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Content JOYCE CAROL OATES, STORYTELLER:
REWRITING THE SELF
by
Nancy Dalton Sanders
A Dissertation Presented to the
FACULTY OF THE GRADUATE SCHOOL
UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA
In Partial Fulfillment of the
Requirements for the Degree
DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY
(English)
August 1992
Copyright 1992 Nancy Dalton Sanders
U M I Number: DP23175
All rights reserved
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UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA
THE GRADUATE SCHOOL
UNIVERSITY PARK
LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA 90007
This dissertation, written by
Nancy Dalton Sanders
under the direction of h.^,xr.... Dissertation
Committee, and approved by all its members,
has been presented to and accepted by The
Graduate School, in partial fulfillment of re
quirements for the degree of
DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY
D ean of G raduate Studies
August 3 , 1992
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DISSERTATION COMMITTEE
The investigation of this subtle point,
though o f no use for constructing food-making machines,
removes the mold of ignorance from the mind,
and sharpens it for other purposes.
J. C. Scaliger
(1484 -1558)
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
I would like to acknowledge my indebtedness to Professor
Jay M artin, for getting me started, and also to Professor
Ronald Gottesman, who with great good humor and loving sup
port, forced me to finish. I also owe an enormous debt to
many kind-hearted research librarians, but most o f all to
Connie Melom of Marymount College and Mark Weimer, Curator of
S p e c ia l C o lle c tio n s at S yracu se U n iv e r sity library, who
graciously allowed me into the Joyce Carol Oates Archive even
before cataloging was complete. I am also grateful to Mary
Ellen and Roger Gozdecki, Herb Yellin, and Irene Herrera, all
o f whom helped me obtain hard-to-find copies of O ates’s
works. Very many of my colleagues were generous with their
encouragements and condolences, but I am most indebted to
those who helped me with questions in their fields, including
Joseph C useo (psychology), Larry Dunlop (religion), David
H ill (psychology), John Perkins (philosophy), and Kenneth
Zanca (philosophy / religion). Special credit, however, must
be given to my niece, Deborah Horn-Bostel, whose artistic
talent and computer expertise produced the charts in this
docum ent. And finally, I am most grateful to my family,
especially my loving husband, whose enthusiasm never lagged
even while he learned to shop, to cook, and to conquer the
computer so that this project could be completed. To all of
you, my sincerest thanks.
CONTENTS
INTRODUCTION.................................................................................. 1
PART I: Selves and Pseudonymous S e lv e s.................................. 36
CHAPTER 1: Art As A utobiography.................................. 83
CHAPTER 2: The Self and The W o r ld ................................ 131
CHAPTER 3: The Self and The Sacred ................................ 171
PART II: The Experience of Em pathy............................................ 215
CHAPTER 4: Art As E xch an ge............................................. 258
CHAPTER 5: From Connections to Continuity................... 293
CHAPTER 6: From Realism to F a n ta sy ............................. 351
CONCLUSION...................................................................................... 394
BIBLIOGRAPHY......................................................... 407
APPENDICES
APPENDIX A: Personal History............................................... 419
APPENDIX B: Publishing H isto r y .......................................... 421
APPENDIX C: Award S to r ie s................................................. 424
INTRODUCTION
In the fall of 1989, Joyce Carol Oates described the "cen
tral intention" of her work as an attempt "to communicate an
inner vision of some complexity and ambiguity, to transcribe
the ’life of the times’ in America, [and] to experiment with
language and structures."^ This she has done in more than
80 published volum es, including novels, short story collec
tions, poetry, plays, and non-fiction pieces that range from
literary criticism to a study o f boxing. In most of these
works, Oates communicates a vision that connects the life of
the individual to that of the community, whether familial or
national, and she adds to this a rich indebtedness to literary
tradition that links her work to that of such writers as Haw
thorne, Joyce, Kafka, Dickinson, and Crane to name only a few.
Like Hawthorne, Oates has chosen the role of moral histor
ian, and so her portraits of American life are both disturbing
and compelling, necessary traits of an art powerful enough to
awaken us, "to make us sympathize with a part of the truth we
[h ave] always su ccessfu lly a v o i d e d . O f cou rse, O ates
offers no single, absolute truth. Instead, her art is heur
istic and suggests that the ability to empathize with others
2
and with ideas, no matter how disturbing, is a kind of recep
tivity necessary for the apprehension of truth, or truths, in
whatever form they take. Crediting D. H. Lawrence with the
idea, O ates agrees that the purpose of literature, for both
readers and writers, is to create "an enlargement of sympa
thies," which she sees as "a means of recreating the self spir
itually."^
A lthough the project of "recreating" one’s self spiritu
ally may at first appear to be a private, internal endeavor,
for Oates it is not only this. All her writing, like Kafka’s,
is intent on "exploring the shifting relations betw een self
and the world."^ O ates contends that her writing-in fact,
all writing—
attempts to be the autobiography . . . not only
of the writer and his era but of that which lies
beyond his era and is evoked by the processes of
im aginative creation. It may be strange to
claim that no [writer] who has immersed himself
in his art for many years can remain detached
from his era— even stranger to claim that the
degree of his immersion in his art may determine
his immersion in the " etern a l" .........................[but
just] as deeply as [the writer] chooses to go
in w a r d --in to th e very so u ls o f h is ch a r a c
ter s— he will fee l the instinctive need to go
o u t w a r d - - i n t o th e s o c i o l o g i c a l a n d h i s
torical and "objective" world that is the set
ting of his visionary drama.^
3
Far from being self-enclosed, this perspective is one of con
n ected n ess, which causes Ellen Friedman to conclude that
"Oates’s is an American voice urging a reconciliation between
the individual and his personal and collective history."**
O ates’s description of the artist’s "aim" also encompasses
the various focal points in her use of art as inquiry. Her
writing is a study of the self as an individual ("autobio
graphy"), the self and others (as "characters"), the self and
the world (the "historical, objective world"), and the self
and the sacred (the "eternal"). Of course, all four of these
partnerships are inextricably related, and it is their dynamic
interaction, the inter-penetrability of external and internal,
subjective and objective realities that is the subject of this
study. In fact, the concept of "rewriting the self' refers to
Oates’s epistemological use of art, through which she examines
and explores the self within relational contexts, for she be
lieves "there are no new ’ideas,’ but only new relationships,
new emphases, surprising new combinations of what was already
known or half-known."^ All of Oates’s work, then, embodies
her pursuit of "constructed" knowledge, a pursuit which is
sym pathetic or "connective" rather than adversarial in its
approach to the objects of study, and which results in knowl
e d g e th at b ea rs th e w eig h t o f e x p e r ie n c e rath er than
4
speculation because it "tests" ideas and credits both internal
and external factors in the determination of meaning.
And despite Oates’s love of paradox, ambiguity, and com
plexity, this pursuit of understanding and meaning as an ideal
goal is at the heart of all her fiction. Each of her works
invites the reader to participate in "enlarging sympathies" as
w ell as expanding the range of conscious awareness if the
reader is willing to take the risks involved in the process of
empathic inquiry. This process opens possibilities for under
standing oneself as well as others, but only if the reader is
willing to withhold judgment in order to experience the text
as "real," and then use reflection to construct an understand
ing, no matter how limited, of that experience. In this way,
em pathy is used as an epistemological principle, a "way of
knowing" that com bines experience and reflection in on e’s
attem pt to assim ilate the "unfamiliar" aspects of both self
and other.
If the reader accepts this challenge, then the use of art
as inquiry pertains to the reader in the same way it is of
central concern to the writer, and for this reason, the study
is divided into two parts that consider both the writer and
reader as existing in a cooperative relationship in which each
functions as audience and creator of the works themselves. In
Part I, there is a theoretical exploration of concepts of the
5
se lf, w hich are "applied" to O a tes’s short stories in the
three following chapters. Similarly, Part II is a theoretical
discussion o f empathy as a successful strategy for reading
Oates’s work, and this idea is further developed in the analyt
ical chapters that follow it. In fact, the two parts are di
rectly parallel in that each employs an early-middle-late ap
proach to the works even as they follow one another in their
p attern s o f ind ividu al, rela tio n a l, and transpersonal con
cerns. The first chapter in each segment, then, focuses on a
"personal" relationship to the work (the writer’s and reader’s
respectively), the second exam ines relational or "connected"
implications embedded in and provoked by the fiction, and the
third investigates O ates’s use of memory and imagination as
these are conveyed through experiments in language that move
both the writer and the reader into "extra-mundane" stand
points or perspectives.
This organization, of course, covers points that are not
nearly so separate nor distinct as they appear here; even so,
the repetition o f issues studied in each section is intended
to provoke a resonance in the reader that might allow for
insights into O ates’s concept of art as an emotional exper
ience that challenges the self. It is in this way, after all,
that the reader must participate in and respond to the work in
order to approximate and thereby empathically understand the
6
experience of both the characters and the author, an under
standing that often reveals a truth that exists not in the
work but in the exchange of experience between the reader and
the text. This exchange, if successful, creates a "shifting
of consciousness" in the reader and places him in a position
where he can not only respond to the work itself but can also
observe and evaluate his response. This is the important
a sp ect o f "self-reflectivity" which O a tes’s art attem pts to
provoke and which necessitates an acknowledgment that her
writing is not only "realistic" but sym bolic in its use of
language that involves the reader in a participatory explor
ation of meaning or meanings concerning the nature of the
self, others, the world, and "beyond."
t
Although this study makes occasional references to Oates’s
novels, especially her more recent ones, the primary objects
of study are her short stories, both individually and as col
lections. This is not meant to suggest that O ates’s stories
are her "best" work or that the story is more an appropriate
forum for her talents than are the genres of the novel, drama,
or poetry, in which she has also excelled. It seems unneces
sary to create a hierarchy among Oates’s works in order to
justify that the stories are an appropriate object of study.
In fact, they have been selected as a focus for three fairly
sim p le reason s: first, they have receiv ed little critical
7
attention to date, and no recent studies attempt to treat them
comprehensively; second, they do afford a unique opportunity,
given the interaction between the single, individual nature of
each story and the "cohesive artistic whole" of its collec
tion, to examine the "relational" nature of O ates’s perspec
tive; and third, they satisfy a decidedly personal preference,
in fact, a love for the form, especially the variety, which
accommodates the many surprises that stories can communicate
so powerfully due to the impact that compression provides.
It is the goal of this study, of course, to present some
new information, especially from the Joyce Carol Oates Archive
as well as from original research that uncovered some interest
ing facts as well as some obscure and little known works that
shed light on O ates’s extensive body of stories. In fact,
som e of the m ost informative materials on O ates’s theories
about art, and especially the story, are to be found in the
many prefaces she has written for a wide variety of texts.
Because previous critical studies on Oates’s works have made
extensive use of her early non-fiction writing, such as New
Heaven, New Earth (1974), the emphasis here is on more re
cen t texts such as C on traries (1 9 8 1 ) and (W om an ) Wri
te r (1 9 8 8 ). H er u n c o lle c te d sto ries, u n fortu n ately, are
outside the scope of this study simply because the collections
offer a number and variety of stories that are inexhaustible.
8
To d ate, O ates has p u b lish ed se v e n te e n short story
collections and these contain some 300 stories, among which
over forty stories have been selected for special recognition
in the O. Henry, Best American, Pushcart, and The Year’s Best
Fantasy award series (see Appendix C). Even so, she admits,
"I collect only a few stories in proportion to the number I
publish."^ N e e d le ss to say, this presen ts quite a chal
lenge to devise an overview of Oates’s career as a "storytel
ler," especially in an examination that attempts to be compre
hensive without being superficial. For this reason, the study
does not claim to be "exhaustive," but rather attempts to link
some of Oates’s earliest stories, many of which have received
little or no serious critical atten tion , with stories in her
more recent collections, which, perhaps surprisingly, reveal a
clear consistency of interests while also illustrating an in
creased tolerance and even fascination with indeterminate know
ledge. These two "extremes," certainly, are bridged by an
exploration of intermediate works and with an overview of the
whole one can understand that Oates has moved from a highly
rational, philosophical approach to learning into an orienta
tion that better accommodates the "mysterious" and fluid and
unknowable aspects of consciousness.
O f cou rse, this study is n ecessa rily selectiv e, but it
attem pts to incorporate a variety of perspectives so that
9
Oates’s work is not "forced, warped, shrunk" into a framework
that is convenient rather than illuminating. For example,
many of O ates’s ideas resonate with the ideas of Nietzsche,
Sartre, and Jung, and even though she, like Derrida, Bakhtin,
and Barthes, to name only a few, considers that art has an
im portant relationship to the political realities o f the cul
ture it attempts to mirror, especially as one of its primary
functions is to question and expose assumptions, to "overlay"
the theoretical frameworks of these men (either one or all of
them) onto Oates’s work would seem to diminish its individual
and original nature. Oates herself discounts the importance
of "influences," insisting that her reading and experience are
so eclectic and varied that it is best to acknowledge her
opinions as her own. While she is not contentious, Oates is
clearly critical and discrim inating in her allian ces to the
ideas of others; therefore, in this study, O ates’s ideas and
artistry are recognized as "original," especially in terms of
her accomplishments as a "woman" writer, even as her devotion
and connectedness to literary and philosophical traditions as
w ell as to the historic past are credited as a significant
element in her perspectives on life and art.
Rather than attempting to locate Oates within a particular
literary or philosophical framework, then, or attem pting to
focus on a "set" of stories, either thematically or formally,
10
or even connecting the stories with the poems or plays or
novels (all of which might produce interesting studies), the
approach used in this study is, quite simply, one of chronolog
ical sampling: the first chapters in each section treat an
early story "in depth" while placing it within a context of
other early work; the second chapter in each section "surveys"
works mostly from her middle period though Chapter Two does
this them atically regarding issues of "power" or social con
cerns while Chapter Five focuses on the formal issues of con
tinuity or connectivity in her story collections; and finally,
the last chapter in each section attempts to more fully exam
ine two recent collections in order to reveal the relation
ships in O ates’s art between extended levels of consciousness
and the consequent influence on one’s perception of reality.
T o O ates, reality is both a "fact" to be acknowledged, no
matter how mysterious or surprising, and a mental construct,
particularly a narrative construct that is regulated by memory
and imagination as well as by language itself. Both of these
types o f reality, whether regarded as fact or fantasy, the
sacred or the profane, are, according to O ates, intim ately
related and reciprocal in their influences, and so her work is
an examination of the uses and influences of language in the
interplay between conscious and unconscious worlds. In this
way, the study attempts to chronologically span Oates’s work
11
while attending to each component of her "central intention":
her vision, its context, and the formal "experiments" through
which she discovers and communicates her view of the "real."
The catholicity of O ates’s vision as well as her curiosity
result in a comprehensive or inclusive impulse in her work,
and the resultant variety and diversity o f O a tes’s stories
preclude any single "theory of story" from encompassing them
all. In fact, Oates has said, "the short story, as it is one
of the many manifestations of the human spirit, simply cannot
be defined. Art is: it springs forth from the soul, usu
ally in m ysterious ways."^ O ates often tends to distrust
th e strictu res o f literary th e o rie s, claim in g th at "art is
m ostly unconscious and instinctive; theories obviously com e
later in history, in personal history, and are therefore sus
picious."^® But d esp ite this distrust of theory and her
apparent interest in experimentation, she also recognizes that
the story often falls within the parameters of certain con
ven tion s, for she h erself has said, "the short story is a
short run-a single idea or mood, usually no more than two or
three characters, an abbreviated space of time."^
In fact, it is perfectly consistent with her perspectives
on life and on art that she both celebrates the uniqueness of
certain formal structures even while she admits they are arbi
trary and interchangeable. In a discussion that links her
12
poetry and her novels, she claims, "any work can be expanded
nearly to infinity, or contracted back to almost nothing. And
any ’work,’ any artistic experience, can be translated back
and forth in to various form s— m usic, painting, literature."
She believes this is true "simply because all art is dream
like, springs from the dreaming mind, and is handled either
gingerly or enthusiastically by the conscious m i n d . " - ^ This
attitude toward art as well as Oates’s interest in the uncon
scious mind as the source of creativity and the conscious mind
as the source of artistic discipline and control is indicative
of her tendency for inclusiveness.
While Oates does truly adopt a comprehensive perspective
on most issues, this in no way suggests that she succumbs to
an uncritical acceptance of theories or ideas. On the con
trary, she is keenly discriminating even as she often chal
len ges the typical boundaries b etw een sim ilarity and con
trast. This point-counterpoint consciousness may account for
her apparent fascination with the paradox of the one and the
many, for this elusive idea is central to Oates’s work, both
thematically and formally. The paradox of simultaneous unity
and individuality not only pertains to Oates’s stories as inde
p en d en t and collective artistic constructs, but it also ap
plies to her concepts of the self. To Oates, the self is both
singular, individual, and separate from others even as it is a
13
"multiple" entity that contains a variety o f selves, both in
ternally, as aspects of consciousness, and externally, as an
inextricably connected member of the "collective human self,"
a position from which Oates claims that the sympathetic person
recognizes others as "surprising variations of oneself."
U nfortunately, the term " self is rather im precise, and
even Oates has used it to suggest such various concepts as per
son , p erson ality, sou l, m ind, consciousn ess, identity, role,
and character or nature. In any case, the "self," to Oates,
is potentially continuous in the narrative of personal history
even though it is not an immutable, fixed, or even necessarily
"bounded" entity. Oates wonders and many of her stories ex
plore the issue of whether or not there is a "core" to the
self that is stable, a "zero at the bone" as Oates quotes from
D ickinson, or whether som ething closer to Sartre’s idea of
radical subjectivity, in which the self is "created" in reflec
tive consciousness (an idea that draws on the theories of both
H usserl and Kierkegaard) is som ething closer to the truth.
C h a ra c te r istic a lly , O a tes e n te r ta in s e a ch p o ssib ility and
stands in a position that encompasses both, thereby removing
the need to reject either.
In this respect, Oates’s opinions about the self seem simi
lar to those of Kohut, whose concept of the "nuclear" self sug
gests that it is the aspect of consciousness most resistant to
14
change and it "contains not only the individual’s most endur
ing values and ideals but also his most deeply anchored goals,
purposes, [and] ambitions." Kohut further suggests that "the
nuclear self, however, is not immutable. The task of modify
ing and even transforming it is repeatedly im posed on us
throughout life under the influence of new internal and exter
nal factors. "I** It is precisely such challenges, ones that
invite if not require transformation, that Oates focuses on in
her art. And so, while she seems to view the self as being
sim ilar what K risteva calls a "subject-in-process, a subject
still finding or refiguring itself," ^ she does not seem com
fortable with the extremity of Sartre’s position, as expressed
in "Existentialism is a Humanism" (1945), in which he claims
that not only the self but morals and values are a completely
subjective construct and thereby are wholly arbitrary. Of
course, Sartre h im self later m odified this position, but to
O ates neither the radical subjectivity of com plete "freedom,"
nor the determinism of a predestined or "essential" self seem
to match her concept of a self that has a core of traits or
values that are subject to possible revision but which, at any
point in tim e, still com prise identity. T o O ates, then, the
self possesses the option to learn and develop within the
lim its o f its ow n im aginative, in tellectu al, and em otion al
skills though this development must be done in concert with
15
(which may include opposition to) a reality that is not simply
"self-selected," but which must be acknowledged as existing
"in itself." For this reason , O a te s’s w ork em b o d ies a
c o n tin u a l search for "stability" and "clarity" ev en as it
celebrates the opportunity for change. And while "certainty"
is the inevitable goal of the selfs search for meaning, Oates
does not "resolve" issues in her stories even though she does,
lik e F ro st, u se her art as "a m om en tary stay a g a in st
confusion."
C ertainly, engaging the "com plexity and ambiguity" of
O a tes’s inner vision is a challenging and often disruptive
experience for the reader, but the goal of developing an auth
entic perspective, one that attempts to replace delusion with
insight w hile accepting the responsibility for on e’s choices,
is, to Oates, a necessary task even though it is complicated
by what Oates refers to as "the paradox that one can exper
ience the world only through the self— through the mind-but
one cannot know, really what the ’self’ is."-^ D espite the
com plications o f fully understanding or defining "selfhood,"
or the shifting, developmental nature of identity, Oates would
concur with Charles Taylor that "our identity is what allows
us to define what is important to us and what is not."-^ In
other words, on e’s identity or sense of self, whether delu
sional or clear-sighted, authors that person’s moral choices.
For this reason, much if not all of Oates’s writing examines
16
the interaction between the subjective reality of the self and
the "objective" (or at least external) reality of the world as
these two agents reflect and influence one another.
The attem pt to achieve authenticity, which Sartre refers
to as "self-recovery" in Being and N othingness (1943), is
the motivation for Oates to examine what she herself calls the
"temporarily deluded" perspectives of her characters:
[the artist], knowing that all manifestations of
life are sacred, . . . may react with violence
against those who claim that nothing is sacred;
and alas, he may provoke alarm and hostility
b ecau se his dram atization of the tem porarily
deluded may be misunderstood as a judgment on
all mankind. But this is a risk that must be
taken. ^
B eca u se O a te s’s goal is alw ays to discover or construct
meaning, to move herself and others away from delusion, she
considers it a necessary risk to attempt to communicate her
in v e stig a tio n s, w h eth er they are o f su ccessfu l or fa iled
attempts to achieve insight. In fact, Oates’s concept of the
sacred creates in her a sym pathetic, non-judgmental stance
even toward "deluded" characters, and yet her goal is always
to recognize and acknowledge the characters’ "prejudices and
illusions," which may be uniquely private, that is belonging
17
only to them, or universal and common to all of us, including
Oates herself. But just as she claims that "unworkable" per
spectives need to be recognized and revised by the individual,
a revelation that O ates admits often "isn’t realized by the
character but by the reader,1 so too does she attempt to
expand the national moral perspective, claiming "A writer’s
job, ideally, is to act as the conscience of his race."^ It
is in this way that her work takes on its sacred or moral di
m ension, for, like Jung, she believes "the religious person,
so far as one can judge, stands directly under the influence
of the reaction from the unconscious. As a rule, he calls
this the operation of c o n s c i e n c e . " ^
O ates attem pts to accom plish this ambitious task, not
through a conventional didacticism that would "force ideas"
into her works or onto her readers, but by pursuing an answer
to the question, Who are we? Unfortunately, the portraits
Oates has drawn in response to that question have not always
been well received: "People frequently misunderstand serious
art because it is often violent or unattractive. I wish the
world were a prettier place, but I wouldn’t be honest as a
91
w riter i f I ign ored the actu al con d ition s around m e. 1
This attempt to "bear witness," as O ates calls it, has often
been confused with a lack of moral judgment, for in her at
tempt "to transcribe the ’ life of the times’ in America" she
18
necessarily suspends judgment in order to see her characters
and their worlds clearly. This ability to withhold judgment
in the process of empathic inquiry is also expected of her
readers; however, as Wayne Booth ironically notes, "Writers
w h o are su c c e ssfu l in g e ttin g th eir r ea d er s to reserve
judgment are not impartial about whether judgment should be
r e s e r v e d . " ^ Far from being impartial on this point, Oates
sees it as a necessary prelude to the empathic exchange that,
when followed by objective reflection, can lead to understand
ing.
Being able to suspend one’s own convictions in order to
attain a better understanding of oneself, others, or the world
is a complex task. Even Heinz Kohut admits, "It is very diffi-
cult to think oneself into another person. Neither is it
a sim ple m atter to penetrate alien ideas, especially those
that oppose one’s own unexamined social, moral, or cultural
codes. As Lacan notes, "One is never happy making way for a
new truth, for it always means making our way into it; the
truth is always disturbing [em phasis a d d e d ] ." ^ Even so,
O ates expects her readers to employ the kind of receptivity
that is necessitated by empathy, which originally meant "feel
ing into," precisely because she demands it of herself. She
asserts that "it is only through disruption and confusion that
we grow, jarred out of ourselves by the collision of someone
19
e ls e ’s private world with our o w n ." ^ The term s "colli
sion," "disruption,” and "confusion" in O ates’s description of
the em pathic experience suggest that the difficulty of this
m ental process parallels the physical and psychic violence
experienced by many of the people in her works, and perhaps
this at least partially accounts for the fact that some char
a c te r s, su ch as J u les W endall in her n o v e l th e m , are
"liberated" by violence. In any case, surviving the experi
ence, both psychically and physically, affords an opportunity
for growth:
Self-understanding . . . rides tandem with an
encountering of otherness, with an imaginative
empathy for the other that in turn discloses or
develops possibilities for oneself. How, indeed,
can one understand that which is not a possi
bility for o n e se lf or that which one has al
ready closed off?26
Many of Oates’s characters approach the world and each other
from just such a "closed off' perspective and do not recognize
the possibility for choices other than the ones they’ ve made.
Even so, Oates hopes for a more receptive perspective in her
readers, whom she claims are always "imagined as a sympathetic
audience (and not, as the world really is, a busy and indiffer
ent crowd)."^
20
Despite her lament that most people are likely to be in
different rather than sympathetic to the visions that modern
writers attempt to communicate, much of the "world" has indeed
recognized and applauded the depth and breadth of O ates’s
work. Since 1963, when she published her first short story
collection, By the North G ate, O ates has been among the
most decorated o f modern fiction writers. In fact, between
1970 and 1989, she won more individual awards for her stories
in the O. Henry and Best American awards series than any other
author. D uring those years, O ates received tw enty-seven
awards, including two for continuing achievement; she was fol
lowed by Alice Adams with 17, one of which was for continuing
achievement, but also all but one of which were awarded in the
O. Henry series. The next highest number of awards went to
John Updike, who received twelve, also including a continuing
achievement award.
M ore surprising, perhaps, is the fact that am ong the
nearly 450 writers who received awards during this time, there
are many authors who might be better known than Oates, includ
ing, for example, Barthelme, Carver, Cheever, Malamud, or even
Alice Walker, but none of them comes near the frequency with
which Oates apparently produces "excellent" works. In fact,
to put her accomplishment in perspective, one simply needs to
note that a full 70% of the writers who received awards over
21
this two decade period received only one award each, even
while remembering how important a single opportunity for such
recognition would be to most writers. It is not surprising,
however, that the dust jacket for Oates’s most recent collec
tion of stories simply states that she has received "several"
awards in the O. Henry and Best American series nor does it
fully account for the numerous career awards she has received
(see Appendix A). It seems that Oates, as she has said, is
ambitious about her work even while she can be humble about
her career.
D esp ite this acclaim, it is still true that O ates’s recep
tion by critics has sometimes been stormy. Early in her ca
reer, she especially suffered from what Jay Mclnerney refers
to in article entitled "The Writers of Wrong" as the "killing
the m essenger syndrome," which he contends originates from
misdirected anger: "In an ugly era, the frightened gatekeeper
98
[the critic] flails at the man who holds up the mirror.""60
M clnerney also suggests that being labeled a "woman" writer
causes problems for the author since "once you turn an individ
ual in to an ab straction , it ’s easy to com m it atrocities."
These are, of course, both issues that Oates has frequently
addressed since both the quantity and content of her work, as
well as the unavoidable condition of her being a woman, have
elicited such critical com m onplaces as "she w rites (or at
22
least publishes) too much," "her writing is too violent (or
d e p r e s s in g ) ," "she is to o fe m in is t," or "not fe m in is t
enough." Since, apparently, no one asked Balzac to slow down
or Kafka to cheer up, especially not as legitim ate critical
criteria for evalu atin g their skill as w riters, one has to
suspect (as O ates does) that these complaints belie a sexist
and m odernist bias grounded in rather conventional, limited
expectations for a contemporary female author
Despite the negativity and even hostility with which many
of O ates’s works have been greeted, since the late seventies
and early eighties, there have been som e excellent critical
studies of Oates’s writings. Probably the best among them is
E llen F riedm an’s text Joyce Carol Oates (1980), which lo
cates O ates’s perspective within the philosophical constructs
o f Pluralism , especially in the tradition of William James.
According to Friedman, "the hunger to overcome human limita
tion is O ates’s abiding theme,"'*® a them e which Friedman
explores in O ates’s first nine novels and touches on in se
veral of her best known stories. Another insightful critical
examination of Oates’s work appears in Greg Johnson’s Under
standing Joyce Carol O ates (1987). Johnson believes that
"[Oates’s] particular genius is her ability to convey psycho
lo g ic a l sta te s w ith u n errin g fid e lity , and to rela te the
intense private experiences of her characters to the larger
23
r e a lit ie s o f A m e r ic a n life." * ^ In his stu d y, J o h n so n
an alyzes six of O a tes’s novels and two story collection s,
in c lu d in g T he W h eel o f L o v e ( 1 9 7 0 ) an d L a s t D a y s
(1984), and while the introduction to his study provides a
helpful "overview" of O ates’s work, Johnson’s primary focus,
like Friedman’s, is on the novels.
Two earlier critical studies, one by Mary Kathryn Grant,
entitled The Tragic Vision o f Joyce Carol Oates (1978) and
the other by G. F. Waller, called Dreaming America: Obses
sion and Transcendence in the Fiction o f Joyce Carol Oates
(1979) are somewhat less helpful in understanding the full com
plexity and range of Oates’s work since each has chosen to con
sider the works through very specific and lim ited orienta
tions. Grant, for exam ple, insists on viewing "tragedy" as
the fundamental truth behind Oates’s fiction, even though she
knows that in 1972 Oates declared her intention, after writing
Wonderland, of moving into a new perspective: "I want to
move toward a more articulate moral position, not just drama
tizing nightmarish problems but trying to show possible ways
o f transcending them."*^ Further, Grant seems to echo the
early criticism o f O ates that claim s her characters, esp e
cially fem ale ones, are "two dimensional, [and] often superfi
cial."*^ A s I h op e to show in this study, this is not
often, and surely not usually, true of Oates’s characters, not
24
even her earliest ones. Waller, too, takes a rather limited
approach to Oates’s work by comparing her to D. H. Lawrence
and drawing parallels betw een them as "visionary" writers.
While Oates shares many ideas with Lawrence and admires him as
an o r ig in a l a r tis t, w h ic h is e v id e n t in h e r stu d y o f
L a w ren ce’s poetry en titled The H ostile Sun (1973), there
are significant differences betw een them , not the least of
w h ich are th e d iffe r e n c e s b etw een a prim arily em o tiv e
(L aw ren ce) and a prim arily intellectual (O ates) orientation
toward life and art. More perplexing, perhaps, is Waller’s
com m ent that reading O ates’s work is like experiencing a
"recurring nightmare," and the fact that he apologizes for
comparing her with Lawrence, hoping that the "major" author
will not be denigrated by the comparison, makes it unclear why
Waller undertook his study at all. Even so, both Grant and
W aller briefly examine som e stories while they, too, mostly
focus on O ates’s non-fiction and her novels, and despite the
lim ited nature of these studies, each certainly has made a
contribution to the possible ways in which Oates’s writing may
be understood.
To date, only two studies that focus primarily on Oates’s
stories have been published and it’s interesting to note these
both originate from a German rather than an American press.
C learly, the b est study is K atherine B astian’s Joyce Carol
25
O a te s ’s Sh ort Stories B etw een T radition an d In n o va tio n
(1983), which is mostly a study of O ates’s traditional and
experimental uses of such genres as "the extraordinary," "rec
ognition," and "initiation," as they are labeled by Bastian.
The study also examines at length Oates’s connections to liter
ary tradition in her "reimagined" stories in Marriages and
In fid elities. T h is c r itic a l study clo ses with a c o n sid er a
tion of "thematic cycles" and "sequences" among Oates’s collec
tions of stories; however, because it was published nearly ten
years ago, there is now a significant body of O ates’s work
that is not covered by Bastian’s study. The other critical
work that deals exclusively with Oates’s stories is a thematic
study, The Image o f the Intellectual in the Short Stories of
Joyce Carol Oates (1986) by Hermann Severin. This work is
rather unevenly written and is a bit difficult at tim es to
follow, but Severin bases his study on the concept of the "as
if" personality and lim its him self mostly to O ates’s stories
that are set in academ ic environments. Both Bastian and
Severin offer interesting insights into different asp ects of
O ates’s works though Bastian’ s study is particularly ambitious
and insightful in its attempt to examine O ates’s connections
to literary traditions.
Perhaps two of the most helpful works in any study of
Oates as a writer are Lee Milazzo’s edition of Conversations
26
with Joyce Carol Oates (1989) and Linda Wagner’s collection
o f critical essays (1979). M ilazzo’s book contains som e
twenty-five interviews on diverse topics and covers a wide
span of years (1996 - 1989). This text also includes a help
ful "topical" index to im portant subjects relating to O ates’s
works and ideas, but its list of publications, while fairly
com p lete, is indecipherable since all of O ates’s works are
sim ply listed chronologically with no distinctions m ade to
ind icate which are lim ited editions or even to distinguish
among the many genres in which Oates works (see Appendix B).
Both Milazzo’s and Wagner’s books have good introductions
though Wagner’s, despite the fact that it cannot encompass the
range of M ilazzo’s in terms of years, is far more scholarly
and penetrating in its analysis of Oates’s works up to 1979.
The review s in W agner’s collection also offer trem endous
in sig h ts in to th e ran ge o f critical rea ctio n s to O a te s’s
works, among the worst is a review by Ronald D eFeo while
Granville Hicks and several others offer ironic as w ell as
in sigh tfu l com m entary. T he essays in the collection are
mostly authored by people whose names are common to critical
studies of Oates, including Grant, Friedman, and Waller, but
also there is an informative and interesting study of Oates’s
poetry in an excellent essay by Peter Stevens. In this essay,
Stevens examines Oates’s concepts of love and her search for
27
the self, both of which are treated in intensely compressed
emotion and highly suggestive imagery in Oates’s poetry collec
tions, which are, it seems, as carefully organized and as rela
tional regarding the "parts" and the "whole" as are her story
collections. Both M ilazzo’s and Wagner’s texts, in fact, are
invaluable in their presentation of a diverse range o f inter
actions betw een O ates and interviewers, usually critics, and
Oates’s works and readers. Often it is clear that the "hori
zon of assumptions" embedded in each are not converging but
are colliding in the disruptive experience that^ Oates so fre
quently offers her audiences.
In an essay entitled "Literature and Religion," Giles Gunn
examines the issue of a "collision" of assumptions as well as
the interactive challenge to identity between reader and text,
and he locates both these critical issues within the hermen
eutic tradition:
The hermeneutic approach can be contrasted with
the phenom enological and structuralist just inso
far as it pays greater attention to the interac
tion between text and reader, or between the hori
zons of assumptions expressed and projected by the
work and the horizon of assumptions possessed by
any one of its potential audiences. Textual under
standing thus occurs only when these two horizons
o f assum ption or m eaning converge, or at least
overlap, and this process o f horizon convergence
is ta k e n to b e r e c ip r o c a l a n d p o t e n t ia lly
28
disruptive. What must eventually converge in the
e v e n t o f u n d e r s ta n d in g a re tw o in e v ita b ly
different cultural and metaphysical mind-sets, and
what is produced by this intersection of mind-sets
is an existential situation in which both text and
read er are altered as the identity o f each is
challenged, revised, and expanded through exposure
to the strangeness of the other.-^
This is precisely the experience Oates provides in her art,
w h ich --a lso fo llo w in g th e h erm en eu tic tra d itio n --d o es not
provide absolute answers to the questions it addresses or
provokes. Instead "there is only the incessant process of
interrogation in which readers seek the question for which the
text is purportedly an answer" just as "texts seeks to deter
m ine and constitute an answer for the question presumably
posed by their readers.
It is a significant point o f this study that O ates not
only asks Who are we? but also an even more fundamental ques
tion: How do we know what we know? These two questions, in
fact, com bine to create the com plexity and am biguity in
O a te s’s art, w hich a ttem p ts, in her transcription o f the
"’life of the tim es’ in America" and through experiments in
language, to discover both the realities and the possibilities
within which the self exists. She accomplishes this in the
"collision of assumptions" present in the experience of the
29
te x t, an e x p e r ie n c e th a t m u st p r e c e d e th e e x is te n tia l
situ a tio n in w hich the se lf can b e rew ritten spiritually.
After all, O ates communicates her "inner vision" through an
arrangement of literary elements in order to provoke a certain
effect: the experience of empathy, through which she herself
and by extension her readers can move closer to, even if they
can never achieve, the goal of perfect understanding.
For Oates, then, rewriting the self is both a public and a
private act. It is a process that begins with self-understand
ing, a dynamic and continuous process that is difficult to dis
tinguish from delusion. In order to orient her characters and
herself, Oates "tests" her inner vision in the world of objec
tive, external reality, a world of other people, some of whom
embrace and some of whom reject an authentic perspective on
the world. Collectively, too, this world of other people im
pinges on the developm ent of the individual’s identity, the
source and seat of moral choices. If the collective conscious
ness or social codes are perverse and destructive, as they
often are, then individuals must learn how to negotiate with
th ese forces in ways other than attem pting to "’substitute
them selves for the world.’"*^ Neither does withdrawal into
a p a ssiv e, d eterm in istic, p e r sp e ctiv e that en cou rages the
individual to persist as "victim" provide a "workable" per
sp ective according to O ates. Instead, the individual must
30
resist the debilitating affronts of a "deluded" society while
recognizing and accepting his connections to it.
In order to accom plish this difficult interactive balance
between the self and other, between conscious and unconscious
awareness, Jung contends that the person must rewrite himself
in such a way that his self-narration, founded on an objecti
fied self understanding, releases him from the tyranny of an
unexamined, instinctual nature:
Modern man can know himself only in so far as he
can b eco m e co n scio u s o f h im self— a capacity
largely dep en d en t on environm ental conditions
. . . . H is con sciousn ess th erefore orients
it s e lf ch iefly by ob servin g and in v estig a tin g
the world around him, and it is to its pecul
ia ritie s th at he m ust adapt his psychic and
technical resources. This task is so exacting,
and its fu lfillm en t so advantageous, that he
forgets him self in the process, losing sight of
his in stin c tu a l n a tu re and p u ttin g his own
c o n c e p tio n o f h im self in p la ce o f his real
being. In this way, he slips imperceptibly into
a purely conceptual world where the products of
h is c o n sc io u s a ctiv ity p r o g r e ssiv e ly r e p la c e
reality.-^
O ates’s fiction is the purely conceptual world where conscious
activity allow s her to rep lace her real, instinctual nature
w ith a con cep tion of herself. This sam e opportunity is
31
a v a ila b le to read ers, and for b oth th e author and the
au d ien ce, th e fulfillm ent of this task is "so advantageous"
precisely because it empowers, informs, and reconciles one to
b o th in te r n a l and extern al co n d itio n s, w hich o p e n s the
p o s s ib ility for le a r n in g , c h a n g e , and grow th . It is a
narrative process through which the person participates in the
construction o f the reality he inhabits "by observing and
investigating the world around him" even while regarding it as
a fiction and himself as a character, a character that is its
own author in the process of rewriting the self.
INTRODUCTION: NOTES
32
^Dr. Jay Martin, ed. USC Major Authors Survey, Los
Angeles: Special Collections at Doheny Library, University of
Southern California, 1989.
^ J o y c e C a r o l O a t e s , p r e f a c e , " F ic t io n D r e a m s
R evelation s," Scenes from Am erican Life: Contemporary
Short Fiction (New York: Random House, 1973) vii.
■^Joyce Carol O ates, "A Night o f Readings," President’s
D is t in g u is h e d G u e s t L e c tu r e S e r ie s , C a lifo r n ia S ta te
University, Fullerton (22 March 1990).
^K ath erin e B astian , Joyce Carol O ates’ s Short Stories:
Between Tradition and Innovation (Frankfurt: Verlag Peter
Lang, 1983) 29.
^Joyce Carol O ates, "Speculations on the Novel," NBA
Writers Speak Out, Written for the 25th Anniversary of the
National Book Awards (New York: Viking, 1974) 1, 4-5.
^ E lle n F r ie d m a n , J o y c e C a ro l O a te s (N e w Y o rk :
Frederick Ungar Publishing Company, 1980) 34.
^ Joyce C arol O a te s, in tr o d u c tio n , The P h ilo so p h e r’s
Stone, by C olin W ilson (N ew York: W arner Paperback
Library, 1974) 8.
^Michael Schumaker, "Joyce Carol Oates and the Hardest
P art o f W riting," C onversations with Joyce C arol Oates,
ed. Lee Milazzo (Jackson: University of Mississippi Press,
1989) 145.
^Joyce Carol O ates, introduction, Best Am erican Short
Stories o f 1979, ed. Shannon Ravenel (Boston: Houghton
Mifflin, 1979) xvii.
33
INTRODUCTION: NOTES
^®Joe D avid B ellam y, "The D ark Lady o f A m erican
L etters," C onversations with Joyce Carol O a tes, ed. L ee
M ilazzo (Jackson: University of Mississippi Press, 1989)
■^Schumaker 145.
The O h io R e v ie w , " T ra n sfo rm a tio n o f S e lf: A n
Interview with Joyce Carol Oates," Conversations with Joyce
C arol O ates, ed. L ee M ilazzo (Jackson: U niversity of
Mississippi Press, 1989) 48.
1 ^
H e in z K oh u t, S e lf P sychology an d the H um anities
(New York: W .W . Norton, 1985) 10-11.
• ^ A n t h o n y P a u l K e r b y , N a r r a t i v e a n d th e S e l f
(B loom in gton and Indianapolis: Indiana U niversity Press,
1991) 63-4.
^ J o y c e C arol O a te s, a fter w o r d , The P o iso n e d K iss
(New York: Vanguard, 1975) 189.
^ C h a rles Taylor, Sources o f Self: The Making of the
M odern Identity (C am bridge: H arvard U n iversity Press,
1989) 3.
■^Oates, "Speculations" 3-4.
■^Joanne C reighton, letter, "To Joanne Creighton," in
"Unliberated Women in Joyce Carol O ates’s Fiction," Critical
Essays on Joyce Carol Oates, ed. Linda Wagner (Boston: G.
K. Hall, 1979) 156.
1 "Author Joyce Carol O ates on ’A dolescent A m erica,’"
U. S. News & World Report (15 May 1978) 60, in "Joyce
Carol Oates: The Changing Shape of Her Realities," Critical
Essays xvii.
34
INTRODUCTION: NOTES
2 ®Carl G u sta v Jung, The U n discovered S e lf (N e w
York: Penguin Books, 1957) 99.
^ O ates, "Adolescent America" 60.
2 2 W ayne B o o th , " O b je ctiv ity in F ictio n ," T w entieth
Century Literary Criticism, ed. D avid L odge (N ew York:
Longman, 1972) 572.
23Kohut 267.
2 ^ J a c q u es L acan , Ecrits: A Selection , tra n s. A la n
Sheridan (New York: W. W. Norton, 1977) 169.
2-*Leif Sjoberg, "An Interview With Joyce Carol Oates,"
C on versation s with Joyce C arol O ates, ed . L e e M ilazzo
(Jackson: University of Mississippi Press, 1989) 110.
26Kerby 63-4.
22Joyce Carol O ates, "The Short Story," Southern Hu
manities Review 5, No. 3 (Summer 1971) 213-14.
2^Jay M clnerney, "The Writers o f Wrong: A N ovelist
Carves the Critics," Esquire (July 1989) 106.
2^For O ates’s rebuttal to these critical com plaints, see
her interviews with Sjoberg or Germain in Conversations with
Joyce Carol Oates or her essay entitled "(Woman) Writer" in
her text by the same name.
■^Friedman 196.
O 1
G r e g J o h n s o n , U n d e rsta n d in g Joyce C arol O a te s
(Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 1987) 8.
INTRODUCTION: NOTES
35
•^ W a lter C le m o n s, "Joyce C arol O a tes: L ove and
V iolen ce," Conversations with Joyce Carol O ates, ed. L ee
Milazzo (Jackson: University of Mississippi Press, 1989) 39.
■^Mary Kathryn Grant, The Tragic Vision o f Joyce Carol
Oates (Durham: Duke University Press, 1978) 140.
^ G i l e s G u n n , " L it e r a tu r e a n d R e lig io n ," I n t e r
relations o f L iterature, ed. B arricelli and G ibaldi (N ew
York: Modern Language Association of America, 1982) 59.
•^Gunn 59.
^P oirer in Friedman 3.
i
I
•^Jung 92-93.
I
t
i
I
36
PART ONE
"SELVES AND PSEUDONYMOUS SELVES"
This title is borrowed from the last section of (Woman)
Writer: Occasions and Opportunities (1988), in which O ates
discusses the autobiographical elem ents in five o f her novels
and closes with an essay on the use of pseudonyms. Not sur
prisingly, she never m entions her own pen-name, Rosamond
Smith, which is a feminine version of her husband’s name (Ray
mond Smith), and which she has been publishing under since
1987, even while she continues to publish under the name Joyce
Carol O ates. Instead, in this essay, she aligns herself— as
"we"— with num erous other writers who have resorted to a
pseudonymous "defense" in the hope of self-renewal or at least
the hope of renewed self-discovery: "It may be that, after a
certain age, our instinct for anonymity is as powerful as that
for identity; or, more precisely, for an erasure o f the pri
mary self in that another (hitherto undiscovered?) self may be
r e l e a s e d . T h i s statem ent seem s to confirm, in a m ore
dispassionate voice, O ates’s original admission that "I wanted
to e sc a p e my ow n id e n t i t y , wh i c h w as her su rp rised
37
R esp o n se to learning that Lives of the Twins (1987) was
known to be hers even before it was published. It is a con
firm ation, that is, if "discovering" and "escaping" are the
same activity, which to Oates, I believe, they are.
In her essay on pseudonyms, Oates concedes that "multiple-
name writers tend to publish their quality work under their
own names but may have a descending order of quality among
their pseudonyms."^ This seems to be true of Oates’s pseu
donymous novels, which tend to be sensational "psychological
thrillers," m ysteries in which she allows herself the intellec
tual delight o f playing with surprises, reversals, and deceit
(both of oneself and others) as these reveal "the dark side of
the soul." In fact, each of the Smith novels deals explicitly
with the doubleness of human nature, as their titles suggest:
L ives o f the Twins (1 9 8 7 ), Soul / M ates (1 9 8 9 ), N em e
sis (1990), and Snake Eyes (1992). T hese books explore
the relationship betw een good and evil as O ates manifests
these opposing forces in twins or doubles who are sometimes
identical and som etim es foils or mirror images of one an
other. The conflict is painted rather starkly in black and
w h ite, but in th e se n o v els, evil o ften reap s unqualified
victories, and "the good" is invariably complicit in its own
defeat. What, then, one is moved to ask, is Oates "escaping"
and what is she "discovering" in these works?
38
To be honest, this "contest" between good and evil is just
a slightly less complex version of the topic that also preoccu
pies O ates in her "quality work," especially as it relates to
the troubled relationship betw een conscious and unconscious
worlds or what Oates often refers to as the "day-time" and
"night-time" aspects of the self. That Oates is both fascin
ated and justifiably frightened by the dark side of human na
ture is incontestable. Her critical essays on Mary Shelley’s
F r a n k e n s t e i n , K a f k a ’s s t o r i e s , W ild e ’s D o r ia n G ra y,
M e lv ille ’s M oby D ick , S h a k e s p e a r e ’s L ea r, and D o s to y
ev sk y ’s The P ossessed —to nam e only a few --clearly illu s
trate her interest in and preference for "the difficult and
troubling works of art."^
A sim ilar interest is evident in a collection of essays
th a t O a te s c o m p ile d an d e d ite d , e n title d N igh t Walks
(1 9 8 2 ), in w hich such diverse writers as Jung, Frost, and
O ates herself write about their insomniac meditations on "the
th em es / thou lovest best, / Night, death, sleep and the
s ta r s . A t the sam e tim e, how ever, her fiction and her
critical exam ination of these and other works, most notably
her reviews of works by Simone Weil and Anne Sexton, clearly
illu strate that her p referen ce for "troubling works" is not
prurient; it is compellingly honest: she simply is not inter
ested in naive or deluded answers, which she considers Weil’s
39
"ideal flesh less s e l f and Sexton’s "death-driven personality"
to be.^
O f course, Oates is not unsympathetic with the people or
fictional characters who have succumbed to the delusions por
trayed or exhibited in these works. On the contrary, she rec
ognizes the seductive quality of delusion and it is precisely
that "seduction"' that she sets out in her pseudonym ous
n o v els to exam in e, to experience, to know , and she no
doubt originally hoped to be able to accomplish this without
suffering the denunciation of critics who frequently view even
her "serious" fiction as too violent, or depressing, or "ob
sessive." She must have hoped to elude the demands of intel
lectual "high art" by escaping the identity of the internation
ally famous Joyce Carol Oates of Princeton University, winner
of the National Book Award, contender for the Nobel Prize.
