuse, New York. Soon enough, she crumbles under the exorbitant debt she runs up...
(2002), and
The FallsThe Falls is a novel by Joyce Carol Oates, originally published in 2004 by the Ecco Press, and winner of the 2005 Prix Femina Etranger.It tells the story of Ariah, a woman whose husband threw himself over Niagara Falls on their honeymoon...
(2004). In 2003, Oates herself said that she thinks she will be remembered for, and would most want a first-time Oates reader to read,
them and
Blonde, though she added that "I could as easily have chosen a number of titles."
For reference to her personal life and recent book "A Widow's Story: A Memoir" see the PBS/News Hour show originally broadcast on February 3, 2011.
Select awards and honors
Winner:
- 1968: M. L. Rosenthal Award
Macha Louis Rosenthal was an American poet and editor. The W. B. Yeats Society of New York renamed their award for achievement in Yeats studies the M. L. Rosenthal Award after Rosenthal's death...
, National Institute of Arts and Letters - A Garden of Earthly Delights
- 1970: National Book Award
The National Book Awards are a set of American literary awards. Started in 1950, the Awards are presented annually to American authors for literature published in the current year. In 1989 the National Book Foundation, a nonprofit organization which now oversees and manages the National Book...
- themThem by Joyce Carol Oates is the third novel in The Wonderland Quartet, first published in 1969.-Plot:Them explores the complex struggles of American life through three down-on-their-luck characters—Loretta, Maureen and Jules—who are attempting to reach normality and the American dream through...
- 1973: O. Henry Award
The O. Henry Award is the only yearly award given to short stories of exceptional merit. The award is named after the American master of the form, O. Henry....
- "The Dead"
- 1990: Rea Award for the Short Story
The Rea Award for the Short Story is an annual award given to a living American or Canadian author chosen for unusually significant contributions to short story fiction.-The Award:...
- 1996: Bram Stoker Award for Novel - Zombie
- 1996: PEN/Malamud Award
The PEN/Malamud Award and Memorial Reading honors "excellence in the art of the short story", and is awarded annually by the PEN/Faulkner Foundation. The selection committee is composed of PEN/Faulkner directors and representatives of Bernard Malamud's literary executors.The award was first given...
for Excellence in the Art of the Short Story
- 2002: Peggy V. Helmerich Distinguished Author Award
The Peggy V. Helmerich Distinguished Author Award is an American literary prize awarded by the Tulsa Library Trust in Tulsa, Oklahoma. It is bestowed annually upon an "internationally acclaimed" author who has "written a distinguished body of work and made a major contribution to the field of...
- 2003: Kenyon Review Award for Literary Achievement
- 2005: Prix Femina Etranger
The Prix Femina is a French literary prize created in 1904 by 22 writers for the magazine La Vie heureuse . The prize is decided each year by an exclusively female jury, although the authors of the winning works do not have to be women...
- The FallsThe Falls is a novel by Joyce Carol Oates, originally published in 2004 by the Ecco Press, and winner of the 2005 Prix Femina Etranger.It tells the story of Ariah, a woman whose husband threw himself over Niagara Falls on their honeymoon...
- 2006: Chicago Tribune
The Chicago Tribune is a major daily newspaper based in Chicago, Illinois, and the flagship publication of the Tribune Company. Formerly self-styled as the "World's Greatest Newspaper" , it remains the most read daily newspaper of the Chicago metropolitan area and the Great Lakes region and is...
Literary Prize
- 2010: National Humanities Medal
The National Humanities Medal honors individuals or groups whose work has deepened the nation’s understanding of the humanities, broadened citizens’ engagement with the humanities, or helped preserve and expand Americans’ access to important resources in the humanities.The award, given by the...
- 2011: Honorary Doctor of Arts, the University of Pennsylvania
Nominated:
- 1968: National Book Award - A Garden of Earthly Delights
- 1969: National Book Award - Expensive People
- 1972: National Book Award - Wonderland
- 1990: National Book Award - Because It Is Bitter, and Because It Is My Heart
- 1992: National Book Critics Circle Award for Fiction - Black Water
- 1993: Pulitzer Prize
The Pulitzer Prize is a U.S. award for achievements in newspaper and online journalism, literature and musical composition. It was established by American publisher Joseph Pulitzer and is administered by Columbia University in New York City...
- Black Water
- 1995: PEN/Faulkner Award
The PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction is awarded annually by the PEN/Faulkner Foundation to the authors of the year's best works of fiction by living American citizens. The winner receives US $15,000 and each of four runners-up receives US $5000. The foundation brings the winner and runners-up to...
- What I Lived For
Novels
- With Shuddering Fall
With Shuddering Fall is the first novel by Joyce Carol Oates. It was published by Vanguard Press in 1964.The novel tells the story of two people, Shar and Karen, and their disastrous love affair....