These descriptors are true of Oates, but they also represent
the im posed illu sion o f a cohesive public self, which, no
m atter how "fictional" is also hopelessly "accountable" even
while it has no control over how others interpret her work.
Certainly, this has been a concern of other writers as well,
and the many cases of pseudonyms used by other authors whom
O ates sym pathetically discu sses in her article dem onstrate
that she recognizes it as a communal problem:
40
Who among us, identified with such confidence by
others, has not felt uneasy, if not an impostor,
know ing that, w hatever they know o f us, we
do not somehow share in that knowledge? Fame’s
O
carapace does not allow for easy breathing.
At the very least, perhaps Oates hoped to relish the engaging
genres of mystery and erotic fiction, neither o f which are
wholly absent from her "quality work."
Whatever the motive, the "escape" and "discovery" in these
w orks p arallel sim ilar endeavors in all o f O ates’s fiction,
for she attem pts to work through or escape delusion— often
m anifest in the conscious, rational mind— and discover a new
self, which is likely to reveal other surprising delusions in
time, but which at least arises from the experience, if it has
been successful, somewhat "enlarged," a bit more reconciled to
its own unconscious nature, and thereby better able to face
new challenges. In short, to escape delusion is to discover
truth just as discovering truth allows one to escape delusion.
It is ironic, of course, that reviewers so often criticize
Oates for the very features of her art that are her strengths.
H er unflinching view o f humanity, particularized in scenes
from American life, is uncompromising simply because it is a
quest for authentic understanding, and as she says of Emily
Dickinson’s poetry, "The quest is no less epistemological than
personal or emotional. It is at that point of juncture that
41
the quest becom es our own as well as the poet’s."^ That
O ates believes writing and reading literature to be "ways of
knowing," epistem ological pursuits, suggests that her m otive
for art, first and foremost, is to "comprehend" with its at
tendant im plication o f "inclusiveness." In order to know
oneself, others, or the world from this perspective, one must
be as familiar with evil as with good.
T his p e r sp e ctiv e is d eligh tfu lly illu strated in a short
parable entitled "The Zebra Storyteller" by Spencer Holst. In
Holst’s story, a Siamese cat has learned to speak the zebras’
language and so is able to surprise and kill many zebras in
the jungle. The cat then drags them home, eats them, and
makes bow neckties and wide belts from their hides. The cat
begins to brag that it is a lion and uses the fact that it
hunts zebras as proof of this claim. The zebras, who know
nothing o f the cat, becom e superstitious, assuming the ghost
o f a lion must be haunting the jungle, for their delicate
noses would tell them if a real lion were nearby. One day,
while walking in the jungle, the zebra storyteller decides to
tell the other zebras an improbable story of a cat who speaks
their language. H e believes the story is so ridiculous it
w ill certainly am use the other zebras, w ho are, after all,
rather distraught at their numerous losses in recent months.
42
Just then the Siamese cat approaches the storyteller, and the
tale comes to a dramatic close:
The zebra storyteller wasn’t fit to be tied at
hearing a cat speak his language, because he’d
been thinking about that very thing.
H e took a good look at the cat, and he didn’t
know why, but there was something about the cat
he didn’t like, so he kicked him with a hoof and
killed him.
1 fl
That is the function of the storyteller.
This story not only suggests that knowing another’s "language"
gives one enormous power, but it also shows that through the
im aginative exp erien ce o f storytelling, the zebra storyteller
is prepared to recognize the duplicity of the cat and there
fore replaces superstition with an intuitive action that saves
him as well as his race.
While real life is not often as simple as a parable, this
story still provides an accurate insight into O ates’s project,
for she believes the serious artist finds that "his role, his
function, is to articulate the very worst, to force up into
con sciou sn ess the m ost perverse and terrifying possibilities
of the epoch, so that they can be dealt with and not simply
feared."^ 1 Through her "brutal honesty," then, insight re
places fear and superstition, which, as Jung notes, requires
an unflinching exam ination o f "terrifying possibilities," for
43
if w e fail to deal with our fears "our lack of insight [will]
deprive us o f the capacity to deal with e v il." ^ H olst’s
story rather graphically makes this same point by distinguish
ing between the zebras who were eaten and the storyteller who
was not.
In order to guard against such a dangerous naivete, Jung
recommends that each person develop an "imagination of evil"
just as O ates adm its that much of her work explores "an
imagination of pain." She has remarked, "I feel the moral im
perative to chart the psychological processes of someone, usu
ally a hero, but sometimes a heroine, who has gone through suf
fering of one kind or another, but who survives it (or almost
1 ^
survives). ^ In this light, it is tragic rather than sim
ply ironic that so many of Oates’s critics and readers tend to
label her works "dark" when, in actuality, darkness is what
she struggles to overcome.
Even though there are at least two writers in the person
of Joyce Carol Oates, the self and the pseudonymous self, find
ing that these "two selves" are engaged in the same activity
is not that surprising since Oates believes that "the underly
ing truth o f writing as an experience (in contrast to writ
ing as a theoretical profession) has entirely to do with uncon
scious and ungovernable factors." ^ N either is it surpris
ing to learn that both th ese selves are involved in the
44
project o f pushing past fear in an attempt to gain under
standing since Oates has admitted that she fears nothing more
than ignorance itself:
W hat I fear m ost is blindness, self-blindness,
th e cen trip etal force of the great tragedies:
the heroic (but doomed) figure who imagines he
sees into the very heart of the universe but, in
fa ct, as any child (as his own children, in
L e a r ) k n ow s very w e ll, the fo o l c a n ’t see
a thing . . . ! N othing so mesmerizes me,
nothing so rouses me to simple animal dread, as
this failure to see, which is perhaps a failure
o f the im agination, in part, but prim arily a
failure of will.1^
The failure of will is primary to Oates because she believes
one must willfully face fear and even push past it before the
im agin ation is freed to explore the possibility o f a new
reality: "man cannot drift upward; he must will him self
upward, through the transform ation of personality into ever
new and ever more complex states of consciousness."1* * For
this reason, O ates, like Faulkner, believes that the modern
writer "must teach himself that the basest of all things is to
be afraid."17
In Love and Death in the American Novel (1966), Leslie
F iedler discusses this perspective as "tragic humanism" and
suggests that literature written from this perspective depicts
45
the internal struggle with darkness as an attempt to change
society: "The final horrors, as modern society has come to
realize, are neither gods nor demons, but intimate aspects of
our own m i n d s . T h i s connection betw een the individual
and society is also reflected in Jung’s conclusion about the
in terd ep en d en ce o f their fates: "It is, unfortunately, only
too clear that unless the individual is truly regenerated in
spirit, society cannot be either, for society is the sum total
1Q
of individuals in need of redemption."
This is the perspective from which Oates pursues her art,
for while she acknowledges the dignity of the single self and
often fictionalizes the debasem ent of the ordinary person at
the hands of "mass" society, she also sees the individual as a
"m icrocosm ic" en tity that both reflects and in flu en ces its
culture. D ue to this relationship between the individual and
the communal whole, to participate in the "regeneration" of
one is an attempt to influence the whole society. In the same
way, fiction moves between the particular and the general in
that it deals with individuals or specific cases in its por
trait of ordinary life while at the same time suggesting uni
versal meanings. For this reason, Oates contends that "art
should be for the entire species, ultimately aimed toward an
elevation of other people through an extension of their latent
sympathies."^® This aim of enlarging people’s sympathies is
46
an attem pt to promote a connection between individuals that
will neither be dom ineering nor subservient, but which will
strengthen cohesiveness and enhance cooperation in the entire
comm unity. If successful, this effort overrides the demands
o f radical individualism, com m on in Am erican culture, and
helps to reconcile the personal self with what Oates calls the
"collective human self."
D esp ite the interactive nature of this perspective, Oates
is often accused o f being "obsessive" or self-absorbed. She
defends herself and other artists against this charge by as
sertin g that "the artist’s presum ed ’egocen tricity’" is both
natural and a necessary starting point for art, contending
that "to be centered upon one’s own ego is no more unna
tural— no less a necessity— than to be centered in one’s own
brain." W hile intense introspection might be uncomfortable
for most people, Oates sees it as necessary for the artist:
If the artist is considered more egocentric than
most people, it is perhaps because the prolonged
contemplation of interior worlds does not evoke
terror, or boredom; the ego is porous enough to
be m esm erized by u n co n scio u s con ten ts, yet
91
strong enough not be overwhelmed by them.
Of course, being "strong enough not to be overwhelmed" in the
attempt to balance interior and exterior worlds is a difficult
47
task, certainly for ordinary people, but also for many art
ists: it is a continuous struggle that repeatedly challenges
the artist to resist "a failure of will."
O ates h erself apparently cam e close to such a failure
w h ile w ritin g W onderland (1971), a b ook about cognitive
processes that she claims continued to trouble her even after
its completion because she was unable to resolve the questions
it provoked. Her disturbance was compounded by her experience
in writing The Poisoned Kiss and Other Stories (1975), a
collection o f stories which she explains w ere "dictated" to
her while she was "possessed" by the consciousness of Fernan
des, a personality quite antithetical to her own. From these
experiences, Oates has concluded that "sometimes I believe art
is cathartic, and rids you of evils; at other times, I believe
it cultivates its own ten sion s, and is perhaps dangerous."
She believes the question, then, behind these possible effects
of art relates to the motive for its creation: "Do you create
troubling works of art because you are troubled, or are you
made troubled by creating these works, which might be faddish,
fashionable, in their morbidity?" Although she does not try
to answ er th ese questions directly, she admits, "I touched
bottom-, in ways, in Wonderland," even as she celeb rates
her ability to survive the experience: "I can glance back and
say, yes, that was it . . . the way you might look back over a
dangerous m ountain road you’ ve travelled, rather proud at
gettin g through, but really shaken. . . . W hile these
must have been disruptive if not terrifying experiences, Oates
celebrates her ability to survive these imaginative ordeals.
In fact, this celebration of survival is present in all of
O ates’s fiction. Although often overlooked by critics, which
she h erself has noted, she considers "survival" to be the
central fact of many of her works, most notably her novel
them (1969). O f course, like the issues of good and evil,
in order to understand how to survive, Oates examines survival
from both sides, som etim es chronicling the stories of people
who succeed, and som etim es of people who fail. In either
case, however, as an author, Oates has always managed to sur
vive. In a discussion of her short story "Plot,” which nar
rates the m ental and emotional disintegration of a person’s
psyche, moment by moment, as this intense emotional experience
occurs, O ates admits this was a very difficult experience to
transcribe into art, but she also says, "I did write it, I did
record it, there it is. And here I am, a survivor." It is in
this way that she feels "literature is wonderfully optimistic,
instructive, because it often demonstrates how human beings
get through things, maneuver them selves through chaos, and
then write about it." ^ This ability to order and under
stand experience through art is what makes Oates a survivor,
49
but even m ore interesting is the fact that it is often the
artistic e x p e r ie n c e rath er than a "lived" e x p e r ie n c e that
Oates orders and understands.
The human ability to make good use of fantasy or the imag
ination is explored in a book called Who A m I This Time? Un
covering the Fictive Personality (1990) by Jay Martin. In
his text, Martin explains the dynamics o f the "fictive" per
sonality, which often belongs to a person who distorts reality
by displacing an unsatisfactory self with a fictionalized and
usually delusional self concept. Because Martin suggests that
fictive processes are also employed by people who quite natur
ally and normally understand and order their lives on fictive
m odels, he considers the differences among artists who are
able to use their im aginations to m eet challenges— in both
life and art— and those who are not:
How did these authors [Mann, James, Kafka and
others] manage to achieve a capacity to manipu
late illusions instead of being driven by them?
How did they manage to pass from the feelings of
surrender to another’s fiction and from bondage
to illusions to the capacity to free the imagina-
94
tion by creating their own illusions?
Martin concludes that these artists must have had some posi
tive, and not only terrifying, experiences with illusions.
50
By using positive experiences to understand and negotiate
with reality, rather than trying to evade or distort it, such
artists are able to establish firm and stable connections be
tw een their inner lives and the exterior world. For this
reason, Martin asserts that "in anyone’s life the process of
illu sio n in g , d isillu sio n in g , and reillusioning is fundam ental
to a world outlook."^ Similarly, Dianne Skafte, a psycholo
gist, proposes that "this constant expansion and revision is a
lifelong process and is the central activity that defines us
as human beings. Clearly, this process is both imagina
tive and pragmatic in that it requires not a rigid but a flex
ible concept of self, which allows one to develop a world out
look that promotes rather than diminishes the chances for sur
vival. A nthony K erby also recogn izes this ability as an
advantage that serves both the individual and the community:
"The developm ent of selves (and thereby of persons) in our
narratives is one of the m ost characteristically human acts,
acts that justifiably remain of central importance to both our
personal and communal existence."^
The relationships among identity, imagination, and the ex
terior world, then, are determined by one’s ability to imagin
atively negotiate with reality. According to Martin, "How one
n eg o tia tes this com plex process o f illusions will influence,
and perhaps d eterm ine, o n e ’s eventual perception of both
51
reality and fictions, as well as the relations betw een them."
In order to understand how a person has achieved a successful
artistic or im aginative perspective, Martin argues that it is
necessary "to explore the development of the self in relation
to the world. ° In other words, to understand how the
adult successfully accom plishes this task, Martin insists that
the person’s early life must be examined for experiences and
patterns that would have nurtured or supported an imaginative
world view.
Oates echoes this sentiment in her assertion that "the gen
esis o f ’art’" springs from two seem ingly contradictory but
entirely natural human impulses, one of which she locates in
child hood and the other she id en tifies as a condition of
birth: "[Art] originates in play: in experiment, improvisa
tio n , fantasy; it rem ains forever, in its d eep est im pulse,
playful and spontaneous, a celebration of the (child’s?) imag
ination." Sh e a lso b e lie v e s, how ever, that this p ositive,
creative im pulse is m atched by a powerful emotional need:
"[Art also] originates out of the artist’s conviction that he
or she is born damned; and must struggle through life to
9Q
achieve redemption. By way of art." Because she knows
many people have struggled through conflicts with themselves,
the world, or others without producing art, Oates considers
the confluence of these two factors in the single individual a
52
n ecessary prereq u isite to th e im petus for artistic creation,
which results from a willingness to struggle, the belief that
the struggle is necessary and important, and the creativity to
manipulate rather than be overwhelmed by the experience.
O f course, O ates recognizes that such qualities are vari
ously present in everyone, and that even some artists are not
able to overcome the feeling of "damnation." In fact, this is
a condition that she often portrays in her fiction and she con
fesses, "I feel an enormous sympathy with people who have gone
i n
under, who haven’t won even the small victories. . . .
But she warns against the tendency to dismiss those who have
suffered such failures of will and imagination, including the
m ost desperate failure, suicide, as simply individual or eas
ily "curable" if the proper therapies are applied. Instead,
she suggests that the fa tes o f several failed artists have
embodied a communal as well as an individual defeat: "poets
like Sexton, Plath, and Berryman have dealt in excruciating
detail with collective (and not merely individual) neuroses of
our time."'*l
These artists, Oates suggests, were not able to manipulate
their illusions in a way that allow ed them to escap e the
isolation o f their personal selves, which she suggests is the
salvation of "the more fortunate artist":
53
It is probable that a serious artist exercises
relatively little control over the choice of sub
jects of his or her art. The more fortunate art
ist is simply one who, for reasons not known,
id e n tifie s pow erfully w ith a unit larger than
the self: Faulkner with his "postage stamp" of
earth, Shakespeare with the glorious, astounding
variety o f human personality, Dostoyevsky with
all o f R ussia. Such artists surely dram atize
their own em otions, but they give life to the
world outside the self by means of these emo
tions, and in so doing often draw up into con
sciousness aspects of the collective human self
that would otherwise not be tapped.
For O ates, America and its people are the subjects "larger
than the self' with which she identifies. In an essay en
titled "The Myth of the Isolated Artist," published in 1973,
O ates d eclared her in ten tion to link individual psychology
with the larger community of American life, which is a project
she continues today: "All the books published under my name
in the last ten years have been formalized, complex proposi
tions about the nature of personality and its relationship to
' I ' l
a specific culture (contemporary America) . J
For O ates, investigating the nature of personality neces
sarily involves drawing up into consciousness issues that re
late to both the individual and communal unconscious mind.
According to Jung, this is an important function of art, for
54
he believes that "anyone who has insight into his own action,
and has thus found access to the unconscious, involuntarily
exercises an influence on his e n v i r o n m e n t " . ^ O ates’s influ
ence may not seem "involuntary," but it is in the sense that
Jung means this term, which is that it does not accomplish its
goals by "preaching or persuading." For this reason, Jung con
tends that "an excellent example of this [influence on others]
is modern art: although seeming to deal with aesthetic prob
lems, it is really performing a work of psychological educa
tion on the public." H e believes this is accomplished "by
breaking down and destroying their previous aesthetic views of
* -
what is beautiful in form and meaningful in content. J
This is precisely the "disruptive" experience that O ates
provides in her art, which does indeed reflect such problems
as the fragmentation and dissociation prevalent in modern soci-
ety by portraying "the dark chaos of subjectivisms," as Jung
calls it. But the "psychological education" that her works
perform also reflects her attempt to extend beyond these sub
jective, isolated perspectives into an orientation from which
one can reconcile a personal perspective with the larger real
ity of an external world. By recognizing that each person has
a personal self as well as a collective self and acknowledging
that these have been in conflict in America ever since the Pur
itan impulse for community and conformity lost to the demands
55
o f rugged individualism and the self-interest o f capitalism ,
Oates attempts to achieve a comprehensive perspective through
which these opposing impulses can be reconciled even if they
can never be merged.
In a discussion o f the interrelations am ong philosophy,
psychology and literature, H einz Kohut similarly suggests that
m odern art provides society with a "psychological education"
by speaking for and to its age. H e describes the "new set of
issues" that preoccupy the modern artist as "the falling apart
o f the self and of the world and the task of reconstituting
the se lf and the world."-^ As exam ples, the interview er
mentions Pirandello and Kohut discusses Franz Kafka and Eugene
O ’Neill. According to Kohut, O’Neill expresses the modern pre
dicament quite clearly in his play The Great G od Brown, in
which Brown says, " ’Man is born broken. H e lives by mending.
The grace of God is glue.’" This statement, Kohut contends,
reveals "not only the sickness of modern times but also his
own individual sickness. . . . The broken self is mended via
the creation o f the cohesive artistic produ ct." ^ O ates,
too, believes that art can be healing in its creative, imagina
tive functions, and she also believes that the primary object
of healing intentions must be the self.
The com plication to this positive function o f art is, of
co u rse, that O ates d o es not co n sid er p e r so n a lity to be
56
com prised o f a single, unitary self. In her discussion o f
Robert Louis Stevenson’s The Strange Case o f Dr. Jekyll and
Mr. H yde (1886), O ates remarks that the author’s recognition
of the doubleness of human nature is viewed as "a scientific
fact, not a cause for despair." And despite the rather harsh
outlines of opposition portrayed in her pseudonymous novels,
she also understands that this "duality" may be an oversimpli
fication, for Oates, like many modern theorists, contends "the
ego contains m ultitudes: m ultiple personalities inhabit us
all."JO Although this is not a completely new idea, it has
far-reaching im plications concerning issues of personal and
social integration. According to Douglas Hofstadter, author
of The M in d’ s I (1981), "We have a social brain," and he
explains that his studies of consciousness have led him to "a
view of the mind as a society or ’democracy’ with ’factions’
o f p r o c e sso r s co m p etin g for c o g n itiv e c o n t r o l . T h i s
com petition, which often manifests itself in the multitude of
"voices" with which a single person argues with himself, not
only encompasses conscious processes, but unconscious ones as
well, thereby posing what Daniel C. Dennett refers to as "the
problem of other minds."^ Dennett argues that this prob
lem refers to both the difficulties of achieving an understand
ing between self and other as well as between self and self,
for m any "factions" o f o n e ’s ow n m in d , e sp e c ia lly th e
57
unconscious, are as difficult for the individual to comprehend
and integrate as are the ideas of other people.
This concept helps to explain the frequent occurrence in
Oates’s stories of characters who emerge from profound or ex
treme experiences as "strangers" to them selves. Not surpris
ingly, however, when this idea of personal dissonance is taken
up in fictio n , it is n o t iso la te d as only an in tellectu al
experience but is seen as an emotional one as well. Oates cer
tainly credits the power of emotion to influence understand
ing, and Faulkner maintains that "the problems of the human
heart in conflict with itself . . . alone can make good writ
ing because only that is worth writing about, worth the agony
and the sweat."^ But whether emotive or intellectual or a
combination of both, Richard Schwartz, a psychologist, whose
article "Our M ultiple Selves" contends that each "part" of
consciousness is "a discrete and autonomous mental system that
has an idiosyncratic range of em otion, style o f expression,
and set of abilities, intentions, or fu n cti o ns .T ha t the
interaction am ong such disparate selves would be conflicted
seem s as inevitable as the conflicts that arise in ordinary
relation s am ong auton om ous individuals, especially if those
relations or separate selves are modeled on patterns of Ameri
can individualism.
58
A p p a r e n t ly , th is c o n c e p t io n o f th e d is c o r d a n t or
contentious nature o f the interaction among these "sub-selves"
is also an apt description of the experience Oates undergoes
when she imagines her characters: "At times my head seems
crow ded; there is a kind o f pressure inside it, alm ost a
frightening physical sen se o f confusion , fu lln ess, dizziness.
Strange people appear in my thoughts, and define themselves
slowly to me. . . She further explains that at times
"I can see them very closely, and indeed I ’am’ them — my
personality m erges with theirs. At other times, I can see
them from a distance; the general shape of their lives. . .
."44 jn either case, however, she often refers to the act
o f writing as "remembering" or "recording" an observed or
exp erien ced event, and she m aintains that "My ’characters’
really dictate them selves to me. I am not free o f them,
really, and I can’t force them into situations they haven’t
themselves willed. They have the autonomy of characters in a
d r e a m . T h r o u g h this type o f sym pathetic identification,
a process that will be explored more fully in Part II, Oates
blurs the boundaries betw een the multiplicity of selves (often
referred to as "roles") that occur in ordinary life, such as a
public self, a private self, a female self, and so on, and the
innum erable possibilities that are available as "selves" in an
imaginative or fictional life.
59
D espite the almost unavoidable inclination to dichotomize
th ese tw o types o f "self-concepts" as oppositional, labeling
one "real" and the other "fantasy," Oates’s concept of litera
ture as an experiential event bridges the difference between
those two perspectives. If, in fact, that difference is even
"real" enough to require a bridge. As Oates suggests at the
opening o f this section, her public self, especially as it is
communicated to her by others rather than imagined by herself,
feels quite "unreal"— it makes her think of herself as an im
postor. Conversely, she often remarks in interviews and in
her non-fiction writing just how "real" her characters are to
her. For example, she comments on the Stevicks of her novel
You Must Remember This (1987) as "embodying" the era they
live through, but not being generalized representatives for
all other people: "They are too real, in my imagination at
least, and surely too idiosyncratic, to bear the w eight o f
allegory. A s Jay M artin suggests, the p erceived rela
tionship betw een fiction and life is a perspective based on
developmental factors, such as experience, and Oates’s view of
this relationship indicates that her use of art as inquiry, as
an ep istem o lo g ica l pursuit, m akes the d ifferen ces betw een
fiction and reality negligible, even if they are distinguish
able and, at times, separate worlds.
60
In other words, Oates believes it is equally possible to
learn from fiction experienced as real as it is to learn from
"reality" itself:
One cannot distinguish between books and people!
An excellent study of M ozart . . . leads us
deeply into Mozart; a novel by Faulkner leads us
into an aspect of human nature we have perhaps
not yet encountered; poetry by one’s friends and
close colleagues reveals an angle of vision and
often a depth . . . not available in ordinary so
cial discourse. N o novelist scorns or under
values reality, o f course, for this is the very
life -b lo o d o f our art: close ob servation o f
people, places, customs, beliefs, practices.^
Learning, then, is an admittedly interior experience, and, to
O ates, it m atters little if new information com es from the
world of reality or the world of books. A third source of
information, however, is the ability o f the unconscious mind
to "inform" a person about his own nature. Dennett explains
this apparent "split" in conscious realities as being marked
by differences in perspective: one is "from the inside" and
one is "from the outside." H e also maintains, however, that
the combination of these points of view results in one’s own
concept of identity: "Those things of which I am conscious,
and the ways in which I am conscious of them, determine what
• • 4 R
it is like to be me. °
61
In order to understand what it is like to be someone else,
both Dennett and Hallie Burnett, a modern fiction writer, rec
ommend that the inquisitive party ask the question "What is it
like to be that kind of person going through that kind of
ex p erien ce? " ^ O ates, too, sees this as an essential per
spective for both the writer and the reader, for she states
that a story must com m unicate "the authenticity o f what it
feels like from a position alien to my ow n ." ^ In other
words, one can (and, in fact, must) use the "interior" perspec
tive to understand an "exterior" one. Burnett claim s this
subjective, empathic question is the only "rock" on which a
short story can be built given the mutability o f the form.
Dennett, on the other hand, extends his discussion to suggest
that consciousness can be divided into a type that can observe
and report on external phenomena, and a type that is simply
information processing; however, he also contends that being
able to make "introspective reports" reveals another type of
consciousness. In "House Hunting," a story in her 1991 col
lection, Oates makes a similar distinction in the character of
Joel Collier, who at the end of the story is able to make an
"introspective report," which is that he wants to live, but
w hose initial confusion about him self is linked to externally
o r ie n te d co n sc io u sn ess and "inform ation processing" only:
"The h ea d im agin es itse lf floating but is in fact m erely
62
b a la n ced on its stalk: a d e sp er a te d evice, staring and
blinking, taking in inform ation, monitoring the avalanche of
in form ation that con stitu tes the ’w o r l d . T h i s lim ited,
functional consciousness cannot and does not provide Joel with
the necessary "insight" to resolve his dilemma; it cannot pro
vide the interior perspective he lacks because it is entirely
outer-directed.
At the end of the story, the character’s dissociation be
tw e e n ex terio r and in terior r e a litie s is r e so lv e d in two
ways: first, the crisis he is facing, which cannot be re
solved in ordinary consciousness, pushes unconscious thoughts
"to th e surface" or into his con sciou s aw areness; second,
Oates uses symbols, such as the house and the wasp are used in
this story, to bridge the gap betw een exterior and interior
points of view. According to Dianne Skafte, the use of sym
bols invariably provides the opportunity for such a bridge:
Thus, to use a significant symbol automatically
places us within two perspectives at once: ours
and that of the other. And what we try to evoke
in th e o th er alw ays r e so n a te s in o u rselv es.
This unites us to a network of shared social
r e sp o n se s th at form th e very fabric o f our
identity.^
Through the aspect of "resonance," then, Oates is, in the act
o f w riting, providing for h erself the sam e experience she
63
hopes to create for her audience of readers. In this way, the
issu e o f "two persp ectives" app lies sim u ltan eou sly to the
writer and the reader (as well as to the character in this
case). Further, this concept o f the symbol as a "mediator"
for self consciousness not only refers to the visual images
described above (i.e., the house and the wasp) but relates in
a more comprehensive sense to the symbolic or semiotic aspects
of language usage in general. It is in this sense that Kerby
claims "the human subject is a semiotic subject that must be
come its own author in order to define itself."*^
Num erous theorists from W ittgenstein to G eorge Herbert
Mead have noted the necessary connection between language and
self-reflexivity, but the idea that language plays a constitu
tive part in the developm ent o f identity by provoking and
n e c e ssita tin g a sym p ath etic id en tification b etw een internal
and ex tern a l p ersp ectives, an id en tification that not only
informs one about the other but about his own consciousness,
has not yet been fully explored. In fact, this may prove to
be a difficult task to accomplish in that it will require an
interdisciplinary study that touches on such diverse fields as
linguistics, psychology, philosophy, literary theory, and cog
nitive science, but it is, and has been for many years, an is
sue of central importance to writers, who are unavoidably con
fr o n te d w ith th e p ro b lem s o f "audience" and ch aracter
d evelop m en t, both of which require an anticipatory under
standing o f an external perspective, for, as Jung suggests,
"to make oneself understood is certainly impossible without a
far-reaching comprehension of the other’s standpoint."^
To O ates, this project o f "being understood" not only
benefits the other but also the self if both are listeners,
for sh e co n ten d s that "experience itse lf is not authentic
until it has been transcribed by way of language." She also
admits, however, that there is a great deal of "imprecision"
in the "creative enterprise," w hich she m aintains is "the
conjunction between inner and outer forces we try in vain to
understand and must hope in the end only to em body."^
Oates, like Nabokov, believes the attempt "’to express on e’s
position in regard to the universe embraced by consciousness
is an im m em orial urge,’" ^ even while she distinguishes be
tw een art’s conscious execution and its unconscious genesis.
In other words, the project of writing, especially to Oates,
is an attempt to discover and express her moral and intellec
tual position regarding both herself and others, or internal
and external realities, an attempt that results in self-defini
tion through the use of language. This project, of course, is
the same one Oates offers to the empathic reader through the
experience of the text.
j
65
In this sense, Oates’s primary topic as well as her epis-
temological pursuit is nothing less than an exploration of con
sciousness itself. And whether or not the artist can explain
the vagaries of human consciousness, its processes are unavoid
ably embodied in the work. That Oates is so clearly aware of
the connections that link consciousness, perspective, reflexiv-
ity, language, and identity— as well as the factors that block
these connections from being m ade— influences not only the
technique of her work but also its content.
According to Dennett, one must distinguish between types
of consciousness before one can understand how they are re
lated. The first type, which he describes as "reportorial" or
able to perceive and report on external phenomenon may be de
pendent on language, but it might also be accomplished by
other means; the second or "information processing" type in
volves physiological functions that are not yet understood but
which may included a variety of imagistic or non-verbal encod
ing p rocesses; but the third type, in trosp ective reporting,
can on ly b e accom p lish ed through langu age. It is p re
cisely this introspective, language-bound " se lf or conscious
ness that O ates refers to when she claims that the artist’s
jo b is to "bear w itness," which suggests both a spiritual
p e r sp e c tiv e as w ell as a "meta" p e r sp e ctiv e on o n eself,
others, and the world.
66
Such a perspective implies an "observer," which Richard
Schwartz identifies as an "observing ego," or a primary self:
"It is the Self which has the ability to achieve a "meta" per
spective on one’s own inner predicament and compassionately
view the situation o f the parts / sub-selves. Similarly,
Kohut also regards the self to be both an observer and an ob
servable "content" o f consciousness, for he states "I consider
the self as a potentially observable content of the mind," and
he suggests that through acknowledging it as such "we will rec
ognize the simultaneous existence of different and even contra
dictory selves in the same person, of selves with various de-
r o
grees of stability and of various degrees of importance."
Clearly, the self-reflexive aspect of consciousness is very im
portant both to survival and self-understanding, and while
available to everyone, it seems "absent" in those who have not
develop ed or discovered the skill of m eta-critical conscious
ness while it is highly developed in other people, such as
writers, who have necessarily enhanced it with extended prac
tice.
The "distance" required to adopt the perspective of an ob
server com es from a self-reflexive loop when the object of
contemplation is the self, but it can also be accomplished in
the process of making art when the writer witnesses another
person by attempting to "match," or "map," as Dennett calls
67
it, one consciousness onto another. The fact is, of course,
that in life if not in fiction, this mapping cannot result in
p e r fe c t id e n tific a tio n ,* ^ due to the unavoidably sep arate
nature of human consciousnesses. Oates has stated, "I know
from experience, as a writer, that a barrier of some kind does
exist between one way of thinking and another, one ’conscious
n e s s ’ and an oth er. Y et it is intangible, inexplicable."^®
For this reason , O ates distinguishes betw een o n e ’s lim ited
ability to identify with and understand another person in life
and the possibility, or in fact at tim es, the necessity, of
accom plishing this in fiction. In other words, O ates rec
o g n iz e s th a t p e r fe c t id e n tific a tio n m ay b e n e c essa ry to
w rite a ch aracter, to e x p e r ie n c e "what it is like to be
that other person going through that experience" even though
d istan ce is n eed ed to un derstand that sam e character or
his experiences.
This id ea is expressed in O ates’s novel Because It Is
Bitter, A n d Because It Is My H eart^ (1990), in which the
refrain "to experience a thing is not to know it" is fre
quently rep eated . This refrain suggests that in order to
"know" or fully understand something, a person must combine
e x p e r ie n c e w ith r e fle c tio n , for n e ith e r a cco m p lish es th e
desired result without the other. To O ates, then, perfect
identification is only one aspect of the authorial perspective
68
even while she acknowledges that it is a perspective which
does not work, or certainly does not work well (i.e., without
d e l u s io n s ) , in l i f e . In f a c t , J u n g c o n t e n d s p e r fe c t
identification in life is im possible, believing o n e ’s sense of
self can be subordinated but cannot be erased, and Kohut
believes it to be dangerous, relieving a person of any sense
o f so c ia l or in d iv id u a l resp o n sib ility by e lim in a tin g th e
sense o f autonom ous action. Oates explores the potentially
horrific co n seq u en ces o f such a p ersp ective in her story
"Testim ony," w hich also su ggests that th e m otive behind
sociopathic identification can be, quite simply, the powerful
human need to feel "special" to someone, a need that even in
"normal" relationships is the hallmark of being loved.
In a discussion of the distance necessary to "live" a char
acter without being overwhelmed by that character’s illusions,
Oates explains that ideas must be "tested". Despite her abil
ity to sym pathize with characters of all types, O ates still
distinguishes between the impulse for compassion and accept
ance and the need to recognize and acknowledge debilitating
faults: "Oedipus’ impetuosity brings about his defeat, not his
buried ’sin ’; Lear is frankly silly and unforgivably selfish;
H ip p o y ltu s’s ’chastity’ is a prig’s satisfaction at having no
desire." In drawing such conclusions while still appreciating
the complexity and truth-value of the work, Oates insists:
69
Distance is all: the creator is not absorbed in
his subject, though he may give voice to it from
the inside. H e is dispassionate, contemplative,
rem oved-by the very act of writing he should be
rem oved from the heat, the ’frenzy’ of inspira
tion. One knows perfectly well that Dostoyevski
is S ta v r o g in , th o u g h h e sh o u ld lik e to b e
Bishop Tikhon . . . but one knows also that the
la b o r io u s c r e a t io n o f T he P o s s e s s e d an d
The Brothers K aram azov has forced the author
into a position of detachment that would have
been impossible had the formidable, rather terri
fying challenge not been m e t.^
Like Mark Schorer, Oates understands that "fiction is . . . an
art, and art, if it is about anything, is about life, but ex
actly b ecau se it is about it, it is a different thing from
it. The very obviousness of this proposition makes it elusive
. . . ." ^ But for this very reason, the work of art pro
v id e s an extraordinary opportunity for ep istem o lo g ica l in
qu iry, for th e d ista n ce n ecessa ry to o b je ctiv e ly o b serv e
another becomes reflexive when that other is the self. Only
through this p rocess can on e achieve the paradoxical but
extrem ely valuable position of an objective witness that ob
serves and evaluates one’s own subjective life.
There is a significant difference between this perspective
and what is usually meant by "introspection," a process that
70
even today often includes Locke’s assumption of the "trans
parent self." The process, as pursued by Oates, postulates
that the self is not at all transparent, but rather is as dif
ficult to know or understand as are the "selves" of others.
For this reason, it is necessary to put the self, whether con
sid ered as a single or m ultiple entity, in the position of
"other" in order to observe it, to learn "what it is like to
be," and thereby gain an enhanced even if incomplete self un
derstanding.
In an essay entitled "What Is It Like to Be a Bat?"— an
essay on consciousness that is not nearly so whimsical as its
title su ggests— T hom as N agel distinguishes betw een im agina
tively understanding what it is like to be something and know
ing, through on e’s own experience, what that something else
is. H e con clu d es that this second option is an im possi
bility, and yet O ates has demonstrated that through writing
fiction or the use of language and imagination, it is quite
possible, and not only enlarges one’s understanding of oneself
but also of others. In order to have this result, of course,
the experience must be view ed as "real," regardless of its
con text. E llen Skafte, a family therapist, has noted that
this same confluence between subjective experience and exter
nalized observation can be accomplished through the use of
video cameras in group therapy. She maintains, however, that
71
"’taking the role of the ’other’ does not mean ’role playing’
or ’playing the role.’ It means that one imaginatively par
ticip ates in the p ersp ective o f som ething outside o f o n e
self." And while she has observed that patients are variously
adept or resistant to adopting the perspective of an observer
concerning them selves, she suggests that it is only from this
perspective that the "self' (as well as one’s understanding of
others) can be reformulated: "If the self is initially forged
from the internalized perspectives o f others, it can be re
worked by the same m eans."^
Like O ates, Skafte sees this process o f "rewriting the
self' as continuous, a process through which one changes and
adapts to new challenges even as the sophistication of the sub
ject develops. A general term for this self that repeatedly
asks the question "Who am I?" and which must remain receptive
to surprising and disruptive answers if the reformulation is
to be authentic, is, according to Anthony Kerby, the "narra
tive self," which he alleges is the only kind o f self that
exists. The "guiding hypothesis" of his book, Narrative and
the Self {1991), is that
th e s e lf is given conten t, is d elin eated and
em b od ied , prim arily in narrative constructions
or stories. . . . The self is perhaps best con
strued as a character not unlike those we encoun
ter almost every day in novels, plays, and other
72
story media. Such a self arises out of signify
ing practices rather than existing prior to them
as an autonomous or Cartesian agent.
Kerby’s hypothesis also questions the distinctions between fic
tion and life by suggesting that the experience of knowing one
self is an interpretative event in either context.
T o O ates, it a central featu re o f the artistic activity
that the writer must be able to "know" his characters as him
self just as he must be able to understand himself as a charac
ter. This task, which Dennett proposes is "apparently imposs
ible" is also construed by him to be the only way "to advance
rigorously beyond solipsism" by allowing one to "confirm the
coincidence o f inner and outer [life] in others."^ Indeed,
this p roject, which may be im p ossib le to fully realize in
life, is possible in art and its practice in a fictional con
text enhances on e’s ability to approximate the same activity
in life. For this reason, O ates believes writing to be a
"connective" activity**^ through which she quite easily sees
h erself as a multiplicity o f selves, and although she clearly
recognizes the differences between fiction and life, in som e
very important respects the differences can be, and should be,
ignored. In this sense, she concludes at the end of her
article on pseudonymous selves that the adoption of a pen-name
as an oth er identity is not that different from the use in
73
vivo, as she says, o f a narrative voice: th ese identities
both represent the same person operating from differing per
spectives.
Perhaps it is not surprising, then, that Oates admits that
her fiction is highly "autobiographical," and as an example
she suggests that her novel Marya: A Life (1986), which
chronicles an aspect of her own mother’s personal history that
she did not even know until after the novel was completed, is
actually a search for the self: "What is most autobiographi
cal about the novel is its inner kernel of em otion— Mayra’s
half-conscious and often despairing quest for her own elusive
s e l f ." ^ In d e e d , a ll o f O a te s ’s fic tio n c h r o n ic le s this
quest, and just as it explores insights that move one forward
in an understanding of consciousness or the self, so too does
it exam ine obstru ctions to this progress, obstructions that
sometimes result only in a delay of understanding, and some
times in fatal mistakes.
D esp ite her insistence, which is optim istic on its face,
that the self is not an immutable or completely isolated en
tity , sh e still n e c e s s a r ily p u rsu es self-u n d ersta n d in g , an
elusive and often frustrating goal, as if it were as delimited
and focused as it can be within various fictional contexts.
To Oates, the self, which embodies both consciousness and iden
tity, is both extrem ely complex and elusive; it is "multiple"
both linearly, in time, which is to say no one is precisely
the same at two different points in his personal history just
as it can be "multiple" at a single moment when more than one
perspective is being entertained. In either case, her attempt
is always to explore the individual "personality" in relation
to the communal whole and attempt to rewrite the self in a way
that reconciles the person with himself as well as with the
c o lle c tiv e , com m u n al s e lf th at is m a n ifest in A m erican
culture.
In this way, her art embodies and pursues the goals that
A n th o n y K erby id e n tifie s as th e m o tiv a tio n b eh in d th e
irresistible and necessary project of self-narration:
. . . self-narration is the properly conscious
form of human identity. Only here is the impli
cit order (or disorder) and structure of our
lives taken up into conscious understanding. It
is also in narration that we seek to tie to
gether the more disparate strands of our lives,
of our history.69
This is the project of "mending" the inevitably fragmented or
"broken" self and world, which Kohut suggests is "healed" when
converted into a cohesive artistic whole. To Oates, it is the
"motive for metaphor," which she describes as "the ceaseless
defining of the self and the world by way of language."^®
75
Through O ates, then, it is also possible to understand
that the world may not be fragmented, which suggests that it
once was whole and now is not, so much as it is necessarily
random until it is viewed through the lens o f an organizing
principle, such as art. The same is true for both the parts
as well as the entirety of an individual life, which may be
coherently understood in the story of one’s personal history.
In eith er case, this p ersp ective answ ers O a tes’s question:
"Why the need, rising in som e very nearly to the level of
71
c o m p u lsio n , to verify exp erien ce by way o f language?"
T h is n e e d , it se em s, arises in th e highly se lf-r e fle c tiv e
individual who is determined to make or discover meaning in
ord er to facilitate rew riting the self, w hich is, as O ates
says, the project of "recreating the self spiritually."
PARTI: NOTES
1 Joyce Carol Oates, (Woman) Writer: Occasions and Op
portunities (New York: Dutton, 1988) 385.
^Edwin McDowell, "A Sad Joyce Carol Oates Forswears Pseu
donyms," Conversations with Joyce Carol Oates, ed. L ee Mil-
azzo (Jackson: University of Mississippi Press, 1989) 147.
^Oates, (Woman) Writer 395.
^ L e if S jo b e r g , " In terview w ith J o y c e C arol O ates,"
C o n v e rsa tio n s w ith J o yce C a ro l O a te s, ed . L e e M ilazzo
(Jackson: University of Mississippi Press, 1989) 110.
^This line is quoted from "A Clear Midnight" in Walt
W hitm an’s L ea ves o f Grass, but it is also referred to in
N ight W alks and is the title o f a short story by Oates:
see "Night. Sleep. Death. The Stars." in Last Days (New
York: Dutton, 1984) 77-94.
^ J o y c e C a r o l O a te s , T h e P r o fa n e A r t (N e w Y ork:
Dutton, 1983) 148, 173.
^N ot c o in cid en ta lly , O a tes has a c o lle c tio n o f short
stories (published under her own name) called The Seduction
and Other Stories (Los Angeles: Black Sparrow Press, 1975)
and the epigram that introduces this collection is a quote
from Simon Weil: "Necessity is a veil of God."
^Oates, (Woman) Writer 397.
^Oates, (Woman) Writer 182-3.
•^Spencer H olst, "The Zebra Storyteller," The Language
o f Cats and Other Stories (New York: McCall Publishing Co.,
1971) 3-4.
77
PARTI: NOTES
H j o y c e C arol O a tes, N ew H eaven , N ew E arth (N ew
York: Fawcett Crest, 1974) 16.
^ C a r l G u s ta v J u n g , T h e U n d is c o v e r e d S e lf (N e w
York: Penquin Books, 1957) 109.
l ^ T h e O h io R e v i e w , " T r a n s f o r m a t io n s o f S e lf"
C o n versa tio n s w ith Joyce C a ro l O a te s, ed . L ee M ilazzo
(Jackson: University of Mississippi Press, 1989) 54.
l^ J o y c e C arol O a te s, p r e fa c e , F u n la n d , lim ite d ed.
(Concord, N.H.: William B. Ewert, Publisher, 1983) n.p.
1'’Oates, Funland n.p.
l^ J o y c e C arol O a te s, in tro d u ctio n , The P h ilo so p h er's
S to n e , by C olin W ilson (N ew York: Warner Books, Inc.
1974) 11.
■^W illiam Faulkner, "Nobel Prize A ccep ta n ce Speech,"
Literature, ed. X. J. K ennedy (Boston: Little, Brown and
Company, 1983) 390.
^ L e s l i e F ie d le r , L o v e a n d D e a th in th e A m e r ic a n
N ovel (New York: Stein and Day, 1966) 38.
19Jung68.
John A lfred A vant, "An Interview with Joyce Carol
O a tes," C o n v e rsa tio n s w ith Joyce C a ro l O a te s, e d . L e e
M ilazzo (Jackson: University of Mississippi Press, 1989)
31. Oates comment is in response to Avant s question asking
whether she writes for herself or others. This question was
probably an echo of a comment made by Alfred Kazin in a 1971
review of her novel them : "Much of her fiction seems writ
ten to relieve her mind of the people who haunt it, not to cre
ate something that will live." This is a typical, rather than
exceptional, response to O ates’s work by critics who do not
understand the thoroughness of her interrelated perspective.
78
PARTI: NOTES
2^Oates, (Woman) Writer 172-73
^"Transformations of Self' 57.
^"Transformations of S elf' 51.
24Jay M artin, Who A m I This Time? Uncovering the
Fictive Personality (New York: W. W. Norton, 1988) 149.
23 Martin 149-50.
2^D ianne Skafte, "Video in Groups: Implications for a
S ocial T heory o f the Self," International Journal o f Group
Psychotherapy 37, no. 3 (July 1987) 389.
22A nthony K erby, N arrative an d the S elf (B loom ington
and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 1991) 1.
^M artin 150.
2^Oates, (Woman) Writer 3-4.
3®Joe D avid B ellam y, "The D ark Lady o f A m erican
L etters," C on versation s w ith Joyce C arol O ates, ed. L ee
Milazzo (Jackson: University of Mississippi Press 1989) 21.
■^^Oates, The Profane A rt 173.
32Oates, The Profane A rt 173.
33Joyce Carol Oates, "The Myth of the Isolated Artist,"
P sych o lo g y T oday (M ay 1973) 75 in E lle n F ried m an ,
Joyce Carol Oates (New York: Frederick Ungar, 1980) 3.
34Jung 121.
79
PARTI: NOTES
35 Jung 122.
3 ^ H ein z K o h u t, S e lf P sy ch o lo g y a n d th e H u m a n itie s
(New York: W. W. Norton, 1985) 198.
37Kohut 169.
3^Oates, (Woman) Writer 198.
39R ich ard Schw artz, "Our M u ltip le Selves," N etw orker
(March-April 1987) 26.
4 ® D a n iel C. D e n n e t t , " C o n sc io u sn e ss," T he O x fo rd
Companion to the Mind, ed. Richard L. Gregory (New York:
Oxford University Press, 1987) 161.
^Faulkner 390.
4 ^Schwartz 27.
43Bellamy 18.
44Bellamy 18.
45Bellamy 25.
460ates, (Woman) Writer 381.
47Sjoberg 113-14.
4^Dennett 161.