(1964)
- A Garden of Earthly Delights
A Garden Of Earthly Delights by Joyce Carol Oates is the first book of "The Wonderland Quartet." It follows Clara Walpole's ill-fated life and the four men who shaped it: Clara’s father, a bitter migrant farm worker; Lowry, who whisks the teenage Clara away and tempts her with love; Revere, a...
(1967)
- Expensive People (1968)
- them
Them or THEM may refer to:*Them, the English third person accusative plural personal pronoun; see English personal pronouns* Them, Denmark, a town in Silkeborg municipality* Them , an Northern Irish rock band featuring Van Morrison...
(1969)
- Wonderland
-Literature:*Wonderland , the setting of Lewis Carroll's book Alice's Adventures in Wonderland*Wonderland , a 1971 novel by Joyce Carol Oates...
(1971)
- Do With Me What You Will (1973)
- The Assassins
The Assassins were a masked professional wrestling tag team from the 1960s to the 1980s. Jody Hamilton, the original Assassin, was a member throughout the various incarnations of the team, teaming with Tom Renesto, Roger Smith, Randy Colley and Hercules Hernandez while donning the masks.-Career:The...
(1975)
- Childwold (1976)
- Son of the Morning
Son of the Morning is the second studio album by American metalcore band Oh, Sleeper. It was released on August 25, 2009, through Solid State Records.-Background and concept:...
(1978)
- Cybele
Cybele , was a Phrygian form of the Earth Mother or Great Mother. As with Greek Gaia , her Minoan equivalent Rhea and some aspects of Demeter, Cybele embodies the fertile Earth...
(1979)
- Unholy Loves (1979)
- Bellefleur
Bellefleur is a magic realist novel by Joyce Carol Oates about the generations of an upstate New York family. It is the first book in Oates' "Gothic Saga"....
(1980)
- Angel of Light (1981)
- A Bloodsmoor Romance (1982)
- Mysteries of Winterthurn (1984)
- Solstice
A solstice is an astronomical event that happens twice each year when the Sun's apparent position in the sky, as viewed from Earth, reaches its northernmost or southernmost extremes...
(1985)
- Marya: A Life (1986)
- You Must Remember This
You Must Remember This is a novel by Joyce Carol Oates. It tells the story of Enid Maria, a girl who falls in love with her uncle, a professional boxer. It also is about her family, the Stevicks, and their thriving life in Port Oriskany, a fictional industrial city in upstate New York....
(1987)
- American Appetites
American Appetites is a novel by Joyce Carol Oates, that is about a couple in upstate New York. It tells of the secrets each harbors and what will happen when they finally get exposed....
(1989)
- Because It Is Bitter, and Because It Is My Heart
Because It Is Bitter, and Because It Is My Heart is a 1990 novel by American novelist Joyce Carol Oates.-Plot summary:In Hammond, New York, in the early 1950s, a young girl named Iris Courtney and her black friend Jinx Fairchild are united by a murder that they commit in self-defense...
(1990)
- Foxfire: Confessions of a Girl Gang
Foxfire: Confessions of a Girl Gang is a novel by Joyce Carol Oates about a group of teenage girls in upstate New York in the 1950s who form a gang called Foxfire.-Plot:...
(1993) (the basis for the 1996 filmMajor releases this year included Scream, Independence Day, Fargo, Trainspotting, The English Patient, Twister, Mars Attacks!, Jerry Maguire and a version of Evita starring Madonna.-Events:...
Foxfire)
- What I Lived For (1994)
- Zombie
Zombie is a 1995 novel by Joyce Carol Oates which explores the mind of a serial killer. It was based on the life of Jeffrey Dahmer.In this novel, a man in his 30s seeks to create a "zombie" out of an unsuspecting young man...
(1995)
- We Were the Mulvaneys
We Were the Mulvaneys is a novel written by Joyce Carol Oates and was published in 1996. We Were the Mulvaneys was featured in Oprah's Book Club in 2001.The Mulvaneys, a family living in the small, rural town of Mt...
(1996)
- Man Crazy
Man Crazy is a novel by Joyce Carol Oates. It was first published as a full novel in 1997 .-Plot summary:Man Crazy follows the early life of Ingrid Boone, from early childhood to adulthood...
(1997)
- My Heart Laid Bare
My Heart Laid Bare is a novel by Joyce Carol Oates. It was published in 1998 by Dutton. It is the most recently published work in her "Gothic Saga"...
(1998)
- Broke Heart Blues (1999)
- Blonde (2000)
- Middle Age: A Romance
-Plot introduction:Adam Berendt, a cryptic yet charismatic sculptor, passes away. The novel expounds the peculiar relationships that he had with the other women in the neighbourhood.-Plot summary:...