80
PARTI: NOTES
4 ^ H a llie B u r n e tt, "The S h o rt S tory F rom a P u rely
P e r s o n a l V iew," H a n d b o o k of Short Story Writing,
(Cincinnati: Writer’s Digest Books, 1981) 209.
**^Joyce Carol O ates, introduction, The B est A m erica n
Short Stories 1979, ed. Shannon Ravenel (Boston: Houghton
Mifflin, 1979) xvii.
^ J o y c e Carol O ates, "House Hunting," H eat and Other
Stories (New York: Dutton, 1991) 21. This story will be
discussed in greater depth in Chapter Six, but the issues of
p ersp ective or con sciou sn ess that it in vestigates are quite
similar to the ideas discussed in an essay by D. E. Harding,
"On Having No Head," in The M ind’ s I (1981).
52Shafte 396.
53Kerby 104.
54Jung 105.
33Oates, "Beginnings" in (Woman) Writer 19
3^Oates, "Beginnings" in (Woman) Writer 15.
^Schw artz 30.
58Kohut 10.
81
PARTI: NOTES
~^The issue o f "perfect identification" will be taken up
at several other points in the study. It is an idea that re
quires many qualifications, but it is definitely a "situation-
specific" phenom enon. In fact, it is not com pletely correct
to say it is not possible in life. Even so, for now, suffice
it to say that in this study it will be considered in the
fo llo w in g term s: it is requ ired o f th e auth or to w rite
th e character; it is preferred for the reader to exp eri
e n c e th e c h a r a cter ’s ex p e rien ce s; it is n o t p o ssib le in
life under "normal" circum stances; it is p o ssib le in life
under two extraordinary (and contrary) circumstances: through
d e lu sio n a l p rocesses, such as "cult" practices or celeb rity
w orship in w hich the fan believes he is the celebrity or
through extraordinary levels o f conscious aw areness— though
these cannot be verified. Unfortunately, it is not even this
"simple" since (especially in this study) writing and reading
are both considered "normal" circumstances, which means it is
also possible "in life" in those terms.
Joyce C arol O ates, p reface, Where A re You Going,
Where Have You Been? Stones o f Young America (Greenwich,
Conn.: Fawcett, 1974) 9.
^ T h is title comes from a poem by Stephen Crane entitled
"In the Desert," which suggests, as does the novel, that "You
hypnotize yourself into loving your life because it is what
you are doing and because it’s life," an idea that is also
echoed in her short story "House Hunting," from which this
quote is taken. (See H eat and Other Stories 4).
^ O ates, The Profane Art 175.
^ M a r k S ch orer, ed. The Story (E n glew ood C liffs,
N. J.: Prentice-Hall, Inc. 1967) 3.
64Skafte 396-97.
65Kerby 1.
^ D en n ett 161.
82
PARTI: NOTES
^ S e e the conclu sion to O ates’s interview with R obert
P hillips in C onversations with Joyce Carol Oates. In this
interview , she says, "I take seriously F la u b ert’s statem en t
that we must love one another in our art as the mystics love
one another in God. By honoring one another’s creation we
honor something that deeply connects us all, and goes beyond
us"(81).
^ O ates, (Woman) Writer 377.
69Kerby 106.
^ O ates, (Woman) Writer 156.
^ O ates, (Woman) Writer 15.
83
CHAPTER ONE
ART AS AUTOBIOGRAPHY
A lthough O ates once declared "all art is autobiography,"
she did not m ean that fiction is a literal transcription of
o n e ’s life, but rather, as Sartre suggests, "if our creative
drive comes from the very depths of our heart, then we never
find anything but ourselves in our work."* It is the ex
ploration of consciousness and the search for the self, coming
from the "depths of [her] heart," which Oates attempts to con
nect to the exterior world, for though she agrees with Goethe
that "every healthy effort . . . is directed from the inward
to the outward w o r l d , s o too does she believe that public
events are internalized as personal ones: "Cataclysmic events
in society are also personal events."-* In fact, O ates in
sists "not all art is self-referential— not all art is autobio-
graphy-in-progress— but all art springs from the artist’s fas
cination with ’the movement of thought,’" for without this in
ternal impulse, Oates maintains, "there would be no art, for
out of what would it spring? The external world possesses no
84
soul." For this reason, Oates concludes that "it is the inter
ior experience that fascinates."^
To O ates, the multiplicity inherent in the internal exper
ience of the human psyche is a source of wonder and a cause
for celebration since it fuels her art, yet it is the diver
sity and even disparate natures of those multiple selves that
provide both the necessary conflict for art and the inevitable
str u g g le o f livin g. F or this rea so n , O a te s’s inquiry is
always relational, a mirroring of self and other that teaches
one about both. Her impulse, then, is always toward synthesis
and reco n cilia tio n even w h ile recognizing, like Blake, that
contraries provoke the enormous energy necessary to pursue a
visionary quest, which leads ultim ately to an affirmation of
the inherent harmony and unity of the universe, a unity that
is only "divided" by hum an p ercep tion , as B lake h im self
believed.
The epigram that introduces a collection of Oates’s crit
ica l essa y s e n title d C on traries (1 9 8 1 ) q u o tes B la k e ’s fa
mous statement from The Marriage o f Heaven and Hell: "With
out Contraries is no progression," and Oates, echoing Blake,
b e lie v es "Life is energy and energy is creativity."^ In
the preface to this text, O ates explains that she is often
most engaged by literary works that provoke an initial opposi
tion in her and thereby stimulate her to think deeply about
85
the people and ideas they portray. In this regard, she also
agrees with Heraclitus, who contends that "The opposite is ben
eficial; from things that differ com es the fairest attunement;
all things are bom through strife."^ Even so, she also ad
mits that "I am not by nature a contentious person; I tend to
grant the writer his or her vision, perhaps because, as a wri
ter, I know how terribly difficult it can be, sometimes, sim
ply to write."” ' 7
T his sta te m en t accu rately reflects O a tes’s sym pathetic
id e n tific a tio n w ith o th er w riters as w ell as her "social
self," w hich is quite soft-spoken and exhibits what W alter
Clemons refers to as "a good girl, honor student earnestness"
O
that he notes "baffles and irritates som e observers."0 In
an essay entitled "Does the Writer Exist?" Oates herself ad
mits that the writer "in the flesh" rarely matches expecta
tions provoked by the text: "The contrast between what we
know of a writer from his or her work— the private self—
and w h at w e are fo rced to co n fro n t in th e irrefu ta b le
f le s h - - t h e ’p u b lic ’ s e lf - - is n ea rly alw ays d iso rien tin g ." ^
Even so, it does seem a bit naive to expect som eone who has
forged a career as form idable as O ates’s to b e— at heart—
"demure," no matter what her manner or appearance. And even
though she admits, "I never explain or defend myself in pub
lic," and she is, indeed, always quite gracious, she does not
86
su ffer fo o ls gladly and som etim es reveals a wry sen se of
humor, especially when she is addressing other writers, which
seems to allow her to expose her "least guarded" self. This
certainly was the case when she addressed a gathering of some
three hundred people at The Center for Ideas and Society at
the University o f California at Riverside. The occasion was
Writer’s W eek in late February of 1991.
During that lecture, Oates revealed herself to be an en
gaging and dynamic speaker as well as a person possessed of
enough humility and confidence to turn her humor on herself,
her profession, and certainly on the ubiquitous interview ques
tion, "Now, what is the exact number of books you’ ve pub-
1 0
lished?"xu She also m entioned she was writing some plays,
and sh e has since published a co llectio n en titled Tw elve
Plays (1991), but since her audience was writers or aspiring
writers, she em phasized the im portance of failure, repeated
failure, in any su ccessfu l writing career and acknow ledged
that w riting is never "easy," stating, "An honest m asochist
slams his finger in a door, a dishonest one writes plays."
This same ironic sense is also evident in a preface en
titled "The Nature of Short Fiction; or The Nature of My Short
Fiction," which introduces a collection o f essays by writers
for writers. In this short piece, O ates attempts to answer
the question "Why do you write?" She explains that at times
87
it is another author who asks her this question, in which case
she knows immediately that sh e’s talking to "a serious, even
doomed person," but she says more often this question is asked
by "a man twice my size who has found himself seated next to
me at dinner and can’t think of anything else to say." Al
though tempted, she confesses she does not respond with the
questions that immediately spring to mind: "Why do you work
so hard? or Why do you dream? I don’t even ask him Why must
you ask that question?" because, she contends, "when I’m being
polite my mind goes blank, and at such times I am most femi
nine." Instead, she usually answers, "Because I enjoy writ
ing," which she believes is a "harmless answer, and perfectly
correct":
It satisfies the kinds of bullies who are always
bothering me (on the average of once a week this
past year) with questions designed to (1) sug
gest the writer’s general inability to cope with
the real world (2) suggest the questioner’s su
periority b ecau se he, certainly, n eed not re
sort to fantasy in order to survive. ^
O ates, of course, has used fantasy to survive quite well in
the real world.
In fact, Oates believes "the creative impulse . . . is in
all o f us and it begins in c h i l d h o o d . C e r t a i n l y , the
im p u lse to w rite m ust have started early in O ates, w ho
88
rem em bers her first stories as drawings with "make-believe
writing." Born on June 16, 1938, Oates is the oldest of three
children though she rarely speaks of her brother, Fred, born
in 1943, whom she remembers fondly as "Robin," which was his
childhood nickname, or her sister, Lynn, born in 1956 and
therefore some 18 years her junior. Her sister was institu
tionalized in early adolescence, diagnosed as autistic. Oates
grew up in western New York, in a small town called Millers-
port, her mother’s childhood home, and also in the nearby Lock-
port, her father’s birthplace and a site that appears often in
her writing. Lockport is in Niagara County, near Lake
Ontario, and O ates remembers its m ost "distinctive feature"
being "the steep rock-sided Erie Canal that runs literally
through its core."^ Both early and recent stories as well
as several of her novels em ploy these settings, especially
those novels that reveal glimpses, fictionalized and oblique,
o f her parents’ lives: With Shuddering Fall, Wonderland,
Marya: A Life, and You Must Remember This are a few of
these.
While she often claims that her childhood was "perfectly
ordinary" and even "boring," she also admits, perhaps unknow
ingly, to having suffered the vicissitudes of an extrem ely
bright and imaginative child. She confesses "a great deal
frightened m e,"^ but also minimizes this fear by describing
89
the usual range o f childhood upsets, such as getting lost or
being hurt. One aspect of her childhood, however, that belies
the sim plicity with which she paints it is her extraordinary
memory. Mixed in with the manuscript materials for one of her
novels, there are several pages of "reminiscences," in which
Oates seems to talk to herself through her typewriter:
Symptoms of invisibility. First discovered? In
the crib itself, I suppose. Som etim es I have
such vivid memories! Going back to the first
year, evidently, so my mother says, when I de
scribe certain im pressionistic scen es . . . the
kitchen o f an old, rented, forgotten house, the
stairway, etc. And then again, I forget. The
corpse hauled from the Erie Canal— totally for
gotten. Nor did I dream about it last night.
Nor can I recall it, no matter how hard I try.
Why do I remember fragmented, jumbled things
from earliest childhood, attached to no specific
event or symbol, and forget dramatic, no doubt
alarming things like the corpse in the water!
T he quirks and p erversities o f con sciou sn ess,
which are alike in all of us. Pride makes us
fo r g e t, N ie tz s c h e h as said , but su rely th at
isn’t always true: on the contrary, humiliating
and terrifying experiences are held vividly sus
pended in the mind for decades, forever.^
For this reason, no doubt, Oates disagrees with Sartre, believ
ing that "Not other people, as Sartre said, but the absence of
90
other p eo p le con stitu tes H e ll," ^ or w orse still, she con-
17
tends "Hell is memory with no chance of alteration."
Fiction, then, is the place where Oates "alters" memory by
reworking it into a cohesive whole, for she believes artists
are simply "more serious dreamers" than ordinary people in
that they "consciously arrange and rearrange reality for the
purpose of exploring its hidden meanings." The writer’s task,
she maintains, is to "write in order to give a more coherent,
abbreviated form to the world, which is often confusing and
terrifying and stupid as it unfolds about u s." ^ Even in
this sen se, O ates believes "writing is not an escape from
reality," but instead agrees with Flannery O ’Connor that "’it
is a plunge into reality and it is very shocking to the sys
tem ’ . . . the writer is a person who has hope in the world;
1Q
people without hope do not write." Such are the seemingly
contrary impulses that lead Oates both to use art as cathar
sis, "to rid herself of evils," by ordering and understanding
them as well as to memorialize those people, places, and exper
iences that have given her "hope in the world."
Both of these attitudes are evident in her portraits of
settings, which she maintains can be another "character" in a
story, and which are so often clearly drawn from places in her
own life. Many of the stories in her first two collections
By the N orth G ate (1963) and Upon the Sw eeping F lood
91
(1 9 6 6 ) occur in a fiction alized rural settin g, called E den
county, which, as she has admitted, is based upon her memories
of her own childhood experiences in Erie county, New York, the
site of the farm where her mother grew up near the Tonawanda
Creek, which is crossed by a bridge that appears often, both
literally and metaphorically, in O ates’s stories. Her mother,
form erly C arolina Bush, and her father, Frederick Carlton
Oates, Jr., continue to live on this same land though most of
the farmland is now gone, sold or usurped by the county’s need
to widen the highway.
Oates refers to this locale in rural New York as "the quin
tessential world of my fiction" in a memoir, entitled "Facts,
Visions, Mysteries: My Father, Frederick Oates,1 and her
m em ories of farm life are a combination of rather mundane
chores, such as "chicken duties," which she recalls as having
"fallen within a specifically fem ale province" and the child’s
p o sse ssiv e d elig h t in n atu re itself: " My lilac tree near
th e back door, m y apple tree at the side o f the house,
m y cherry tree . . . long u p rooted , gone." She clearly
regrets that "looking at the property now from the road, you
would not be able to guess that it was once a farm." These
are obviously pleasant memories, perhaps because they are her
own, and even though she is not given to self pity, she does
communicate a feeling of sincere longing and of loss: "My
92
childhood seem s to have been plowed under, gone subterranean
as a dream,1 but then dreams, after all, are retrievable
through memory.
In her stories, however, her use of these rural settings
is not a nostalgic, sentim ental recollection of ideal country
life, but in stead often suggests the rigors, drudgery, and
soul-num bing isolation of life in the country, especially as
this life is often rigidly lim ited by lack of education and
econom ic hardship. This is the isolated reality Oates depicts
in th e title story o f her first c o lle c tio n , By th e N orth
99
G a te . This story begins with "old man" R evere’s dream,
which is filled with "an opaque white mist" and which he can
not decipher: "He had been dreaming of the past again that
night and his dream had been fragmented and confused, like
pieces of a jigsaw puzzle spilled across his mind" (236). H e
had dreamed of his wife’s death, the land he owns, once owned
by his grandfather, land that at one time must have not been
owned by anyone. When he awakes, he knows something is wrong
and he goes outside to find the ears of his old dog, Nell,
have been "neatly and viciously" slit. The next day, he goes
outside to see smoke rising from the field behind his barn.
H e thinks of what happened to the dog the day before and he
joins the incidents in his mind: "He saw them together, and
he both realized something and doubted everything" (238).
93
What the old man realizes is that these are human acts,
premeditated and intentional, but wholly impersonal; they have
nothing to do with who he is or what he’s done in his life.
H e thinks of the boys who followed him on the road one day and
though he tried to be friendly, they threw stones at him: "It
was not because he was a Revere, not because he was who he
was— there was no reason for their behavior" (251). The utter
randomness of the cruelty and violence bewilders him and makes
him doubt his faith in an orderly, coherent world. Eventu
ally, the old man sits down on a bench outside his house, ex
hausted after having put out the fire, and he tries to make
sense of the stones, the dog’s ears, the fire, and the fact
that someone, he didn’t know who, had hit him from behind and
knocked him unconscious while he was fighting the flames: "He
knew something had happened. And there had to be a reason for
it— a reason he must try to discover" (240). H e did not want
to abandon his "faith in understanding and knowledge, the kind
of thinking found in books, though Heaven knew he had never
been good at it him self' (240). Indeed, this is a kind of
faith the old man should not abandon, for "the kind of think
ing found in books" is precisely what he needs to order and
understand these disturbing events.
Most of the story, however, is comprised of the old man’s
disorderly and confusing "reveries," which occur as he slips
94
indistinctly from waking, to daydreaming, to sleeping. His
memories are of his farm, fallen into disrepair and "discourag
ing" to him, and the house, although better, is not so nice as
when his wife was alive or his three children lived at home:
"It seemed to have changed as if by magic— the shed and the
house and the whole look of the land— as soon as he was fi
nally left alone" (243). And indeed it has changed through
the "magical" power of emotion to influence perception. But
the old man understands none of this, and his memories are
jumbled in time, his children grown, then young, then grown
again. After a memory of the last time he saw his daughter,
who had come to ask him to move in with her and her husband,
but who left as angry as he was confused, he worries that he
has "betrayed" his children: "Revere felt a pang of guilt, as
if he had betrayed [his daughter], as he had betrayed his
sons, by bringing them all into a world of strangers" (245).
H e is confused by these thoughts, especially the idea that he
had missed his chance to get to know his own children, but he
abandons these ideas because they are "too difficult for him
to think of and made him feel bad" (246).
The central memory of the story, however, and the one to
which the old man returns for comfort at its conclusion, is
his m em ory o f years ago, as an adult, walking across the
fields to a one-room schoolhouse, where a young male teacher
95
had helped him learn to read and they had "argued, argued
about life, about strange things--no one else had ever talked
to R evere like that, not even his wife, not even his father"
(252). T h ese had been intim ate conversations about ideas,
about literature, though Revere never would have called them
"intimate" and only obliquely recognizes them as such. The
old man had argued with the teacher "pretending more scorn
than he felt" when they discussed a story about magic, a past
time, and a young woman who met her death in the form of a
dark man, protesting that the story made no sense " ’cause
things don ’t happen that way in the w orld’" (252). Still,
this was R evere’s only chance to broaden his world, a brief
glim pse at ideas that suggest reality is more than what is
seen.
This is the memory to which Revere returns after the three
loutish, dirty boys, probably the same ones who had thrown the
stones, set the fire, and hurt his dog, come to his farm, pre
tending to want water from his pump, but really only trying to
entice him to look around the corner of the shed, where he dis
covers, after they’ve run away, his dog, Nell, still alive but
dying, her belly slit open. H e chases after them, demanding
to know why— he yells that he has never hurt anyone and he has
survived his sixty-eight years w ithout "giving in": "All my
life I done battle against it: that life don’t mean nothin’!
96
That it don’t make sense! . . . You ain’t gong’ to change my
mind now, an’ me grown so old an’ come so far" (251).
R evere is old, and his sight is failing, so, exhausted, he
stops running after the boys he cannot even see, and though
"he believed there was something a man ought to do, even an
old man" he can’t "get to the beginning of things" (251). As
he thinks this, the boys’ faces come into his consciousness
stripped o f their identity and individuality: "By an effort
of will that exhausted him, that strained his mind and even
his heart, he saw them enveloped by a greater darkness beyond
them, the darkness of this wild land itself," and "he saw them
caught within the accidental pattern of a fate in which he
him self would be caught" (251). Still reluctant to abandon
his b elief in a single, coherent meaning for all of reality,
Revere protests, "But they ain’t no judgment upon the world,"
and reassures him self that "they ain’t anything but boys, no
more. . . . They don’t stand for anything s’post to change my
mind about life" (251). But, in fact, that is precisely what
they stand for, and at that moment "his thoughts built up and
collapsed about him" (251).
This is his moment of revelation: "When we reach our lim
its . . . when our ordered worlds collapse, when we cannot en
act our moral ideals, when we are disenchanted, we often enter
in to th e a w a ren ess o f M y s t e r y . W h a t John S h ea, a
97
th e o lo g ia n , r e fe r s to h e r e as "Mystery" is a d e c id ed ly
religious concept, and though Oates also uses the term in this
sense, at this point in her career she is more interested in
p h ilo so p h y than relig io n , th ou gh the two can hardly be
separated. Just as Shea asserts that such moments are both
" m e n a c in g and p r o m isin g ," an d in v a r ia b ly r e su lt in a
"decidedly human" activity: storytelling, so too does O ates
contend that "When w e are hurt; when we are frightened,
befuddled . . . we take up our pens."^ Through an act of
w ill that pushes him "beyond himself" in the N ietzschean
sen se, old man R evere "rewrites" the story o f that day’s
terrib le events, claim ing "This here ain’t no m ore than a
accident" (252). Only then does he experience any relief:
"All th e strange failures o f his life . . . even this final
vexatious waiting for death— all shrank before the memory of
th a t tim e [at th e s c h o o lh o u s e ], th e w ay h is c h ild h o o d
nightmares had shrunk back, vanquished, before the clear empty
sunshine of day" (253).
The old man’s assertion that these events are "accidental"
rather than having "a reason he must try to discover" is not
an evasion of reality, but an apperception of it. His dis
illusionment, which is clearly menacing to him, is also prom
ising in that it frees him from having to accept its oppo
site: that there must be a single, determinate reason for
98
everything and so he must be being "punished" or that the
events o f his life are a "judgment" on him. According to
Oates, "The world has no meaning. I am sadly resigned to this
fact. But the world has meanings . . . and the adventure of
? C
being human consists in seeking out those meanings. J This
is the "larger," p h ilosop h ical p ersp ective that R evere sub
stitu tes for a con ven tion ally religiou s perspective involving
"judgment," and in this way, without fully knowing what he’s
done, he has connected his own life with "the life o f the
mind" that he remembers in "the smell of chalk and dust and
the coal burning in the stove at his back" (253) in that
drafty schoolroom of so many years ago. Oates claims, "our
liv e s are n arratives; th ey are e x p e r ie n c e d in the flesh ,
sometimes in flesh that comes alive only in pain, but they are
recollected as poem s, lyrics, condensed, illuminated by a few
precise im ages."^
Even in an early, seemingly "realistic" story such as this
one, O ates is far less interested in its ostensible plot than
in the story’s ability to embody and demonstrate the human
ability to make meaning from the fragmented, seemingly sense
less events of on e’s life. Her perspective, in fact, is more
p h ilosop h ical than conventionally religious, for as she says
in an interview that discusses these early stories with Linda
K eu h l, O a tes rejects th e p r e ce p ts o f o rgan ized religion ,
sp ecifically the Catholicism in which she was raised, even
th ou gh sh e d o es not fe e l sh e ’s ever reb elled against it.
Instead, she focuses on "the problems of living in the world.
It seem s to m e a su fficien tly intricate h o p ele ss problem
itself w ithout bringing in another world, another dimension."
Even so, she also adds, "I was very interested in religious
problems when I was writing those early stories, and many of
them I know I had imagined as workings out of remarks of
Pascal, and also Kafka, and Kierkegaard too." She explains,
"I would take ideas from these men and try to illustrate them
dramatically."^
From her earliest published writings forward O ates has
b e e n in te r e ste d in su b jective truth rather than em pirical
truths alone or even the "blind" faith demanded in the over
sim plifications com m on to conventional religious belief. This
in terest is m an ifest, esp ecially in her early work, through
sto ries that exp lore issu es o f w ill and hum an lim itation s
(N ietzsche), or subjective truth and authentic choices (Kierke
gaard), or the perplexities of identity and consciousness (Kaf
ka), but at this same time she was also interested in the writ
ings of Jean-Paul Sartre, whose book Nausea (1938), which
is about a man’s decision to "remake" his life through the cre
ative act of writing fictions, O ates claims to be "a religious
novel in a way I can understand religion."^ Only from this
100
perspective can one understand that, despite the horrifying
and senseless cruelty of the boys, old man Revere has won a
victory o f sorts: he has given up his rigid insistence that
the world has a definite and determinable meaning and has
acknowledged the random, unintentional nature o f reality, an
acknowledgment that opens the possibility for many meanings,
and so the story ends in "the clear empty sunshine of the
day."
O ates was able to pursue her philosophical interests at
Syracuse University, where she majored in English and minored
in philosophy. She graduated in 1960, both Phi Beta Kappa and
valedictorian for her class, and despite having won the 1959
co lleg e fiction co n test sponsored by M adem oiselle for her
story "In the Old World," as well as the senior poetry contest
at Syracuse, she did not feel ready to declare herself a wri
ter, so she went to the University of Wisconsin, where she re
ceived her M.A. in 1961. In that same year, she met and mar
ried her husband, Raymond Smith, a fellow graduate student.
They had only known each other three weeks before they were
married, and in an excised portion of some manuscripts notes,
O ates recalls, "In early adulthood I would become fearful of
planes for the absurd, sentimental reason that, newly married,
I was conscious of mortality: if I am so happy, surely I
m ight die." A ccording to K ierkegaard, the aw areness of
101
su bjective truths, such as o n e’s own m ortality, is precisely
the process through which a person discovers their authen
ticity sin ce th e se truths h elp o n e to clarify valu es and
establish priorities. As Donald Palmer explains in his dis
c u ss io n o f K ie rk eg a a r d ’s id e a s, a ck n o w led g in g su b jectiv e
truths helps "to recover the se lf from its alienation into
so c ia l r o le s , m a teria l p o sse ssio n s and lin g u istic a b stra c
tions. It reveals (and at the same time creates) the self
which had been invisible to the se lf." ^ O ates has often
dem onstrated such "self-awareness" in both her fiction as well
as her non-fiction writing, but that she possessed it so early
in life , in her early tw en ties, v erifies E lain e S h ow alter’s
assertion that "She seems to be someone who is never blocked,
whose unconscious is always available. . . . She has the un-
Of)
canny personal power of genius."
That genius has been carried into a career that started
not so much with the publication of her first book of stories
in 1963, but at the point when she discovered one of her stor
ies, "Sweet Love Remembered," in Martha Foley’s honor roll for
the Best American Short Stories of 1960. Upon making this dis
covery, she wrote Martha Foley a letter to thank her and left
the doctoral program at Rice University to become a writer. A
short time later, she and her husband, Raymond, left Texas for
Detroit, where they lived from 1962 to 1968, teaching at the
102
U niversity of D etroit until they moved to Ontario, Canada,
w here they both taught in the English departm ent o f the
University of Windsor from 1967 to 1978. They returned to the
U nited States in 1978 when Oates was appointed writer-in-
residence at Princeton University, where she continues teach
ing creative writing. She says she enjoys teaching because
she likes her students, and it provides a nice balance to her
regular regimen of writing. These, at least, are the "public"
facts of O ates’s life, but they have been "personalized" in
her stories, which use both memory and imagination to recreate
the world.
O ates often refers to her own writing as "autobiograph
ical," explaining that "I project my doubts, my metaphysical
and p h ilo s o p h ic a l doubts" in to certain ch a ra cters, ^ a l
though she seems to have become increasingly wary of making
such statem ents in recent years. In 1970, for example, she
stated that even though her novel, them is "largely auto
b iograp h ical," sh e d id n ’t fe e l v u ln era b le b eca u se "people
think they’re reading fiction . . . I’ve fixed it up so that
my fiction gives me a certain protection."^ By 1978, she
claimed, "there is nothing of a personal nature in the writ
ing"**** and her 1991 collection called H eat and Other Stor
ies carries a P u b lish er’s N ote states that th e stories are
works of fiction and any resemblances to actual persons or
103
p la c e s are p u rely " co in cid en ta l." U n d o u b ted ly , "fam e’s
carapace does not allow for easy breathing."
Even so, "allowing the writer her vision," the reader can
acknowledge both the fictional and the personal nature of her
w riting. She asserts that w hile friends, acquaintances, and
fam ily— m ost certainly her parents or her husband— never ap
pear in her work, the places, the historical events, and the
emotions as well as the ideas are quite "real." Oates admits
"most [writers] are probably m ost pow erfully influenced by
their early surroundings: they wish to capture universal
truths in the form of particular, even local types, and give
the life to the larger element of the human psyche by way of
fa m ilia r i m a g e s . O n e o f the early surroundings that
appears often, and with great affection in Oates’s writing, is
Syracuse U n iversity, w hich is the settin g for early works,
such as "Archways" as well as recent ones, including much of
her recent novel Because It Is Bitter, A n d Because It Is My
H ea rt. Sim ilarly, th e m ain ch aracter o f a recen t story
entitled "Morning" attends "a m id-western land-grant univer
sity of some distinction," much like the University of Wiscon
sin, and Detroit is central to many of her works, including
D o With M e What You Will and them , which recounts the
D etroit riots of 1967 through the personal experience of the
main character, Jules Wendall. Canada, another of the places
104
w here O ates has lived, is the setting for her collection of
s t o r i e s c a lle d C ro ssin g th e B o rd e r, an d m an y o f h er
stories take place in academ ic environm ents, including the
c o lle c tio n The H ungry G h osts. That O ates w rites "from
life" is n ot that surprising, esp ecia lly since sh e b eliev es,
like Sartre, that she must acknowledge the facticity o f the
world, but it is her "recreation" of places and events, and
the emotion with which she imbues them that "fascinates."
According to O ates, it is "inevitable" and "entirely na
tural" that a writer "cannibalize" his own life for his fic
tion since "the artist is driven by passion; and passion most
powerfully derives from our own experiences and memories."*^
For this reason, Oates creates characters who are not her in a
literal sense, yet they share em otions and experiences with
her, and by watching them as their lives "work themselves out"
in her fiction, O ates is providing herself with an invaluable
"psychological education." For example, in her 1972 interview
with Walter Clemons, Oates admits that Ilena of "The Dead" is
her "alter-ego," a "way I might have gone," for this is the
story of a young woman writer much like Oates, but who-unlike
Oates— loses herself in the struggle to handle newly won fame.
O ates suggests that writing about this as fiction helped her
to avert the experience in life. Similarly, in "Dreams" from
Crossing the Border the main character, Margo, has a dream
105
that replicates O ates’s own description of a recurring dream
that returns her to her childhood r o o m .^ Further, this
story begins with a descrip tion that quite sp ecifically re
counts O ates’s own feelings while writing the stories in The
Poisoned Kiss:
Several years ago in an eastern city there lived
a woman who was afraid. She could not have said
exactly what she feared, som etim es it was the
fear o f fear itself, a state of mind that was
ludicrous but terrifying because it was so open.
Anything could fill it. She was an intelligent
woman in her late twenties who did not really
take h erself seriously, and so she thought of
this strange em ptiness as a puzzling joke: but
it was not funny. She carried herself around
like a vessel, ready to be filled with anything.
To keep out fear she had to be filled always with
new ideas, new books, the constant assurance of
friends. (83)
To anyone who has ever experienced this feeling, this is a
chilling account, and it owes its power to the fact that its
"psychological fidelity" comes from lived experience. The im
age of the "vessel" is not only a typical female symbol, but
also suggests the aspect of receptivity through which Oates ap
prehended the stories "told" to her by Fernandes. Although
the published version of the Afterword to The Poisoned Kiss
s ta te s th a t th e e x p e r ie n c e w as "not r e a lly d istu rb in g,"
106
and it no doubt was no longer disturbing since the Afterword
was w ritten som e five years after the stories, excised por
tions o f the draft indicate that the original experience was
somewhat distressing:
Though I maintained a normal surface personality
during the transcribing of the Fernandes stories,
I was in fact perplexed and often frightened at
th e oth ern ess o f the P o rtu g u ese ta les--w h ich ,
as I wrote them, seemed to me nightmarish and
deathly (when I read through them all, however, I
saw that they w ere not so evil, really, and I
came to feel that Fernandes was a saintly human
being). I made no effort at the time to inter
pret this, though as the stories were published I
m entioned to various people my half-serious fear
that this "other" writer would displace me; but
this was always a kind of joke. My conception of
normality has always been quite limited, and per
haps narrow; I can sympathize with anyone in my
fiction, but am bewildered at other-than-ordinary
experiences of my own. Therefore, I tend to
treat them as jokes or to forget about them.
(Since my experience with Fernandes, I am aston
ished to observe how often people react the same
way I did— they either dismiss or joke about all
events they cannot explain logically... )?^
N one of this, of course, suggests that Oates is anything but
normal; she may be, however, a far more sensitive, intelli
gent, and receptive person than m ost. The point o f the
107
comparison, however, is that both Oates and Margo were fearful
b eca u se they felt so vulnerably receptive, so "open," they
both try to dismiss their fear as a joke, and they both turn
to fr ie n d s for rea ssu ra n ce. T h ese are n ot p articu larly
unusual incidents, but there seem s to be a high correlation
b e tw e e n O a te s ’s p e r so n a l e x p e r ie n c e an d th is fic tio n a l
passage.
In a later part of the draft, also not included in the
published version, she admits that her experience in writing
the "Portuguese" stories caused her to have to rethink some of
her ideas and although she could not arrive at a satisfactory
conclusion, she explains that she has had to broaden her
thinking beyond "existentialism" and Freud and has become more
in t e r e s t e d in , for e x a m p le , J u n g ’s c o n c e p ts a b o u t th e
unconscious. In any case, it seem s fair to conclude that
M argo is O a te s , at le a s t in th is d e sc r ip tio n , and this
serves as an example of how Oates’s work is as epistemological
as it is artistic: by recrea tin g this ex p erien ce through
Margo, Oates has afforded herself the opportunity to becom e an
observer of her own experience, to order it, to have it make
sense. Certainly, this is only a small part of the story, and
it d o es n ot su g g est that all o f M argo’s ex p erien ces are
O a tes’s, for this would confine the fiction to the "merely
personal." Instead, O ates has taken a rather disturbing and
108
perplexing experience, as was Old Man R evere’s, and tran
scribed it into the objective world of art in the hope of
seeing it more clearly, and, if possible, understanding it.
A similar parallel occurs between O ates’s story "Survival
o f Childhood" in Upon the Sweeping Flood and her non-fic
tion essay entitled "Stories that Define Me." In the story, a
young man named Gene, an artist of sorts, commits suicide, and
his brother Carl, a college professor, com es to understand
that G ene had "been a victim not only of the world, but of the
world’s judgment on him— a judgment he had accepted without
question" (58). Through the anguished faces G ene has drawn
and placed along the walls to his room, Carl discovers that
his brother’s pain had becom e unbearable, a pain prompted by
his "angry sympathy" for those whose lives in that dismal and
stifling rural community were as miserable as his own. That
Carl "survives his childhood" and learns from G ene illustrates
how O ates exam ines various choices or options for herself
through her characters. In her essay, she writes
So frequently attacked as a (woman) writer who
writes about violence in the lives of fairly nor
mal people, I recall the various nightmares of
my childhood and tell myself that, after all, I
did survive childhood and should not be espe
cially pained at the violence of the critical at
tacks my writing receives. If pricked or even
stabbed, I seem incapable of bleeding, but I am
109
not invulnerable to psychic hurt--a fact I take
to be a salutoiy sign .^
Although Oates makes no mention of the story in her essay and
the two are separated by som e 16 years, understanding the
story from the perspective of the essay helps the reader to
recognize that while Oates shares G ene’s pain at "the judg
ments of the world" (i.e., from critics), she does not "accept
them without question" and so is aligned with Carl in choosing
"survival." She is not simply one character in this story,
but shares attributes with tw o-both male. Her range of "sym
pathy" is quite broad.
Oates also shares G ene’s "angry sympathy" for those appar
ently locked into the econom ically and educationally bereft
life of the rural poor in America. In fact, her appreciation
for her own artistic career and educational experiences seems
amplified by the fact that her early education started in a
one-room schoolhouse in rural New York. Looking back on those
early years, she seems amazed that her parents are not bitter
and were not broken by their early lives, but instead, emerged
as "survivors of a world so harsh and so repetitive in its
harshness as to defy description, except perhaps in art. ^
Oates herself is not quite able to give up her anger at those
early hardships, though she admits "this is a personal anger,
not one I have inherited from my family."^® In the draft to
110
the memoir on her father, Oates states, "Thinking of my par
ents’ early lives makes me angry, and anger is inappropriate
for a memoir of this sort. So I won’t dwell upon this facet
o f our lives except to confess that such anger (and it is,
yes, ’class’ anger too) has fueled a good deal of my writing,
and always will." Yet, she also acknowledges that her parents
have a "genius" for happiness that seems to defy circumstances
o f birth, environm ent, or family. H er mother, she recalls,
sum m arizes their early lives succinctly, "’I guess we w ere
poor but it didn’t seem that way at the time . . . somehow we
always managed."^
O ates’s parents’ lives were not only "harsh" for economic
reasons, but for "family" reasons as well. Knowing that nei
ther of her parents ever really knew their fathers helps ex
plain why Oates, herself from an apparently stable family back
ground, would so often people her stories with fathers who are
d isin terested , ob liviou s, or abusive to their children. In
"Stigmata," for exam p le, the father prefers the em otion al
oblivion of religion to the "human pain" of connections with
his children. In "The Death of Mrs. Sheer," Sweet Gum, an
orphan who has desperately wondered all of his life who his
father might be, discovers at the end of the story that it is
a man he has always known, so he tries to shoot him, acciden
tally killing Mrs. Sheer, who incidentally appears in the last
I l l
few sentences of the story. In the story "What Death With
Love Should Have To Do," a young father casually abandons his
you n g w ife and so n — an in cid en t that rep licates her own
father’s experience. H er m other’s experience of losing her
father to violence (he was killed in a tavern brawl) first
took the form of a short story called "November Morning,"
w h ich O a tes later rew rote and e x te n d ed into the n ovel
Mayra: A Life.
M ore recen t stories, including "Funland," "Daisy," and
"Magic" also chronicle troubled relationships betw een fathers
and their children, but in these stories, the pain of absent
fathers is replaced by the even more terrible prospect of fath
ers who are delusional, controlling, or abusive in ways more
subtle and insidious than simple abandonment. This is also
true of a recent story called "Leila Lee," which appears in
O a tes’s 1991 co llectio n , H ea t an d O ther Stories. In this
narrative, a domineering, selfish father simply does not know
how to love his son— or anyone, really-an d the story ends
with the young step-mother trying to comfort the boy (and try
ing to think of a way to cover up his crime) after the son has
hacked the father to death with an ax. It is a Lizzy Borden
story, and the reader, like the step-mother, cannot help but
understand the boy’s actions even if repulsed by them.
112
O ates has written innumerable stories in which the rela
tionships betw een parents and children are debilitating, and
som etim es life-threatening, for the children. Som etim es the
abusive parent is the mother, as in "Matter and Energy," a
story Oates explains is based on the childhood memory of one
of her students, a young man whose mother tried to kill him
b efo re she was institutionalized for m ental illness. O cca
sionally, both parents are so selfish and self-absorbed that
the children are shattered in early life. The reader assumes
this is the case in "How I Contemplated The World from the
Detroit House of Correction and Began My Life Over Again," but
it is clearly true of the parents in "Getting to Know All
About You," a story that in many ways seems a condensed ver
sion of the novel Because It Is Bitter, A n d Because It Is My
H eart. T here are som e significant differences, but in both
n arratives th e children are left to "fend for them selves"
w hile their mothers, both alcoholics, and their fathers, both
gamblers, are busy destroying their own lives.
Clearly, these are not stories extracted from Oates’s per
sonal fam ily experiences. In fact, "Daisy," she says, is a
story that examines som e "issues involved in the relationship
betw een sanity and insanity" and is based "informally" on the
life of James Joyce and his daughter Lucia, who was diagnosed
as s c h iz o p h r e n ic .^ W hat O ates is chronicling in th ese
113
sto ries, h ow ever, is the collective or com m unal, and not
merely individual, neuroses of our times. Both Jung and Kohut
have noted a "shift" in modern psychological problems away
from the troubles that could be attributed to "smothering"
p arents (although this, certainly, still occurs) to a new ly
socialized self that is incom plete, empty, or estranged from
i t s e lf d u e to th e a b s e n c e o f p a r e n ta l in v o lv e m e n t in
children’s lives. According to Kohut, "The importance of the
m a tr ix o f e m p a th y in w h ic h w e grow up c a n n o t b e
overestim ated ." ^ Few would argue that modern American
society has hardly prom oted the kind of connectedness that
em pathy requires; instead, parental absence, whether physical
or emotional, is a common personal and social problem even if
it is not a universal phenomenon.
In her stories, Oates is neither narrating merely personal
trauma nor voyeuristic fantasies about the suffering o f oth
ers. Instead, she is doing what fiction has always done:
examining in the individual issues that are of concern to the
communal whole. It’s true that Oates’s father was abandoned
by a drunken, violent father at the age of two or three, and
that her mother was given up for adoption as a consequence of
her own father’s early and unnecessary death. It is also true
that O ates’s father’s grandfather tried to beat his w ife to
death and then went into the basement, placed a gun-barrel
114
under his chin and killed himself, even as his own daughter,
aged eight, O ates’s paternal grandmother, was trying to get
into the house, surprised to find it locked upon arriving home
from school. On one of the pages of the draft for her memoir,
Oates typed, "A childhood memory: Frederick Oates goes to ram
shackle house next door to try to stop beating (wife)— common
when man is drunk. Gets punched, but beating stops." These
certainly must be "personal" events to Oates, and there is no
doubt that they have made violence and the fear of violence
quite real to her, but they are also Am erican events, and
Oates feels a duty to witness the reality she sees.
Even so, these events do not represent the whole world to
Oates, and critics and reviewers have perhaps revealed som e
thing about themselves rather than something about Oates by
being alarmed at the violence in her fiction rather than in
so c ie ty it s e lf .^ T he w h ole w orld, to O ates, always in
cludes at least two sides to an issue, and usually more, and
in a small piece excised from the published version of the
memoir, O ates writes, "Suppose Frederick Oates, Sr. had not
abandoned his wife and two year old son 1916." She concludes
that her grandfather’s drunken, abusive nature would have "in
fected" her own father, and so it was a "generous gesture," a
" ’fortunate fall,’ even though Oates, Sr. had no such good in
te n tio n s ." In th is , as in e v e r y th in g , O a te s a d o p ts a
115
"comprehensive" perspective: she not only acknowledges the
pain and problems of that early life, but she also looks back
on it with reveren ce and fond ness. T he draft, like the
memoir, communicates the sincerity of her affection:
Though sometimes denounced and very often mis
understood by a genteel literary community, my
writing is, at least in part (how can I say this
w ithout sounding presum ptuous, or pretentious?
or simply desperate?) an on-going attempt to mem
orialize my parents’ world; my parents’ lives.
Sometimes fairly directly, and sometimes by ana
logy.45
In an interview with Robert Phillips, Oates explains that
"I identify very closely with my parents in ways I can’t satis
factorily explain." She says their early lives seem "access
ible" to her and "a memory belonging to my mother or father
seems almost to ’ belong’ to me" and that "in studying old pho
tographs" she gets the feeling of having been "contemporary"
with her parents, as if she’d known them when they were very
young or as teenagers.4* * Although she asks the interviewer
if this is odd, it seems only to suggest an equal level of sym
pathy as that with which she approaches her fictional charac
ters.
Knowing that her father, an intelligent, sensitive man, a
talented pianist, would have been better suited to an artistic
116
or academic life, she cannot help but regret that he spent so
many years working long hours as a punch press operator, a
sign painter, and later as a tool and die designer. His early
career, during the Depression and before the start of World
War II, was especially difficult since in those days, O ates
contends, "management owed nothing to labor; not even simple
c o ur te sy , an d he was often laid off— with a young w ife
and daughter to support. Like his daughter, however, Freder
ick O ates is apparently not given to self pity, and his only
comment on those years, Oates recalls, is the statement "They
4 8
were hard. ° As a family, however, Oates remembers that
they have all, always, enjoyed "busyness" or "useful em ploy
m ent," not sp onsored by any self-flagellating Puritan work
ethic, but inspired by a far more positive perspective: "We
love to work because work gives us genuine happiness, the pos
iting and solving of problems, the joyful exercise of the imag-
..49
mation. ^
One cannot help but suspect that these early experiences
have had a profound influence on Oates, an influence that sur
faces as dismay when an interviewer asks her why she writes so
much or as a sincere sympathy for the Wendalls, a poor, urban
fam ily in her novel them (1969), who despite the apparent
w r e tc h e d n e s s o f th e ir liv e s , s u r v iv e ; in h er im p a tie n c e
with "a genteel literary community" who insists on seeing that
117
survival as irony only rather than also as victory; in her
im patience with the self-absorption o f academics, satirized in
The H ungry G hosts (1974) or the shallow ness of suburban
social life, so graphically depicted in her story "Party." It
is not surprising, perhaps, that O ates feels her sophisticated
and well educated and economically secure "public self' to be
an impostor, for she quite clearly sees her "escape" from the
hardships o f this early life as a "fortunate fall," o f which
she is fully conscious and for which she is quite grateful.
Unwilling to credit her hard work or her enormous talent, she
believes "only chance saved me and others of my generation
from the work-oriented lives of our parents."^®
She seems, at times, not quite able to believe her good
fortune, or at least not to be able to enjoy it without a
tinge of guilt, for among her manuscript notes is a stray page
dated August 14, 1978, that recalls a dinner or celebration
apparently given in her honor:
. . . o f large privileges, and constructed out
of a galaxy of abuses of one kind or another
(cap italism , m im icking nature, is unfair) but,
at least, from time to time, it is really quite
nice. And my parents were extremely pleased.
Where else might my father hear himself praised
as handsome and adorable and charming and marve
lous by glamorous women . . . and my mother,
look in g very attractive in a white dress and
118
shoes with thin straps, praised for her daughter
by people who have actually read something she
has written, and appear to know her, even to be
fond of her?*^
There is no doubt that Oates admires her parents, or that she
feels both anger and fondness for those years, now gone, some
o f which she knows only through family "stories" and som e
through personal memory.
Both stories and memories are, of course, sources of pow
erful emotional experience for Oates. The fact that they are
at tim es hardly distinguishable to her, despite the fact that
reworking memory into art allows for (or requires) composure
and distance, is evidenced in the fact that the notes for her
memoir on her father are mixed in with the manuscript notes
for her novel Because It Is Bitter, A n d B ecause It Is My
H e a r t," o r ig in a lly e n title d Songs o f In n o cen ce, w h ich is
a clear allusion to Blake, but which also no doubt refers to
the many references to popular music that Oates uses to evoke
m em ories of the era (the late 50’s and early 60’s) that the
novel memorializes. In her memoir, she claims to have inher
ited her love of music from her father, describing hers as "a
temperament thoroughly imbued with music" and for that reason,
she explains, "people like us are always involved in music no
matter what it appears we are doing."*^
119
There are several other instances of "overlap" where notes
for the novel blur into notes for the memoir, but both, even
in published form, suggest that "facts" rather than memory or
emotions need to be explained, and each contains the phrase,
"Memory is a transcendental function" and speak of the "lumin
osity" of memory. In the novel, the focus is on the mundane:
"Memory is a transcendental function. But it attaches itself
only to bo die s.T he memoir explains this cryptic state
m ent, even as it reverses its focus and speaks of the spiri
tual qualities of memory:
M em ory is a transcendental function. Its ob
jects may be physical bodies, faces, ’character
istic’ expressions of faces, but these are shot
with luminosity; an interior radiance that trans
fixes the imagination like the radiance in m edie
val and R en aissa n ce religious paintings . . .
that signal that Time has been stopped and Eter
nity p revails. So though w e can ’t p erceiv e
’soul’ or ’spirit’ firsthand it seem s to me that
this is precisely the phenomenon we summon back
by way of an exercise of memory.
And why the exercise of memory at certain
times in our lives is almost too powerful to be
borne.~^
In the draft to the essay on her father, Oates asks herself,
"Can you tell how painful it is for me to write this seemingly
120
off-hand, informal m em oir?-as if I were staring into a bright
beacon of light?" For Oates, the "transcendental" function of
memory is not only manifest in memory’s ability to span the
years of one’s personal history or even all of human history,
but in its connection to unconscious processes, it suggests
the possibility of transcending the profane world, even while
remaining in it and acknowledging it as "real," and allowing
one to glimpse or "summon back" the sacred world that eludes
conscious awareness.
Only from this perspective can one understand why Oates
would have entitled her memoir, a non-fiction piece of writ
ing, "Facts, Visions, Mysteries" or why elements of this "non
fiction" work would appear in a novel, usually considered pure
fiction. To Oates, the world of fiction and the world of real
ity serve one another’s needs, and at the end of her memoir,
she admits that the "harsh and unsentimental world" from which
her parents emerged is sometimes overwhelming for her to consi
der: "I can only bear a prolonged consideration of that world
in my writing, and there it is transmogrified as writing— as
fiction. To consider it head-on, not as art but as historical
C C
reality, leaves me weak and bewildered. J For this reason,
no doubt, the novel’s main character, Iris Courtney, much like
Oates herself in appearance and experience (she leaves behind
a fragmented early life by going to Syracuse University on a
121
scholarship, as O ates herself did in the late 1950’s) desires
that art w ill provide a com plete escape: "Art is a world
overlaid upon this world with the pow er to obliterate this
world . . . thus its enormous attraction. So Iris Courtney is
coming to see." ^
Oates, too, at least occasionally, looks on art as a sanc
tuary from the "harsh and unsentimental world": "And what the
writer wants is, simply, a ’ world to live in’: a complete sanc
tuary o f language, desire, myth, significance. W ithout signi
ficance there is no art and without art— no artist."^ To
Oates, the "sanctuary" of art does not derive from its ability
to substitute a "fantasy" world for a the "real" one: this
cannot be done. Every living, breathing person— even art
ists— m ust exist in the tangib le, m undane world. Rather,
Oates suggests that fiction is the only world in which one can
entertain the fantasy of complete understanding:
H ow powerful, the wish for comprehension: a
so la ce, a rescu e, a sm othering o f all doubt.
Why otherw ise do our quick, calculating minds
fasten onto som e shard of memory, some stray
(co n v ersa tio n )? W hat are such p u zzle-p ieces
for/to what end, if not to constitute a mosaic?
h o w ev er fa n ta stica l? B e tte r to p lace o n e ’s
faith in a world of true & un(deceiving) sur
faces, which art (is). There are no delusions
in art— art is (delusion).
122
A lthough not "delusional," art is a world of illusion rather
than a world of reality, for it is through art that "the wri
ter puts his imprimatur upon his (historic) self by way of
writing. H e creates him self, im agines himself, [and] som e
tim es . . . renames him self as one might name a fictitious
character in a work of a r t." ~ ^
For Oates, this process of "rewriting the self' is not an
evasion of the real, but a pursuit of it, accomplished through
memory and imagination. She contends that Freud’s statement,
"Art h a llu c in a tes E go-m astery" is sim ply brilliant: "This
s e n te n c e am azes m e. E verything is in it, everything is
t h e r e . S h e explains that the "hallucination" o f art is
like a dream brought into conscious awareness, and like a
dream, it is not real although, as is any vision, it is ex
trem ely valuable. She also equates "ego" with "self," but
c o n te n d s "your s e lf is n o t fix ed but flu id , c h a n g e a b le ,
mysterious. It is never quite the same self, and yet it is
never another self." One constant of this self, however, is
that it wants "mastery" or control over reality, which is elu
sive because reality, like the self, is fluid, mysterious, and
"vaguely terrifying." B ecause both the self and reality are
elusive, to achieve mastery, "we must therefore create it; we
dream; we create a world (let us say a short story) which is
populated by people we have made, whose thoughts we direct,
123
and whose fates we make sure add up to some sense." In this
way, she maintains, "we write in order to pretend mastery of
the world," but the mastery is "pretend" because we do not con
trol the dream— the unconscious source of the story. There
fore, writing is also a process o f discovery, often of new,
perplexing, and disturbing ideas that then need to be "or
dered" if they are going to "add up to some sense."
To O ates, this is "immensely pleasing" because "it is a
noble task." She concludes, "we write because we are ordained
to a noble task, that of making clear mysteries, or pointing
out mysteries where a numbing and inaccurate simplicity has
held power. We write to be truthful to certain facts, certain
e m o t i o n s . I n this way, one comes to understand how Oates
b elieves that art, even though its fictional contents are not
"real," allows one to "master the world" through the practice
o f perceiving and experiencing truth, which requires the hon
est and scrupulous examination of internal and external reali
ties. To this end, she translates Freud’s sentence "Art hallu
cinates Ego-mastery" into "Fiction Dreams Revelations," the ti
tle of her preface to a collection of contemporary short fic
tion called Scenes from A m erican L ife (1973). The "auto
biography" that Oates writes, then, is not only her own; it is
an American autobiography that conflates self and other, pub
lic and private, real and im aginary— those "contraries" that
124
stimulate the "inner vision of some complexity and ambiguity"
em bodied in her art. Through this vision, "fiction dreams
revelation s" b e c a u se , to O a tes, "writing is n ot after all
m erely the record o f having lived but an aspect o f living
itself'^ --a noble task.
125
CHAPTER ONE: NOTES
I j e a n -P a u l S a rtre, "Why W rite?" T w en tieth C entury
Literary Criticism, ed. David Lodge (New York: Longman,
1972) 372.
^Johann Wolfgang G oethe, "Conversations with Eckerman"
(29 January 1826), trans. John O xenford rep rinted in
Criticism: The Major Texts, ed. Walter Jackson Bate (New
York, 1952) 403.
Paul D. Zimmerman, "Hunger for Dreams," Conversations
w ith J o y c e C a r o l O a te s , e d . L e e M ila z z o (J a c k so n :
University of Mississippi Press, 1989) 15.
4Joyce Carol Oates, (Woman) Writer: Occasions and Op
portunities (New York: Dutton, 1988) 174.
^ R o b e rt P h illip s, "Joyce C arol O ates: T h e A rt o f
Fiction LXXII," Conversations with Joyce Carol Oates, ed.
Lee Milazzo (Jackson: University of Mississippi Press, 1989)
81.
^ D io g e n e s L a e r tiu s, " H eraclitu s," L iv e s o f Im m in e n t
Philosophers, Book IX, Section 8, 121.
n
G eorge M eyers Jr., "Oates Writes Out o f ’Fascination,’
N o t Z eal," C o n versa tio n s w ith Joyce C arol O ates, ed.
L ee M ilazzo (Jackson: U n iversity o f M ississippi P ress,
1989) 184-5.
O
°W alter Clem ons, "Joyce Carol Oates: Love and V io
lence," C onversations with Joyce Carol Oates, ed. L ee
M ilazzo (Jackson: U niversity o f M ississippi Press, 1989)
^Oates, (Woman) Writer 48.
126
CHAPTER ONE: NOTES
l^ J o y c e C arol O a tes, lec tu r e, C en ter for Id ea s and
S ociety, U n iversity of C alifornia, R iversid e, W riter’s W eek
XIV, February 22, 1991.
H jo y c e Carol O ates, "Preface: The N ature of Short
Fiction; or T he Nature o f My Short Fiction" H andbook o f
S h o rt S tory W riting (C in cin n a ti, O hio: W riter’s D ig est
Books, 1981) xi.
-*^David Germain, "Author Oates Tells Where She’s Been,
W here S h e’s Going," Conversations with Joyce Carol Oates,
ed. Lee Milazzo (Jackson: University of Mississippi Press,
1989) 174.
1 ^
±JJoyce C arol O ates, "Facts, V ision s, M ysteries: My
F ather, F rederick Oates," Fam ily Portraits ed. Carolyn A n
thony, (New York: Doubleday, 1989) 153.
-^Zimmerman 14.
l^ N o te s from th e J o y ce C arol O a tes A rch ive, B ird
Library, Syracuse University, New York, n.p.
l^Oates (Woman) Writer 172.
1 7
1 ' Joyce C arol O ates, lectu re, "A N ight o f R eadings,"
P re sid e n t’s D istin gu ish ed G uest L ecturer S eries, C alifornia
State University, Fullerton, March 22, 1990.
l^Oates, "The Nature of Short Fiction" xii.
l^Oates, "The Nature of Short Fiction" xii.
^ O a tes, "Facts, Visions, Mysteries" 155.
127
CHAPTER ONE: NOTES
^ Oates, "Facts, Visions, Mysteries" 154.
^ J o y c e Carol Oates, By the North Gate (New York:
Vanguard, 1963).
^3John S h ea, Stories o f G od: A n U n authorized B io
graphy (Chicago: The Thomas More Press, 1978) 39.
^ J o y c e Carol O ates, B ecause It Is Bitter, A n d Because
It Is My Heart (New York: Dutton, 1990) 234.
^ O ates, "The Nature of Short Fiction" xii.
^ J o y c e C arol O a tes, "Love. F rien d sh ip ." C rossing
the Border (New York: Vanguard, 1976) 33.
^ L in d a K uehl, "An Interview with Joyce Carol O ates,
C o n v e r s a tio n s w ith J o yce C A ro l O a te s ed . L e e M ila zzo
(Jackson: University of MIssippi Press, 1989) 11.
^ W a l t e r C le m o n s, " Joyce C a r o l O a te s at H om e,"
C on versations w ith Joyce C arol O a tes, ed. L ee M ilazzo
(Jackson: University of Mississippi Press, 1989) 5.
^ D o n a ld P alm er, L o o k in g a t P h ilo so p h y (M ou n tain
View, CA.: Mayfield Publishing Company, 1988) 259.
•^Elaine Showalter, "My Friend, Joyce Carol Oates: An
In tim ate Portrait," C on versations w ith Joyce C arol O ates,
ed. Lee Milazzo (Jackson: University of Mississippi Press,
1989) 130.
31Keuhl 8.
-^Zimmerman 14.
128
CHAPTER ONE: NOTES
•^Phillips 79.
•^ L eif Sjoberg, "An Interview with Joyce Carol Oates,"
C o n versa tio n s with Joyce C arol O ates ed. L ee M ilazzo
(Jackson: University of Mississippi Press, 1989) 115.
Oates, (Woman) Writer 6.
•^ O a te s’s dream is recou n ted in "Facts, V isions, Mys
teries: My Father, Frederick Oates," in Family Portraits.
nn
J 'Archive Notes, n.p.
•^Joyce Carol Oates, "Stories that Define Me," The New
York Times Book Review, Section 7 (11 July 1982) 16.
Archive Notes, n.p.
“ ^O ates, "Facts, Visions, Mysteries" 161.
^ O a tes, "Facts, Visions, Mysteries" 162.
^^Sjoberg 117.
^ H e i n z K o h u t, S e lf P sy ch o lo g y a n d th e H u m a n itie s
(New York: W. W. Norton, 1985) 166.
129
CHAPTER ONE: NOTES
44The issue of "violence" in O ates’s fiction should, by
now, be well understood by anyone interested in her work. She
h a s, r a th e r b a f fle d , a d d r e s s e d th is issu e m any tim es,
explaining that her work chronicles American life and much of
A m erican life is violen t. Further, she has asserted that
"objections" to this aspect of her writing belie a sexist and
limiting bias about what is and what is not within the proper
purview o f fem ale authorship. Still, the issue comes up in
interviews as in, for example, her 1988 interview with David
Germain (see Conversations 177).
^A rchive Notes, n.p.
46Phillips, 75-6.
4^Oates, "Facts, Visions, Mysteries" 161.
AO
Oates, "Facts, Visions, Mysteries" 161.
4^Oates, "Facts, Visions, Mysteries" 161.
~^Oates, "Facts, Visions, Mysteries" 160.
Archive Notes, n.p.
^Oates, "Facts, Visions, Mysteries" 162.
^ O ates, Because It Is Bitter 403.
^4Oates, "Facts, Visions, Mysteries" 156.
-’-’ 'Oates, "Facts, Visions, Mysteries" 163.
130
CHAPTER ONE: NOTES
~^Oates, Because It Is Bitter 340.
Archive Notes n.p.
CO
JOA r c h iv e N o te s: A lth o u g h I can n ot b e certa in , I
suspect that the use of parentheses in Oates’s drafts suggests
that while the general idea is being communicated, she is not
yet satisfied with the exact words; therefore, the parentheses
function as prompts for her to reconsider or search for other
terms in the process of revision.
^ O a tes, (Woman) Writer 16.
6®Oates, "The Nature of Short Fiction" xii.
^ O a tes, "The Nature of Short Fiction" xvi.
^ O a tes, (Woman) Writer 158.
131
CHAPTER TWO
THE SELF AND THE WORLD
Just as Oates acknowledges the contrary and multitudinous
nature of "selves," whether one’s own or the necessarily dis
parate entities of self and other, so too does she acknowledge
the separateness between internal and external realities even
as she attempts to examine the interactive nature of these two
dynam ic w orlds. Like Sartre, O ates believes the external
world must be recognized as "other," as external to the self
and largely beyond individual control even though she also
asserts that knowing the world, like knowing the self, is an
in te r p r e ta tiv e activity th at can n ot, under "normal" con d i
tions, escape the influence of each person’s irrevocably sub
jectiv e orien tation . A ccording to O ates, the difficulty in
understanding a reality "outside" the self is further compli
cated by the very nature of the age we inhabit: "It is a
m y sterio u s age, th e p resen t. It q u estio n s all m ean in g.
Writers, trying to make sense of the age, are also creating
it, and there is m ore need than ever for the contemplative
- 1
life. . . . Contem plation, of course is needed to avoid
132
the temptation to impose one’s subjective perspective onto the
world as a denial of external reality, an attempt that invar
iably lead s to the crushing failures so often w itnessed in
O ates’s stories and novels, but neither should the self simply
adopt a deterministic perspective, a point of view that Oates
often depicts in characters who, through their passivity, so
clearly m ake victims of them selves. Instead, O ates believes
that life, like w riting, m ust include a w illin gn ess to risk
one’s sense of self in the attempt to connect to "something
larger than the self:
To write is to make a plea for some sort of human
sympathy and communication. To write is to risk
b ein g r e je c te d , rid icu led , m isu n d erstood . To
write is to attempt to make contact between the
w o r ld o u t there a n d th e w o r ld in here,
both of them mysterious, perhaps ultimately un-
knowable.
Despite the inevitably elusive nature of such goals as "commun
ication," "contact," and "knowing," O ates believes the attempt
to move toward them is "a risk that must be taken" since the
inescapable consequence of denying their importance is suffer
ing and, as she states quite unequivocally, "One is born not
to suffer but to negotiate with suffering, to choose or invent
forms to accommodate it." ~ *
133
In order for this negotiation to be successful, one must
not distort reality but rather must know it as fully as pos
sible, and so Oates maintains that "the [writer] cannot escape
his own sense of obligation to the facts of the world as they
present themselves to him daily," nor should the writer "leap
into th e abstractions o f p h ilosop h y or current sociological
thought, unless these abstractions have been experienced in
tim e, in reality."^ This perspective has, of course, prom p
ted many critics to label Oates a "realist" and her short stor
ies are often categorized as employing "psychological realism"
as their primary mode. And while Oates herself has used such
labels to describe her work,-* these descriptions m ust be
acknowledged as only sometimes or partially accurate, for her
work, from the very beginning, has also contained a "symbolic"
dim ension that moves its levels of meaning far beyond the
"realistic" one that is most easily recognizable.
Although Oates contends that the realistic and the symbo
lic exist within the "same space" (a point I will develop in
the next chapter), a description of her work as simply "real
istic" is at best incom plete, for as Friedm an, Lohafer and
Wagner have all pointed out in their writings on O ates’s work,
her attention to the minute, concrete details of ordinary life
is not her means of accessing understanding but rather serves
to d em o n stra te th e d ifficu lty o f p iercin g th e ob servab le
134
c o n te n ts o f the extern al world in order "to discover its
h id d en m eanings." B e ca u se O a te s’s fic tio n is n ot only
concerned with its ostensible "plots" but also with what John
C iard i c a lls "its jou rn ey to itself," or its se lf-r e fle c tiv e
n a tu r e , o n e c o m e s to u n d e rsta n d h ow a rticu la tio n and
contem plation are, to O ates, of equal im portance with the
"facts" of the world. According to Charles Taylor,
Our attempts to formulate what we hold important
must, like descriptions, strive to be faithful to
something. But what they strive to be faithful
to is not an independent object with a fixed de
gree and manner of evidence, but rather a largely
inarticulated sense of what is of decisive impor
tance.^
Like Taylor, O ates acknowledges the difficulty of articulating
ideas of "decisive importance," yet in her art, she insists on
fidelity for her descriptions of external reality in the hope
of achieving a similar accuracy in her descriptions of inter
nal realities or subjective exp erien ce-th e experience through
which she discovers what her values are. In fact, it is pre
cisely this examination and determination of values that Oates
believes links the experiences of reading and writing, for "in
this [the subjective discovery of values or truths], the art
of reading hardly differs from the art of writing, in that its
m ost intense pleasures and pains m ust rem ain private and
135
7
cannot be communicated to others." D espite the difficulty,
if n o t th e im p o s s ib ility , o f fu lly c o m m u n ic a tin g su ch
d is c o v e r ie s , O a te s , lik e T a y lo r , b e lie v e s th a t "m aking
’articulate’ and more definite that which had been inchoate
and ill-formed . . . is the way we create our values while
creating ourselves."^
This "interior" reality is the ultim ate focus of all of
O ates’s fiction, which attempts to understand the self through
articulation and experience even w hile recognizing that the
self is inseparable from the exterior world. In her examina
tions of the influence of history and culture on the individ
ual, she also foregrounds the significance of personal perspec
tive and individual choice as factors that contribute to both
the individual and collective histories of an era. To Oates,
th e se in flu e n c e s are alw ays, un avoidably, recip rocal. In
fact, she echoes such diverse thinkers as Heraclitus, Heiddeg-
ger, and Thomas Hardy in her conclusion that "character itself
is fate: for all that one does is a con seq u en ce of all
th a t o n e is."^ F or th is r e a so n , sh e in sists th at "the
artists of America must resist the temptation to give up the
struggle for consciousness, to go down with the age," which
she believes is characterized by an "ethic of unconsciousness:
a certain aim lessness, a distrust, a fear of the future that
seems . . . either forbidding or u n i m a g i n a b l e . " ^
136
O ates herself suggests that life in the present time is
incomparably better than it ever has been in previous ages,
especially as it has been improved by developments in technol
ogy as well as political advances in personal freedoms and res
pect for human dignity. She also suggests that only a person
with a very unrealistic historical perspective could be nostal
gic for past eras, and that the present is undoubtedly the
best historical period— so far— in which a woman can pursue a
1 1
public career in the arts. Even so, she also recognizes
that "all things are born of strife," a condition that is abun
dantly evident in the struggles and suffering still present in
the world today, and it is to these conditions that Oates ad
dresses her art:
I have tried to give a shape to certain obses
sions of mid-century Americans . . . a confusion
of love and money, o f the categories of public
and private experience, of a dem onic urge to
se lf-a n n ih ila tio n , su icid e, th e u ltim a te e x p e r
ience and the ultimate surrender. The use of
language is all we have to pit against death and
17
silence.
These issues or concerns are of interest to Oates, not because
they are inevitable, but because she believes they are remedi
able. According to D aniel Dennett, "Self-formation . . . is
in fo r m a tio n a lly s e n s itiv e , a m e n a b le to in d e fin ite ly m any
137
levels of m eta-level criticism, and ’creative’ in a way that
art is: the forms that emerge contribute to the constitution
o f the canons by which they are j u d g e d . " ^ Consequently,
one comes to understand that Oates’s contention that writers
must accurately acknowledge the "facts" of the world is a pre
requisite to being able to articulate a clear and compelling
assessm ent of what is important in that external reality, in
cluding those ills O ates has identified above. The ultimate
g o a l, o f course, is a restructuring o f both the se lf and
society based on this information and "meta-criticism," which
O ates b eliev es will help in the construction o f the "tale"
that is America: "Our past may weigh heavily on us but it
cannot contain us, let alone shape our future. America is a
tale still being told— in many v o ices— and now here near its
c o n c lu s io n . H er art, th e n , is p r e c ise ly w h at O a tes
"pits" against death and silence.
Not surprisingly, Oates’s own vision of the world has shif
ted and developed over her thirty year career as a writer. In
recent years, she has abandoned her seemingly "apocalyptic"
vision o f the w orld, a vision that su ggested that radical
change was imminent. This perspective was expressed in the
preface to her story collection called Where Are You Going,
Where Have You Been? Stories of Young America (1974), though
e v en in that text, sh e refers to the era as a tim e o f
138
"transition," a stance that seems to be closer to her present
p ersp ectiv e on hum an progress as a co llectiv e m ovem ent,
inevitably slow, but perhaps only seem ingly slow from the
p ersp ectiv e o f a single life-tim e. For this reason, O ates
attempts to capture a more comprehensive picture of history by
connecting the individual life to the evolution o f the com
munal whole. She argues, in fact, that fiction writers "are
all historians, dealing with the past. It is the legendary
quality of the past we are most interested in, the immediate
p a s t , m y s te r io u s a n d p r o f o u n d , th a t f e e d s in t o th e
1 S
future." O ates explains elsew h ere that, to her, "legen
dary" means as it is "meditated upon afterwards," which seems
to e c h o K ie r k e g a a r d ’s a sse r tio n th at "life can on ly be
understood backwards, but it must be lived forwards." To
O ates, only such a connective orientation, one that attempts
to view the temporal and physical world as a comprehensive
whole— a work of art— can free the individual from the tyranny
o f a con tin u ou sly iso la ted p resen t tim e or a p erp etu ally
solipsistic sense of self.
In his article "Why the Self is Empty," Philip Cushman con-
textualizes what he considers to be "the current configuration
of the [American] self," which he sees as a post World War II
consum er-oriented self that is "empty," and therefore desires
to " fill it s e lf " w ith " fo o d , c o n s u m e r p r o d u c t s , a n d
139
c e le b r it ie s ." ^ T h ese are p recisely the "obsessions" that
O ates id en tifies as characterizing "m id-century Am ericans,"
though she further extends their significance by associating
th em w ith a d esire for "the u ltim ate surrender"— su icide.
Cushman, a psychologist, also sees this problem as a signifi
cant threat to mental health, but he believes that psychiatry
cannot adequately address the issue in its present practices
that decontextualize both the subject and the problem from
their historical foundations. For this reason, Cushman ex
plains that the historical and social origins of the m odem
self need to be studied. H e also explains that he believes
the self to be a "cultural artifact" that has evolved out of
W estern traditions, which, starting in the R enaissance, pro
posed a "bounded, masterful s e lf that "wished to manipulate
the external world for its own personal ends" and evolved
through the rigidly restrictive V ictorian era to the present
time, in which the American self appears to be extremely self-
absorbed and self-indulgent. According to Cushman, this mod
ern self has interiorized the empty values of a consumer soci
ety whose strongest "authority" is the advertising industry:
Our terrain has shaped a self that experiences a
significant absence of community, tradition, and
shared meaning. It experiences these absences
and their consequences "interiorly" as a lack of
personal conviction and worth, and it embodies
140
the absences of a chronic, undifferentiated emo-
17
tional hunger.
This is a theme that Oates has not only explored in stories,
but in her novels and poetry as well. For example, her novel
Son o f the M orning (1978) has as its controlling metaphor
Nathan Vickery’s "hunger" for God, and a more recent novel,
A m e ric a n A p p e tite s (1 9 8 9 ) contrasts th e em otion al em p ti
ness of the characters’ lives against a background of gourmet
foods, foods appropriate to the kinds of social rituals that
suggest "family" and connectedness, which these characters do
not enjoy or understand. Similarly, one of her poetry col
lections is entitled Women Whose Lives Are Food, Men Whose
Lives Are Money (1978) just as a story collection is named
The Hungry G hosts (1974) and both examine the disruption
of living a life driven by material or mundane desires. Also
like Cushman, Oates locates the origins of the American empty
self in what she refers to as the "willful" R enaissance " I"
and she often alludes to the emotional hunger of her charac
ters in images of gluttony, money, or the "stranger," all of
which evoke the idea of a self that is as dissociated from it
self as from society.
One of the most significant points o f Cushman’s article,
however, echoes an idea that is central to O ates’s work: the
"American self is a good illustration of how the economy and
141
the power structure impact on personality."^ On a page of
the m anuscript notes for Because It Is Bitter, A n d Because
It Is My H eart, O ates writes, "Belief systems are to m ain
tain so c ia l division s b [etw een ] th ose w ho ’know ’ and the
rest. . . . Thus, new data is forced (warped, stretched,
shrunk) to fit into the old--until a revolt occurs. U ntil
1 Q
[so m eth in g collapses. ^ This note precedes another about
one of the novel’s major characters, Jinx Fairchild, a young
black man whose only hope out of his impoverished life is
through the prom ise o f a basketball scholarship to an ivy
league college. Jinx, however, suffers an injury and is un
able to escape the world he was born into, a world that has
left him with an empty self: "Jinx contemplates self in mir
ror. H e sees what he sees, but seeing it from inside, doesn’t
know the first syllable about what he sees." This comment
suggests that a person whose interior perspective has not been
accom panied by adequate, accurate, or supportive mirroring in
the external world is left without a clear concept of self.
Both Oates and Cushman (as well as Charles Sanders Pierce,
Jung, Kohut, and Foucault to name only a few) believe that
"humans do not have a basic, fundamental, pure human nature
that is transhistorical and transcultural. Humans are incom
plete and therefore unable to function adequately unless em
b e d d e d in a sp ecific cultural m a t r i x . " ^ i f that m atrix,
142
however, is even partially a source of the problem, as Cushman
asserts is the case in present-day America, and as Oates illus
trates is true for Jinx as well as most of her other charac
ters, then the solution must address itself to both the empty
self and the fragmented society. This is not a simple task,
and as Jung suggests, "resistance to the organized mass can be
effected only by the man who is as well organized in his indiv-
91
iduality as the m ass itself." ^ O ates also recognizes that
the project of reshaping society begins with the individual:
"I would be very modest about claiming that my books improve
humanity." Instead, she insists, "the writer hopes to reach
out to a reader . . . to a single reader at a time. The pro
per object of the writer’s hope is not a crowd but an individ
u a l." ^ Cushman, how ever, does not seem optim istic that
psychiatry can help either the individual or society accom p
lish Jung’s task of "organizing the self' due to the histori
cal nature of its practices. In contrast, O ates does seem
hopeful that the combination of a comprehensive historical per
sp ective and th e self-reflective nature of literary study, if
used as an "organizing principle" in one’s life, can move the
individual into a meta-perspective from which positive and pro
ductive choices can be made. For this reason, Oates’s compre
hensive stance does not only seem preferable but necessary,
for both a thorough understanding of the self and the world is
143
required if a person is going to be able to move toward a re
conciliation betw een the desire for personal power and the
recognition of external societal structures that award power
to constituencies outside the self.
In a 1982 interview with Leif Sjoberg, O ates maintains,
"Since approximately 1965 I have set myself the task, in both
novels and short stories, of exploring contemporary society on
many levels." Like R. D. Laing, whom Oates explains she read,
along with Jung, "rather late" (probably in the 1970’s), she
su ggests she is in terested in "a close exam ination o f the
sources of power." For Oates, this examination has included
"the political and econom ic milieu; professions like m edicine,
the law, and m ost recently education and religion; and, to
some extent, the predicament of the young and of wom en— all
these have fascinated m e."^ Certainly, much of the concern
in criticism on Oates’s novels has focused on these "external"
issues, and like the stories that she quite deliberately se
lects for each collection, her novels also reveal her seem
ingly irresistib le urge to connect issues and ideas and to
view them from a variety of perspectives.
For this reason, her novels are often "trilogies" that are
linked by a single issue or concern rather than by explicit
story lines. For example, she examines the issue of "class"
in rela tio n to se ttin g in her early n ovels A G arden o f
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E a r th ly D e lig h ts ( 1 9 6 7 ) , E x p e n s iv e P e o p le (1 9 6 8 ), and
th em (1 9 6 9 ), w hich are set resp ec tiv ely in rural, subur
ban, and urban locales. She also explores a variety of per
spectives by using the various genres of Gothic, romance, and
mystery (though they are highly "adapted" and modernized) in
h e r n o v e ls B e lie f le u r ( 1 9 8 0 ) , A B lo o d s m o o r R o m a n c e
(1 9 8 2 ), and M ysteries o f W interthurn (1 9 8 4 ). T h at her
uses of fiction and writing are largely epistem ological again
surfaces in her comments on these works: "It interests me
immensely that in writing a ’mystery/detective’ novel, one be
gins to see the world in terms of mystery. And the world is
infinitely mysterious." In the same way, she contends that
"If one writes a romance . . . one begins to see the world in
romantic term s."^ In fact, O ates’s ability to adopt a wide
range of perspectives has fostered and enhanced her ability to
develop the comprehensive orientation from which she makes ne
cessary comparisons as well as distinctions about issues that
pertain to both the self and the external world.
O ates also claims that "for m e, writing~and reading— are
ways o f seeing'. I have a sharply visual im agination and
love to see by way of words."^ Oates is, in fact, an accom
plished artist, and so, not surprisingly, her most recent tril
ogy connects the visual and verbal arts in three slender nov
els that are highly "imagistic." The first, / Lock My Door
145
Upon M yself (1990) borrows its title and cover design from
an 1891 work by Fernand Khnopff, and the story of its main
character, known as Calla, is a translation and fictional elab
oration o f K h n op ff’s provocative painting, which depicts a
wistful young woman looking outward, past a calla-lily, from
the weather-beaten porch of her rural home. This novel con
nects the issues of memory and imagination in that the story
of Calla is narrated by a granddaughter who knows the "facts"
but cannot bring herself to ask about the motives and emotions
that prom pted her grandmother’s unusual life. The second
novel, en titled The R ise o f L ife on E arth (1991), echoes
the stark naturalism of an Edward Hopper painting, "Morning in
a City" (1944), which appears on the book jacket and depicts a
young woman, standing naked, before an open window. In the
novel, as in the painting, the portrait of the young woman is
one of loneliness and isolation, and the main character, Kath
leen Hennessy, moves between light and shadow as a nurse’s
aide whose impulse to nurture becomes overridden by a desire
for revenge as a fem ale member o f D etroit’s disenfranchised
working class.
T h e th ird n o v e l in th is trilogy, ca lled B la c k W ater
(1992), displays a modern work by Dave Henderson on its cover,
which portrays a dark and isolated landscape that stretches to
in fin ity and is at o n ce frig h ten in g and sed u ctive. T he
146
picture quite subtly suggests car tracks leading toward a body
of water in the distance, but the viewer’s eye is drawn to the
last glimpse of light that escapes from behind the dark clouds
of an evening sky. This novel, it seems, has turned to his
tory— though this is never acknowledged in the book— to nar
rate the human tragedy connected with this landscape, for the
story is told from the perspective o f a young, intelligent,
ambitious woman named Kelly Kelleher, who leaves a Fourth of
July picnic to be with a senator whose power more than his
p e rso n is irresistib ly attractive to her. A s occurred at
Chappaquiddick, the couple drives off the road, and the novel
narrates the young woman’s dismay and disbelief that a single
fo o lish m istake will cost her her life. In each o f these
novel "sets" O ates connects rural, urban, and suburban life
with the distant past, the near past, and the present, and
though her explorations cross the boundaries of gender and
genre, her primary focus, always, is on American life: "My
central concern, how ever, is with American history and on
going American society, so my subject matter does, in a sense,
take precedence over the experimentation. I am not at all
interested in experimentation for its own sake."^
Even so, Oates also admits, "I experiment more in stories
than I do in n o v e ls " ^ because she sees the short story as
"open," not a genre that lends itself to clear or absolute
147
d efin ition s and is, th erefore, always "still in the making."
For this reason, she suggests that "radical experim entation,
which might be ill-advised in the novel, is w ell suited for
the short story. I like the freedom and prom ise o f the
fo rm ." ^ Som e o f O ates’s stories are clearly "experimen
tal," including, for example, "How I Contemplated the World
from the Detroit H ouse of Correction and Began My Life Over
Again," which violates ordinary narrative sequencing in a way
that parallels the main character’s own disjointed and disor
ganized logic, or "One Flesh," which is only five sentences
long and reads like a haiku in its presentation of sensual
imagery rather than action, or "Wild Nights," that extends the
story to novella length even while alluding to Emily Dickin
son’s poem with the same title, a short poem that conveys in
tensely com pressed emotion. Oates has also explored radical
form s of experimentation concerning time and perspective in
such stories as "Heat" and "Death Valley" as well as organiz
ing e n tire c o lle c tio n s th em a tica lly or stylistically, as she
does with The Goddess and Other Women (1974), which ex
plores various cultural and archetypal views o f the female,
and A S e n tim e n ta l E du ca tio n (1 9 7 8 ), w hich stu d ies "pro
traction" as opposed to the "compression" evident in the stor
ies collected in The Assignation (1988).
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S u ch e x p e r im e n ta tio n illu s tr a te s th a t O a te s h as an
enormous range, and so the fact that she most often chooses—
r a th er than is lim ited to --a fairly tra d itio n a l b eg in n in g ,
middle, ending structure for her stories suggests, as she has
often m entioned, that her stories usually originate from an
image of a character, or a setting, or even an idea that then
determines the appropriate form for the story. She does not,
in other words, tend to "fit" a story into a predeterm ined
form so much as allow the story to evolve into a form that
supports its subject.
To say that O a tes’s work "resists classification" is an
understatement of the first order since she seems to delight
in crossing or expanding the traditional boundaries of narra
tive technique, genre, and even "content" since she has quite
obviously taken on traditionally "male" topics, not the least
of which is the external world itself. And despite the fact
that her last three novels, which might be more accurately de
scribed as novellas, are im m inently "lyrical" in their focus
on interior lives, each of them frames those lives within the
context of an external world that has been enormously powerful
in its ability to shape, and often deform , the interior vi
sions of the characters. This perspective, Oates believes, is
important to art, which she contends "becomes transformed as
it is d irected tow ard a certain social, moral, or religious
149
context— at which point it generally acquires its ’m oral’ di-
n29
mension. ^
For this reason, her stories also "attempt to make contact
b e tw e e n th e w o rld o u t th ere and th e w o rld in here,"
even though the stories, in contrast to the novels, m ore
prominently or exclusively focus on the interior reality of a
single character. In other words, her novels, given the expan
sive p o ssib ilities for d evelop m en t, are usually rather com
plete, even historiographic depictions o f the external world
while also developing its consequent influences on the psyche
o f individual characters w hereas the stories must "assume"
that sam e world exists rather than depict it fully, and so
their focus is m ore clearly on the character’s interior life.
The story, then, requires a more "cooperative" or sympathetic
stance on the part o f the reader, for her stories, like her
novels, also often examine "sources of power" in such areas as
m edicine, politics, and religion as w ell as those concerning
young people and women even while the character rather than
the world stands at the center of the story.
A clear demonstration of O ates’s interest in "sources of
power" occurs in her rather satirical treatment of the psychia
tric p r o fe ssio n in the story "Psychiatric Services" in The
G oddess and Other Women. In this story, which is mostly
d ialogu e, a young psychiatric intern, called Jenny by her
150
supervisor and Dr. Hamilton by her patients, is quite intimi
dated and therefore easily dominated by her prominent but also
over-bearin g, egotistical, and sexist supervisor, the m iddle-
aged but famous Dr. Culloch. After Dr. Hamilton has done what
appears to the reader to be a thoroughly sensible thing— con
vince a suicidal and possibly homicidal patient to turn over
his gun to her— Dr. Culloch subjects her to the most abusive
criticism, claiming "everything you have done is wrong" (396)
and asserting that she has only affirmed the patient’s suici
dal tendencies while robbing him of his masculinity. In the
next moment, Dr. Culloch reveals his own self-inflated ego by
turning the conversation to himself: "I do have a certain
reputation for wit, I do admit it . . . [and for] being rather
young for my age. . ." (397). Rather than showing any con
cerns for the clearly serious problem s o f the patient, Dr.
Culloch begins to lam ent his own "reputation," his "genius,"
which he claims has become "a burden to me" while he also
m akes critical observations about Dr. H am ilton’s appearance
and manner, telling her she is "attractive" and "should not be
ashamed of her body" (398). Dr. Culloch then goes on to ac
cuse her of having taken the patient as a lover and when she
denies this, he asks her " . . . who is, then? or have you
many?" Still, he cannot resist talking about himself, so he
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does not even wait for her to answer before he asks, "Do you
dream about me?" (399).
Just when it seems this exchange could not becom e any more
frustrating, Dr. Culloch forces her, calling her "my child,"
to admit that he is right— not even allowing her to maintain
the "probably" with which she attem pts to qualify her re
sponse. Eventually, Dr. Hamilton manages to give a stumbling,
relu ctan t recital o f exactly w hat Dr. C ulloch expects and
wants to hear. H er "resistance," at which Dr. Culloch, of
course, takes offense, cannot withstand the authority of her
supervisor’s attack, and Dr. Culloch m anipulates her, by a
most contorted and distorting maneuver that "puts words in her
mouth" into concluding their discussion with a weak and be
wildered "thank you."
Several of the references in the story, especially the doc
tor’s comment on his own "wit," suggest that Oates might have
been thinking of Freud in writing her portrait of Dr. Culloch,
a very good fictional "imitation" of the Freud who reveals him
self to be an arrogant bully in his own text Fragment o f an
A nalysis o f a Case Study in Hysteria (1905), often referred
to as "The Dora Case." Oates, of course, has acknowledged
Freud’s genius even though she disagrees with him on certain
p oin ts, and so the con n ection , if it exists at all, is un
doubtedly oblique and the fictional character w ould be an
152
e x a g g e r a te d r a th e r th a n a lit e r a l tr a n s c r ip tio n o f an
historical personality. M ore important, especially within the
c o n t e x t o f th e c o ll e c t i o n , w h ic h fo c u s e s on s o c ie t a l
perceptions and influences on the fem ale character, is the
fa c t th a t D r. H am ilton clea rly p a r ticip a te s in her ow n
defeat. Even so, it seems not only unfair but unnecessary to
"judge" her since, as Daniel Dennett acknowledges in his book
on free will, having free will entails what he refers to as
the "could have don e otherw ise" pr in ci pl e .G iv en Dr.
H a m ilto n ’s socialization as a "non-contentious" fem ale, her
respect for the authority of her supervisor’s stature in their
m u tu a l p r o f e s s io n , an d h e r u n a v o id a b le fin a n c ia l and
professional dependence on his evaluation of her, the question
of "free will" seems to be a moot point. In fact, Aristotle’s
p rin cip le o f "probability" in w hich characters must act in
accord with their natures and the circumstances that surround
them seems a better criterion for evaluation. In other words,
the story, according to the principles of art, must tell the
tr u th a b o u t an is s u e th a t p h ilo s o p h e r s still h a v e n o t
r e s o lv e d . T o a s s e r t th a t D r. H a m ilto n s h o u ld h a v e
resisted D r. C u lloch’s dom ineering personality is, after all,
neither as "realistic" nor as instructive as the fact that she
d id n o t. F u r th e r , th e sto ry stu d ie s in c o n c r e te and
particular term s, rather than in p h ilosop h ical abstractions,
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t h e i s s u e s o f d o m i n a n c e , f r e e w i l l , s o c i a l i z a t i o n ,
p rofession al integrity, and not lea st im portant— the sources
and m ain ten an ce o f pow er in a typically m ale-d om in ated
profession. It does all of this, in fact, even though it is
first and foremost an engaging story.
T h at " P sych iatric Services" illu stra te s a c le a r-sig h ted
perspective on the problems of professional women demonstrates
that perhaps Elaine Showalter, a colleague at Princeton and a
friend of Oates’s, may be overlooking some important examples
in her early work by locating O ates’s interest in "feminist"
-2 - 1
issu es as b eg in n in g th e early 1980’s. This story was
clearly written before 1974 when the collection was published,
and it is not alone among Oates’s early stories in chronicling
the difficulties that women face in modern society. Even so,
even this story is not simply a "feminist" work. Rather, it
explores the role of victim, in which Oates portrays men as of
ten as women, in order to determine how not to be one. This
is an insight that O ates would expect the reader to obtain
from the story even if the character remains unenlightened.
In any case, Oates herself has admitted that she believes femi
nism is "too narrow;" her interests are in humanity and she
co n ten d s, "the im agin ation , in itse lf g en d erless, allow s us
all things."-^
154
Of course, O ates is not at all naive about the realities
of life for a female in modern American society, and in speak
ing of her own profession, she notes "a woman who writes is a
writer by her own definition; but she is a woman writer by
o th e r s ’ d e fin itio n s ." ^ It is not a co in cid en ce that the
main character of Oates’s story "Morning," a young philosophy
student, declares, "I am not a woman when I’m doing philoso
phy," which echoes Oates’s own statement "I am not a woman
when I’m writing." Similarly, in a discussion o f her career
as a writer, Oates alleges that one of her fellow profession
als, Norman Mailer, has admitted that even though there are,
no doubt, some excellent female writers in America, he cannot
make him self read their work. In response, Oates ironically
com m ents, "even excellen ce isn’t enough to com pensate for
being fem ale. She also states in this sam e essay that
"power does not reside with women— no more in the literary
world than in the worlds of politics or finance— and power is
n e v e r u n d er th e o b lig a tio n to act j u s t l y . S t i l l , sh e
concludes that such perverse attitudes, ignorance, and even
inequality can be "accommodated" with a variety of responses:
"with resilien ce, with a sense o f humor, with stubborness,
with anger, with h o p e . " - ^
Such various responses, som etim es offered simultaneously
to the reader in a single work, are evident in all of Oates’s
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writing that examines power. As with her attitudes toward
settings and the past itself, Oates seems to be able to encom
pass both anger and awe and the result is that her work is at
once social criticism and a celebration of survival. These
seem in gly contradictory attitudes are evident in her collec
tio n N ig h t-S id e (1 9 7 7 ), e s p e c ia lly in a story c a lle d "A
T heory of K now ledge," originally entitled "Knowing," which
Oates has described as "a poetic attempt to dramatize the con
tra d ictio n s in h eren t in p h ilo so p h izin g --in abstracting from
the world of sense experience and personal h i s t o r y . " ^ She
has also stated that this story is a fictional adaptation of
certain aspects of the later years of Charles Sanders Pierce
who appears in the story as Dr. Weber, an elderly and nearly
crippled philosopher. This elderly scholar spends his days at
his daughter’s farm, sitting outside under the trees, attempt
ing to write a final, comprehensive summary of his important
id eas, for which he b elieves he did not receive sufficient
cred it during his p r o fe ssio n a l life. T he story, how ever,
really turns on the relationship betw een the elderly doctor
and a young boy from a nearby farm, a child who is clearly
being abused and neglected by his parents.
In this respect, O ates’s story strikes a note similar to
the one sounded in Ursula LeGuin’s story, "The Ones Who Walk
Away From Ornelas." LeGuin’s tale is a fictional exploration
156
of William James’s philosophical challenge to Jeremy Bentham’s
utilitarian maxim that "the greatest happiness of the greatest
number is the foundation of morals and legislation." James
suggested that this doctrine was unacceptable if even one per
son had to live miserably, and both LeGuin’s and Oates’s stor
ies depict a young child who is atrociously abused and locked
in a secluded room in order to ensure the happiness— no matter
how perverse— of other people. The difference between these
stories, however, is that LeGuin weighs the difficulty of mak
ing a proper moral choice against self-interest whereas Oates
has Dr. W eber actually "save" the child, and so their story
ends in laughter, thus contrasting the value of a single moral
act against the diffuse benefit of writing even an important
philosophical treatise.
Not only psychiatry and philosophy, but also education as
a scholarly and potentially ruthless profession com es under
O ates’s critical eye in The Hungry Ghosts (1974), a collec
tion that is centered on academia as a context. In the collec
tion’s first story, "Democracy in America," a young professor
named Dr. Ronald Pauli demonstrates how the insecurity of non
tenured faculty and the pressures of "publish-or-perish" aca
demic politics can drain a person of any vestige of human sen
sibility. In this story, Pauli is forced to search for the
on ly co p y o f h is m a n u scrip t in th e a p p a llin g ly sq u alid
157
basem ent apartment of a university copy-editor, a thirty-eight
year old man named Dietrick, who was "found dead" of natural
causes, but not discovered until eight days after his death in
the cluttered and claustral room that Pauli has reluctantly
entered.
At the beginning of the story, Pauli suppresses all em o
tions except anger and frustration, but as he searches through
the disheveled rem ains of D ietrick’s life, he realizes, intel
le c tu a lly even if not em otion ally, that D ietrick ’s lot was
even worse than his own, for the dead man had been reduced to
copy-editing after losing his part-time job as a night school
teacher at the university. Only at the end of the story, once
Pauli has painstakingly hunted down all three hundred eighty-
five pages of his manuscript, the document that he hopes will
save his job, does the full force of this emotional experience
overtake him, and the story concludes with his protest, "’It
isn’t fair. . . . It isn’t fair. . ." (29). These words ap
ply not only to himself but to Dietrick as well, and his final
admission, "I’m so afraid," indicates that "he knew that som e
thing terrible had happened to him," (30) which is true: he
w ill never again be able to fully retreat into his form er,
se lf-in ter este d and p itiless se lf after having "survived" the
ordeal he has just been through. In this story, then, Oates
suggests that "democracy in America" is not always fair and
158
often reduces people-even young professional men— to live and
work under conditions that are not only physically deplorable
but emotionally deadening as well.
As these examples suggest, all of O ates’s stories examine
the relationship between the self and the world even when they
foreground the internal struggles o f the characters. In fact,
the story that perhaps best illustrates an extreme consequence
of a debilitating relationship between the self and the world
is O ates’s story "Testimony," which appears in her collection
R a ven ’s Wing (1986). This collection focuses on the pos
sible "nightmare" aspects of the American dream, and "Testi
mony" may w ell b e O a tes’s m ost chilling story, especially
because its genesis was a Life magazine article that repor
ted a non-fiction story about a man in Arizona who abducted,
raped, and killed teenage girls. Oates modeled her character
Arnold Friend after this man in her story "Where Are You G o
ing, Where Have Been?" and, as is true of Friend, this man was
older, perhaps in his late twenties or early thirties, though
he pretended to be a teenager, wearing make-up and a wig and
stuffing rags into his boots to make him look taller than he
O O
was. Both the actual person and the fictional character
are "smooth talkers" who epitomize the worst possible manifes
ta tio n s o f th e em p ty se lf in its attem pt to construct a
159
"fictive" personality based on the ethics of popular culture:
drugs, sex, and rock-n-roll.
According to Jay Martin, such a delusional application of
fictive m odeling results in a personality "in which there ex
ists only a loose connection between an empty inner self and a
vaguely perceived external w o r l d . " - ^ Such people, Cushman
asserts, often feel "emancipated from personal responsibility
or m oral obligations because they view them selves as trans
formed by some commercial product or cult practice that com
pletely separates them from their former lives or human con
nections, often including family. Cushman contends that this
orientation erases any link to a historical or social matrix
and so results in "the isolation and moral confusion that are
among the greatest problems of our tim e."^
This is precisely the perspective that O ates relates in
her story "Testimony," which she has explained examines an
other aspect of the Arizona murder cases, an aspect that con
tinued to baffle and bother her even after the first story
about Connie and Arnold Friend had been completed: in the
real-life case, there were teenagers in the Tucson area who
knew about the killer and his actions, yet they did not report
him to parents or police. This is the story that Oates tells
in "Testimony," whose main character, a young female who nar
rates the story from a first-person perspective, demonstrates
160
th o se qu alities that C ushm an d escrib es as "regressive and
destructive of critical thought" and which include "the wish
to overidealize and psychologically merge with an admired fig
ure or the experience of grandiosity and the pull to exhibit
before and please the admired figure." These, Cushman con
clu d es, "are exceed in gly pow erful psych ological m otives.