(2001)
- I'll Take You There
"I'll Take You There" is a number-one single written and produced by Al Bell and performed by soul/gospel family band The Staple Singers, released on Stax Records in February 1972...
(2002)
- The Tattooed Girl (2003)
- The Falls
The Falls is a 1980 film directed by Peter Greenaway. It was Greenaway's first feature-length film after many years making shorts. It does not have a traditional dramatic narrative; it takes the form of a mock documentary in 92 short parts.-Plot:...
(2004)
- Missing Mom (2005)
- Black Girl / White Girl
Black Girl / White Girl is a novel by Joyce Carol Oates first published in 2006. It takes the form of an untitled 300 page manuscript written in 1990 by Generva Meade, a white historian, who truthfully recounts the events which happened during her freshman year at a prestigious liberal college in...
(2006)
- The Gravedigger's Daughter
The Gravedigger's Daughter is a 2007 novel by Joyce Carol Oates. It is her 36th published novel. The novel was based on the life of Oates's grandmother, whose father, a gravedigger settled in rural America, injured his wife, threatened his daughter, and then committed suicide...
(2007)
- My Sister, My Love
My Sister, My Love is a 2008 novel by Joyce Carol Oates. It is her 37th published novel. It reimagines the JonBenet Ramsey murder, with ice-skating champion Bliss Rampike standing in for JonBenet, and is narrated by her surviving older brother, Skyler Rampike.The book received generally positive...
(2008)
- Little Bird of Heaven
Little Bird of Heaven is a 2009 novel by Joyce Carol Oates. It is her 38th published novel. The novel is the third set in the fictional city of Sparta, NY, which was also a main setting for her two previous best-sellers We Were the Mulvaneys and The Gravedigger's Daughter.-Plot summary:When a...
(2009)
- A Fair Maiden (2010)
- The Crosswicks Horror (Forthcoming)
Short story collections
- By the North Gate
By the North Gate is a collection of short stories by Joyce Carol Oates. It was the author's first book, first published by Vanguard Press in 1963.It was last published in 1971 by Fawcett...
(1963)
- Upon the Sweeping Flood And Other Stories (1966)
- The Wheel of Love and Other Stories
The Wheel of Love and Other Stories is the third short story collection by Joyce Carol Oates. It was published in 1970 by Vanguard Press.While the book itself is out of print, several of the stories—Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?, "Unmailed, Unwritten Letters," "In the Region of Ice,"...
(1970)
- "How I Contemplated the World from the Detroit House of Correction"
- "Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?
"Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?" is a frequently anthologized short story written by Joyce Carol Oates. The story first appeared in the Fall 1966 edition of Epoch Magazine. It was inspired by three Tucson, Arizona murders committed by Charles Schmid, which were profiled in Life magazine...
"
- Marriages and Infidelities
Marriages and Infidelities is the fourth volume of short stories by Joyce Carol Oates. In this collection, Oates explores the relationship between love and betrayal.-Contents:*The Sacred Marriage*Puzzle ...
(1972)
- The Goddess and Other Women (1974)
- The Hungry Ghosts: Seven Allusive Comedies (1974)
- Night-Sides (1977)
- Where is Here? (1992)
- Haunted: Tales of the Grotesque (1994)
- Demon and other tales (1996)
- Will You Always Love Me? And Other Stories (1996)
- The Collector of Hearts: New Tales of the Grotesque (1998)
- Faithless: Tales of Transgression (2001)
- I Am No One You Know: Stories
I Am No One You Know: Stories is a short story collection by Joyce Carol Oates. It was published in 2004 by Ecco Press, an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers...
(2004)
- The Female of the Species: Tales of Mystery and Suspense (2006)
- High Lonesome: New & Selected Stories, 1966-2006
High Lonesome: New and Selected Stories, 1966–2006 is a collection of short stories by author Joyce Carol Oates. First published by Ecco in 2006, it is the author's largest collection of short stories....
(2006)
- The Museum of Dr. Moses: Tales of Mystery and Suspense
The Museum of Dr. Moses is a short story collection by Joyce Carol Oates which comprises shorter works in a darker genre. In "The Man Who Fought Roland LaStarza" a woman’s world is upended when she learns the brutal truth about a family friend’s death—and what her father is capable of...
(2007)
- Wild Nights!
Wild Nights! Stories about the last days of Poe, Dickinson, Twain, James and Hemingway is a collection of short stories by Joyce Carol Oates. As the title suggests, the stories are about the final days in the lives of authors Edgar Allan Poe, Emily Dickinson, Mark Twain, Henry James and Ernest...
(2008)
- Dear Husband (2009)
- Sourland: Stories (2010)
- Give Me Your Heart: Tales of Mystery and Suspense (2011)