In O a tes’s story, as in life, th ese "powerful motives" are
apparently strong enough to cause a young person to partici
pate in torture and murder and "not tell" because the bond
betw een the sociopathic adult and the empty-self teenager is
stronger than any other connection in the young p erson ’s
life . In fact, the narrator in O ates’s story explains that
she never has to answer any questions from her mother " ’cause
she don’t want questions asked back" (237). Further, she re
peatedly refers to herself as a "little girl" and exhibits her
pride at being "special" to the murderer by self-aggrandizing
descriptions of her prowess as a "lure" who helps him capture
his victims. The relationship between the young girl and the
killer is one o f id ea lized identification, in which the girl
seem s to have abandoned all critical thought— a condition that
the killer certainly supports since it affords him com plete
power and continues the fantasy that he is an exceptional in
dividual, one with the right to act outside the ordinary con
straints of social custom or law. The true horror of this
161
story, then, is that it narrates Jung’s description of an un
avoidable social problem, one that is exacerbated by the empha
sis on "individualism" in American culture: "society has an
in d isp u ta b le right to p rotect itse lf from arrant su b jectiv
isms, but, in so far as society itself is composed of de-indiv-
idualized persons, it is completely at the mercy o f ruthless
i n d i v i d u a l i s t s . " ^ In o th e r w o r d s, th e s o c ia l im p u lse
toward community and cooperation is an agreement that not only
can be, but is likely to be, broken by a person whose "individ
uality" p laces him in an antithetical relationship with that
culture, and if that person’s perspective is "ruthless," then
his subjective code of conduct as well as his interpretation
o f "reality" is likely to result in som e form of "anti-social"
behavior, including the brutality narrated in this story.
Perplexing though it may be, even such "ruthless individ
ualists," it seems, share the basic human need for connected
ness. N ear the beginning of O a tes’s story, the narrator
states, "my boyfriend says I’m as pure as the dust of angels.
We had a secret wedding, only one witness, she was prettier
than m e but not for long" (234). This reference to "angel
dust," a powerful drug, and the disfiguring torture and even
tual murder o f the "witness" is further com pounded in the
story by references to "the beat, the wild heavy beat" of
popular music and allusions to repeated sexual attacks on the
162
victim . But the narrator asserts that her boyfriend, called
"Ruby Red, his own name that he gave himself' (241), never
hurts th e narrator like h e d oes the other girl, at least
"never so it lasted. There are rewards for being faithful. I
was the only one he loved, he said" and she assumes this is
true because "nothing dirty ever passed between us like be
tw een him and her." In fact, the only reason the narrator
can imagine why Ruby Red does hurt the other girl must be
because he doesn’t "respect" her.
The allusions to drugs, sex, and popular music in O ates’s
story, how ever, really only point to the vacuous m eans by
which these young people try to "fill" themselves rather than
to the source of the problem, which is the culturally support
ed psychopathology of emptiness. In fact, this young girl is
so dissociated from her own emotions that she clearly demon
strates what R. D. Laing refers to in his text The Divided
S e lf (1 9 5 9 ) as "the fa ls e -s e lf system," w hich he explains
"casually detaches the person from what he says or does."^
In the story, the narrator recalls certain scenes and conversa
tions, but she relates them in a way that suggests she never
experienced them as "real": " ’D on’t hurt m e,’ she was say
ing. Or maybe it was being sung over the radio. . . . ’D on’t
fight it,’ Ruby R ed says. ’D on’t resist’" (239). The narra
tor, apparently, cannot distinguish betw een "real life" and
163
song lyrics, nor does she recognize that she, like the victim,
is being controlled by Ruby Red, who has so dominated the cap
tive girl that he can taunt her, telling her to leave or call
the police and know that she will not or cannot do it. Simi
larly, the narrator is so disconnected from her own emotions
that, after having to clean the bathroom where the murder took
place, she "looked in the mirror and [saw] my face as wet from
crying but I didn’t remember crying" (242). As Cushman ex
plains, people "with disorders of the self are empty and hun
gry for idealizing and merging and thus are in a highly sug
gestible and vulnerable sta te ." ^ This explanation accounts
for, even if it cannot reduce the horrors of understanding,
the narrator’s idealized attachment to Ruby Red. Only at the
end of the story does the reader hear the bewildered and hope
less voices of adult authority: "Why didn’t you tell anyone?
they asked. Your mother, the police, somebody on the street.
Why d id n ’t you tell, they asked. I said I did n’t know,
but really I w anted to laugh in their faces— they’d never
understand" (243).
This is a truly terrifying story, and not the least part
of its effect derives from the fact it is based on an incident
from "real life," an incident provoked by the reality that in
modern society, traditional sources of moral guidance, includ
ing the fam ily, con ven tion al religiou s practices, com m unity
164
organizations and affiliations as w ell as political and educa
tion al in stitu tion s are operatin g from p o sitio n s o f greatly
dim inished authority. O ates seem s to suggest that if these
social constructs are dysfunctional, then they need to be re
constituted, for to abandon them without a suitable, cohesive
m oral rep lacem ent— and, clearly, consum erism , food, idealiza
tion of celebrities or maniacs are not suitable replacem ents-
only guarantees that the American empty self will continue to
attempt to appease its voracious emotional hunger in ways that
are self-destructive and self-defeating. This may well be a
truth that people are reluctant to hear, but Oates seems com
pelled to say it again and again in her writing.
Perhaps surprisingly, Cushman suggests that, not psychia
try nor political solutions, but storytelling may prove to be
the most effective means of restructuring concepts of the self
and society. H e asserts that "individuals in the post-modern
era, w ithout a coh esive com m unity, are struggling to find
sense and meaning in a confusing world. There is little to
guide them, and they stumble and feel despair."^ As a re
sponse to this need, he suggests that society and individuals
turn to "the tools traditional cultures use for curing the
sick," which he explains, include " the web o f meaning, the
array o f stories, songs, b e lie fs, rituals, cerem onial objects,
[and] costumes . . . that heal by teaching and readjusting the
165
s o c ie ty ’s cultural fram e o f r e f e r e n c e . L i k e Jung and
K ohut, then, Cushman believes that art can provide society
with a "psychological education" by articulating and m editat
ing upon those values that forestall "death and silence" with
a declaration of meanings.
O f course, Cushman, like Oates, acknowledges that this is
not a simple task, and he concludes that "such changes would
require developing a distance from the current normative intel
lectu a l discou rse regarding individualism , the self, and the
good life." ^ This distance, O ates contends, is provided in
the writing and reading of literature, and so even a story as
disturbing as "Testimony" becomes, as a cohesive artistic prod
uct, a means of examining and understanding those critical in
cidents and conditions that too often remain unaddressed in a
confusing world. In this respect, Cushman echoes O ates’s con
clusion that the relationship betw een the self and the world
must be understood in both an individual and a communal sense,
an understanding that must be positioned within the historical
and social context wherein lie both the problem and the solu
tion. For this reason, Cushman maintains
the study of the self is also a crucial element
in interpreting an era. By studying the config
uration o f the current self, w e will com e to
have an enlarged perspective on the forces that
sh aped it, the d iscou rse that justifies it, the
166
co n seq u en ces that flow from it, the illnesses
that plague it, and the activities resp onsib le
A O
for healing it.
Or recreatin g it spiritually, as O ates w ould say, for she
b eliev es that "literature provides a very real education in
how to picture and comprehend the human situation," and con
seq u en tly, she contends "that for both th e collective and
in d iv id u a l sa lv a tio n o f th e race, art is m ore im p ortan t
than anything else, and literature most important of all."^
CHAPTER TWO: NOTES
167
Ijo y c e C arol O ates, N ation al B ook Award A cceptance
Sp eech, The Tragic Vision o f Joyce Carol Oates by Kathryn
Grant (Durham N. C.: Duke University Press, 1978) 164.
^ J o y c e C a r o l O a te s , p r e f a c e , M a yra : A L if e in
(W om an) Writer: Occasions and Opportunities (N ew York:
Dutton, 1988) 378.
■^Joyce C a ro l O a te s , T he P ro fa n e A r t (N e w Y ork:
Dutton, 1983) 116.
^Joyce Carol Oates, "Speculations on the Novel," Written
for the 25th Anniversary of the National Book Awards, NBA
Authors Speak Out (New York: Viking, 1974) 5.
-’See preface to Where Are You Going, Where H ave You
Been? (Greenwich, Conn.: Fawcett Books, 1974) 10.
^ C h a rles T a y lo r, " R e sp o n sib ility for Self" (1 9 7 6 ) in
D a n iel D enn ett, E lbow R oom : The Varieties o f Free Will
Worth Wanting (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1983) 90.
^Joyce Carol O ates, "N otes on Failure," The Pushcart
Prize VIII: Best o f the Small Presses ed. Bill Henderson
(Wainscott, N. Y.: The Pushcart Press, 1983) 199.
^D aniel D en n ett, E lbow R oom : The Varieties o f Free
Will Worth Wanting (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1985) 90.
^Joyce C arol O a tes, C on traries (N ew Y ork: O xford
University Press, 1981) 28.
l^Oates, "NBA Acceptance Speech" in Grant 164.
l^ S e e in te r v ie w w ith L e if S jo b er g in C o n v e rsa tio n s
112.
168
CHAPTER TWO: NOTES
l^Oates, "NBA Acceptance Speech" in Grant 164.
^ D en n ett 91.
l^Oates, (Woman) Writer 371.
l^Oates, "NBA Acceptance Speech" in Grant 163.
^ P h illip Cushman, "Why the Self is Empty: Toward a
H is to r ic a lly S itu a te d P sy ch o lo g y ," A m e ric a n P sy c h o lo g ist
45, no. 5 (May 1990) 599.
^ ^Cushman 600.
^C ushm an 600.
•^ N o te s from th e J o y ce C arol O a tes A rch iv e, Bird
Library, Syracuse University, New York, n.p.
^C ushm an 601.
^ Ju n g 72.
^ L e i f Sjoberg, "An interview with Joyce Carol Oates,"
Conversations with Joyce Carol Oates ed. Lee Milazzo (Jack
son: University of Mississippi Press, 1989) 109.
^Sjoberg 106.
^ F r a n k M cLaughlin, "A C onversation with Joyce Carol
Oates," Conversations with Joyce Carol Oates ed. Lee Mil
azzo (Jackson: University of Mississippi Press, 1989) 126.
169
CHAPTER TWO: NOTES
^ M ich ael Schumaker, "Joyce Carol Oates and the Hardest
P art o f W riting," C o n v e rsa tio n s w ith J o yce C a ro l O ates
ed. Lee Milazzo (Jackson: University of Mississippi Press,
1989) 143.
^M cLaughlin 126.
^ W a l t e r C le m o n s, " Joyce C a r o l O a te s at H om e,"
C on versation s with Joyce C arol O ates ed. L ee M ilazzo
(Jackson: University of Mississippi Press, 1989) 6.
^Schum aker 145.
^Sjoberg 107.
^ D en n ett 131.
^ S e e Show alter’s essay on O ates in Conversations with
Joyce Carol Oates 128-134.
•^Oates, (Woman) Writer 25.
^ O a tes, (Woman) Writer 27.
•^Oates, (Woman) Writer 29.
^'’Oates, (Woman) Writer 32.
^ O ates, (Woman) Writer 32.
-^Sjoberg 117.
170
CHAPTER TWO: NOTES
•^See Oates’s essay " ’Where Are You Going, Where Have
Y ou B e e n ? ’ in S m ooth Talk: Short Story in to Film" in
(Woman) Writer 316-321.
J a y M artin, Who A m I This Time? Uncovering the
Fictive Personality (New York: W. W. Norton, 1988) 125-6.
^C ushm an 608.
41 Cushman 607.
42Jung 67.
43r . D. Laing in Martin 135.
44cushm an 607.
4^Cushman 606.
4^Cushman 605.
47cushman 609.
4^Cushman 599-600.
49oates, Profane A rt 187.
171
CHAPTER THREE
THE SELF AND THE SACRED
In his book, Sources o f Self; The Making o f the M odem
Identity (1989), Charles Taylor contends that "selfhood and
the good, or in another way selfhood and morality turn out to
b e inextricab ly intertw ined th e m es."1 T aylor, like M ead,
Foucault, and others, believes "the self is created through an
exch an ge in language,”^ which suggests it is at least par
tially a culturally contextual construct, and so Taylor links
the issues of identity and morality by examining the dominant
philosophical legacy that "induces us to talk about moral or
ientation in terms of the question, Who are we?"^ This is a
question that O ates addresses from a variety of perspectives,
in c lu d in g th e h is to r ic a l, th e c u ltu r a l, th e p h ilo so p h ic a l,
and th e lite r a r y or a r tistic o r ie n ta tio n s e v id en t in her
work. More importantly, perhaps, is the fact that Oates also
addresses this question from two seemingly separate but inex
tricably related persp ectives: th e secu lar and the theistic.
In fact, while much of her work focuses on the profane or
m undane world, and explores its virtues and vices from a
172
w holly secular p ersp ective o f eth ics and m orals, she also
examines both internal and external realities from a spiritual
o rien tation , an orien tation that she su ggests con nects the
mundane, temporal world with the "eternal.'' In fact, Oates
insists that the sacred and the profane are coeval realities,
and "that the visions [of each] are not antithetical; they are
complementary. Both are required. We come by both naturally,
and should not reject one in favor of the other.
Certainly, the question Who are we? can be given a fuller
response if both the sacred and the profane are considered as
elem ents in a total design, yet it can be answered (even if
the answers are never absolute) quite satisfactorily for some
people within a completely mundane, secular context. This, it
seems, is the world and the reality Oates presents in the real
istic elem ents o f her fiction, the elements that have received
the most critical attention and perhaps the most vitriolic re
sponse by those very readers who insist on seeing only the
realistic or the "profane" dimension of her work. By failing
or refusing to acknowledge the symbolic or spiritual nature of
O ates’s writing, she seem s, as she says of Kafka, completely
"murderous" rather than "saintly," which is som ething closer
to the truth. Even so, the question of who we are does not
se e m to n ecessitate the spiritual dim ension as profoundly
as d oes an oth er qu estion , a q u estion that is even m ore
173
fundamental in nature: How do we know what we know? This, it
seem s, is really the question at the heart of O ates’s fiction,
for it accounts for both the passion and the breadth of her
use of art as inquiry.
In h is te x t e n title d On M oral F iction (1 9 7 8 ), John
G a rd n er a sser ts th at "true art is by its n atu re m oral,"
and he maintains that "we recognize true art by its careful,
thoroughly honest search for and analysis of values. It is
not didactic because, instead of teaching by authority and
force, it explores, open-m indedly, to learn what it should
teach."-’ Such a definition em braces art as inquiry while
foregrounding a m odernist bias against the orthodoxy of a
traditional or theistic perspective. Rather than making ap
peals to absolute, external authority, the modern writer more
often turns inward, to the self, as a moral source. Oates,
too, believes that art is best used as a means of inquiry, a
process that necessarily involves a journey inward. She ex
plains, "That the writer labors to discover the secret of his
work is perhaps the writer’s most baffling predicament, about
which he cannot easily speak," for she suggests that the in
ward journey is not, as Gardner indicates, a wholly autonomous
or self-en clo sed activity. To O ates, "[the w riter] cannot
write the fiction without becoming, beforehand, the person who
m u st w rite th at fiction : and he can n ot b e th at p erso n
174
w ithout first subordinating him self to the process, the labor
o f creating that fiction."** The difference betw een O ates’s
p e r sp e c tiv e and G a rd n er’s is su b tle, b u t sig n ifica n t, for
O ates b eliev es that the se lf m ust be subordinated in the
process of inquiry while Gardner sees the self as autonomous,
which, unfortunately, leaves the inquirer with no criteria for
evaluating whether or not the "secrets" he has discovered are
truths or delusions.
Gardner concludes his book with the statement "The busi
ness of civilization is to pay attention, remembering what is
central, remembering that we live or die by the artist’s vi
sion, sane or cracked."^ Because Gardner does not define
what is "central," even in a sense that would establish a gen
eral orientation that m akes no claims about specific truths,
he leaves the reader with no guidance about distinguishing be
tween "sane" or "cracked" concerning those artistic visions he
claims are matters of life and death. Of course, the belief
th a t c iv iliz a tio n lives or dies by "vision" origin ates from
religiou s sources: "When th ere is no vision , the p eop le
perish" (P roverbs 19: 32). It is precisely the external,
com m unal qualities of "religion"— as an historical artifact or
a "generalized other"^— that O ates uses as a horizon against
which she can orient her inner vision. Like most modern
w r i t e r s , h o w e v e r , h e r " r e lig io n " is lit e r a t u r e i t s e lf :
175
"Literature grants us few of the consolations and none of the
vatic prom ises o f religion, but it is our religion non eth e
less." ^ T h is sh ift n e c e ss a r ily se c u la r iz e s th e p r o sp ec ts
for salvation and makes determining the criteria for what is
moral, sane, or central a wholly secular endeavor, one which
poses meaninglessness rather than condemnation as the primary
human predicament.
Certainly, the issue of "meaning" is o f great importance
to Oates since it is a problem that can "rouse her to simple
animal dread," and much of her work is an exploration that at
tempts to distinguish between "sane" and "cracked" as a moral,
secular, extern ally-orien ted inquiry that establishes and d e
fines on e’s relationship to others and the world. Even so,
O a tes u ses both external and internal rea lities as m oral
sou rces, for she believes "Liberation consists in our being
able to accep t the oth ern ess o f the universe," which she
contends entails "having faith in its order [and] assuming the
responsibility for developing our species in the direction of
com p rehend ing this order--the realization o f dorm ant, long
n eglected pow ers o f reason and intuition."^® In this way,
her stance is in sharp contrast to the prominent modern posi
tion, which Gardner simply echoes, that the only moral source
is personal, autonom ous, and wholly internal. This modern
perspective results in what Charles Taylor calls the "loss of
176
horizon" that makes issues of personal identity and moral ori
entation problematic, as is evident in the dissociation exhibi
ted by the "empty" self of modern society. Consequently, when
q u estion s o f identity, esp ecially the attem pt to define an
authentic self, and the quest for meaning and order, even if
presented as tem porary, conditional, or futile, are only an
swerable at the level of personal vision, then the task b e
com es circular since personal vision derives from a sense of
identity focused on an ordered moral orientation or a clear
personal perspective.
W ithout such an orientation or perspective, the vagaries
of "unsituated reason" (as Taylor calls the philosophical leg
acy that dominates our age) may indeed produce answers that
se e m "m eaningless" sin ce each, at b est, carries only the
w eight o f a possibility. And further, entertaining the play
o f an infinite number o f possibilities, while engaging as an
in tellectu a l p astim e, only frustrates the focus or acuteness
necessary to the developm ent o f a personal vision, especially
a vision that d efin es o n e ’s relationship to o n eself or the
world. The problem with using the self as an autonomous moral
source, then, is that it creates a closed system, and the pos
sibilities for consensus or com m unity are precluded, erasing
even a secular horizon. Without an orientation or connection
to "something larger than the self," as O ates describes it,
177
there is no ground on which the inquirer can stand, even in
opposition to "traditional" beliefs.
H ow , then, or what is G ardner asking "civilization" to
rem em ber as "central"? W hether consciously or not, Gard
ner is asking a presupposed community of inquirers to remember
their common interests and concerns as these have been subver
ted or supported by traditional cultural values. Despite the
modern tendency to subordinate cultural traditions to the in
dividual self as the authority by which m oral choices are
m ade, traditional values, both secular and theistic, are an
inescapable and necessary foundation for an inquiry that at
tempts to establish or refute a moral orientation. For this
reason, O ates insists on the necessity of a connection to a
suprahum an reality as w ell as to the external world, even
while she "bears witness" to the difficulties of faith and to
the world’s shortcomings in such areas as organized religion,
p sych iatry, p olitics, the law, and even ph ilosop h y. Only
through such a connection could one verify or test those opin
ions that sponsor both attitude and action.
Oates, however, does not only recognize external sources
of knowledge, and, in fact, to her, the internal sources— espe
cially the unconscious— are of equal importance, and may even
be the "final" authority on questions that relate to but move
one beyond the confines of the mundane world. In this regard,
178
Oates seems quite close to Jung in perspective, for they both
contend that "the unconscious [is] the only accessible source
o f relig io u s e x p e r ie n c e . Jung, in fa ct, su ggests that
religious experience is closely tied to a person’s quest for
self know ledge and the "rigors" o f such a pursuit, he b e
liev es, are rew arded in the "psychological advantage" that
results from o n e ’s own declaration of dignity, which is evi
dent in the act of "deeming himself worthy of serious atten-
19
tion and sym p athetic in terest."x This is, o f course, the
position from which all o f O ates’s writing is "autobiograph
ical."
Both Oates and Jung, apparently, are skeptical of conven
tionally organized religions and both use the term "God" even
though they each acknowledge the problematic nature of this
designation for a source of authority that is at once internal
and yet more than the self. As Oates suggests, understanding
that o n e’s "truest and m ost valuable selves are interior" is
another "way of saying ’The Kingdom of God is within’— as if
we knew, except in metaphor, what the ’kingdom’ is. And what
’G od .’"-^ Similarly, in a discussion of James Joyce’s con
cept of the "epiphany," which she refers to as "one of the
most potent motives for art," Oates remarks that "the epiphany
has significance . . . only in its evocation o f an already
existing (but undefined) interior state. It would be naive to
179
imagine that grace really falls upon us from without— one must
be in spiritual readiness for any visitation."^
To Oates, the epiphany is a potent motive for art because
it is a transcendental moment, what Wordsworth calls "a spot
in time" in which the person has an immediate, certain, and
often unsolicited apprehension of reality or truth. Such un
derstanding is undeniably "interior," yet both Oates and Jung
would locate its source in the mysterious "objective" realm of
the unconscious. This source is the only one that can trans
la te "know ing" as p o s s ib ilit y in to "faith" as c e r ta in ty
through the power of experience. According to Jung, "the seat
of faith . . . is not consciousness but spontaneous religious
experience, which brings the individual’s faith into immediate
r e la tio n w ith G od."^^ T h is r ela tio n sh ip is clea rly th e
subject o f O ates’s novel Son o f the Morning (1978), which
sh e has referred to as a literary "prayer" w h ose proper
audience is God.
This con cep tion of the interiority of insights that can
inform a person about himself or take one "beyond o n eself is
not perhaps as contradictory as it seems since both Oates and
Jung consider information that intrudes into conscious aware
n ess from the u n con sciou s to be "objective" because, like
d ream s and fa n ta sie s, it is not "self-selected" or greatly
influenced by the subjectivity of conscious awareness, which,
180
in fact, it often opposes. Even so, Oates seems reluctant to
r e ly on e p ip h a n ie s or su d d en in sig h ts fo r "certain ty,"
claim ing that "there is a statute o f limitations on ’mystical
v is io n s ,’ as on rom antic lo v e ," ^ w hich d oes not su ggest
that the experience or the insight is necessarily unreal or un
true (though it can be), but instead she is arguing that such
insights, no matter how powerful, must be continuously renewed
and repeatedly tested in the sphere of "ordinary life." Simi
larly, Jung maintains that "insight that dawns slowly seems to
me to have more lasting effects than a fitful idealism, which
17
is unlikely to hold out for long. ' For this reason, even
those characters, like Rafe Murray in "The Fine White Mist of
Winter" or the lovers in her works that occasionally transcend
the mundane through the powerful experience of passion, or any
character who has a profound experience that is authentic in
its production o f insights, still has to return to ordinary,
mundane reality where he can choose to deny, forget, or incor
porate the insight into the fabric of his daily life.
Because of the difficulty in maintaining a conviction long
after the experience that prompted it has passed, Oates con
tinuously "tests" ideas both in the real word, as she has sta
ted, and in her fiction, which is evident from the work it
self. Soon after com pleting Son o f the M orning, a novel
abou t religiou s E vangelicalism in the U nited States, O ates
181
com m ented, "Having completed a novel that is saturated with
what Jung calls the God-experience, I find that I know less
than ever about myself and my own beliefs." She admits, " I
have b e lie fs, o f cou rse, like everyon e--b u t I don ’t always
believe in them. Faith comes and goes." She admits that, for
her at tim es, "God diffracts into a bew ildering number of
elements," but also that "these elem ents then coalesce again
into som ething seemingly unified." She concludes that "it is
a human predilection . . . our tendency to see, and to wish to
see, what w e’ ve projected outward upon the universe from our
own s o u l s . T h e s e comments are typical o f O ates’s ten
dency to avoid statem ents of certainty, and they also partly
explain why she repeatedly examines issues of importance from
a variety o f perspectives even though she also admits, "I
thin k r elig io u s exp erien ce is real and p ossib le to every
one."^
The surprising consequence, however, o f Oates’s relentless
inquiry is that, in the work at least, truth itself becom es
con textu al, w hich suggests perhaps there are no ab solu te
truths, at least none that can be clearly communicated to oth
ers. For example, the female narrator in "Testimony" utters
words that the reader knows are simply a delusional rationaliz
ation for her absence of values or personal responsibility;
however, had those same words been uttered by an Eastern
182
m ystic or even such p e o p le as Sartre or K ierkegaard or
N ietzsche (which they were, only slightly altered) they might
be regarded as "truth." In the story, the narrator says,
There is a special God, he says, that the Sufis
b elieve in. That H e ’s creating us but w e’re
also creating Him at the same time. Man creates
God, God creates man, so we can see ourselves on
both sides. It goes on and on, he says, dreamy,
there’s no logical place for it to end. (240)
The "he" in this passage, of course, is the demonic murderer,
Ruby R ed , so perhaps this is his rationalization and the
narrator only repeats it without even attempting to understand
its implications. What this passage seems to suggest is that
even "ancient wisdom" can be convolved into popular culture,
which decontextualizes that "wisdom" and uses it for its own
purposes. Such "misunderstanding," in fact, may be the fate
of any information that is removed from its proper context,
especially if no new appropriate context is formulated for it.
In any case, the narrator’s conclusion that "logic" could be a
means of understanding this idea indicates how far away from
any authentic insight she truly is. According to Jung, there
9ft
are many instances when "Reason alone does not suffice,""6
and a "religious" concept such as this would certainly be one
of those instances. Oates is a little less anxious than Jung
to abandon reason or logic; even so, she contends that the
183
"daytime" truths of reason, such as science, are not really
contradicted by the "lunar" truths of mysticism.
The contrasting, yet interdependent nature of these per
spectives is explored in an essay entitled "Against Nature,"
in which Oates takes a most unsentimental view of the natural
w o rld , cla im in g th a t n a tu r e -in -its e lf is sim p ly M e lv ille ’s
"blankness ten tim es blank," but nature-as-experience is ra
tion al, sustaining, and b earab le, but only b ecau se in this
role it becom es a "flattering mirror" to hum an sentim ents.
The portrait she paints of the "scientific" view of nature is
that it is a mouth (an image that appears at the end of her
story "Morning"), but then she interjects the artistic perspec
tive that it is really mouths, and the variety and difference
among them is rather fascinating. Finally, she quotes the end
o f T h o rea u ’s "Spring," the chapter that con clu d es Walden
with the line "The impression made [by Nature] on a wise man
is that of universal innocence." Oates implies that Thoreau
is posturing h ere since sh e b eliev es the lin e suggests "a
’ wise man’ filters his emotions through his brain. Or through
his p rose. In this essay, how ever, she introduces an
other possible perspective: the mystical, though her tone is
rather contentious and slightly apologetic. She seem s uncom
fortable claiming to have had a "mystical vision," so she re
names it a "fever dream" and recounts it as follows:
184
My body is a tall column of light and heat.
My body is not " I" but "it."
My body is not one but many.
My body, which " I" inhabit, is inhabited as well
by other creatures, unknown to me, imperceptible
--the smallest of them mere sparks of light.
My body, which I perceive as substance, is
in fact an organization o f infinitely com plex,
o v e r la p p in g , im b r ic a te d s tr u c tu r e s , ra d ia n t
light their manifestation, the ’body’ a tall col
umn of light and blood heat, a temporary agree
m ent am ong atom s. . . . In this fantastical
structure, the "I" is deluded as to its sover
eignty, let alone its autonomy in the (outside)
world; the m ost astonishing secret is the "I"
d oesn ’t exist!--but it behaves as if it does, as
if it were one and not many.
In any case, without the " I" the tall column
of light and heat would die, and the microscopic
light particles would die with it . . . will die
with it. The "I," which doesn’t exist, is every
thing.^2
In the essay, her only comment on this "dream" or "vision" is
to agree with Dr. Johnson that "The inexpressible need not be
expressed," a comment which she follows with the question "And
'- > '3
what resistance, finally? There is none." Although this
was clearly a powerful experience, Oates refuses to sentimen
talize it or use it as a source of absolute or final answers.
It seems to be an interruption in the rest of the essay, but
185
it is not, for Oates is examining the dream with the same crit
ical eye she directs toward Nature. She knows the dream was a
vision of som e suprahuman dimension of unity, a perspective
from which all ego was apparently erased, and yet she cannot
or will not abandon the "real" or the mundane knowledge that
w ithout her singular, personal perspective, the dream itself
would not exist. As further acknowledgment of the temporal,
she recognizes that the dream now only exists in her memory,
so it will die with her, just as the "other" entities would
have "died" without her ability to observe them: "the I is
everything." It seem s, then, that Oates cannot "resist" the
profound nature of this experience, nor will she abandon what
she knows of mundane reality from the experience of living it,
and so she is left in the paradoxical position of needing both
a profane and a transcendent perspective in order to accommo
date both of these experiential "truths." To Oates, the diffi
culty of tolerating the "complexity and ambiguity" of this par
adox is preferable to the incom pleteness of "rejecting" either
vision.
Perhaps because Oates is highly intellectual, she makes no
claim s to know ing "truth" or even "truths." Instead, her
focus is often on what she does not know, which leads her to
assert that "the ap p eal o f w riting~of any kind o f artistic
74
a c tiv ity — is prim arily th e in v estig a tio n o f m ystery. ^ In
186
h e r e a r l y c a r e e r , O a t e s w a s c le a r ly i n t e r e s t e d in
in v e stig a tin g p h ilo so p h ic a l issu es, but the purely rational
approach to the world that philosophy necessitates eventually
gave way to an apparent enthusiasm for the visionary and the
m ystical, esp ecia lly as th ese are com m unicated in Eastern
religious thought. The influence of Eastern philosophies is
evident in many of her works, but perhaps most clearly in her
p reface to Where A re You Going, Where H ave You Been?
(1974), New Heaven, New Earth (1974), and in the title and
o rg a n izin g p rin cip le for The H ungry G h o sts (1 9 7 4 ). In
works that immediately followed these, such as The Poisoned
K is s ( 1 9 7 5 ) , The S e d u c tio n ( 1 9 7 5 ) , a n d N ig h t- S id e
( 1 9 7 7 ) , h er a d m itte d p r e o c c u p a tio n w as w ith "m ystical
experiences" though in later works, such as "Testimony" (1986)
and A m erican A ppetites (1989), for example, O ates puts the
words of "ancient wisdom" into the mouths of characters who
are clearly d elu sion al, perhaps to "test" those ideas from
another perspective.
In any case, it would be convenient but unforgivably reduc-
tionistic to assum e that each o f these areas of interest is
isolated to a particular "period" in Oates’s career. More ac
curately, it seems that she has always been and continues to
be interested in questions that are at once philosophical and
r e lig io u s in n atu re and her p articu lar fo cu s is on the
187
psychological processes through which a person interprets and
n e g o tia te s w ith v a rio u s r e a litie s. If th ere has b e e n a
"trend" in her writing, it seems only to be a movement away
from a youthful quest for "certainty" toward a more mature
tolerance for mystery and ambiguity.
This m ovem ent, it seem s, received its strongest impetus
from her experiences in the early 1970’s when she was writing
b o th her n o v el W onderland and the c o llectio n o f stories
later published as The Poisoned Kiss. Both of these were
"troubling" experiences for Oates and probably account for the
comments she made in her essay "The Short Story," which was
published in 1971, and suggests at least a subtle, and perhaps
a profound, shift in perspective:
Years ago I believed that art was rational, at
bottom, that it could be seen to "make sense,"
that it had a definite relationship to philosoph
ical inquiry, though its aim was not necessarily
to resolve philosophical doubt. Now I’m not so
sure: certain short stories, certain works of
fiction , are obviously m ore rational than oth
ers, more reducible to an essence. But others
are mysterious and fluid and unpossessible, like
certain people. The short story is a dream ver
balized . . . [and just as] the dream is said to
be some kind of manifestation of desire, so the
short story must also represent a desire, per
haps only partly expressed, but the most inter-
r y e
esting thing about it is its mystery.
Her work since this period, certainly, has been more often en
gaged with the "mysterious and fluid" aspects of reality than
her previous work had been. As recently as 1986, she still
attributed her fascination with "mystery" to her experiences
in writing The P oisoned Kiss. She explains her conviction
that "Somehow, by employing a deliberate speech-rhythm, or by
unlocking it, one is able to follow a course into the psyche
that reveals different facets of the self." She discovered
this, apparently, w hile writing those stories that felt as if
they were "dictated" to her by Fernandes: "The Poisoned
Kiss is my journal of a sort of the most extreme experience
of my own along these lines." In order to accommodate this ex
perience, she "gave to the voice of the stories the adjec
tive ’Portuguese’ because I knew only that it was foreign, yet
n o t fa m ilia r ly fo r e ig n . B e y o n d th is, it is d iffic u lt to
speak."^
There is, it seems, an interesting "evolution" in her opin
ion about the experience of writing these stories, for even
though the experience was rather disturbing, she only acknow
ledged this in her notes to the Afterword. In print, it was
only p resen ted as interesting although perplexing. It was
also first view ed as a "mystical" experience that apparently
" in sp ir e d " h e r n e x t c o lle c t io n , T he Seduction ( 1 9 7 5 ),
which her notes suggest are all stories that examine mystical
experiences. By 1986, however, she describes the event as a
"psychic" phenomenon, one that is wholly internal and not, it
seem s, connected to any reality other than her own internal
mental functioning.
This is not meant to suggest, however, that Oates is being
dishonest in her reporting of this experience, but rather that
she has accommodated this experience in a context that is com
fortable and that makes sense to her at the present time. For
this reason, her work, like any author’s, needs to be under
stood within both these present and "original" contexts, as
far as is possible. Her memory of this experience, like her
memory of the "fever dream" has apparently passed its "statute
of limitations," and one assumes that what she says of the
dream is also true for her experiences with Fernandes: "it
impressed me enormously, and impresses me still, though I’ ve
long since lost the capacity to see it with my mind’s eye, or
even, I suppose, to believe in it." ^ This statem ent sug
gests that, like so many of her characters, Oates must return
to "ordinary" life where the power and intensity of such ex
ceptional experiences cannot be continuously maintained.
Even so, many of the stories in The Seduction are pow
erful narratives that exam ine a wide range o f experiences.
The first story in the collection, entitled "An American Ad
venture," explores the feeling o f deja vu that suggests the
190
possibility of parallel worlds or the even more remote possi
bility that dreams can "transport" a person to a place that is
real but rarely recognized in waking life. The narrator is a
young man who is struggling against such impressions because,
quite simply, they make him uncomfortable, and so he attempts
to get back to "the real world," to his "real self," and yet,
like so many of O ates’s characters, his "real self' seems to
be a mystery to him. In fact, this story is an interesting
exam ple of one o f O ates’s investigations of personality, for
in it she considers the idea that "we believe we exist in
terms of other people, our surroundings, or our environment,"
but sh e also w onders if there is a "core" to personality,
especially concerning values, and this idea is explored at the
end of the story. If there is no "nuclear self," as Kohut
c a lls it, th e n sh e is le ft w o n d erin g if " p erson ality [is]
98
nearly all cultural-external trappings?"
The narrator in this story is a university teacher and as
he walks to school one day he is "pulled" toward a certain
house and cannot release himself from the conviction "this is
my home" (19). Eventually, he breaks into the house though
the reader is not aware of how he entered it until some time
later in the story. While there, a young black girl comes
hom e and at first he considers grabbing and raping her but he
lea v es the h ou se w ithout incident, and once back on the
191
street, he encounters a friend who calls to him by name. The
story concludes with his recognition that "I am named, finite,
safe, [but] the adventure is not concluded: it drains out of
me" and though he is aware of the "ponderous beat" of his own
heart, "everything slows down to become opaque and permanent
once again" (24). The narrator’s anxiety seems a result of
his having just "exited" a hypersensitive state of conscious
n ess that appears to be sim ilar to K ierkegaard’s idea of
"dread": "In dread there is an egoistic infinity of possibil
ity, which does not tem pt like a definite choice, but alarms
9Q
. . . and fascinates with its sweet anxiety."'6 This charac
ter, it seem s, is exploring an "infinite" set o f possibilities
by temporarily abandoning his "finite" self, a bounded, delim
ited se lf that feels "safe," but which does not satisfy his
urge for self-exploration because to be defined only in terms
o f "cultural" or "physical trappings" seem s so clearly insuffi
cient as an explanation of "self."
The story is ambiguous about the narrator’s confusion re
garding his sen se of self, but it clearly suggests that his
ordinary, "finite" self often feels like an impostor. It is a
"false self' as Winnicott or Laing would call it or an empty
self in Cushman’s terms: he attempts to please others with a
smile he does not believe in and he cannot "simplify" his own
perception of himself to match any of the many labels, such as
192
"teacher" for exam ple, that serve as ordinary identification
for m ost p e o p le . But in his confusion this character is
closer to someone like old man Revere, who is searching for
"meanings," more than he is similar to the narrator in "Test
imony," who is also confused but who is so dissociated that
sh e uncritically adopts rather than discovers or constructs
meanings for herself.
This story suggests that it is valid to question the "real
ity" o f external m odes of identification, such as a name, a
job, clothing, or even a home, but, like Revere’s experience,
abandoning these "habitual" concepts opens possibilities that
are both "menacing and promising," for in the story the narra
tor very nearly translates his "adventure" into a tragedy when
his "egoistic" (and no doubt American) values tempt him to
take control, to dominate and rape the young girl into whose
hom e he has already intruded. When he notes at the end of the
story "the adventure is not concluded," the reader understands
that it is not nor will it be until or unless this young man
can somehow synthesize his experience with an understanding of
h im se lf that is n eith er aggressive, acquisitive, nor sim ply
vacant. The story’s conclusion, however, does seem to suggest
that the character has emerged from the experience with a gain
in understanding. After leaving the girl’s house, he thinks
to himself, "An embrace was required, not an assault" (24).
193
A nd so, despite the frightening possibilities of a "boundless"
se lf and the dissatisfying lim itations o f a "finite" self, the
story suggests that the character’s "adventure" has expanded
his se lf-u n d er sta n d in g by exploring p o ssib ilities not avail
able in "ordinary" states of consciousness.
It is through this exploration, in fact, that the charac
ter d iscovers the value o f caritas, a value that rep laces
his o rig in a l im p u lse for a g g ressio n . In this sen se, the
reader can understand that his "adventure" is not simply a
m eaningless excursion into unknown levels of awareness; it is
the very serious task of providing himself with a "psycholog
ical education" that moves him away from the tyranny of his
instinctual nature and toward an enhanced "conceptual" nature
of his own construction. That he was unable to achieve these
insights from interactions in ordinary life is not that sur
p risin g, sin ce, as Jung su ggests, "experience u n fortu nately
shows [that] the inner man remains unchanged however much
community he has. His environment cannot give him as a gift
that which he must win for himself only with effort and suf-
If]
fering. In other words, the "gift" of understanding must
be actively sought though the "adventure” of its discovery is
both promising and menacing.
The next story "Gifts" suggests that art can provide a co
herent understanding of events that are often simply baffling
and disturbing in life. Both memory and imagination are exam
ined to explore how these combine in the constructed "reality"
o f new ly p ossib le interpretations o f form er events, in this
case, a personal memory for Oates: the experience of her own
father’s abandonment by his father. In the story, however,
the father finds the son when he is grown and has his own
fam ily, and although the son is still angry, his anger is
dissipated by the recognition that this old man is really a
stranger, not a "father" to him at all. This, too, actually
occurred to Frederick O ates when he m et his father as an
adult, years after that man had left the boy and his mother,
but this is the point at which "personal history" and fiction
diverge.
In the story, the old man brings "gifts" for his grand
children, and during the course of his stay, he tells them the
story o f a hurricane; it is the sam e story that occurs in
"Upon the Sweeping Flood," a tale of a terrible storm replete
with spiders and snakes and a night spent on a rooftop,
waiting to be rescued by a boat. The children are fascinated
by the story, but the parents ask the old man not to frighten
them , an exchange that really only serves to illustrate that
the old man is not welcome to insinuate himself into the lives
of these people with whom he broke the connection so many
years before.
Throughout the story, the son has vacillated between anger
and a reluctant sen se o f obligation , but near the story’s
close, he tries to make sense of his father’s unexpected in
trusion into his life:
Pasts do not entwine: they do not make a single
past. Relationships do not spiral upward to a
climax. H e knew this, he had always known. It
was not a new discovery! . . . Years cannot be
eradicated, sins can not be forgiven and dare
not be forgiven, old memories are often no more
than discarded junk, scrap paper, things no one
should bother to decipher. H e knew, he knew.
H e had always known. Yet he wanted to cry, he
wanted to mourn, he wanted— H e did not want—
"Why did you do this to me?" he whispered. (43)
This passage suggests that the story, unlike the life, can be
conveniently resolved: it will "spiral upward to a climax."
And so it does, for in the story the old man’s real "gift" to
his son is his death, which brings the issue of "leaving" to a
c lo s e --a p s y c h o lo g ic a l se n se o f c lo su r e. T h e story, o f
course, does not resolve the tension between the impulse to
hold onto even painful memories and the need to let them go,
"like scrap paper," like trash that is blown in the wind. Not
everything, this story suggests, can be deciphered or fit into
an orderly pattern, at lea st not in life. A n other "gift,"
then, is the story itself, which creates an order otherw ise
196
not available. Oates frequently refers to art in these terms,
b e lie v in g "the c r e a tiv e act is an acute gratuite . . .
usually p resen ted to the w orld as an offering or gift."
The cohesive artistic construct, then, also provides a type of
"liberation" in its portrayal and im itation o f the "larger"
order that Oates asserts exists in the universe and that she
believes human consciousness must train itself to apprehend.
S e v e r a l o f th e sto ries in The S ed u ctio n d e lib er a tely
disrupt order through experiments in form and, as Jung sug
gests, they offer a "psychological education" to the reader by
subverting expectations. The first o f these is "Passions and
Meditations," which is written in an epistolary format, and it
tells of a young fan who is infatuated with a composer, Keith
Lurie. A t first, the letters are polite, admiring, and pro
fessional in their request for a response; the young person,
apparently, is doing research on the composer’s work. When no
response comes, the tone of the letters changes: they become
angry, threatening; they suggest the fan has been spying on
the composer and has even been inside his apartment when he
was not home. Eventually, the fan admits that "Roberta" was a
pseudonym, and he is, in fact, a young man, and not a young
woman as he pretended in his first few passionate letters. In
this way, the story itself subverts the reader’s expectation,
but the surprise is not as profound as the disappointment and
197
anger that the fan expresses because of his unrequited atten
tions to Lurie.
This story, then, examines what Oates has referred to as
the confusion between public and private experiences, and it
is a phenomenon that is becoming increasing common in modern
society, as noted by both Martin and Cushman, who explain the
attempt to ''fill" the empty self by connection to a celebrity
(even a minor one) as another delusional attempt to satisfy a
ravenous em otional hunger. The mystical-or at least myster
io u s— elem en t in this story is the apparent clairvoyance of
the fan, his delight in his anonymity, which makes it possible
for him to be "anyone," and the seemingly inevitable "bond"
that is created by the dynamics of what the character himself
refers to as "the black hole," which is him self, and "the
star," which is Lurie. "Passions and Meditations," then, sug
g e sts th at e v en "worship" that is w holly se lf-e n c lo se d is
likely to end in delusion and disappointment.
A nother story that violates traditional narrative conven
tions is entitled "6:27 PM." This story derives its terrify
ing aspect from the fact that the "villain" is absent through
out the narrative. A young woman, Glenda, a hairdresser, and
her young son, Bobby, are estranged from Guy, Glenda’s former
husband and the boy’s father. Although Glenda knows he’s been
out of town, she has recently heard that Guy has returned and
though nothing more extraordinary occurs than two phone calls
at work, calls in which the caller never speaks, Glenda is
worried that Guy will keep his promise to hurt her and she is
reluctant to go home alone with Bobby. N o one is available to
accompany her, however, and so she and the young boy arrive
hom e at 6:25 p.m.— two minutes before the time the title of
the story suggests is the "crucial" moment. The reader never
knows what happens, or what doesn’t happen, at 6:27 p.m.
This story really is an ingenious investigation o f "ten
sion," both thematically and formally, for the story is broken
into segments, each introduced by a heading that simply names
a specific m om ent in time, and the impression is that the
story is "ticking" tow ard a clim ax. T his exp ectation , o f
course, is subverted since the "climax"— whatever it may be
takes place outside the scope o f the story. Further, the
absence of Guy, the fact that he is never seen, coupled with
the fact that G lenda seem s unable to resist the "pull" of
stran gers’, esp ecially m en ’s, gazes, gives the im pression o f
an evil or a danger that is more universal than Guy himself.
Clearly, this is a story that investigates fear, both as it is
provoked by real, external conditions and as it is generated
internally. In either case, the emotion is the same.
The third experim ental story, "Notes on Contributors" is
both humorous and awful at the same time. As Oates has
199
observed is true of several of Kafka’s stories, including "The
Hunger Artist," tension is provoked by the fact that the humor
is directed at those characters for whom the reader would like
to feel sympathy. Even so, their distortions and illusions
are so radical, and the circumstances of their defeat are so
absurdly self-inflicted that the reader is forced to acknowl
edge the comic aspect of their tragic fates. This story, like
the other experim ental pieces in the collection, is disjoin
ted, told in nonsequential segments, each of which appears as
a short summary of a "character," much like the author summar
ies that appear at the ends of certain anthologies. In this
story, the main character, Morley Hill, seems to be a slightly
more radical and less intelligent Timothy Leary, but his char
ismatic nature supplies him with enough delusional, paranoid
followers to plan and attempt to execute an act of terrorism,
which of course is intended as a political protest, though the
point of it is never quite clear. It may be that the group
intended to free Benjamin Ackley from jail, where he is being
held for possession of illegal drugs despite the fact that his
mother, a widow, has gone on a popular talk show and granted
interviews to protest that her son, "Bennie was a tool that
they used. That’s all he was just a tool" (165).
The group, it seem s, failed in their attempt, whatever it
was, and ended by blowing themselves up in their VW van in the
200
parking lot of Recorder’s Court. How this story qualifies as
a "mystical experience" is indeed a mystery, but it is clear
that the presentation of the information, which parodies the
shallow ness and sensationalism o f Am erican news reporting,
robs it of its "reality" and makes it seem humorous and triv
ial rather than tragic. Even the fact that the incident in
volves two innocent bystanders, an elderly man who is killed
and a young boy who is blinded, cannot evoke any true emotion
due to the m anner in which the cliched, superficial details
are provided. After Morley Hill’s name, for example, nothing
is mentioned other than birth and death dates and a short list
of the family members who "survive" him.
O f course, this is the point, and the story ends with a
fam iliar "minor" character rem em bering, after the fact, that
M orley H ill did, p erh a p s, se e m a little sin ister in life:
"Later, he began to remember more about Morley Hill: som e
thing about the man’s eyes. But he was not certain that he
w asn’t inventing m ost o f it" (169). That a story that in
volves life and death, especially since the deaths are clearly
unnecessary, could seem so ordinary, so typically American, so
very "unreal" because it has been heard on television so many
tim es before, is indeed a powerful indictment o f a society
that has come to view "news" as "entertainment." It is not
surprising, then, that the d istin ctions b etw een reality and
201
fiction are tragically blurred in the p ersp ectives o f these
characters, a truth that the reader is provoked to consider as
applying to himself.
Several o f the other stories in the collection are more
clearly "mystical" in their attem pt to call into question or
extend the boundaries of the "real." Most of these appear to
be stories about "ordinary" people, yet they clearly take on
an additional level of meaning through a variety of techni
ques. One of these is the story "Getting and Spending," whose
title is a clear allusion to William Wordsworth’s famous lines
"The world is too much with us; late and soon, / Getting and
spending, we lay waste our powers." Certainly, these lines
echo the theme of the story, which is about a writer named
Roger Craft, a man who is appallingly egotistical and yet as
sumes the authority to "bless" others. His books, he claims,
are filled with wisdom, and yet in his personal life, he has
an unhealthy attachment to his mother, he is abusive to his
children, one of whom he actually kills in a careless acci
dent, and he (like Wordsworth did in his "Prelude") rewrites
his life to m ake it match his fantasies in his later years.
Through the use of literary allusion, then, Oates imbues this
seem in gly sim ple story with a m ultidim ensional elem en t of
meaning.
202
Two stories that cross the boundary between the ordinary
and the extraordinary are "Hell" and "Year of Wonders." The
first of these is the story of a man who possesses not only
his own soul but the souls of others and is, therefore, perpe
tually in H ell. O ates has adm itted that this story, like
th o s e in The P o is o n e d K iss , o r ig in a te d w ith F ern a n d es
though she believed this one was written in a style close
enough to her own to be included in a collection under her own
name. The experience of being "possessed" by the souls of
others, o f course, does not seem to be dissimilar to Oates’s
own descriptions of entertaining the multitudinous psyches of
her characters.
The second story, "Year of Wonders," first appeared in
the collection Where Are You Going, Where H ave You Been?,
published in the previous year. This story is ostensibly a
"realistic" tale about a young girl who spends much of her
time at the mall. But Oates remarks that the story is also
"set largely upon one of those centers of the universe a mys
tic knows to be a ’mandala,’ though most people see it as the
shopping plaza out by the expressway." She then asks, rhetor
ically, "Is one vision correct, and the other incorrect? D oes
t h e m y s tic k n o w s o m e t h in g t h e r e a l i s t c a n ’t q u it e
express?"-^ i n the story, the young girl seem s "superstit
ious" about which of the twenty-eight mall entrances she uses,
203
but actually, by being observant, she makes good choices for
herself, and the story ends on an affirmative note when her
rather distant, self-absorbed mother accepts her gift, a "gift
of h e rself in the form of a portrait drawn by an artist at
the mall, and instead of rejecting and criticizing the child,
the mother thanks her. The story makes clear that the work of
art is not an accurate or "true" representation of the child,
but it is offered and accepted as a loving gift that opens a
powerful emotional connection between the mother and the daugh
ter. This story, then, stands in direct contrast to the story
"Hell" in that one portrays the positive connective power of
art while the other demonstrates art’s "dangerous" potential.
Two of the stories in the collection that fade from the
realistic into the fantastic are "The Madwoman" and "The Dream
ing Woman." In the first of these, a young couple, lovers,
are brought to a house by a child who claims her mother is
"sick." Once the couple gets there, they realize the woman is
mad, and possibly evil, given the description of her eyes, and
the female narrator realizes she and her lover would be power
less against the awesome strength of the woman’s "madness" if
she decided to attack either one of them. But the woman does
not attack; instead, her original fury subsides and she adopts
an inappropriately cordial manner, and the couple has a diffi
cu lt tim e ex trica tin g th e m se lv e s from th e u n co m fo rta b le
204
situation. The child, too, changes from pleading to sarcastic
o n c e it is clear th at the cou p le is going to resist any
overtures from the mother, and only then does the narrator
n o t ic e a se e m in g ly triv ia l d e ta il--th a t th e m o th e r and
daughter are wearing the same unusual color of nail polish— a
detail that suggests the entire encounter was a ploy rather
than an emergency and although the narrator is relieved to
"get away," sh e is p rofou n d ly ch an ged by th e in cid en t,
realizing that her lover is not a man of courage and that she
will never have the kind of life she wants with him. Although
all o f the events in this story are perfectly "ordinary," the
reader knows that they thinly veil a level of evil that only
the narrator seems to perceive, but which is terrifying enough
to change her perspective on her own life.
"The Dreaming Woman," similarly, is a story about security
and fear, and it seems to be a precursor of a more recent
story "Come Live With Me, It’s Time," in that both deal with a
young woman’s connections to her grandmother and in both the
grandmother’s house is a place of solace and comfort but not a
place where the young girl can stay for very long. In "The
Dreaming Woman," the liminal boundaries between waking and
sleeping, reality and fantasy are blurred and the young girl
is brutally thrown into reality in a car accident that occurs
with her lover. The story ends, however, with a paragraph
205
that suggests all of it has been a distant memory, a memory
recalled from the im m inently "safe" but deadening life that
the young girl chose in order to become "impregnable": "I sit
here alone and dream out the window, very safe, warm in the
sunlight and safe in my house, married, alone, not in love,
impregnable" (263).
This story, which closes the collection, echoes the ques
tion of the story that opened it: How can one make of the
outside world a home? This question, asked by Eugene O ’Neill
in an essay on modern drama, suggests that the emptiness felt
by modern man originates in the basic human need to feel safe,
com forted , and loved, and these desires, he contends, are
founded on an "ideal" memory of such security in childhood,
even if this security was never actually experienced or en
joyed. Oates, it seems, would agree, and the distance between
th e stiflin g security that the character escap es by leaving
her grandm other’s house and the passionate risks that she
takes with her married lover are bridged or negotiated in the
safety o f the life she has chosen for herself by the river,
not in love. In this story, like so many, the woman’s ability
to remember the pleasure is balanced against her inability to
forget the pain, and so both must be accommodated.
The most powerful and provocative story in the collection,
however, is called "Out of Place," and it is a rather brief,
206
fairly simple story of a young man who is in a hospital. As
the story unfolds, the reader realizes that the young man has
been seriously wounded in the Viet Nam war, and he has been
sent back to the States to convalesce. His memories wander
from ordinary scenes of wasting his time and his talents in
high school, a time when he assumed life would always be nor
mal, and ordinary, and available to him as he was then to
memories of the war that are terrifying and vivid. The most
surprising aspect o f this story, how ever, is that this young
man is "out o f place," not because of the many uncomfort
able encounters he will have to endure with people who cannot
stand to look on the reality of his young and unnecessarily
broken body, but because his experiences in the war and his
nearness to death have made him so appreciative and aware of
life.
This character is a clear example of the most positive con
sequences of Kierkegaard’s concept of "subjective truths," for
this young man has ordered his life in gratitude and apprecia
tion based on his full understanding of death, including his
own. His perspective is constantly that of the "witness," a
perspective from which he views himself and others so clearly
that even in his present condition, he can conclude, "I think
that I am a kind of masterpiece. I mean, a miracle. My body
and my brain" (161). This is a story that celebrates all of
207
life, both the wonder and the pain, and it does not "reject"
either vision for the other. It is perfectly complete in its
portrait of both the sacred and profane aspects of living.
What all of these stories have in common, in fact, is the
attempt to encompass both sides of such dualities as truth and
delusion, reality and fantasy, risk and security, as w ell as
the concepts of life and death. Most of them are examinations
of a desire or expectation that is thwarted or subverted in
some way. Some of the characters move from desire to accep
tance of an unexpected fate; others move from desire to loath
ing when they cannot have what they believe they want, or
worse, what they believe they need. In all of them, however,
the realistic elements of the story are informed by the larger
context of the symbolic or the spiritual.
In fact, without this larger context many of the stories
w ould be nothing m ore than accounts of pathetic, hopeless
lives. Such a conclusion would be antithetical to O ates’s
p osition that "literature is our religion," for it is in this
sense that she pursues "perfect" understanding as if it were a
v ery rea l and im m in en t p o ssib ility . S h e d e sc rib es th is
search, an ideal rather than an achievable goal, as the pur
pose behind both reading and writing, for both are manifesta
tion s o f "the search for the elu sive ’sacred’ text. ’T h e’
t e x t . T h i s se a rc h is b o th d iffic u lt and e x ce ed in g ly
208
important, and the text is "sacred" in its promise of perfect
understanding. A rt’s ability to frame and order experience
h e lp s o n e to sift th r o u g h th e c o n fu sin g and p o ssib ly
overwhelming experiences o f life. This is the dim ension in
w hich it acquires not only its moral, but also its sacred,
aspect.
In an essay entitled "Literature and Religion," Giles Gunn
states that "religion may be said to provide us with those
basic paradigms by which we define the nature of that other
ness of our circumstances and attempt to bring them into some
m easure o f conform ity with it." ^ H e suggests that litera
ture similarly helps one understand and negotiate with reality
since "works o f literature explore hidden, and often poten
tially disturbing dimensions of those paradigms by organizing
them into an encompassing structure," which he explains "sheds
[light] on their existen tial nature, [and] helps r elea se us
from anxiety about those paradigms by clarifying the alterna
tive kinds of response we can imaginatively, if not actually,
O C
make to them."*^
This is precisely the project of O ates’s art, and since,
as Taylor notes, "we are now in an age in which a publicly
accessible cosm ic order o f m eanings is an impossibility," it
is not surprising that O ates would go outside conventional
form s and trad ition al b e lie fs in her search for m eaning.
209
T aylor r efers to such origin al thinkers as "seekers" and
suggests th ey o ften go "beyond the gam ut o f traditionally
availab le fram eworks" and even "often d ev elo p their own
versions of them. . . . And this provides the context within
w hich the qu estion o f m eaning has its p l a c e . O a t e s ’s
"context" is always a relational one, a context in which the
self is view ed in relation to itself, others, the world, and
even the sacred in the hope of discovering insights that will
not only answer the question Who are we? but also Who might we
becom e? This is a question that O ates asks not only for
herself but for "the collective human self' as well, for she
adm its, "I take w ith absolute seriou sn ess F lau b ert’s claim
that ’ we must love one another in our art as the mystics love
one another in G od.’" This perspective explains how her
"dedication to literature springs from a conviction that it is
a ’mystical’ affirmation of our common human bond.
Oates, like Taylor, believes this bond is founded on the
communal need "to examine how we make sense of our lives, and
to draw the limits of the conceivable from our knowledge of
'3 0
what we actually do when we do so. ° This examination
requires an inquiry into the question How do we know what we
know? In order to accommodate the expansive nature of that
inquiry, O a tes in sists th at the lim its o f th e con ceivab le
encompass both the sacred and the profane, and in this sense,
210
literature must provide a necessarily expansive and flexible
context for inquiry and understanding if one is to be drawn to
the conclusion that ’’ the experience of art projected into the
a ctu a lity and to ta lity o f life [is] the id eal form o f the
moral life."39
211
CHAPTER THREE: NOTES
1
C harles T aylor, Sources o f Self: The M aking o f the
M odern Id e n tity (C am b rid ge, Mass: H arvard U niversity
Press, 1989) 3.
^Taylor 509.
•^Taylor 28.
^Joyce C arol O a tes, p r e fa c e, W here A re You G oing,
Where Have You Beem? (Greenwich, Conn.: Fawcett Books,
1974) 10.
^John Gardner, On M oral Fiction (New York: Basic
Books, Inc. 1978) 19.
^ Joyce C arol O a te s, The P rofan e A r t (N e w Y ork:
Dutton, 1983) 114-15.
^Gardner 205.
O
°In her essay, "Video in Groups: Im plications for a
Social Theory of Self' (1987), Diane Skafte explains that in
volvement in a social matrix can lead to a feeling of complete
ness and that "both Mead and Cooley pointed out that the culti
vation of the ’generalized other’ is a more advanced develop
m ent of the self system, taking place only after individual
identity has gained a foothold. Experiencing oneself as a
part of the social matrix returns the self, in a sense, to its
original birthplace, and bestows a feeling of being larger and
more complete" (398-399). This matches O ates’s idea of a
"fortunate" connection to "something larger than the self."
^Joyce Carol Oates, "Literature as Pleasure, Pleasure as
Literature," (W om an) Writer: Occasions and Opportunities
(New York: Dutton, 1988) 63-64.
212
CHAPTER THREE: NOTES
l^ J o y c e C arol O a te s, in tro d u ctio n , The P h ilo so p h e r’s
Stone by Colin W ilson (N ew York: Warner Books, Inc.,
1974) 10.
•^ C a r l G u s ta v J u n g , T he U n d is c o v e r e d S e lf (N e w
York: Penguin Books, 1957) 101.
^2Jung 101.
l-^Oates, (Woman) Writer 52.
l^Oates, (Woman) Writer 13.
15Jung 100.
■*^Oates, (Woman) Writer 74.
17Jung 118.
■^R obert P h illip s, "Joyce C arol O ates: T h e A rt of
F iction LXXII," Conversations with Joyce Carol O ates ed.
Lee Milazzo (Jackson: University of Mississippi Press, 1989)
74.
19 Judith A pplebaum , "Joyce Carol Oates," Conversations
w ith Joyce C a ro l O a te s ed . L e e M ilazzo (Jack son :
University of Mississippi Press, 1989) 60.
20Jung 112.
2^Oates, (Woman) Writer 73.
22Oates, (Woman) Writer 74-75.
213
CHAPTER THREE: NOTES
^3 Oates, (Woman) Writer 75.
^ M ich ael Schumaker, "Joyce Carol Oates and the Hardest
P art o f W riting," C o n versa tio n s w ith Joyce C arol O ates
ed. Lee Milazzo (Jackson: University of Mississippi Press,
1989) 141.
^3 J o y c e C a r o l O a te s , "The S h o r t S tory," S o u th ern
Humanities Review 5 (1971) 213-14.
^Schum aker 140.
^ O ates, (Woman) Writer 1A.
^ L e if Sjoberg, "An Interview with Joyce Carol Oates,"
C o n versa tio n w ith Joyce C a ro l O ates ed. L ee M ilazzo
(Jackson: University of Mississippi Press, 1989) 102.
^ S o r e n K ierk egaard , "D read and Freedom ," E xisten t
ialism from Dostoevsky to Satre ed. Walter Kaufman (New
York: New American Library, 1975) 105.
30Jung 70.
3 -^Sjoberg 107.
3^Oates, preface, Where Are You Going, Where H ave You
Been? 10.
33Oates, (Woman) Writer 44.
3 ^ G ile s G u n n , " L ite r a tu r e a n d R e lig io n ," I n te r r e
lation s o f L iteratu re ed. B arricelli and G ibaldi (N ew
York: Modern Language Association of America, 1982) 50.
214
CHAPTER THREE: NOTES
3^Gunn 50.
36Taylor 512, 517.
3 ^Sjoberg 105.
3^Taylor 32.
' I Q
L io n e l T r illin g , The O p p o sin g S e lf (N e w Y ork
The Viking Press, 1950) xiv.
215
PART TWO
THE EXPERIENCE OF EMPATHY
"Go ahead and believe, then, if you like, that the stars
-1
see nothing but the roofs of your little mountain hamlet."^
This is the admonishment Pirandello offers to his readers in
his story "The Cat, A Goldfinch and the Stars." Pirandello is
asking his readers to abandon their indulgence in the pathetic
fallacy, a perspective from which the observer "tends to sub
stitu te h im se lf for th e world." In fa ct, th is p rojective
point of view, one that imposes subjective meaning on non-
sen tien t nature, fram es the story and is its true subject,
w hich is n ot--as it seem s--th e con ven tion ally plotted story
that begins (after six paragraphs): "I once knew an old
couple who had a goldfinch."
The story of the couple serves only to illustrate, however
ironically, the possibly dire consequences of maintaining such
a perspective. These old people have transferred their love
and grief for their dead granddaughter (an orphan) onto the
bird, and the story ends in tragedy when the old man is shot
and killed after bursting into his neighbor’s house, shooting
216
wildly in his attempt to kill the cat, whom he is certain in
ten tion ally, m aliciou sly ate the little goldfinch. W ith the
action of the story clearly finished (the bird has been eaten,
the old man has been shot, and the neighbor has fled the coun
try), Pirandello closes the story where it began:
As for the cat, it scarcely remembered, a moment
later, having eaten the goldfinch, any goldfinch
. . . there it was, all white against the black
roof, gazing up at the stars which, from the
darkening depths of interplanetary space, saw—
and o f this w e may be quite certain— nothing
whatsoever of the humble roofs of this mountain
ham let; and yet, so brilliantly did they shine
up there, one would have sworn that they beheld
nothing else that night. ^
The use o f this fram e, the circularity of ending the story
just where it began, suggests the strength of the temptation
to hold onto a perspective that places one at the center of
the world or the universe itself. Certainly this is often the
perspective of em otionally needy p eople, like the grandpar
ents, who in their grief and loneliness interpret the world
according to their desires. The consequence of this outlook,
however, has not been healthy but destructive, and so Pirandel
lo ’s story attem pts to expose this epistem ological framework
as unworkable.
217
In story after story, Joyce Carol Oates offers a similar
(though usually m ore subtle) challenge to assum ptions— both
her own and those of her characters. Oates maintains that
every artist’s work is his "attempt to explain som ething to
him self: and in the process o f explaining it to himself, he
exp lain s it to o t h e r s . W h i l e this is also true in her
poem s, plays, and novels, the short stories offer particularly
clear exam ples of the connections betw een delusion and its
consequences due to the brevity of the form and O ates’s fre
quent use of beginning-middle-ending structures.^
This structural patterning is clear in two of O ates’s most
famous and certainly most frequently anthologized stories. In
"Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?" for example, Con
nie at first has a romanticized concept of love and sexuality
("the way it was in movies and promised in songs"); this per
spective is demonically challenged by Arnold Friend; and Con
nie’s fate is either rape, as it is in the conclusion to the
m ovie adaptation called "Smooth Talk," or rape and probable
\
murder, as implied in the ending of the print version of the
story. Similarly, Sister Irene in "The Region of Ice" begins
the story believing she is safe from "messy" em otional en
tanglements such as those her parents subjected her to; this
assumption is proven false by Allen Weinstein, who tempts her
into believing she can save him; and the story concludes with
218
Sister Iren e’s withdrawal into an icy, em otion less existence
o f d isc o n n e c te d n e ss. Iron ically, S ister Iren e b egin s the
story b elievin g she is safe and ends it being em otionally
dead.
Although O ates’s stories are richly complex— they all chal
len g e a variety o f assu m p tion s— the em phasis o f individual
stories often ech oes the organizing principle o f the collec
tion as a w hole. Still, the issue o f on e’s relationship to
others and the world is so pervasive in her work that multiple
challenges can be found in one work just as one challenge can
be traced through multiple works. In her effort "to tran
scribe the ’life of the tim es’ in America," O ates challenges
b eliefs and attitu d es that are both idiosyncratically indivi
dual and traditionally norm ative. Included in th ese chal
len ges to assum p tion s are con cep ts o f individualism ("Pil
grims’ Progress"), female roles ("What Love With Death Should
H ave To Do"), sanity ("Psychiatric Services"), racism ("The
Case of Bobby T."), materialism ("First Views of the Enemy"),
and narrative truth ("Plot")-to name only a few. Delusions
about love and personal relationships as well as both indivi
dual and communal attitudes toward the "sacred" or God or the
secular eq u ivalen t— m orals and eth ics— are ubiquitous in her
work.
219
In most of these stories, the challenge to the character
is to survive the p rocess o f d isillusion m en t and its con
comitant threat to identity and world view. Many of Oates’s
characters do not survive, and many of those who do have stub
bornly or helplessly kept their deluded perspectives intact.
In such cases, O ates expects insight to replace delusion in
the reader through the experience of the story. Even so,
O ates does not prescribe "correct" perspectives. Instead, she
tests ideas against experience and subtly suggests a direction
for her readers, a suggestion that often only im plies "not
this way."
By understanding Oates’s stories as a challenge to deluded
assum ptions and traditional perspectives, it is easier to ac
cep t her contention that her writing is not negative. In
fact, she claims her writing is a judgment "not of the world,
but o f m an ’s false interpretations o f it."*’ For this rea
son Oates would claim for her fiction that which Auden claims
for poetry: "Poetry is not magic. In so far as poetry, or
any of the other arts, can be said to have an ulterior pur
p o se, it is, by telling the truth, to disenchant and disin-
n
to x ic a te . O a te s’s fictio n is filled w ith p e o p le w ho are
"temporarily deluded" because she believes fiction is cen
tered on conflict:
220
p e o p le need help with pain, never with joy.
T here’s no need to write about happy people,
happy problems; there’s only the moral need to
in stru ct read ers co n cern in g the d irectio n to
take, in order to achieve happiness (or what
ever: m aybe they don’t want happiness, only
O
confusion).
Like Pirandello, who tells his readers, "Go ahead and believe,
then, if you like . . . " Oates cannot control how her audi
ence will respond to her ideas, but she believes she offers
them an opportunity for disillusionment.
In fact, alm ost all o f O ates’s stories (though they are
not only this) and certainly the Pirandello story discussed
above are clear examples of what Thomas Leitch has labeled
"the debunking story." According to Leitch, "the debunking
story . . . displays as its point and purpose the process of
unknowing a false or delusive sense of individual action or
p ercep tio n as basis for a stab le sen se o f p ersonal id en
tity."^ In order to attain a stable identity, however, one
must survive the process of disillusionment.
Of course, neither Connie nor Sister Irene have emotion
ally stab le iden tities: C o n n ie’s self con cep t is as highly
rom anticized as her concept o f others and her identity is
still developing since she is an adolescent. Sister Iren e’s
identity is rigidly lim ited to her relationship with G od— to
221
the exclusion of humanity. And in the Pirandello story, the
old man’s identity is not at all stable: he worries that his
attentions to the bird have made him an "object of ridicule"
among his neighbors. This concern provokes great anger in
him, and it is this anger that prompts the behavior that gets
him killed. The responses of Oates’s characters are similarly
based on their unstable identities, which both influence and
reflect their delusional world views. These characters would
only be able to develop stable identities by "unknowing" their
delusions, which may, in fact, be the case for Connie, but cer
tainly not for Sister Irene.
Leitch also explains that the debunking stoiy is a subset
o f th e an tith etical story, w hich he describ es as "a story
which proceeds from an illusory initial way of knowing to a
critique of or challenge to that order."^® The term "order"
su g g ests, q u ite rightly, an in stitu tio n a liz e d or tra d itio n a l
societal code. For O ates’s characters, and even Pirandello’s,
their delusions are more personal than this: they are indivi
dual choices though they may be supported and reinforced by
communal cultural attitudes. For Connie, the illusion is her
naive, romanticized idea of love, for Sister Irene, it is the
b elief that distance and isolation will keep her emotionally
safe, and for Pirandello’s old man, the mistake is his pro
j e c t io n o f h is f e e lin g s o n to th e o b je c tiv e w o rld . In
222
c o n tr a st, th e a n tith e tic a l sto ry illu str a te s a p e r sp e c tiv e
somewhat closer to what Lionel Trilling describes in his book
The Opposing S elf (1950). According to Trilling, the anti
thetical perspective consists o f "selves conceived in opp osi
tio n to th e gen eral culture. T his b etter d escrib es a
character like Hawthorne’s H ester Prynne, whose identity re
su lts from her op p o sitio n to the rep ressive traditions of
seventeenth century Puritan society.
Rather than exhibiting any such critical awareness, Sister
Irene, Connie, and the old man have adopted attitudes that are
common in the general culture, and none of them has the aware
ness to link these perspectives with their suffering. Only
th e r e a d e r ’s p ersp ectiv e is an tith etical to the culture in
this sen se. B oth types o f stories, then, inclu de cultural
criticism but while the antithetical story places the charac
ter in an adversarial stance to the world, the debunking story
attem p ts to clarify and recon cile the relation sh ip s am ong
p erson al identity, subjective p ersp ective, and the objective
w orld— for both characters and readers. In this way, the
antithetical story challenges the world whereas the debunking
story challenges the self.
While asserting that stories which "are organized around a
conceptually unresolved challenge to the self1 are more Ameri
can than stories which conclude with a "revelatory teleology,"
223
Leitch recognizes that his distinction betw een dom estic and
foreign fiction is debatable. H e admits that some "non-Ameri
can authors," such as Chekhov, Joyce, and Kafka (in "Gooseber
ries," "A Painful Case," and "The Hunger Artist" respectively)
prefer the unresolved challenge to assumptions over declara
tions of wisdom, and if they supply their characters with rev
elation s at all, they are negative rather than prescriptive:
"a d eb u n k in g o f in ad eq u ate certain ties in favor o f w hat
Charles E. May . . . called ’the im m ediate truth of intui
tion, emotion, and dreams.
Whether or not such authorial intentions can be claimed as
A m erican, they are certainly Oatesian, for O ates has called
the short story "a dream verbalized." In this expression, she
echoes Freud’s idea, expressed in "Creative Writers and Day-
Dreaming" (1908), that adult fantasies or daydreams are simply
an extension of the child’s playful imagination, which makes
the story, like the dream , an exercise in w ish-fulfillm ent.
But the importance of dreams, to Oates, seems to go well be
yond F reud’s ideas, and when the story is equated with a
dream, it is also helpful to consider that Jung believed "to
concern ourselves with dreams is a way of reflecting on our
s e lv e s - ^ way o f self-reflection." H e further explains that
the dream "relfects not on the ego but the self; it recollects
that strange self, alien to the ego. . . . It is alien to us
224
because we have estranged ourselves from it through the aberra-
1 ^
tions of the conscious mind." Jung’s explanation of the
significance o f dreams parallels O ates’s idea o f writing as a
type of "memory" that promotes "self-recovery" and though it
may be coincidental that Kafka, Joyce, and Chekhov are three
authors that O ates adm ires— she "reimagined" or reworked a
story by each of these m en in her collection Marriages and
I n f id e litie s — sh e clearly sh ares th eir p ro fo u n d in te r e st in
subjective ways o f knowing oneself, others, and the world.
Yet, as with Pirandello, she maintains a clear connection to
th e o b jectiv e w orld. P ir a n d ello ’s ironic debunking story
starts with the lines "A stone. Another stone. Man passes
and sees the two lying side by side. But what does the stone
know of the one beside it?"-^ Oates and Pirandello would
both answ er "nothing at all" based on experience in the
o b je c tiv e w o rld . A cco rd in g to O a tes, "The illu sio n o f
possessing and controlling everything is a powerful one, and
its charms are not readily surrendered even in adulthood."
But she rejects "both the puzzling contempt for ’real’ worlds
and the sen tim en tal h op e for a forcible rem aking o f the
universe as if there were not already a universe to be ac
kn ow ledged."^ For this reason, O ates insists that subjec
tive and objective perspectives must be interactive if one is
225
to develop a workable orientation to reality or truth, what
ever these may b e .^
To Oates, the two components of such an interactive per
spective are experience and reflection. She quotes the poet
William Stafford as saying "’The world happens to us twice.
T h e first tim e, it happens. T he secon d tim e, it is fil
tered through language and understanding. It becomes an intel-
1 7
lectual construct in our minds.”'x/ This combination of the
em otional orientation of experience and the intellectual orien
tation o f reflection is precisely what O ates attempts in her
art:
I w ould like to create the psychological and
emotional equivalent of an experience, so com
p le te ly and in su ch e x h a u stiv e d eta il, th at
anyone who reads it sym pathetically will have
experienced that even t in his mind (which is
18
where we live anyway).
This aspiration was voiced in 1972, but by 1975 Oates felt com
p elled (because of her experiences in writing The Poisoned
K iss) to q u alify it: "There is a con sid erab le d ifferen ce
betw een reading about something and actually experiencing it,
a lesson that intellectually oriented people must learn again
and again, at times to their chagrin.
D e sp ite the "considerable differences," O a tes’s original
contention is valid: a sympathetic reader can understand a
226
story at a level so compelling that it is inscribed in memory
and can then be used as the basis for future judgments or
moral choices. Oates believes that "much of our mental life
is, of course, memory" and "I would like to have absorbed into
my system certain ’fictional’ events so that they are as power
ful as memory." It is in this way that Oates believes "All
art is m oral, e d u c a tio n a l, illu stra tiv e. It in stru cts. If
it’s working well, it communicates to you exactly what you’d
90
feel like if you, like R askolnikov, had made a mistake."
In this com m ent, Oates is suggesting that to a sympathetic
reader literature parallels experience in its ability to serve
as a basis for moral choices.
According to Wolfgang Iser "Reading reflects the structure
of experience to the extent that we must suspend the ideas and
attitudes that shape our own personality before we can experi-
91
e n c e th e u n fam iliar world o f the literary tex t.,,z,x This
structure, Iser explains, stem s from the similarity betw een
reading and experience wherein "knowledge is continually re
vised" through anticipation and retrospection, which he con
tends makes the interaction between reader and text "a living
99
event."*6^ This need to anticipate and reflect in reading is
comparable to the selfs need to have a sense of history since
only from such continuity can identity be formulated. Oates
repeatedly illustrates that a character who fails to achieve
227
this continuity also fails to gain insight, for these charac
ters, like Walter Stuart in "Upon the Sweeping Flood," emerge
from profound experiences as "strangers to themselves." Rob
ert L uscher sim ilarly id en tifies this type o f reciprocity in
the reading process: "Although we must read either type of
w ork [short stories or novels] sequ en tially, w e continually
cast a backward glance to formulate the relationships of the
past to the evolving whole.
That the process of reading encourages readers to develop
the ability to suspend personal opinion and revise their knowl
edge by giving attention to a comprehensive whole connects it
to experience of the most productive kind. Such an expansion
of on e’s perspective is considered by John Dewey, author of
A rt A s Experience (1934), as well as by Oates, to be the
foundation of "the moral function of art . . . [which] is to
remove prejudice, do away with the scales that keep the eye
from seeing, tear away the veils due to wont and custom, [and]
perfect the power to perceive."^ In this sense, both read
in g a n d e x p e r ie n c e as w e ll as rea d in g as e x p e r ie n c e
contribute to O ates’s m oral objective "to recreate the self
spiritually" by challenging assumptions.
The problem, of course, is how to interpret or understand
the experience of O ates’s fiction. Like her characters, and
with equally good intentions "to see clearly," many of O ates’s
228
readers have difficulty distinguishing betw een insight and de
lusion, both for them selves and for the characters. Oates
herself admits that this is difficult to accom plish, and yet
she suggests that the immediate, em otional, subjective quali
ties of experience constitute the "moment of art":
. . . there is no guarantee that art will be
understood, not even by the artist, it is not
meant to be understood but experienced. Emotions
flow from one personality to another, altering
som eone’s conception of the world: this is the
moment of art. It is a revelation. This impact
of another personality upon us-our terrible, re
luctant, unavoidable acknowledgment of another
person, other people, all the consciousness out
side ourselves that w e cannot possess, despite
our d eep est w ishes--all that is humanly sacred
is present m this exchange, which is art.
As an author, Oates fully intends the impact of this exchange
to occur on two levels: inside the story (between characters)
and outside the story (between the characters and the reader).
The exchange between the author and the characters has already
taken place during the act of writing. Such an exchange, one
that can result in "the alteration of som eone’s conception of
the world," is similar to David Bleich’s concept of response,
which he sees as central to the study of aesthetic experience.
229
H e asserts that "attention to the text is not enough; at
tention to response is necessary."^
In discussing D. W. Harding’s article, "Psychological Pro
cesses in the Reading o f Fiction" (1962), Bleich states that
Harding constructs a model in which the response of the reader
is part of a "communication situation" with the author:
"the mode of response made by the reader . . .
can be regarded as an extension of the mode of
response made by an onlooker at actual events."
W ithin this response (to art), two factors are
fundam ental: "imaginative or em pathic insight
into other living things, mainly other people,"
and "evaluation o f the participants and what
they do and suffer, an evaluation that I would
relate . . . to his structure of interests and
97
sentiments."
H ard in g’s descrip tion o f the reading process com bines the
subjective elem en t— the readers’s personal framework— and the
objective elem ent— the work of art as an "actual event"— that
are implied in Oates’s concept of art as an "exchange." That
Harding believes this conversation is predicated on "empathic
insight" also suggests the need for interaction betw een sub
jective and objective realities. (See Figure 1: Pathways for
Empathic Exchange).
In order to accomplish this goal, Oates attempts to eradi
c a te th e tr a d itio n a l d iv isio n s am on g e th o s , lo g o s, and
230
PATHWAYS FOR EMPATHIC EXCHANGE
-INQ UIR Y versus PROJECTION-
THE WORLD
n W'fjCTio
C R IT IC IS M
SUBJECT IV E/O BJEC TIV E
v y
f/CTlO^i
THE CHARACTER
L E G E N D :
INQUIRY
THE WORK 9 ----------»
PROJECTION • --------»
FIGURE 1: While there are no purely objective exchanges, and while
the transaction between the author and the reader that is accom
plished through criticism must negiotiate three subjective perspectives
(the author's, the critic's, and the reader's), the typical paths for
inquiry necessitate only the interaction between objective and subjec
tive perspectives that is encountered in the exchange between "self
and "other". Conversely, projection attempts to avoid interaction and
is, therefore, an imposition of self rather than an authentic exchange.
231
p a th o s: the artist, the character, and the reader are not
set up in triangular opposition, but are connected through sym
pathetic identification, which prompts the experience through
which the reader may alter his conception of the world. That
experience— the empathic exchange— is the means by which the
rea d er can v a lid a te the "evaluation," w hich, according to
Oates, must be based on both subjective and objective know
ledge. For this reason, the pathways for exchange are not a
triangle, but a circle, on which— if imagined as a clock face,
the world or reality stands at twelve, the author at three,
the fictional character at six, and the reader at nine. Each
quarter arc is a two-way bridge that allows for an exchange
b etw een each o f these agents: the w orld/the author, the
a u th o r /th e c h a r a c te r , th e c h a r a c te r /th e rea d er, and the
reader/the world— for the reader, too, must test ideas in the
arena of objective or external reality.
Of course, the author may "converse" with the reader in
several ways: she may pass counterclockwise through the world
or reality in her non-fiction, which Oates has done often and
well, or she may travel clockwise through her fictional char
acters, or she may traverse the circle directly by crossing
its diam eter (from three to nine o ’clock) through criticism,
no doubt a "least favorite" choice for most authors. Added to
this in teraction is the com plication that at each of these
232
p o s itio n s a lo n g th e w h e e l, th e r e is a p riv a te, in tern a l
struggle for understanding going on, a struggle that is in
separable from the flow of information, ideas, and emotions in
either direction. This complication is confirmed by Bleich’s
observation of "students [who] have intuited the insepara
bility of their knowledge from their experience."^
Oates, too, has noted the connection between knowledge and
experience though she emphasizes the emotion of the response
as the key to understanding: "one does not analyze a dream in
order to know what sort of emotions to feel about it; one uses
the emotion to seek out the meaning, inseparable from the ex
p erien ce itse lf." ^ A ccording to O ates, how ever, response
also requires a self-reflective ability to distinguish betw een
expectation and actual experience: "Once we distinguish our
intellectual expectation of em otion from actual emotions, we
are prepared to approach a work of art from our own point of
view, and [thereby] can . . . discover what might be timeless
in
in it."J V / In other words, the reader must have a clear, or
fairly clear, grasp of his own personal framework— both intel
lectual and em otional-so that the work and the response can
be accurately evaluated.
Sim ilarly, B leich su ggests that the evalu ation that d e
rives from this exchange, an evaluation that is im plicit in
his use of the term "response," is not "just another learning
233
experience; rather it is an expression of, a declaration of,
se lf in a local context reflectin g a set o f local ch oices,
m otives, and in terests in k n ow led ge." ^ B leich is hereby
suggesting that the response to literature is an extraordinary
experience because it is an attempt to learn, or know, or de
clare an authentic self based on an examination of one’s re
sponses to situations, which means these responses are choices
that— in the case of most readers and writers— are motivated
by a desire for accurate knowledge or genuine understanding.
This conclusion is similar to O ates’s statement about Shakes
p e a r e ’s C ordelia: when "she declares herself unwilling to
lie , sh e d e c la r es h e rself as a self." Such hon esty in
the face of adverse or unwelcomed consequences is the hallmark
of authenticity.
O f course, motivations are not always positive, and though
Bleich only discusses the orientations of readers in his arti
cle, it is possible for both readers and writers (and even
characters, as Oates has suggested) to operate from a perspec
tive that subordinates an interest in accurate knowledge to
the desire to fulfill an em otional need. Such is the case
when either the reader or the author attempts to bypass the
productive pathways for empathic exchange, pathways that re
quire an interaction between the self and other, between sub
jectiv e and objective realities, and instead projects only a
234
subjective perspective onto the world or the character. When
this occurs, productive learning is precluded from the experi
ence because only previously held convictions, which may in
clude prejudices and delusions, are necessarily confirmed. In
this way, projection is antonymous to empathic inquiry because
projection distances rather than reconciles or connects a per
son to the objective world.
An ability to connect and reconcile rather than maintain
or prom ote separateness and distance is, according to Jung,
th e a ffe c tiv e thread that con n ects individuals as w ell as
provides cohesiveness to society as a whole:
[A] free society needs a bond of an affective
n a tu r e , a p r in c ip le o f a kind lik e ca rita s,
the Christian love of your neighbor. But it is
just this love for one’s fellow man that suffers
m ost o f all from th e lack o f understanding
'2 '5
wrought by projection.
Oates, too, recognizes that a connective, sympathetic love is
a mirror image of the destructive love than can result from
pathological em otional need, of which projection is only one
example: " ’Love’ is really two things, perhaps more. There
is the sen sib le, com radely, species-loving love, in which I
recognize in you and in others a humanity, a sympathetic per
so n a lity , an o th ern ess th at is sacred." O a tes co n tra sts
th is p o sitiv e lo v e w ith "the to ta lly irrational, p o ssessiv e,
235
ego-destroying love, which is . . . perhaps a pathological con
dition of the soul." This second type, she contends, "some
times generates in one person . . . a desire to kill the be
loved , if the beloved can’t be c a p t u r e d . M a n i p u l a t i o n ,
dom inance, and "possession" through an imposition of self--
projection--are just a few of the m otives that prompt this
kind of destructive love, which Oates so often examines in her
fiction.
C onversely, the positive kind o f love is closely related
to Charles Taylor’s explanation of the modern concept of "res
pect," which he sees as a value that places a high priority on
autonomy and the avoidance of suffering. Taylor suggests that
respect falls into the general moral category of "an affirma
tion of ordinary life," which he says stresses human welfare
and has evolved into modern utilitarianism from its source in
C h ristian sp iritu a lity . Su ch a p e r sp e c tiv e is im plicit in
O ates’s concept of positively motivated sympathetic identifica
tion; how ever, because her art focuses on "false interpreta
tions" of the world, she is more inclined, like Jung, to warn
her readers that "where love stops, power begins, and vio-
' ' 3 C
len ce, and t e r r o r . F o r the sam e reason, evaluating the
experience o f love, which is usually quite clear to the per
sons involved, not only concerns the outcom es but also the
motives of the lovers.
236
In attem pting to distinguish between positive and negative
ch oices, such as those concerning love, B leich ’s "subjective
paradigm" is helpful precisely because it offers the motive of
the person as a fundamental criterion for evaluation. Accord
ing to B leich , th e paradigm "equalize[s] th ese au th orities
[subjective and objective knowledge] by considering any knowl
edge as having been deliberately sought and by relating its
authority to the motives of those who seek it."^ This ap
plies not only to readers, as implied in Bleich’s discussion,
but can be extended to suggest that the response given by any
o f the agents involved in the text, including those o f wri
ters, readers, and also characters, may be judged according to
whether that response has been authored by an authentic search
for insight or a delusional attem pt, such as projection, to
fulfill an emotional need.
Although not always clear, m otives are usually easier to
determine in art than in life since the reader has an overview
of the narrative whole, which has been structured in a way
that attempts to emphasize such insights. Further, the mode
o f n a rra tio n , e sp e c ia lly an o m n iscien t p e r sp e c tiv e , gives
insights into the characters that simply are not available in
life. In reality, the only "internal dialogues" we hear are
our own, but in literature even private thoughts as well as
words and actions combine to reveal that some characters are
237
heroic in their pursuit o f authentic knowledge while others
are stubbornly deluded and still others are honestly confused
about the difference betw een these two orientations. This
information, then, must be used by the reader to evaluate the
characters’ motives, as well as his own, concerning attempts
to negotiate one’s way in the world.
In order to succeed at this attempt, the inquirer must
have accurate insights into both him self and others, insights
that can be and have been verified in the objective world.
According to Jung, the knowledge gained from exchanges with
others needs to be tested in objective reality in order to
determine its validity or worth:
We recognize our prejudices and illusions only
when, from a broader psychological knowledge of
ourselves and others, we are prepared to doubt
the absolute rightness of our assumptions and
compare them carefully and conscientiously with
'in
the objective facts.
S im ilarly, O ates also con ten d s that w riters m ust discover
their own biases and beliefs through authentic exchanges in
life as well as in fiction:
If the novelist attempts to force absolute ideas
down into the world of his fiction, he soon sees
how ’ideas’ as such must be tested in the arena
o f living, breathing, existing human beings, not
'lO
once but many times, again and again.
238
Although contrasted in Bleich’s statement, the "learning activ
ity" and the "declaration o f self," especially to O ates, are
inextricably related since both knowledge and on e’s sense of
o n e ’s self are "continually revised" or rewritten in her use
of art as an inquiry that attempts to achieve authenticity by
challenging assumptions.
F or th e w riter, this inquiry req uires em p athically in
teractin g w ith and interpreting the world, others, and the
self, and presenting that interpretation in o n e ’s art. For
th e r e a d e r , th e in v e s tig a tio n in v o lv e s e m p a th ic a lly in
terpreting the world and others as represented in the text,
but it must also include reflecting on one’s own experience of
the text as a means of gaining self understanding. The pos
s ib le in s ig h ts in to o n e ’s s e lf w ill b e r e v e a le d in th e
rea d er’s resp on se, w hich invariably exp oses prejudices and
illusions that need to be challenged. In this way, Bleich’s
subjective paradigm connects response and experience in a way
that h elp s recon cile o n e ’s p ersp ectiv e w ith the "objective
facts" of the world:
[T his] subjective ep istem ology is a fram ew ork
through which the study of both response and in
terpretation may be actively integrated with the
experience of response and interpretation, there
by transforming knowledge from something to be
acquired into something that can be synthesized
an
on behalf of oneself and one’s community.
239
B leich ’s assertion that this "framework" prom otes a synthesis
of knowledge is similar to Taylor’s idea that "to articulate a
framework is to explicate what makes sense of our moral re
sponses" because "a framework is that in virtue of which we
make sense of our lives spiritually. Not to have a framework
is to fall into a life which is spiritually sen seless. The
quest is thus always a quest for sense." Taylor further as
serts that it is precisely this search for meaning that is the
presen t-d ay secular eq u ivalen t o f red em p tion or salvation,
although he admits "the existential predicament in which one
fears condemnation is quite different from the one where one
fears, above all, meaninglessness. The dominance of the lat
ter perhaps defines our a g e ." ^ O ates herself has quoted
Saint Anselm, who said, "I believe in order that I may under
stand."
By investigating and then articulating her own moral re
sponses, Oates attempts to synthesize her knowledge of herself
and others through the empathic exchange that Giles Gunn de
scribes as a convergence or overlap in two differing "horizons
of assumptions." In her art, she provides a parallel opportun
ity for her readers. Yet, in order to accomplish this goal,
the reader must be willing to suspend judgment and view the
characters w ith a degree of sym pathetic identification that
simulates Oates’s moral perspective:
240
M ost artists in sist u p on th e san ctity o f all
beings; the [writer], having spread his own ener
gies out among so many, many fictional personal
it ie s , w ill fin d it in c r e a s in g ly d iffic u lt to
believe in the old rigorous absolutes o f ’good’
and ’evil’ .....................for one realizes, both in
art and in life, how others exist as a part of
o n eself or as ever-surprising and unpredictable
variations o f o n eself, a fundam ental life-force
cast out into innumerable bodies, bearing innu
merable faces.^
In order to result in insight rather than delusion, such com
p le te sym p athetic id en tificatio n , an em otive, subjective ex
perience, must be joined with the intellectual (though also
subjective) project of empathic inquiry, the aim of which is
comprehension. By using these two methods of inquiry in con
junction, they can becom e "the epistem ological principle" that
B leich claim s is required for "the study o f literature and
language [which] involve the same forms of thought and the
sam e criteria of explanation."^ (See Figure 2: Empathic
and Sympathetic Epistemologies).
To Oates, sympathy and empathy are inextricably related in
the selfs search for authentic knowledge, which can only come
from engaging in a self-reflective intellectual and em otional
exchange with others and the world. Unfortunately, however,
"empathy" and "sympathy" as terms are often misunderstood.
241
EMPATHIC AND SYMPATHETIC
EPISTEMOLOGIES
AUTHENTIC EXCHANGES INAUTHENTIC EXCHANGES
m m m m
SYMPATHETIC ORIENTATION
RAFE MURRAY in
"Fine White Mist of Winter”
BY THE NORTH GATE
(1963)
SELF-INTERESTED ORIENTATION
t
SAUL BIRD in
"Pilgrim's Progress"
THE HUNGR Y GHOSTS
(1974)
EMPATHY I " " ,
/ s '
/ /
f /
£ /
X
X
"FEELING INTO"
t
SELF
I T
\ \
\ '
\ \
V \
\ \
\ \
THE EXCHANGE
-OTHER
I
i i
! "FEELING WITH"!
/ $
/ /
' /
* £
\ X
# . v
. - V '
SYMPATHY
JOEL COLLIER in
w ar n■ m b
TIMMY in
"House Hunting" "First Views of the Enemy"
HEAT AND OTHER UPON THE SWEEPING
STORIES (1991)
\\
FLOOD (1966)
WITH COMPREHENSION
' I B hS I O
WITHOUT COMPREHENSION
T
DELUSION
FIGURE 2: If an inquirer employs both empathy and sympathy in order to understand and identify
with another, then the inquiry constitutes an authentic exchange that promotes and extends com
passion and insight. If, however, a person uses empathy alone to understand and manipulate, or
uses sympathetic identification without trying to comprehend the other, the result is an inauthentic
exchange that supports such delusions as projection and control.
242
Dr. Leslie Brothers of the UCLA School of Medicine explains
that empathy is a capacity that has no inherent moral quali
ties: "Although commonly confused with sympathy, empathy is
not merely compassion or kindness but an immediate subjective
grasp of another person’s feeling or experience, which may be
used for good or ill."^ It is precisely these uses and the
motives that prompt them that Oates examines in her art.
But just as em pathy requires a careful distinction con
cerning its uses, so too does sympathy need to be examined
from a perspective that acknowledges "identification" as som e
thing more than a simple confirmation of pre-existing ideas.
To Oates, this is a point of some significance, since she be
lieves, "We are stimulated to emotional response not by works
that confirm our sense of the world, but by works that chal
lenge it. (T o ’identify with’~ a comm onplace pietism — means
simply ’to have no further thoughts a b o u t . ’) " ^ if identi
fication is going to be more than "a commonplace pietism," in
which one allows assumptions to preclude learning, then atten
tion must be given to the "emotional" response of reading, as
Oates suggests. In her writing, it is often the need to iden
tify with disturbing or deluded characters that provokes the
challenge to the reader’s "sense of the world."
This disruptive experience, the attempt to understand the
unfamiliar, constitutes the "exchange" between reader and text
243
that clarifies one’s attitudes toward moral choices. As Iser
explains, however, "the incorporation of the unfamiliar into
our own range of experience" has often been "obscured" in the
misuse of the term "identification":
Often the term "identification" is used as if it
w ere an explanation, whereas in actual fact it
is nothing more than a description. What is nor
mally m eant by ’identification" is the establish
ment of affinities between oneself and someone
outside oneself— a familiar ground on which we
are able to exp erien ce th e unfam iliar. The
author’s aim is to convey the experience and,
above all, an attitude toward that experience.
Consequently, "identification" is not an end in
itself, but a stratagem by means of which the
author stimulates attitudes in the reader.
T his "stim ulation o f attitudes" parallels O ates’s concept of
"the em otional response" in that both provide the basis on
which moral choices can be made or evaluated. But for Oates,
the goal is not a self-righteous judgment of others, or even
o f oneself, but an "attitude" of sympathetic com passion that
is both fostered by and accompanied by an understanding which
m ight possibly allow individuals as well as society to avoid
repeating the errors of the past.
In a discussion of the Detroit riots of 1967, a time when
Oates lived in that city and an event that figures prominently
244
in her novel them, she remarks that "The instinct to de
stroy is inadequately understood by those of us who work to
create, and who are governed by a sense, itself instinctive,
of the need to preserve the past, which is always embodied in
a healthy society." This destructive urge is only one example
of the "unfamiliar" that Oates contends is unapproachable and
baffling in life, but which can be acted upon if it becomes
understood through art:
w e do not know , we do not understand un
less we experience. And it is only through art,
an art seriously committed to the portrayal of a
dense, com plex, stubborn, and irreducible real
ity, one in which human beings are presented
honestly, without sentimentality and without cyn
icism, that we can hope to approximate the exper
ien ce o f a n oth er’s life. Tragedy, it is said,
breaks down the barriers between human beings:
but it should be argued that all serious works
of art break down these barriers, affirming our
kinship with one another.^
T he attitu d e, then, that O ates hopes to stim ulate in her
readers is one of community, of "kinship," an attitude that
would not be fostered by the use of identification to assume
rather than to know another’s conditions and thereby fail to
understand his actions, but through a use of identification to
p r o v o k e an e m o tio n a l r e sp o n se th at su g g ests th at e v en
245
seem in g ly "individual" p ro b lem s, such as th e im p u lse to
destroy in the rapist or the murderer, are communal problems,
which need to be addressed by a community as committed to
solving them as to punishing them.
This is not a naive, sim plistic stance on O ates’s part.
She fully acknow ledges that there is a difference betw een
those who attempt to create and those who want to destroy:
"We look upon the murderer, or the rapist, or the vandal, and
we try to project our own selves into him; and we invariably
fail. T here are others, and w e are not am ong th em ." ^
It is precisely the im penetrable "otherness" of such people
that necessitates an understanding accom plished through art,
for Oates also asserts, "we all share emotions" and contends
that it is only through the emotional response to art that one
can approximate the experiences-and thereby understand those
exp erien ces--th at would m anifest them selves in the destruc
tive, violent im pulses so common in American society. In
order to be productive, however, this emotional response can
not simply be revulsion or contempt; it must be a type of sym
p a th e tic id e n tific a tio n th at c rea tes a com p ellin g n eed in
the reader to act toward a solution as a single member of a
community with an inescapably communal fate.
In this way, it is clear that despite O ates’s claim to
disbelieve the old rigorous absolutes of good and evil, she
246
does not adopt an amoral stance toward her art or the world.
Rather, she recognizes the need to suspend judgment during the
act of inquiry in order to allow sympathetic identification to
occur--even with characters as frightening or unappealing as
Arnold Friend, the "lover" of "Where Are You Going, Where Have
You Been?" or Bobbie Gotteson, the psychotic ax-murderer in
Triumph o f the Spider Monkey. According to Taylor,
There is such a thing as moral objectivity, of
course. Growth in moral insight often requires
that we neutralize some of our reactions. But
this is in order that the others may be identi
fied, unmixed and unscreened by petty jealousy,
egoism, or other unworthy feelings. It is never
a qu estion o f prescinding from our reactions
altogether.
Clearly, there is a subjective elem ent in Taylor’s "moral ob
jectivity," but it is only through such a suspension of judg
ment, which must be followed by a delayed judgment based on
reflection, that writers and readers can achieve an authentic
exchange with the characters. Such an exchange affords the
opportunity to discover o n e ’s own b iases, p reju dices, and
delusions, which may parallel those of the characters or be
revealed an tith etically in their response to the characters’
delusions. A fter all, O ates has not invented the delusions
247
she portrays in her stories; she has only transcribed them in
an extreme form in these characters.
By suspending judgment and then evaluating one’s response
to the experience of the exchange, the possibility for insight
is accomplished. Even so, Bleich’s claim that the authority
o f knowledge derives from the motivation behind its pursuit
requires, as Jung notes, a scrupulous honesty: "In eliciting
the meaning [the interpreter] will involuntarily be guided by
certain presuppositions, and it depends very much on the scru
pulousness and honesty of the investigator whether he gains
something by his interpretation or perhaps only becomes more
deeply entangled in his m i s t a k e s . T h e suspension of judg
ment, then, is not an amoral stance but a receptive one, a
perspective or orientation from which the inquirer attempts to
expand his opportunities for self understanding in order to
"alter his perception o f the world" by examining the motives
that support his personal framework or world view. In this
way, empathy and sympathy actually serve two functions: they
can provide the basis on which one’s own moral choices can be
made or by which the moral choices of others can be evaluated.
In order to better understand this perspective, it is nec
essary to distinguish between "sympathy" and "empathy" as well
as to recognize that each of these can be used for good or
ill. B oth words are from the G reek, in which sympathy
248
originally m eant "feeling with" and em pathy m eant "feeling
into." The O xford English D iction ary d efin es em pathy as
"the power of projecting one’s personality into (and so fully
comprehending the object of contemplation)." Sympathy, on the
other hand, is defined as "a real or supposed affinity between
certain things by virtue of which they are similarly or corre
spondingly affected by the same influence."
This definition o f sympathy suggests that "feeling with"
is predicated upon a recognized or perceived similarity b e
tween the sympathetic parties while the definition of empathy
suggests an ability to penetrate and comprehend "otherness."
It is precisely this ability to understand the other— through
projection that is an inquiry rather than an im position of
se lf— that opens the possibility for an authentic recognition
o f similarity. Such a positively m otivated exchange would
result in connectedness and reconciliation. As Ricouer has
said, "It is always through some transfer from Same to Other,
in empathy and imagination, that the Other that is foreign to
m e is brought closer."^
Despite this model for a productive exchange, which Oates
no doubt assumes for herself and her readers, her characters
often, even if only initially, operate from deluded perspec
tiv es th at resu lt in "false in terp retation s" o f th e w orld.
A lthough som etim es difficult, the reader can infer from the
249
details of the story whether or not the character has engaged
in an empathic inquiry in order to understand another for com
passionate or manipulative purposes. Saul Bird in the story
"Pilgrims’ Progress" and Annette in "First Views of the Enemy"
are both characters who use their highly developed empathic
skills to first understand and then manipulate others rather
than to achieve a compassionate, sympathetic connection with
them.
In the sam e way, O ates often illustrates a character’s
attem pt to establish his own identity through the process of
sym pathetic identification, not as a m eans o f enlarging his
own framework or perspective, but as an attempt to dominate
and control. Rather than truly attempting to understand an
other, such characters often resort to projection as a re
sponse to their overwhelming desires. Some of O ates’s other
characters, often but not always female, are "empty," and they
distort the use of sympathetic identification in their attem pt
to satiate a voracious emotional hunger. This last condition
describes the female narrators in both the stories "Testimony"
and "Heat." While the actions of these characters are often
p erp lexin g and disturbing, their m otives are usually quite
clear.
In order to understand Oates’s stories and her characters,
then, readers must repeatedly question motives, including the
250
positive and abusive possibilities of both sympathy and em
pathy. Only in this way can readers discover the "horizon of
assumptions" em bedded in the text and in them selves. It
seems, for Oates, that sympathy and empathy, which are both
subjective epistemologies or "ways of knowing," can have posi
tive results when used in combination with one another, result
ing in an authentic exchange; however, when used separately,
as required by the negative motives of manipulation or projec
tion, the result is inevitably a delusion that causes a dimin-
ishment rather than an enlargement of self.
But whether the characters’ delusions are subtle or extrav
agant, Oates does not draw these portraits to provide easy tar
gets for self-righteous judgm ents. In fact, that O ates ex
amines the issue of perspective in terms of "choices" not only
reveals her existential orientation but com bines it with the
"humanism" implicit in her art. Although it is difficult to
categorize Oates, she has described herself as an "existential
humanist,"'’ ^ which is consistent with the idea that choos
ing and decision-making are both continuous activities, always
subject to revision based on new information, and so even delu
sions can be viewed as "temporary." This condition clearly ap
plies to readers as well as characters; therefore the reader
needs to recognize, as Giles Gunn suggests, that literature is
251
likely to provide a disruptive experience in its attempt to ex
pand the range of human understanding and potential:
Our resp on se to literatu re, w hile unavoidably
dependent on "our deepest sense of ourselves,"
is not absolutely determined by that sense. In
d eed , it is p recisely that sense which litera
ture seeks to extend, to com plicate, and ulti
m ately to transform by suggesting "that som e
thing else might be the case," which is only to
reiterate that, at bottom , literature seeks not
to confirm but to convert by extending the range
of our imaginative grasp and hence "our know-
ledge and governance of human possibility." ^
Just such an enlargement of sympathies, one that results in en
hanced understanding of oneself, others, and the world, and
the su b seq u en t possibility for reconciliation, is the m otive,
the subject, and the potential effect of Oates’s art. In her
complex, ambiguous inner vision of life in America, she por
trays and provides the "collision" of assumptions that require
an initial suspension of judgment in order to experience an au
thentic exchange between self and other, an exchange that is
necessarily follow ed by reflection if it is to result in "re
creating the self spiritually." This experience, whether ac
complished through literature or in life, provides the oppor
tunity of "constructing a new stage," which W allace Stevens
con ten d s can only be accom plish ed by listening with "the
252
delicatest ear of the Mind . . . Not to the play, but to it
self, expressed / In an emotion as of two people, as of two /
Emotions becoming one."^
This is the experience of empathy: "the realization of
the identity of the finite self with the infinite, a vision of
p aradise that is at the sam e tim e the ’profan e’ world."^^
It is a reconciliation that is accomplished in "The poem of
the mind in the act of finding / What will suffice"— the neces
sarily continuous inquiry that rewrites the self.
253
PART II: NOTES
Luigi Pirandello, "The Cat, A Goldfinch and the Stars,"
The Wrought R esponse, ed. Ray Kytle and Juanita Lyons,
2nd ed. (Encino, CA.: Dickenson Publishing Company, 1976) 94.
^Pirandello 94.
^Pirandello 98.
^Joyce C arol O ates, p reface, "Fiction D ream s R e v e la
tions," Scenes from Am erican Life: Contemporary Short Fict
ion (New York: Random House, 1973) vii.
-’The examples of "Where Are You Going, Where Have You
Been?" and "In the Region of Ice" are being used to illustrate
the typically tripartite structuring of O ates’s fiction though
to read them in only these terms would be unforgivably reduc-
tionistic. Still, O ates contends that it is a human tendency
to order experience into rhythms much like those of " ’novel-
istic’ plots" (see Speculations on the Novel 1974) In an as
signment to her Fiction Workshop 202 course, Oates asked her
students to "read Schwartz’s ’ Rough Strife’ and Spencer’s ’The
Girl Who Loved Horses’ and analyze in terms of broadest struc
ture: beginning, middle, and end." The introductory explana
tion to the assignment stated "Narrative generates and is gen
erated by structure. M ost fictions are constructed along a
trajectory that m ight be analyzed in spatial term s--’begin-
ing,’ ’middle,’ ’end’" (Syracuse University, Archive Notes).
^Joyce Carol O ates, "Speculations on the Novel," NBA
A u th ors Speak Out, 25th Anniversary o f the National Book
Awards (New York: Viking Press, 1974) 3.
7
W. H . A u d e n , "Writing," T w en tieth C entury L itera ry
Criticism, ed. David Lodge (New York: Longman House, 1972)
645.
O
°T h e O h io R e v ie w , " T r a n sfo r m a tio n s o f S elf: A n
Interview with Joyce Carol Oates," Conversations with Joyce
Carol Oates, ed. Lee Milazzo (Jackson: University of Missis
sippi Press, 1989) 47.
254
PART II: NOTES
^Thomas M. Leitch, "The Debunking Rhythm of the American
S h o r t S tory," S h o rt S to ry T h eory a t a C ro ssro a d s, ed .
Lohafer and Clarey (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University
Press, 1989) 140.
10Leitch 139.
^ L io n e l Trilling, The Opposing S elf (N ew York: The
Viking Press, 1959) xiv.
12Leitch 141.
1 ^
Carl Gustav Jung, "Dreams," Night Walks: A Bedside
C o m p a n io n , ed. Joyce C arol O ates (P rinceton: O ntario
Review Press, 1982) 235.
-^Pirandello 94.
l^ Joyce Carol O ates, Contraries (N ew York: Oxford
University Press, 1981) 16.
1 f\
To state that Oates insists on a connection beween ex
tern a l, o b je ctiv e reality and o n e ’s su b jectiv e p e r sp e ctiv e
does not suggest that she is simply or solely a "realist." In
fact, O ates’s art indicates an am azing breadth of interests
ranging from realism to surrealism and she has recently re
ceived awards for two of her stories, "Haunted," and "Family"
in The Year's B est F antasy Series. R ather, th e point is
that she attempts to balance these two perspectives: just as
o n e ’s internal orien tation n eed s a horizon in the outside
w orld— "something larger than the s e lf as O ates calls it— so
too do we need to remember that "realism is a style" as Arthur
Miller has said.
1 7
1 Joyce C arol O ates, lectu re, "A N ight o f R eadings,"
P r e sid e n t’s D istin g u ish ed G u est L ectu re S eries, C alifornia
State University Fullerton, 22 March 1990.
255
PART II: NOTES
l^Oates, "Transformations" 49.
l^Joyce Carol O ates, afterword, The P oisoned K iss and
O ther Stories fro m the Portuguese, (N ew York: Vanguard
Press, 1975) 189.
2^Oates, "Transformations" 49.
^^Wolfgang Iser, "The Reading Process: A Phenom eno
logical A pproach," R ea d er R esponse C riticism , ed. Jane P.
Tom pkins (Baltim ore: The Johns Hopkins University Press,
1980) 65.
22Iser 64.
2 R o b ert L u sch er, "The Short Story Sequence," Short
Story Theory at a Crossroads, ed. Lohafer and Clarey (Baton
Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1989) 166.
2^John D ew ey, A rt A s Experience (N ew York: Minton,
Balch & Company, 1934) 325.
2^Oates, "Fiction Dreams Revelations" vii-viii.
2 **David B le ic h , " E p istem o lo g ica l A ssu m p tio n s in th e
Study o f Response," R eader Response Criticism, ed. Jane P.
Tompkins (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press,
1980) 138.
22Bleich 143.
28Bleich 137.
9 Q
^ O a tes, Contraries 57.
256
PART II: NOTES
3®Oates, Contraries 57.
31Bleich 158.
32Oates, Contraries 59.
3 3 C a r l G u s ta v J u n g , T h e U n d is c o v e r e d Self (N e w
York: Penguin Books, 1957) 117.
34Joyce Carol Oates, "Transformations" 57-8.
33 Jung, The Undiscovered Self 118.
36Bleich 136.
32Jung, The Undiscovered Self 114-15.
3^Oates, "Speculations" 3.
3^Bleich 136.
^ C h a r le s Taylor, Sources o f Self: The M aking o f the
M odem Identity (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1989)
18, 26.
43Oates, "Speculations" 3, 4.
42Bleich 163.
43Dr. L eslie Brothers, "Empathy: Therapeutic and Bio
logical Views," H arvard M edical School M ental H ealth L e t
ter, 6, no.5 (November 1989): 4.
257
PART II: NOTES
44Oates, Contraries vii.
4^Iser 65.
Joyce Carol Oates, (Woman) Writer: Occasions and Op
portunities (New York: Dutton, 1988) 367.
4^Oates, (Woman) Writer 367.
48Taylor 8.
4^Carl Gustav Jung, "Dreams" 228.
^ P a u l R icou er, Tim e an d N a rra tive, vol. 3, p. 184 in
Paul Kerby, N arrative and the S elf (B loom ington and In
dianapolis: Indiana University Press, 1991) 95.
51
J±Dr. Jay Martin, ed. USC Major Authors Survey, Los
Angeles: Special Collections at Doheny Library, University of
Southern California, 1989.
57
JZ,G iles G unn, The In terpretation o f O therness: L ite ra
ture, R eligion, and the A m erican Im agination (N ew York:
Oxford University Press, 1979) 86.
“ ^ W a lla c e S te v en , "Of M odern Poetry," The C ollected
Poems (New York: Vintage Books, 1954) 239-40.
Joyce Carol Oates, New Heaven, New Earth: The Vis
ion ary E xperien ce in L iteratu re (N ew York: V anguard,
1974) 249.
258
CHAPTER FOUR
ART AS EXCHANGE
O a t e s ’s fic tio n n o t only c h r o n icles th e c o llisio n s in
differing "horizons of assumptions" that can occur among fic
tion al characters or even a generalized "self" and "other,"
but it also offers the reader an opportunity to participate in
a similar exchange through the experience of the story. In
order to benefit from this experience, however, the reader
must engage the story on O ates’s terms by empathically attempt
ing to understand the characters rather than imposing quick
judgments and through this "suspension of s e lf accomplish a
sym p athetic identification, even with unappealing characters,
an identification that will expose although it may not resolve
issues of identity, morality, and world view.
Because O ates’s stories focus on assumptions that need to
be challenged, as perhaps all assumptions do, this can be a
d ifficu lt p ersp ective to adopt, esp ecia lly sin ce th e stories
often require a confrontation with "the truth we have always
successfully avoided." In other words, the fiction is asking
its readers to acknowledge truths about themselves that most
259
people would prefer to see only in others. As Jung suggests,
"just as the typical neurotic is ignorant of his shadow side,
so the normal individual, like the neurotic, sees his shadow
-I
in his neighbor or in the man beyond the great divide."^
Resisting this tendency or even experiencing a challenge to it
can be a very "disruptive" experience indeed.
In a review of Joyce Carol Oates’s second short story col
lectio n Upon the Sweeping FloodP“ (1966), D avid M adden
notes that "all Miss O ates’s stories do violence to the reader
somehow" and admits that "she is one of the few writers today
who has the power to disturb my sleep. . . . After reading
Miss Oates, one’s casual moments are not one’s own." B e
cause O ates believes that "it is only through disruption and
confusion that we grow, jarred out of ourselves by the colli
sion of som eone e lse ’s private world with our own,"^ this
collection introduces the reader to such characters as Ann
ette, the m aterialistic m iddle-class housewife in "First Views
of the Enemy," Carl Reeves, the self-absorbed college profes
sor in "Survival o f Childhood," and Walt Stuart, the brutal
self-appointed savior in "Upon the Sw eeping Flood." The
reader indeed "collides" with these people, whose orderly pub
lic worlds thinly and precariously encase private worlds that
are fille d w ith fear, gu ilt, and som etim es brutal se lfish
ness. The exchange between these characters and the reader,
260
however, is not meant "to confirm but to convert" the reader’s
comfortable assumptions as the stories flesh out portraits of
characters w ho, at first, invite easy sym pathetic identifica
tion, but who eventually provide a disturbing view o f these
"surprising variations of oneself."
At times, Oates reverses this pattern by putting the "un
pleasant" on the outside, which she does in her portrait of
Vale and Mae in "What Death With Love Should Have To Do." In
this story, Vale is a young man who casually walks away from
his young wife and month old son to be with Mae, a sixteen
year old girl whose life has been a continual onslaught of
abuse. M ae eventually dies after falling off the back of
V ale’s speeding motorcycle where she clings to Vale until her
strength gives out: she is bleeding from another self-imposed
abortion. This story opens with the statement, "At last she
said, ’I’m bleed in g,’ and in fear tightened her hold around
him. . . . H e would hear nothing" (209). Whether Vale cannot
hear because of the rushing wind (external causes), or will
not hear because of the ecstasy of speed (internal causes),
are issues as basic as nature and nurture, determinism and
free w ill, in n ocen ce and guilt, issu es that raise questions
Oates does not try to answer even though she provokes them.
Instead, this story focuses on the motives of M ae’s choices as
w e ll as V a l e ’s in a b ilit y to a c c e p t r e s p o n s ib ilit y fo r
261
M ae’s death, whether he caused it intentionally or not. The
"facts" of O ates’s story are that V ale does n ot hear, and
M ae dies because she is clinging to som eone who not only
cannot or will not save her, but who, in fact, hastens her
death.
In these two characters, Oates shows her readers a social
world probably far different from their own, a world filled
with extrem e poverty, lack of education, and guiltless disre
gard for such social institutions as marriage and fatherhood.
But it is not at this level of difference that Oates asks her
readers to empathize, for this would be a type of condescen
sion that results in a sympathy similar to pity, which would
smugly comfort rather than disturb her audience. Certainly,
such differences must be pierced before any further progress
in understanding can be made, but the purpose of the story is
to illustrate an essential similarity: the hum an difficulty in
escaping delusion and desire. To this end, Oates creates por
traits of individuals who suffer from delusions that are uni
versally human, but her focus is on the particular support and
reinforcem ent that these delusions find in Am erican culture
itself. In this way, her work repeatedly links the individual
to the larger communities of social and moral reality.
Just as Oates invites her readers to participate in an em
pathic exchange of understanding with her characters, so too
262
does she frequently narrate such exchanges in her stories. In
fact, a good example of a positive empathic exchange between
fictional characters takes place in O ates’s story "The Fine
White Mist of Winter" in By the North Gate. In this work,
Rafe Murray, a sheriffs deputy, opens the story by declaring
he has "entered . . . his second period— his new period . . .
he had had his eyes opened only on that day; he meant to keep
it fresh in his mind" (198-99). The day that Murray is refer
ring to is the day he captured a black prisoner named Bethl’em
Aire, who— at the hands of another black man— suffers a feel
ing of shame so profound and scalding that it penetrates Mur
ray and causes him to see the injustice of cruelties imposed,
legally or not, by one man onto another. And so Murray has
his "revelation;" he is p rofou n d ly altered , d eterm in ed to
"keep it fresh in his mind."
And yet that first paragraph which heralds Murray’s "great
experience" also tells the reader that "when the long winter
finally ended . . . the Negro Bethl’em and his memory had both
disappeared from Eden County, and— to everyone’s relief, espec
ially his w ife’s— from Murray’s mind, too" (199). The last
sentence of the story reinforces this idea: "Murray thought
that some time before very long, surely in a minute or two, he
would continue on his way" (216). And so he does. Despite
the enormity of the experience, Murray eventually fades back
263
into his insulated, absolutist perspective where laws are sim
ply fair and necessary when comfortably considered outside the
realm of specific human experience. In other words, he re
turns to living in what Sartre calls "bad faith," a perspec
tive from which he can avoid acknowledging the responsibility
o f m aking choices for himself. D espite the authenticity of
Murray’s empathic exchange with Bethl’em Aire, an exchange
that led to a com passionate, sym pathetic identification with
another human being, he allows the inauthentic to regain con
trol of his world view in the absence of any further con
firming experiences. To Oates, this does not make Murray ex
cep tion ally w eak or evil; in stead, it m akes him p erfectly
human.
O ates’s story "First Views of the Enemy," which appears in
her c o lle c tio n Upon the Sw eeping F lood, narrates a co n
trasting empathic exchange, an exchange that provokes hostil
ity and delusion rather than compassion and insight. This
story also illustrates the connections betw een personal choice
and social in flu en ce as they com bine in the character of
Annette, and later, in her six year old son, Timmy. In this
story, Annette and Timmy are driving home from the grocery
store when they come around a curve in the road and see a sur
prising riot of colored "shirts and overalls and dresses" worn
by Mexican migrant workers who are standing on the side of the
264
road, stranded, because their bus has broken down. Annette is
so disturbed after this h a lf seriou s, half com ic encounter
with the Mexicans, in which she has to push past their hungry
faces in her car loaded down with groceries, that she rushes
home to barricade herself and Timmy against what seems to her
to be the threat of an imminent attack. The Mexicans never
show up. The "exchange" that takes place in this story is
only incidentally betw een A nnette and the Mexicans, although
that, too, raises som e profound moral and sociological ques
tions.
More profound, however, is the empathic exchange between
Annette and her young son, Timmy. At first, the boy is intui
tively, in stin ctively angry with his m other for her attitude
toward the Mexicans, especially the little Mexican boy who had
thrown pebbles and a dirt clod at their car. Timmy, whom the
writer has been careful to describe as possessing both an amaz
ing intelligence and the shrewdness of wood animals, suspects
that th e M exican boy’s hostility is justified. O nce hom e,
Timmy runs into the house without helping to carry in the gro
ceries (something he knows is expected of him) "as if he cher
ished the memory of that strange little boy and ran out to
keep it from her" (97). Annette feels "betrayed;" she wonders
if she’ll be able to trust him or whether he will side with
the Mexicans when they come to despoil "her possessions [that]
265
stretched out about her, defining her, identifying her" (98).
While Annette wonders about this "as if the question had been
voiced," Timmy, in a "daring" tone, accuses his mother: " ’You
alm ost killed him [with the car].’" A n n ette reacts angrily
and Timmy backs down: "He hit the car. Two times,’ he
said. This was spoken differently. The ugly spell was over."
A fte r th is, "they w orked easily, in silence" fortifying the
house against the Mexicans (97).
The story ends with Timmy and Annette sitting at the din
ing room table, which the mother has covered with apples,
fresh strawberries, and strawberry tarts:
T hen som ething clicked in his eyes . . . he
smiled at her, relieved, pleased. As if a secret
ripened to bursting betw een them , swollen with
passion, they smiled at each other. Timmy said,
b e f o r e b itin g in to h is ta r t, "He c a n ’t h it
th e car again , it’s all lock ed up." A n n ette
said, gesturing at him with sticky fingers, "Here
darling. Eat this. Eat. Eat." (102)
In this exchange, in which "emotions flow from one personality
to another, altering som eone’s conception of the world," Ann
ette has intimidated and then seduced Timmy into accepting her
frightened, adversarial, materialistic world view.
This story, then, dem onstrates the "way cultural values
are translated into family values which are then translated
266
in to in d ivid u al fam ily m em b er’s internal fam ily structures
w h ich r ein fo r ce extern al fam ily and cultural v a l u e s . B y
"internal fam ily structures" Richard Schwartz, in his article
en titled "Our M ultip le Selves" (1 9 8 7 ), is referring to the
m ultiplicity o f v o ices that are usually con stru ed as "con
science" in a single individual. His description of the way
values are transmitted and adopted suggests a necessary ex
change betw een internal and external realities, an exchange
that results in a p erson al fram ework that then reinforces
those values in its interactions with others and the world.
The difference betw een Timmy and Murray, however, is that
Timmy’s experience will no doubt be supported and reinforced
w hereas Murray’s, unfortunately, was disruptive or disturbing
to th ose around him . F or this reason, it is likely that
T im m y’s perspective will becom e a perm anent part of his
framework while Murray was only able to maintain his insights
for a short time.
Like so many other psychologists, philosophers, and liter
ary theorists who discuss this system o f "inherited values,"
Schwartz assumes this process is "all to the good." As this
story clearly dem onstrates, how ever, this is not necessarily
--and perhaps even not usually— the case. In this way, Oates
is encouraging her readers to question an assumption even more
fundamental than the common American assumption of a right to
267
private property or the right to protect that property if it
is threatened. Just as in Pirandello’s story about the cat
and the goldfinch, which is not about the old couple so much
as the issue of perspective (in both the characters and the
reader), so too does Oates use Timmy and Annette as examples
to illustrate the process of "inherited delusions."
In order to recognize this point, Oates’s readers must be
willing to suspend judgment and risk the rightness of their
convictions by participating in the exchange of the story on
two levels: experience (an exchange with the characters) and
reflection (an exchange with oneself). At least two critics,
David Madden and Susan Lohafer, missed an opportunity to do
this with O ates’s story "First Views o f the Enemy." While
Madden wrote about this story in 1967, Lohafer’s analysis was
published in 1983. The similarities in their confusion, how
ever, suggest that despite the great improvement in criticism
on her novels during those years, O ates’s short stories still
have not received the critical attention they deserve.
David Madden, despite some insightful comments, concludes
that O ates speaks from a position of "stark authorial author
ity," and while he believes the "heat" of her creative energy
has a powerful effect on the reader, he did not, apparently,
empathically experience this effect. H e contends that Oates
"renders the involvement of her characters in their miserable
268
predicaments, yet her cold objectivity expends no warmth on
the characters."^ On the contrary, Oates engages her char
acters at a level of empathic sympathy so profound that she
has said, "I think if I were in their position I would behave
n
the way they do. Perhaps what Madden has interpreted as
"cold objectivity" is a m ore accurate description of O ates’s
"unswerving gaze," which Virginia W oolf considers an essential
approach to art and which is also evident in Hawthorne’s New
England, on M elville’s oceans, and at Dickinson’s gravesites.
Oates has admitted that
My personal experience— both as a reader and a
teach er o f literature is that the difficult and
tr o u b lin g w ork s o f art, K in g L e a r, for in
sta n c e , are far m ore b e n e fic ia l than happy
works. One learns so much from Thomas Mann,
D o sto e v sk i, K afka, M elville, and oth er great
writers precisely because they refused to soften
their view of humanity. Y et, even including
Q
Kafka, they are by no means negative.
B ecau se her objective is learning, there is no incentive to
"soften" her views. Instead, Madden needs to employ empathy
to really see these characters, whom he has failed to get to
know.
In his review, M adden summarizes the story as follows:
"’First V iew s of the E nem y’ is the story of a superficially
se cu re , u n d em onstrative young w om an ’s realization o f the
269
savage in her domesticated little boy, provoked by a chance en
counter with some boisterous Mexicans who block the progress
o f her C ad i ll a c .G ra n te d , this summary is highly con
d en sed and th erefore easily m isunderstood, but the reader
knows at least, as a "fact" of the story, ‘that Annette is not
driving a Cadillac. She is driving a station wagon that the
M exicans m istake for a C adillac— a trivial but ironic detail
that Oates uses to suggest, perhaps, that the Mexican’s percep
tion of A nnette’s luxury is as distorted as her perception of
their threat. Or it might just be emblematic of the differ
ences between the "haves" and the "have-nots."
A more important issue, however, is present in M adden’s
conclusion about the relationship between the mother and son.
Unless he means "realization" in the sense of "accomplishment"
rather than "discovery," he has missed the point that Annette
did not just discover that Timmy is "savage;" she encour
ages him to be this way. Madden’s reading, if taken to an
extrem e, suggests that Annette could be a kind of "innocent"
who discovers that her son, Timmy, is The Bad Seed. Such a
reading overlooks the exchange that has taken place between
these characters, an oversight that suggests that Madden has
missed the experience of the story.
Rather than empathically understanding the characters and
then reaching conclusions by reflecting on that experience,
270
Madden has set out to judge the characters first and then at
tem pts to understand their actions based on those judgments.
In so doing, the issue of embracing or accepting delusions has
escaped him. For Oates, this is the moral issue behind the
story: just as sym pathetic identification has occurred b e
tween the characters, it must also occur between the charac
ters and the reader if the story is going to work well enough
to "communicate to you exactly what you’d feel like if you,
like Raskolnikov [or Timmy or Annette], had made a mistake."
If the reader, however, enters the story with fixed judgments
and is unable to subordinate the self in order to understand
another person ’s perspective, then there is little chance of
being engaged in the experience of the story or being instruc
ted by that experience.
For Oates, empathy as honest inquiry and sympathy as iden
tification that results in experiential learning are her means
o f understanding the world, but they are also the source of
her ability to recreate that world for her readers. According
to Brian Cleeve, a fiction writer himself, an understanding of
this p ersp ectiv e is necessary to create characters that are
more than "just cardboard cut-outs":
N ow it seem s to m e that this "springing alive"
[o f a character] is a kind o f sm all m iracle
w hich h a sn ’t a lot to do with other literary
v irtu es--c lea n style, an ability to invent and
271
manage complex plot designs. It doesn’t really
depend even on imagination except in a special
sense. What it does depend on to my mind is sym
pathy. Or rather— empathy— that special kind of
imagination which lets you put yourself in som e
one else’s shoes. . . . Real empathy requires
subordination o f self, a making blank of your
own mind to let another personality take over
for the time being. ^
Cleeve goes on to explain that actors often use this technique
to "live" a character, and in the same way "a writer who wants
to m ake a character live m ust a ct that character in his
mind." In order to accomplish this, Cleeve contends the wri
ter "must make his mind blank, he must receive the character
into the vacuum, he must be the character, he must listen
1 1
to it, and not tell it what to do or be.
C leeve’s explanation o f this perspective reveals that, for
the artist, empathy is not simply a matter of projecting his
personality into the character. Only the "blank" observing I
is allowed to intrude by stepping into another’s shoes as an
observer, a recorder of what the world looks and feel like
from som eone else’s perspective. For the writer, then, em
pathy is a kind o f receptivity, and it is inextricably con
nected to sympathy as the need "to feel with," a condition
272
made necessary for the artist by having to stand in someone
else’s shoes.
U n fortu n ately, the com p leteness o f this interpenetration
is not a necessity (though it is desirable) for the critic and
the reader in th e sam e way it is required o f the artist.
As with M adden, the significance of this "connected" perspec
tive eludes Susan Lohafer in her analysis of "First Views of
the Enemy" in her book Com ing to Terms with the Short
Story (1983). Like many of O ates’s critics, Lohafer is un
able to enter into an empathic exchange with the characters
and so is baffled rather than enlightened by the story. Since
this is a typical rather than an exceptional experience for
O ates’s readers, I will use Lohafer’s analysis as a foil to ex
hibit the kind of critical perspective that O ates’s stories de
mand but have seldom received. In her analysis, it is fairly
clear that L oh afer d islikes A n n ette; that is, she was un
able to suspend judgment. In fact, Lohafer’s confusion bet
w een her perception of the characters and her judgment of
their "moral character" interferes with her ability to under
stand the implications of the story or the assumptions it at
tempts to challenge.
Ironically, however, Lohafer knows the very thing she re
fuses to do:
273
It seems to me that the language o f this story
is qu ite deliberately loaded, that it is m eant
to engage our attention with an immediacy and
c o m p le te n e ss that exclu d es all q u estio n s, all
wandering thought, even— I would argue— all aes
thetic appreciation o f its own devices. It is
meant to engross us in the act of suspending
1 ?
judgment.
Y et L ohafer sees "the central weakness" of this "undeniably
pow erful story" to be the "fact" that "Annette is a cut-out
d o ll, to w hom O a te s has a ffix ed ju st th o se q u a lities— in
sk etch iest d e ta il— n eed ed to give m inim al cred en ce to her
p r o te c tiv e m a ssa c r e o f r o s e s , her d e s p e r a te straw b erry
bribe." ^ Lohafer cannot see A nnette as real; instead, she
contends "Annette is patently a ’type’— the overwrought wife
and m other with all the middle-class accoutrements. She is,
a fter all, n o t ju st a thin , but a ’thin , fash ion ab ly thin
young woman.’" From this perspective, Lohafer has no sympathy
for Annette: "The paranoia has substance only if we see Ann
ette as an extreme case of the type. Yet the fiction expects
us to take her to heart (mind? soul?) as a gaudily particular
case of bad nerves."^
The critic who sees a character as a "cut-out doll" and a
"type" could scarcely accep t the character as a character,
much less "take her to heart." Just as Cleeve explained that
274
a writer must use empathy to create a character who is more
than a "cardboard cut-out," so too must a reader use empathy
to accept a character as being "alive." O ates reminds us,
"The individual, to the individual, is never a type."^ But
Lohafer has distanced herself from Annette in her dismissive
judgments, which are evident in Lohafer’s own "loaded" descrip
tion of Annette, whom she sees as "an American woman, a subur
ban housewife replete with a Vogue m odel’s figure, a cliche of
a station wagon, a mandatory child, a middle-class husband
(obscurely at work in the city), and bags and bags of opulent
g r o c e r ie s. T he sarcasm o f th is d escrip tion d oes not
absolve us from admitting that that which is cliched is also
typical and representative, but it does show us that Lohafer
is not standing in Annette’s shoes.
Contrary to L ohafer’s contention, O ates does not paint
A nnette in only the sketchiest detail, but rather fully enters
the ch aracter’s m ind to tell the reader her m ost private
th ou ghts. In fact, O ates gives the read er kn ow ledge o f
secrets that Annette herself could not share with anyone:
[A n n ette] rem em b ered the early days o f her
motherhood, how contemptuous she had been of
herself, o f what she had accom plished— a baby
she refused to look at, a husband neurotic with
worry, a waiting life of motherhood so oppres
sive that she felt nausea contem plating it: is
275
this what I have become? What is this baby to
me? Where am I? Where am /? (94).
A n nette regrets the loss of her "former life," before marri
age, which was filled with "familiar possessions and patterns"
(95). It is precisely A nnette’s inability to locate or under
sta n d h er s e l f - - to e s ta b lis h an a u th e n tic id e n tity --th a t
prevents her from connecting with people, and her inability to
connect with people explains her connections to things, which
are after all, more stationary, more predictable than people.
In the story, after closing and locking the garage door,
A nnette looks at her house, her rosebushes, her finely mani
cured lawn only to realize how "all these in their elaborately
planned splendor shouted mockery at her, mockery at them
selves, as if they were safe from destruction!" (95). This
experience certainly requires a m odification of B leich’s asser
tion that "all knowledge is deliberately sought." W hile this
may be generally true of writers and readers who are con
scio u sly e n g a g ed in a self-reflectiv e activity, it d o es not
seem to apply to the very believable portrait of "ordinary
life" that O ates has drawn in this story. Indeed, Annette’s
"revelation" is closer to what Jung has described as the "ob
jective" k n ow led ge that th e unconscious often forces upon
people, even against their most frantic conscious wishes.
276
This knowledge has in fact come to Annette despite her
even tu al su ccess in resistin g it: "Annette fought o ff the
inertia again, it passed close by her, a whiff of som ething
like death; the same darkness that had bothered her in the
h osp ital, d elivered o f her child" (9 5 ). T he "death" that
Annette senses, that so disturbs her, is nothing less than the
possible annihilation (which she resists) of her desire to re
main emotionally disconnected from people, to prevent change,
to ward off even death itself. It is the threatened annihil
ation of her Selfhood as Blake would call it, but contemporary
readers will understand it as her desire to com pletely and
thoroughly control her world, which she has long ago despaired
o f doing so far as people are concerned, but has only just
begun to realize is also impossible with things. If Annette
had been able to acquiesce to this "death" (not an easy task)
rather th an — un fortu n ately— having the strength to resist it,
then she might have enjoyed at least a partial or temporary
release from her fears.
From this perspective, the reader com es to realize that
the M exicans, even if only indirectly, have not just threat
ened A n n ette’s possessions, but her entire world view, and
this is p recisely what gives her "paranoia" the "substance"
that Lohafer could not accept. In fact, by fearing that the
M exican s w ill ap p ea r and g reed ily , hu ngrily d e sp o il her
possessions, she is projecting her own materialism and needi
ness onto them because she does not recognize it in herself.
She has not successfully negotiated the process of "unknowing"
her delusion, as Leitch describes it, and so she remains ig
norant of the true source of her fear. According to Jung,
this is a dangerous thing to do. H e asserts that naivete and
ignorance of one’s own "shadow side"
lead to projection of the unrecognized evil into
th e "other." This strengthens the op p on en t’s
position in the most effective way, because the
projection carries the fear which we involuntar
ily and secretly feel for our own evil over to
th e other side and considerably increases the
17
formidableness of the threat. '
This is precisely what Annette has done, and it explains the
extremity o f her reaction to a rather minor incident--the en
counter with the Mexicans on the road. By failing to under
stand h erself, A n n ette m isunderstands others and, as Jung
warns this "lack of insight" has deprived her "of the capacity
to deal with evil." B ecause Annette lacks insight, she will
continue to marshal her efforts against the M exicans, which
means she is dealing with nothing at all. Unfortunately, not
only Annette but also Lohafer is in this position since she is
baffled and cannot explain the perspective of the story.
278
In her discussion o f O ates’s use of language, Lohafer
asks, "Are we to believe that we are seeing through the eyes
of a mind that temperamentally and categorically distorts ex
perience— or are we to believe the author is simply heighten
ing the crisis effect of the m om ent?"^ Why not both? In
fact, if "yes" is the answer to the first part of that ques
tion, then the second part necessarily follows. These two
points are not in opposition. If the reader is seeing through
A n n ette’s eyes and living her distortions, then her crisis is
the read er’s crisis, and it’s a m onum ental artistic ach ieve
ment that the language Oates uses creates the same experience
in the reader that the character is experiencing. These exper
iences could be distanced through a different narrative tech
nique, but this would encourage the reader to comfortably
judge A n nette as being, as Lohafer contends, "excruciatingly
particular,"^ a specimen far different from ourselves.
It is ironic that Lohafer refers to Annette as a "cut-out
doll" and then attempts to keep her alone at the center of the
story, nearly missing Timmy entirely by seeing him too as a
type: "the mandatory child." Like Madden, she also missed
the exchange between the characters as well as the opportunity
for an exchange between the characters and herself. For this
reason, what Lohafer perceives as a "resistance to closure"
is, in actuality, her own inability to see and understand why
279
this story ends when and how it does, for she offers her read
ers a dazzling display of unconvincing options. She suggests
the story ends when it does because an "equilibrium" has been
reached in Annette between action and reaction, but she has al
ready stated that A nnette over-reacted, and just a few sen
tences later she tells us that the final view of Annette de
picts a "closing in o f n e u r o s i s , " ^ which may be true, but
w h ich is d ifficu lt to r e c o n c ile w ith th e id ea o f "equili
brium."
L ohafer also suggests that A n n ette’s obsessive-com pulsive
behavior has run its course, or that the story must end before
the father gets home. Because none of these options seems
quite convincing, L ohafer further speculates that A nnette is
m eant to be judged against some "sense of normative behav
ior. "21 A s L ohafer surely knows, this is a practice that
Oates herself has repudiated. In an interview with Leif Sjo-
berg, O ates states that she agrees with accusations against
the psychiatric profession that it employs "narrow and out
moded standards of normality and sanity" to "measure" people.
She further states that "It has always seem ed to me . . . that
in s a n e b e h a v io r o f m any k in d s w as th e n orm in our
s o c ie ty . W ith so m e se n se , th en , th at O a tes is n ot
judging A nnette normatively, Lohafer continues to search for
an explanation of the ending, and at last she writes that
280
Oates is concerned with " ’the mystery of human emotions’" and
therefore "no full explanation is possible."
O f course "no full explanation is possible," but Lohafer
herself has resorted to cliche here. Because O ates’s story is
rich with "complexity and ambiguity," it provokes far more
questions than it answers. For example, who is the enemy in
this story? The Mexicans, as a real, physical threat? as
representatives of "otherness"? The son, Timmy, who initially
threatens his mother with an innocent, sympathetic perspective
that fear causes her to resist? The mother, who is an enemy
to her son by inculcating a m aterialistic, adversarial world
view or because she encourages the delusion of "security" that
such values necessitate? In an essay entitled "Building Ten
sion in the Short Story," Oates herself concludes "We see that
the true ’enem y’ is the wom an’s hysterical selfishness, which
she is forcing upon her child a lso ." ^ O ates, unlike Lo
hafer and Madden, did not miss the issue of the exchange.
Precisely because Lohafer quickly judges Annette and re
fuses to see her sym pathetically as "one of us," this critic
misses the fact that the story ends quite simply and logically
just where we would expect: in the last paragraph when Timmy
enters into an empathic exchange with his mother and fully un
derstands and accepts his mother’s perspective. This is also
th e p o in t at w hich Tim m y sym p athetically id en tifies w ith
281
Annette and the reader can expect that he has incorporated her
m aterialistic values into his personal framework so that, in
the future, he will be "correspondingly affected by the same
influence." Furtherm ore, it is only at this point that the
read er understands the p rocess o f in h erited delusion that
perpetuates such a world view.
The story, in fact, follows a rather traditional structure
o f beginning, middle, end: Timmy at first resists A nnette’s
point of view, then he temporizes to regain her approval, and
finally, he accepts her world view as his own. This is far
sim p ler than L o h a fer’s p lot analysis, but it is co n sisten t
with O ates’s view of structure. Concerning this issue, Oates
has stated
I believe that most human experiences (including
the total experience of one’s life) tend to ar
range them selves in rhythmic structures rather
lik e n o v e lis t ic " p lo ts" --b e g in n in g s, m id d le s,
e n d s— and that [the writer], if he is sensitive
to th ese rhythm s, can sim ply transcribe them
and, by em phasis and sim plification, transform
the so-called "chaos" o f life into the relative
order of art. The plot of the traditional play
and novel is not dead— it is all around us, in
life. ^
In a similar discussion o f narrative structure, Anthony Kerby
a s s e r t s t h a t u n d e r s t a n d in g o n e ’s l i f e r e q u ir e s " s e lf
282
narration." T his p rocess, he b eliev es, rep lica tes sto ry tel
ling in that "such narrating generally seek s closure," which
he associates with the totality of a personal history or life,
"by framing the story within a beginning, middle, end struc
ture. Closure of this sort . . . is not only a literary de
vice but it is a fundamental way (perhaps the fundamental
way) in which human events are understood."6^ Structurally,
then, there is no mystery about the closure of O ates’s story,
w h ich d o e s in d ee d p rovok e q u estion s abou t m ysteries as
profound and universal as how to negotiate one’s way in the
world.
According to David Bleich, " ’ it is . . . futile to attempt
to account for response merely by isolating certain linguistic
configurations,’" which Lohafer has done by attempting to ana
lyze all short stories according to a model that uses the or
dinary syntax o f a sentence as its basic paradigm. Bleich
further asserts that "even if every detail is accounted for
formally, it will not explain how or why [the writer] made
these sentences. Logical explanations have been most convinc
ing in coping with mechanical phenomena and least convincing
w ith p s y c h o lo g ic a l e v e n ts . P e r h a p s , th e n , O a t e s ’s
"closely packed bundle of concrete images" do not "offer un-
7 7
u su a l r e sista n c e to c lo su r e, ' as L o h a fer su g g e sts, but
serve as a key element in her use of "an extreme form of
283
realism ," w hich G ranville H icks ironically defines as "deal
i n g ] w ith so m e th in g th e rea d er w ou ld rath er n o t hear
about."^ Because she is unable or unwilling to suspend her
r e sista n c e to em p ath y, L oh afer in correctly con clu d es that
O ates is "normalizing the a b n o r m a l " ^ in her portrait of A n
nette. In fact, the story does just the opposite: What could
be more "normal," more American, than the idea that we have
possessions and that we must protect them? What could be more
human than the delusion that we can resist change, mortality
its e lf, by ca refu lly ord erin g our liv es? by lo ck in g our
doors? These are only some of the very "normal" assumptions
that Oates challenges in her story.
And so, this person whom Lohafer sees only as a type, and
with whom she cannot empathize, can also be seen as someone
w ho is fully real, a "typical" representative o f many of us,
even when she is perceived to be "temporarily deluded" in her
fu tile — though perversely hu m orou s— attem p ts to fortify her
self against intrusion by closing a gate that has no lock, by
draw ing even firep ro o f curtains over a fragile p late-glass
window, and by closing and locking windows while forgetting to
lock some doors. The futility is an inevitable outcome of the
perspective that we can, somehow, protect ourselves from life,
or death, whichever we choose to fear most. An empathic read
ing that is supported by sympathetic compassion allows us to
284
see A nnette’s predicament as ironic, and we can laugh at it
only because we all participate in it to some degree.
Perhaps one of the reasons that makes this a difficult per
spective to adopt is the typically American, if not universal,
desire to identify only with "the good." In "First Views of
the Enemy," A nnette is not a very "good" person, especially
not in her manipulation of Timmy, but to fail to identify with
her is to fail to learn the "process of unknowing" her delu
sions, a process she did not successfully complete, but which
the reader still can accomplish. In the same way, the other
stories in this collection require that the reader understand
and identify with characters that m ost people would just as
soon not know, much less recognize as being similar to them
selves. But an empathic reading allows one to recognize that
the delusions of these characters are not so unusual after
all.
In "Stigmata," for exam ple, d esp ite the bizarre circum
stances of the family gathering at a rest home to witness the
"miracle" o f their fa th er’s holy affliction , the story really
turns on the exchange between the father and the son, Walt.
Just as Walt is on the verge of being touched (or "doomed" as
he calls it) by this miracle, his father whispers to him, "I
hurt," and W alt rea lizes h e ’s b e e n right all along: his
father is not an exceptionally holy man, but a self-absorbed
285
person who "never recognized the world," (23) not, as the
others assum e, out of holiness, but from selfishness. This
realization confirms W alt’s fear, which is shared but denied
by his brothers and sisters, that the father never loved his
children, and so Walt concludes that the stigmata is a punish
ment and the father "was being educated now in the pain of
being human" (33).
When the bleeding does not stop, and the old man commits
suicide, the others want to dismiss his actions as irrational,
but Walt contends, "My father was responsible for what he did"
(35). To Walt, the father was responsible for choosing the
"escape" o f religion over the pain and difficulty of connec
tions with others, including his children, in the same way he
was responsible for choosing to escape from life through sui
cide rather than enduring the pain of being human. In this
story, then, Walt had to reach a point where he fully under
stood and identified with his father, the point at which he
wanted to adopt that man’s model of faith, before he could
r e a liz e th at r elig io n is n ot alw ays p ositive, esp ecia lly if
one uses it as an "escape" that excludes humanity. This is a
theme that Oates treats more than once in her fiction, but the
conclusion that the connections between people are more impor
tant, even if more difficult, than a connection to a distant,
abstract God is only confirmed through the experience of the
286
story. By em p athically understanding and sym p athetically
identifying with such characters as Walt or Sister Irene, the
reader understands how Walt has come to "unknow" his delusion
while Sister Irene has embraced hers.
In the title story to this collection, "Upon the Sweeping
Flood," Oates takes her main character, Walter Stuart, through
a series of delusions and insights that end in abominable cru
elty when he cannot accept the disillusionment that has made
him a "different person, a stranger even to him self' (247).
This story begins with Walter’s confident declaration "T know
what I’m doing! I know what I’m doing!’" (232) made as he
begins his "adventure" of trying to rescue anyone who might be
stranded in the on-coming hurricane. The story ends with his
cry "’Save me! Save m e!’" (250) to the approaching rescue
boat. Between these two points, Walter attempts to save a
young boy, Jackie, and his sister, but he is, like them, at
the mercy of the storm. The experience, however, has caused
him to question who he is and he realizes that "they had saved
him as much as he had saved them" (242). Despite this in
sight, W alter broods all night on the "pain and humiliation"
he has suffered, and how this experience had estranged him
from his form er, com fortable, confident life, and so he at
tem pts to retreat back into his initial delusions of being a
savior: "he wanted to run at them, demand their gratitude,
287
th eir love" (2 4 7 ). A ccording to O ates, " once a truth is
on
know n it can n ot be unknown, it can only be denied.'
W alter’s attem pt to deny what he has learned, irrefutably,
through experience, causes him to project the problem onto the
young people, whom he tries to kill at the end of the story.
H e does, indeed, need to be saved, but not from the brother or
sister, or even from the storm, but from himself.
E ach o f the other stories in this co llectio n illu strate
sim ilar "collisions," esp ecia lly th ose that q u estion assu m p
tions about real or illusory expectations concerning familial
love. Both "Survival of Childhood" as well as "The Death of
Mrs. Sheer" end with a death (one a suicide and the other an
attempted murder that claims an innocent victim) when the ex
change that takes place between the characters does not sup
port the assumptions held by one of the characters. In the
first story, Carl is ironically freed — em otionally--to m ake a
better attempt at success with his marriage when his brother
G ene commits suicide. This occurs because Carl realizes that
G ene was a "victim of the world and the world’s judgment upon
him" (58). In his brother’s art, Carl can see that "they had
mobbed him, praised him, loved him but they had not understood
him . A nd Carl, w ith his self-congratulatory intellect, was
most guilty" (58). The older brother comes to understand that
G ene’s "angry sympathy" for those whose lives were as desolate
288
as his own is the cause of his suicide, and Carl goes to the
shabby country store where G ene sorted mail in order to "stand
in his shoes" and fully understand his pain. Through this un
derstanding and compassion, Carl has gained the insight not to
suffer the same fate.
Each of these stories, then, despite the variety of faces
or the seemingly bizarre behavior of the characters, point to
delusions and truths that do not seem "excruciatingly parti
cular" upon closer examination: the need for familial love,
the need for a stable and authentic identity, the need to ac
cep t rather than resist disillusionment, no matter how frigh
tening or painful this may be. These are human needs and by
challenging the delusions that thwart their fulfillment, O ates
offers her readers a "direction," even though she "cannot tell
them what to do or be." According to Paul Berry, who compiled
a n d e d ite d The E s s e n tia l S e lf (1 9 7 5 ), a c o lle c t io n o f
p oem s, short fictio n , and plays that d ep ict the struggling
self exercising values in the face of important and difficult
choices, the "exchange" of art depends as much on the skills
of the reader as on the talents of the writer:
Like a w ork o f art, a good p iece o f fiction
doesn’t yield much unless we bring something of
ou rselves to it. R ather than a meaning, fic
tion offers us an experience, one in which we par
ticipate as we read. Having done so, we are
289
somehow the larger for it, and we carry away from
th e e n c o u n te r so m eth in g o f v a lu e --a n u n der
standing, a new sensitivity, a feeling or perhaps
simply a sense of enjoyment. Just how much one
takes from involvem ent with a story depends as
m uch on the sensibilities and openn ess of the
r e a d e r a s it d o e s o n th e t a le n t s o f th e
writer.
B ecau se it is inevitable that the reader "brings" him self to
the encounter with the text, Oates suggests that the exchange
be accomplished with as much self-awareness as possible. Only
in this way can the answers to the question "Who are we?" be
continually revised in the process of empathic inquiry.
CHAPTER FOUR: NOTES
290
^ C arl G u s ta v J u n g , T he U n d is c o v e r e d S e lf (N e w
York: Penguin Books, 1957) 77-8.
^Joyce C arol O a tes, Upon the Sw eeping F lood (N ew
York: The Vanguard Press, 1966).
•^David M adden, review , Upon the Sweeping Flood by
Joyce Carol O ates in Critical Essays on Joyce Carol Oates,
ed. Linda Wagner (Boston: G. K. Hall, 1979) 7.
^Joyce C arol O ates, p reface, "Fiction D ream s R e v e la
tion s," Scenes fro m A m erican L ife: C ontem porary Short
Fiction (New York: Random House, 1973) viii.
^R ichard S chw artz, "Our M ultiple Selves," Networker
(March-April 1987) 25.
^Madden 10.
L inda K uehl, "An Interview with Joyce Carol Oates,"
C o n ve rsa tio n s with Joyce C a ro l O a tes, e d . L e e M ilazzo
(Jackson: University of Mississippi Press, 1989) 110.
^L eif Sjoberg, "An Interview with Joyce Carol Oates,"
C o n ve rsa tio n s with Joyce C a ro l O a tes, e d . L e e M ilazzo
(Jackson: University of Mississippi Press, 1989) 110.
^Madden 9.
1 n
lu Brian C leeve, "Empathy C reates Living C haracters in
F iction ," H a n d b o o k o f Short Story Writing, ed. D ick son
and Smythe (Cincinnati: Writer’s Digest Books, 1981) 47.
H Cleeve 47.
291
CHAPTER FOUR: NOTES
4 2 S u sa n L o h a fe r , C o m in g to Term s w ith the Sh ort
Story (B a to n R ou ge: L ou isian a S tate U n iversity P ress,
1983) 155.
^L ohafer 147.
14Lohafer 148.
1 5
Joyce C arol O ates, "(W om an) W riter: T heory and
P ra ctice," (W om an) Writer: O ccasion s an d O pportunities
(New York: Dutton, 1988) 22.
^^Lohafer 144.
42Jung 109.
-^Lohafer 145.
-^Lohafer 154.
20Lohafer 155.
24Lohafer 155.
22Sjoberg 113.
2 ^Joyce C arol O a tes, "Building T en sion in th e Short
Story," The Writer 79, no.6 (June 1966) 11.
74
^ Joyce Carol Oates, "Speculations on the Novel," NBA
Authors Speak Out, 25th Anniversary of the National Book
Awards (New York: Viking Press, 1974) 6.
292
CHAPTER FOUR: NOTES
'y S
^ A n t h o n y P a u l K e r b y , N a r r a t i v e a n d th e S e l f
(B lo o m in to n and In d ia n a p o lis: Indiana U n iversity P ress,
1991) 6.
^ D a v i d B leich , " E p istem o lo g ica l A ssu m p tio n s in th e
Study o f R esp onse," R eader Response Criticism, ed. Jane
P. Tompkins (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press,
1980) 137,157.
^ L ohafer 155.
^ G r a n v ille H icks, "What is Reality?" Critical Essays
on Joyce Carol Oates, ed. Linda Wagner (Boston: G. K. Hall,
1979) 13.
^ L ohafer 155.
Joyce Carol O ates, Because It Is Bitter, A n d Because
It Is My Heart (New York: Dutton, 1990) 314.
3 1 p a u l B erry , e d . The E sse n tia l Self: A n I n tr o
duction to Literature (New York: McGraw-Hill Book Company,
1975) 1.
293
CHAPTER FIVE
FROM CONNECTIONS TO CONTINUITY
"All of us who write work out of a conviction that w e are
participating in som e sort o f communal activity. . . . By
honoring one another’s creation we honor something that deeply
connects us all, and goes beyond us."^ This is O ates’s de
claration of connectedness, which appears to be the subject,
the motive and the potential effect of her art. Her empathic
epistemology and her use of art as inquiry combine to create
w h a t B e le n k y r e fe r s to as "c o n stru cte d k n o w l e d g e in
which both the reader and writer are able to view "all know
led g e as con textu al, exp erien ce th em selv es as creators o f
knowledge, and value both subjective and objective strategies
for knowing."^ B oth experience and reflection are im por
tant aspects of this type of knowing, in which "all knowledge
is constructed, and the knower is an intimate part of the
'I
know n. From this p erspective, O ates questions assum p
tions and authorities even as she "honors" the creations of
others, for her app roach to k n ow led ge is on e that both
questions and listens. In order to accom plish her goal o f
294
understanding the self, others, and the world, she uses art,
in the philosopher Jurgen Habermas’ terms, as a kind of "ideal
sp eech situation" that prom otes and exhibits connectedn ess.
Like Habermas, Oates sees art as a type of "speech that simul
taneously taps and touches our inner and outer worlds within a
community of others with whom we share deeply felt, largely
in a r tic u la te , b u t d a ily r e n e w e d in te r s u b je c tiv e rea lity .
A rt, then, is a self-reflexive "communal activity" that cre
ates com m unity even as it investigates one’s relationship to
it.
In a comment on her artistic processes, Oates once stated,
"most artists experience them selves as intermediaries o f one
kind or another— bringing metaphors from one dimension to an
other, transpersonal ideas brought into flesh. . . ."^ This
idea of translating metaphors from one dimension to another
appears often in O ates’s work, for her project seems to be
always to connect, even as she operates from a point-coun-
terp oin t con scio u sn ess that attem pts to find sim ilarities in
contrasts. Like Heraclitus, she is fascinated by the paradox
of the one and the many: "Couples are whole and not wholes,
what agrees disagrees, the concordant is discordant. From all
things one and from one all things." For Oates, this paradox
is most compelling as it refers to the mystery of "I / they,"
and her attempt to span the distance between the personal and
295
the universal is founded on her belief that "we are all inter
connected— it seems we are individual and separate, whereas in
fact w e ’re not."^ This does not suggest, o f course, that
O ates d en ies the "reality" o f sep arate lives and sep arate
selves; instead, it reveals her impulse to connectivity, which
stems from both a desire to connect to something larger than
the self and a confidence in the "transpersonal" nature of
universal meaning available in art: "all forms of art [are]
expressions o f a subjectivity which might then be translated
in to th e universal. . . ."^ In th is se n se , O a tes view s
"the one and the many" as similar and separate at the same
time.
In fact, O a tes’s short story collections are a testam ent
to her impulse for connectedness, her desire to juxtapose if
not conflate "the one and the many," for the arrangement of
stories is never arbitrary or incidental but rather is "combin
atorial," sometimes taking the form of story cycles or sequen
ces and even, in one case at least, becom ing a "composite
n o v e l .B y exam ining each collection as a "totality," one
b etter understands O ates’s claim that "My story collections
are not at all mere collections; they are meant to be books,
con sciou sly o r g a n i z e d . In his essay on short story se
quences, Robert Luscher explains that the relatedness of the
stories w ithin a co llectio n d oes not dim inish but expands
296
their significance: "The story’s status as a significant part
of a progressive whole does not undermine its independence,
but rather expands its functions and significance within an
1 n
open book." Similarly, Oates values the integrity or inde
pendence of individual stories though her collections also par
ticipate in the tradition of story sequences and story cycles,
which she uses to unify her stories within the context of a
larger framework, a strategy whose initial development is of
ten credited to Boccaccio and Chaucer. Many of O ates’s collec
tions are not only unified by subject or sequence, but also by
O ates’s use o f such elem ents as setting and style. In this
way, she participates in the traditions as well as honors the
creations of such writers as Kate Chopin, Sarah Orne Jewett,
and Jam es Joyce, w hose short story collections Bayou Folk
( 1 8 9 4 ) , The C o u n try o f th e P o in te d F irs ( 1 8 9 6 ) , an d
D u b lin ers (1 9 1 4 ) are all u n ified by se ttin g s th a t sh a d e
into th e sym bolic in their ability to reflect and influence
the lives of those who inhabit them. Although certainly not a
"regionalist," O ates’s use o f setting is often sim ilar to the
ways in which these authors use it as a reflective and influ
ential context within which the self develops— or dies. She
also shares interests with Hamlin Garland, however, whose col
le c tio n o f s to r ie s e n title d M a in -T ra v e lled R o a d s (1 8 9 1 )
focu ses on issues of class and econom ics in rural America.
297
And also similar is Garland’s use of "roads" and O ates’s use
o f "borders" in her text Crossing the Border to serve in
these collections as controlling metaphors for the ideas the
authors attempt to convey. Even these few examples suggest
the relatedness of O ates’s writing to the tradition o f story
tellers, and the depth, breadth, and variety of her work con
nect her with masters of the form.
S ty listica lly , O ates also draws on her fam iliarity with
literary traditions in order to create a resonance among stor
ies in a single collection. She shares with H awthorne, for
exam ple, an interest in the "fantastic" m odes of Gothic and
rom an ce w riting, w hich unify th e stories in The Poisoned
Kiss, and she also echoes his style in stories that take the
form of parables and allegories. With Poe, O ates shares a
fascination with the "dark" side o f human nature, especially
with the difficulties in distinguishing betw een delusional and
extraordinarily perceptive states of awareness, and like him,
she often calls into question sim plistic distinctions betw een
"sanity" and "insanity." T h ese issues are explored in her
c o lle c t io n N ig h t-S id e , fo r e x a m p le , w h o se s to r ie s , lik e
many of P oe’s, are written in the style of "psychological real
ism" that, for both these authors, is used in conjunction with
symbolic modes in order to expand the range of implication in
each story beyond the "ordinary" or the "mundane."
298
O ates also shares M elville’s love o f contrast, for they
are both interested in the surprising relatedness of good and
evil, believing that knowledge of one enhances an understand
ing of the other. With Chekhov, Oates enjoys a mutual dis
taste for generalities and abstractions as well as an affinity
for stories that present a "slice of life" in the interactions
o f only a few characters. Occasionally, as in her collection
Sentim ental Education, O ates allows herself to explore the
density o f langu age and th e p o ssib ilities o f the extended
story form, traits common to the stories of Henry James, yet
quite often, like Jam es’s, her stories are really studies of
the artist, no matter what their ostensible subjects seem to
be. Even so, Oates can also write in the clipped, occasion
ally impertinent style of modern writers such as Salinger or
Pirandello or even Updike, an ability she demonstrates quite
clearly in her collection The Assignation.
In fact, O ates’s more recent story collections do suggest
an increased, even if not a new, interest in the writer’s abil
ity to convey com plex ideas through innovative uses of form
and language. In Heat and Other Stories, for example, she
presents interesting challenges to the reader by embedding the
sym bolic in the ordinary in "House Hunting," by creating a
seam less confluence or "overlap" in the perspectives of two
characters in "Death Valley," and by narrating stories from
299
the perspectives of speakers who, although not "unreliable" in
the traditional sense, use imagination rather than experience
to relate specific details of events they admittedly did not
witness. This occurs in "Heat," "The Buck," and "Sundays in
Summer," to mention only a few. In this collection, as in oth
ers, Oates also experiments with concepts of time and percep
tions o f reality while studying these in relation to extended
levels of consciousness and meta-critical awareness. In these
studies, her formal innovations, which often include a somehow
subtle but intrusive authorial voice, are as "radical" as any
by Barth or Barthelme, and like them, she is often preoccupied
with the function of the artist and the creative process it
self, and yet she is able to manage conveying a story that in
corporates many levels of meaning without violating the inte
grity of the story itself.
Several of the pieces in this collection, in fact, could
be categorized as "fantasy" or "horror" stories, which links
her work with that of such writers as Kafka, Borges, LeGuin
and Calvino, as examples. While these modes have not served
as th e sin gle organizing principle for an entire collection,
they have long been of interest to Oates, appearing in several
o f her c o llec tio n s, perhaps m ost clearly in Night-Side and
R a v e n ’s Wing and c e r ta in ly in H e a t an d O ther S to ries,
which calls into question the nature of reality itself. As
300
th ese exam ples suggest, O ates’s connections to literary tra
dition cross the boundaries of nationality, gender, and genre,
and while she acknowledges her appreciation and indebtedness
to many writers, both contemporary as well as historical, hers
is a unique and original voice that speaks in concert with
many others. In this way, literary tradition, both contem
porary and historical, is the context for O ates’s art, espe
cially as it affords her an opportunity for connections that
take her beyond the "merely personal and local."
The "personal and local," of course, are also important to
Oates, and throughout her career, she has used familiar and
personal settings as an im portant unifying principle in her
w ork s. O ften , her se ttin g s are clea rly d istin g u ish ed as
rural, urban, or suburban, but the specific locales in which
her stories are set are frequently places where Oates herself
has lived, including rural New York, Syracuse, D etroit, and
Canada. In fact, many of her collections are not only unified
by a focus on specific rural or urban settings, but by O ates’s
frequent use of academic settings as well. Some of the stor
ies in her first collection, such as "Expense of Spirit" and
"Archways" are portraits of university life and the settings,
at least, are taken from Oates’s own memories of Syracuse Uni
versity. In an interview with Walter Clemons, Oates admits
that this second story, "Archways," also draws on some of her
301
experiences or feelings as a "country girl" who imagined her
self rather out o f place at the large university, which sug
gests a continuing connection between the rural and academic
settings so common to her fiction. In fact, Oates admits the
"secret" to understanding her is to keep in mind her rural ori
gins: "The real clue to me is that I’m like certain people
who are not really understood-Jung and Heidegger are good ex
am ples— people of peasant stock, from the country, who then
com e into a world of literature or philosophy." Oates sees
these as fairly distinct and separate worlds, which creates a
tension in the person: "Part of us is very intellectual, want
ing to read all the books in the library— or even wanting to
write all the books in the library," but this im pulse con
trasts with "the other side of us, which is sheer silence, in
a rticu la te— th e silen ce o f nature, o f th e sky, o f pure b e
ing." ^ * But as Clemons notes, the connections between Oates
and the female character in "Archways" are oblique, for Oates,
it seems, has managed quite well to "keep a foot in each of
these worlds."
M ore im portantly, perhaps, is the fact that this story,
also like many of O ates’s other works, is primarily concerned
with the self in relational contexts. In this respect, "Arch
ways" is an interesting study o f one of the possible varia
tions of the empathic exchange, for in it, a young man named
302
Klein is quite determined to commit suicide and end his miser
able, lonely life until a young woman, a student, pulls him
out of himself and forces him to say to her those words he
most desperately needs to hear: "You must understand it’s
nothing to be ashamed of. . . . Some people get loneliness as
if it were a disease. It makes them sick. I suppose I’m one
of them" (179). Through his relationship with the girl, Klein
recovers a sense of him self and his depression lifts; he no
longer contemplates suicide.
This type of recovery, it seem s, is the direct result of
what Kohut defines as "empathy: the resonance of the self in
the self of others, of being understood, of somebody making an
1 0
effort to understand you." Soon, however, Klein discovers
"he did not love her and that he had never loved her; that he
did not especially want to see her again; that perhaps she had
freed him, giving herself and thereby freeing him to him self-
he did not quite understand" (183). H e leaves her a note, af
ter which he never sees her again, "and he supposed he would
forget her, which he did" (148). Like so many of O ates’s stor
ies, the ease with which Klein "separates" him self from this
other person, seeming not to care or even to consider if she,
like him, has a powerful need for empathic connections to oth
ers, is at on ce fully b eliev a b le just as it is regrettab le.
In fact, the story suggests that K lein’s regression to a less
303
com passionate perspective, w hile perhaps entirely natural or
normal, is still a loss.
This story, then, like "The Fine W hite Mist of Winter,"
investigates an interesting tension betw een the positive con
sequences of a sincere and sympathetic exchange between the
characters and the main character’s inability to hold onto the
insight gained from the experience. Although Klein under
stands that he has gained "power’ and "freedom" because "He
had been loved. H e had been worthy of love" and the story
ends with a description of the perfectly ordinary, "normal"
life th a t K lein m ak es for h im se lf, its fin a l lin e is th e
question, "What possibility of happiness without some random,
incidental death?" (185). As Oates claims of Kafka, the story
always shades back into the greys of ordinary life, but Oates
is also draw ing a sharp contrast betw een com passion and
se lf-in ter est, b etw een joy and pain, and b etw een life and
death— all of which are connected in their opposition to one
another, including the painful truth that death can create an
ap p reciation for life that is often absent w hen one takes
e ith er for granted. E ven O a tes’s early stories, then, are
rather in cid en tally co n n ected through their use o f settings
tak en from O ates’s early life, for they are prim arily con
cerned with investigating truth and delusion just as they are
304
examinations of the connections between people, people who are
often connected by their opposition to one another.
This sam e exploration of the relationships or similarities
am ong contrasting or adversarial agents or com ponents in a
work results in Oates’s frequent use of a single theme as an
organizing principle in her work. Often, she will investigate
a single unifying idea that runs throughout a collection by
using each individual story to exam ine it from a differing
perspective or within an alternate context. Such themes as
lo v e , in itia tio n , m ystical e x p e r ie n c e s, and th e n a tu re o f
reality, to name only a few, have served as frames for O ates’s
c o llec tio n s. W ithin these them atic studies, she em ploys a
wide variety of formal approaches, including both experimental
and trad ition al narrative tech n iq u es, in order to exam in e
"old" ideas from fresh perspectives. O ne of the techniques
that occurs frequently in O ates’s writing is the allusive qual
ity, especially common in her titles, that connects her work
to that o f other writers. Regarding Marriages and Infideli
ties, for exam p le, a co llectio n that contains such "reima
gined" stories as "Metamorphosis," "The Dead," and "The Lady
with the Pet Dog," among others, Oates has stated, "Postmodern
writing often gains a secondary meaning by its juxtaposition
to other works of literature or art. The stories stand on
their own and were . . . published on their own, but they are
305
1 %
m eant to have an allusive quality. J This quality, which
Oates refers to as a "marriage," comes from a relational per
spective that applies to all her work. In fact, the metaphor
of "marriage" aptly describes O ates’s attitude toward learning
or ideas in that she believes the marriages people make bring
"salvation or ruin" although "some lead to meaning beyond the
s e lf ." ^ i n this sen se, each o f O a te s’s story c o llectio n s
can be seen as a "marriage" between the individual stories and
the cohesive whole, as well as betw een "original" works and
historic ones, both of which echo her idea that the individual
self must recognize its participation in "the collective human
self1 as both a social and a metaphysical reality.
This recip rocal relationship betw een the individual and
the communal whole is also reflected in O ates’s epigram to her
c o lle c tio n The A ssignation , w hich q u otes Italo C alvino as
saying, "It is not the voice that commands the story: it is
th e ear." This sta tem en t su ggests the in evitab ility o f a
dialectical circum stance betw een speaker and listener though
the final arbiter of m eaning is the "recipient" of the idea.
In order to avoid "arrant subjectivisms," as Jung says, it is
b e n e fic ia l to p a r tic ip a te in an exchange o f in fo r m a tio n
th a t lin ks su b je ctiv e and ob jective, in tern al and extern al
perspectives, so that, as Derrida suggests, "The ear of the
o th e r says m e to m e and c o n stitu te s th e a u to s o f my
306
1 S
autobiography.' In oth er w ords, the constru ction o f a
self-concep t or identity is not simply a matter of internally
determ ined ideas, but needs to be generated in a reflective,
interactive relationship with people and circumstances outside
the self. For the reader, then, this suggests the need for
attention not only to the self or only to the text, but to the
nature of their interaction while observing each story as an
individual unit within a "cohesive artistic whole" that neces
sita tes a p ersp ectiv e o f in clu siven ess. This patterning in
O a te s’s art illu strates w hat sh e p erceiv es as a significant
similarity betw een her stories and life: in both cases, the
individual and the group, of people and stories, are unavoid
ably related, and in this way, "the group becomes more than a
hall of mirrors. It becomes a hall of doorways that open into
new vistas of the self."^
In her earliest stories, including those in By the North
G ate, and Upon the Sweeping Flood, the "new vistas" that
O ates explores are philosophical questions about reality, the
uses of memory and imagination, and the connections between
people, especially family m em bers. Clearly, these have been
abiding them es with Oates, as has been her original "intense
interest in subjectivity, in the psychology o f living, breath
ing, human b ein gs .A ll of these issues, as w ell as an
attem pt to investigate a moral position on life, are evident
307
in an early story such as "By the North Gate," in which old
man Revere is forced by circumstances beyond his control to at
tempt to make meaning in an indifferent, confusing world. In
several early stories, including "Stigmata" and "At the Semin
ary," issues of religious b elief and morality are enmeshed in
the conflicts o f family life, and these are presented against
the backdrop of organized religion, which, even in her most
recen t stories, cannot m eet the b eliev er’s expectations for
meaning or emotional security.
Often, for Oates, a theme or idea that serves as the unify
ing p rin cip le o f a story collection is also present in her
other works, such as novels and poetry, written at the same
time. O f course, dates of publication for the collections are
not always an accurate indication of such themes, for some col
lections, most notably Where Are You Going, Where Have You
B een ? and The S ed u ctio n a n d O th er Stories g a th er t o
gether stories that were written over a span of many years,
and th e stories for The Poisoned Kiss, for exam ple, w ere
written in the early 1970’s though the collection was not pub
lished until 1975. M ost frequently, however, each collection
reveals "common concerns, common themes . . . in a certain per-
1 s
iod of time."xo And despite the enormous range and variety
among O ates’s large body of work, the collections as a whole
reveal an interesting consistency o f concerns, not the least
308
o f which is her investigation of the nature o f the self in
various relational contexts.
To Oates, the story, like the person, exists within a "so
cial matrix," and like several members of the American pragma
tic movement, including George Herbert Mead, Charles Sanders
Pierce, and William James, all of whom Oates admires, she be
lieves "the self arises in a social matrix and cannot be under
stood ind ep en dent of it. Instead, it is inconceivable that
1 Q
se lf-c o n s c io u sn e ss cou ld arise in total isolation." This
interest in context, while always important to Oates, is most
notably the gen eral unifying princip le in th ose collections
published between 1970 and 1974. In these books, each story
develops an alternative perspective on a theme that predomin
ates in the collection. In this way, the variety of the in
d ivid u al sto r ie s is u n ifie d by th eir a sso c ia tio n w ith the
theme, which is itself embedded in a context that extends its
levels of meaning. For example, in Wheel o f Love (1970),
the thematic concern with love is encased in the context of
relation sh ip s that rise and fall on their circuitous journey
around the wheel o f fate. While this "larger context" sug
gests the influence o f arbitrary or indifferent influences at
work in the lives of ordinary individuals, the wheel, as a cir
cle, is also a symbol of perfect unity and completeness: the
final goal of love. In this way, then, Oates has not only
309
connected the self, the world, and "beyond" in these stories,
she has also "unified" the contrasting visions of struggle and
perfection inherent in the theme of the collection.
S im ila r ly , in M arriages and In fidelities (1 9 7 2 ), O a tes
employs the metaphorical context of marriages in order to exam
ine the theme of making choices that create relatedness or es
tablish partnerships, which not only involve cooperation and
lo y a lty , but the ad v en tu re and risks o f " in fid elities" as
well. In this collection, Oates examines the self in relation
to oth ers in personal relationships, cultural or literary re
lation sh ip s, and spiritual relation sh ip s. In fact, the con
nection betw een the carnal and the spiritual, so commonly
lin k ed in literary tra d itio n , is su ggested by the op en in g
reference to Dylan Thomas’ poem, "On the Marriage of a Vir
gin," w hich sp eak s o f the "m iraculous virginity as old as
lo a v e s and fish e s," as w e ll as by th e c o lle c tio n ’s first
story, entitled "The Sacred Marriage." As is so often the
case in O ates’s work, she has framed these stories within a
context that encompasses both the sacred and the profane as
simultaneous and related realities.
The context of American society and a thematic consider
ation of its influence on the individual is the focus of both
O ates’s collections The Goddess and Other Women (1974) and
Where Are You Going Where Have You Been? Stones for Young
310
Am erica (1974). The first of these, o f course, focuses on
the roles and images of women, which are supported, subverted,
and im posed by cultural traditions and attitudes, but it also
extends the range of meanings of its individual stories to in
clude the ideal as well as the ordinary, as suggested by the
co llec tio n ’s title. Similarly, the title as w ell as the stor
ies o f the second collection, like those of the first, imply
the need for "a backward glance" that contextualizes the self
within a fram ework that is at once historical and spiritual.
The stories in this collection are also unified by their focus
on initiation or "coming of age" as themes that link the self,
e s p e c ia lly its pursuit o f identity, w ith its relation sh ip to
the world, but the equally im portant spiritual dim ension in
which identity needs to be considered is discussed by Oates in
the preface to this book as well as explored, for example, in
the story "Year of Wonders," which conflates the sacred and
the profane within the context of a shopping mall that Oates
ex p la in s is a lso a m an dala or "center o f the universe."
In both these texts, Oates honestly examines the conflicts and
struggles com m on to ordinary life, especially as these have
been "inherited" through cultural traditions, and yet she also
points forward to possibilities that encom pass progress and
p erfectio n as the ultim ate goals o f the hum anist tradition
within which she works.
311
A n oth er co llectio n o f stories, The Hungry Ghosts, also
published in 1974, makes a similar use of multidimensional con
texts in its concentric positioning of academia and Buddhist
cosmology as frameworks for its stories. In this case, the re
ligious or spiritual context adds an ironic elem ent as it re
inforces an idea evident in the "mundane" or secular them e of
the collection, which examines the folly and ultimate futility
of attachments to worldly desires. This collection also reson
ates with O ates’s many other works that use "hunger" as a m eta
phor for desire or emotional need, and, as often is true in
those other works as well, Oates seems to suggest that the de
sire itself is not so much the problem as are the misdirected,
even if infinitely creative, m eans used in the attem pts to
m eet those emotional needs.
The fact that Oates not only relies on theme but embeds
her investigation s on a particular subject within a context
that further unifies the collection even w hile extending its
range of significance dem onstrates her intention to emphasize
the universal implications o f the particular or individual sub
jects studied in her work. O f course, Oates balances her im
pulse for synthesis and connectivity with a love of the parti
cular and an abiding interest in and celebration o f variety.
In this way, she resp ects the individuality o f each story,
especially as the differences among them create a "mosaic"
312
th a t can en com p ass the diversity o f life itself. In The
Wheel o f L ove (1970), for exam ple, the stories are clearly
connected through the thematic focus on the various forms of
love that are to be found in differing relationships, which
d esp ite th eir variety are similar in their frequent inability
to establish or maintain connections betw een people. Oates
has ex p lain ed that th ese are "stories ab ou t lo v e— different
form s o f lo v e, m ainly in fam ily relationships, Such a
clear principle of unity makes it easier for the reader to see
how th e individual stories reso n a te through the collective
w hole. T h ese stories exam ine fam ilial, rom antic, and reli
gious love, all of which, if they are to be successful, must
be grounded in compassion and empathy. The fact that the book
ch ron icles m any fa iled relation sh ip s d oes not suggest that
O ates sees love only as a "snare and a delusion," as Sally
Buckner contends in her review o f this collection. Instead,
O ates is examining the assumptions and "false interpretations"
of love that prevent it from being a liberating rather than a
devastating experience.
In her later work, in fact, and especially in her poetry,
O ates often suggests that "the experience of erotic love can
create another ’self,’ a personality that is a result of the
lovers’ spiritual unity." Far from being invariably negative,
O ates believes that through love one "can find his liberation
313
from the ego."^ In "The Region of Ice," for example, it is
not Sister Irene’s love or em pathic understanding that leads
A llen Weinstein to insanity and suicide; it is her decision to
w ithhold th ese em otion s that provokes his despair. Sim i
larly, the story "Matter and Energy" illustrates how the ab
sence of the m other’s love, shattered by mental illness, cre
ates an emptiness in the child that prevents her from loving
as an adult.
O ne o f the m ost in terestin g stories in The Wheel o f
L o ve, how ever, is "C onvalescing," w hich exam in es th e r e
lationship betw een memory or personal narrative history and
identity. In this story, David, a young husband and father,
has been seriously injured in a car accident and has lost his
memory. This loss has had a devastating effect on his sense
of identity, and throughout the story he worries that he is
not a "real" person but only "fictitious" (83). During the
course of the story, however, he begins to recover his memor
ie s in d isjoin ted and b afflin g fragm ents until, finally, he
rem em bers that just before his accident he learned his wife
was having an affair and that she might leave him. The story
closes, however, with the wife making "a vow of commitment and
energy" to stay with him always (101). D espite the clearly
positive side of this conclusion, as always, O ates poises it
against the tension that David still sees life as "a puzzle,"
314
and he wonders where there "was a fixed point" (101). Without
his memory, David is left wondering if he hadn’t perhaps imag
ined the problems with his wife and he can’t quite conquer the
feeling that he himself and his life are fictions. For David,
th e p o s s ib ility o f b e in g " fictitio u s" is d isru p tiv e rath er
than liberating because, quite obviously, he has not chosen
this option for himself.
The disruption in continuity in D avid’s life, caused by
his loss of memory, illustrates Kerby’s belief in the need for
self-n arration , w hich he contends is essential "in order to
exist as a meaningful human subject and [it demonstrates] the
function o f narrative in generating a continuity o f identity,
o f self." ^ Ironically, then, it is precisely because D avid
has lost the "story" of his life that he feels "unreal." The
positive dimension of the story, however, is that he has sur
vived the experience and so has an opportunity to "rewrite"
the life that he had formerly allowed to slip away from him.
B ehind all o f the stories in this collection, in fact, there
stands a vision of connectedness and the potentially healing
powers of love even as the foreground is occupied by charac
ters struggling, and often failing, to make the necessary con
nections.
T h e rela tio n sh ip s narrated in The Wheel o f L ove, o f
course, take place within the context of American society and
315
just as the individual must have a comprehensive perspective
on the narrative whole of his personal history if it is to be
understood as a cohesive or meaningful life, so too does the
person need to see himself as a character in the drama of the
collective human self. From this perspective, Oates expands
the social and cultural framework to explicitly include liter
ary tr a d itio n in h e r c o lle c t io n M a rria g es a n d I n f id e li
tie s. S e v e ra l o f th e sto r ie s in th e c o lle c tio n , as their
titles suggest, are "reimaginings" of fam ous works by Kafka,
Thoreau, Chekhov, Jam es, and Joyce. A bout these stories,
Oates has stated that they "are meant to be autonomous stor
ies, yet they are also testaments of my love and extreme de
votion to these other writers."^
S he su g g ests th at sh e im a g in ed a kind o f "spiritual
m arriage" b e tw e e n h e r se lf and th ese w riters, and though
critics have often commented on these stories, none has noted
that tw o oth ers in the collection are also highly allusive:
"The Spiral," for example, is both a them atic and structural
exam ination o f Y ea ts’s conflict betw een the carnal and the
spiritual; it is divided am ong alternating segm ents entitled
"matter" and "antim atter." T his story a lso in c o rp o ra te s
Y eats’s long lasting but unrequited love for Maude Gonne, a
lo v e th a t fu e led m uch o f his p o etic p assion . Sim ilarly,
"Nightmusic" is a clear allusion to M ozart, who w rote an
316
instru m en tal p ie c e called "A L ittle Nightmusic" during his
career. This story investigates the joys and terrors of being
a child genius e v en w h ile it clearly suggests the author’s
respect and admiration for the composer.
That Oates herself has not always received the kind o f em-
pathic understanding or respect that her stories deserve is
evident in the comments made by Ronald D eF eo on one of the
allu siv e stories in this co llectio n . In his review o f the
book, D eF eo claims that O ates’s story "Metamorphosis" is un
satisfying because he has no sympathy for the character:
But how can a description of a crisis period im
press and move us if we care little about the in
dividual living through that period? In "The M et
amorphosis," for example, Miss O ates produces a
car salesmen suffering a breakdown. She describes
the process well enough, but who cares about the
salesman? . . . . Though we realize [her charac
te r s ] a r e s u ffe r in g , e x p e r ie n c in g fr u str a tio n ,
guilt and depression, we never quite understand
why.^
Clearly, this critic has not experienced an empathic exchange
with the character, nor does he connect this story to Kafka’s
with the same title. In a page of manuscript notes to one of
her novels, O ates asks herself, "Can sympathy be extracted
(forcibly) from another . . . ?" and she answers herself with
a quotation: "And what about the children who don’t want to
317
b e loved ?— D in e se n ." ^ H er m editation suggests that O ates
was reflecting on the ways people who seem to make themselves
"unlovable" can get love or sympathy, and wondering how the
writer can extract sympathy from readers for unappealing char
acters. Perhaps she cannot. After all, that was precisely
her goal in "reimagining" th ese sto ries. She claim s, "all
truths have been uttered many times. But they must be reim
agined in new contexts, in order to awaken sympathy in people
to whom ’old’ truths are no longer comprehensible."
This strategy, however, did not work with D eFeo, and so it
is understandable that O ates often laments her own "connec
tions" with critics who attempt to judge her art on grounds
that conflict with the very premises by which it has been de
vised. In fact, all her readers need to be able to suspend
judgments, and certainly need to be more empathic than to dis
miss a character as a "salesman," but more importantly, they
need to engage the story with a tolerance for ambiguity, which
D eF eo does not seem to possess. In art, as in life, the rea
sons for suffering often are not clear; in fact, when they be
come clear, the problem is often resolved. This is especially
true of fiction, which turns on the very issue of conflict.
According to Oates, "This is one of the points, in fact, that
distinguishes the artist from the critic." She contends that
"the critic, though he may live in time and experience life as
318
w e all do, humanly, without very often encountering Platonic
abstractions . . . nevertheless attem pts to judge the artist
a g a in st v alu es th e artist cannot, becau se he is an artist,
accept." For this reason, Oates concludes that "the vision of
absolute perfection brings all existential striving to an end
. . . ." ^ In the world Oates attempts to depict, which is
often as close to the "real" world as an artist can get, the
characters usually do not know why they suffer, much less why
other people suffer, but Oates wants her readers to care about
the car salesman anyway. For Oates, both the subject and
the m otive for the art is "struggle," and visions of "perfec
tion," in which, for example, each person fully understood his
or her own conflicts, would result in the silence of the mys
tic or the silence of death.
T h e a llu s iv e s t o r ie s in M a rria g e s a n d I n f id e litie s ,
however, are less than half the collection, and many of the
others exam ine ordinary relationships or marriages, many of
which are fraught with the conflicts common to human relation
ships. In "Loving, Losing, Loving a Man," for example, Harry,
terminally ill, asks his lover, Ruth, "What do people have to
do with one another anyway?" (331). This question is at the
heart of the empathic experience, and it appears over and over
in O a tes’s writing, not only in regard to relationships b e
tw een ind ividu als, but also in resp ect to th e in teraction s
319
b etw een the individual and the so ciety that provides the
historical, cultural, and communal context for the self.
Since self-concepts, especially those shared in a commun
ity, are u n d en ia b ly cu ltu ral co n str u c ts, it is w ith in th is
frame of reference that O ates examines individual, archetypal,
and cultural concepts of the female in The Goddess and Other
W om en. The published epigram for the collection is from
John Donne though the original was a quote from Rumi: "Look
not upon my exterior form, but take what is in my hand." Both
this quote and D on n e’s, which states "Things naturall to the
S p ecies are not always so for the individuall," suggest that
O ates has organized this collection around a thematic consid
eration o f the relationships betw een the individual and the
"species" or the collective human community. The stories do
e x p lo r e th e p a rticu la rity o f th e in d iv id u a l, e sp e c ia lly as
this is represented in external appearances and the exchange
o f "gazes" or "looks" that Sartre suggests both rob and re
cover o n e ’s sense o f self. In this way, the collection in
v e stig a te s both the p o ten tia lly cooperative as w ell as o p
p ressiv e in teraction s betw een an individual and others, in
cluding society or any communal group.
While many of these stories deal with wom en’s subordinated
positions in fam ily and social life, as well as in their ca
reers, O ates also uses several stories to illustrate the idea
320
that being a victim is a common human experience not limited
to females. In "The Case of Bobby T.," for example, the main
character is a man who is victimized by a female as well as by
the unem pathic social and legal systems of American society.
Being a victim, however, is also a common human perspective,
which O ates illustrates in the character o f Alfred Buell in
"The Goddess." Unlike Bobby, Alfred is a victim because he
chooses to be one; in fact, he is so busy blaming others and
the world for his m iseries that there is little hope he will
ever escape them. Similarly, Anna, in "The Daughter," shares
A lfred ’s d eterm in istic p ersp ectiv e and gu aran tees that her
suffering will continue by seeing it as just "the way life is"
rather than attempting to confront the issue of taking respon
sibility for her choices. As a collection, these stories both
confirm and subvert traditional expectations regarding women.
M ore importantly, however, in them, O ates investigates issues
that are of concern to women within the larger context of Am er
ican society, thus connecting the individual to the larger so
cial unit.
A lso in 1974, O ates published The Hungry G hosts and
Where Are You Going, Where H ave You Been: Stories for Young
A m erica. The second of these, however, contains seventeen
stories all but two of which, "Back There" and "Silkie," ap
pear in other collections. Even so, this is a highly unified
321
c o lle c tio n and its p refa ce give im portant insigh ts in to a
fairly young O ates’s philosophies concerning Am erican society
and the young person’s participation in what she deems an era
o f "transition." T he other collection , The Hungry G hosts,
is O ates’s ironic view o f university life, in which characters
such as Saul Bird in "Pilgrims’ Progress" dem onstrate quite
clearly that empathy can be "used for ill." To serve his own
ends, Bird uses his keen empathic powers to commit psycho
logical and em otional murder on his associates. H e is an
a b s o lu t e ly o p in io n a t e d , m a n ip u la tiv e , and s e lf -c e n t e r e d
person, and he is able to treat others with an astounding
absence o f compassion in spite o f the fact that he is fully
conscious of the choices he makes.
In this collection, such thoroughly m odern and realistic
characters as Saul Bird are framed by an ancient, religiously
fictio n a lized view o f reality suggested by the b ook ’s title.
A t the front of the book, a note tells the reader that "a
preta (ghost) is one who, in the ancient Buddhist cosm ol
ogy, haunts the earth’s surface, continually driven by hunger,
that is, desire of one kind or another." From this larger per
sp ective, at one and the sam e tim e frightening and funny,
Oates is encouraging her readers to take an ironic view of the
fa te th a t su ch ch a ra cters as Saul Bird have ch osen for
322
them selves— even while the reader must reluctantly admit that
he, too, is "one of us."
In direct contrast to th ese realistic, contemporary, even
iro n ica lly hum orous ta les, O a te s’s c o lle c tio n The P oison ed
K iss a n d O ther Stories from the Portuguese (1975) extends
the range of complexity and ambiguity in her work by showing
the reader a world as fantastical as that of Hawthorne’s "Rap-
paccini’s Daughter." According to Oates, the context of these
stories is "foreign" though she admits that her use of Portu
gal as a "setting" is meant to suggest the alien nature of the
subject and voice of the stories more than it is intended to
provoke associations with a particular locale. This explora
tion o f "otherness" as an antithetical voice marks a fairly
clear shift in her career, for from this point forward her
stories are certainly more focused on the "fluid" and the "mys
terious" than was her previous work. The stories in this col
lection , as she has stated, are not sim ilar to her norm al
"style," and yet they do seem to explore several them es of
abiding interest to Oates.
For exam p le, the first story in the collection, entitled
"Our Lady o f the Easy Death of Alferce," is a first person
narration by a statue of the Madonna who resides in a Catholic
Church, presumably in "Portugal." During the course of the
story, the reader witnesses the Madonna’s oppressive burden of
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listening to but being unable to respond to the b elievers’
prayers, which express their desires, devotion, and expecta
tions. The effect o f the narration is that it both exposes
the icon for what it is— a helpless abstraction that cannot
p articip ate in the daily affairs o f ordinary p e o p le — as w ell
as a sympathetic, fully "human" mother who understands and
suffers with th ese p eop le, especially the m other who "lost"
her son to a fan atical religiou s b e lie f and so steals the
wooden doll, the Christ child, from Mary’s arms. The statue
o f the baby Jesus is, of course, replaced with another, only
slightly different, and the damage to the statue of Mary is
repaired, but the story suggests that the grief of the living
mother will not be so easily remedied, and it calls into ques
tion the value o f a religious b elief that lures its followers
into an "easy death" and thereby moves them away from life
itself.
The effect of "listening to" and the inevitable feeling of
sympathy for the statue that narrates the story, even w h ile-
in its own words— it reminds the reader of its own "unreal
ity," is a d isr u p tiv e an d p e r p lex in g e x p e r ie n c e for th e
read er. It requires m aintaining two perspectives at once:
the imaginative perspective that accepts that the statue has a
consciousn ess o f its own and the "realistic" perspective that
the M adonna is plaster and w ood. N either perspective is
324
rejected for the other; in fact, they are both entertained by
the narrator herself. This story, then, explores such issues
as the difficulty of apprehending the sacred and the profane
as co ev a l realities, the disparity betw een religious abstrac
tions and the value o f ordinary lived experien ce or "life,"
and the problems with sympathy and identification when the
"borders" between one consciousness and another are not clear
or solid but rather allow desire, anger, and even love to "in
trude" on the vulnerably receptive person. These tensions are
not resolved in the story, which closes with both a reference
to the statue’s "motherhood" as well as her emotionless state
in which she stands in front of suffering and madness "like a
column" (24).
A nother story in the collection that pursues a topic of
lasting interest to Oates is "The Brain of Dr. Vincente." The
circumstances of this story provoke questions about just where
p e r so n a lity and id en tity "reside" w ithin an ind ividu al, for
Dr. Vicente, a beloved and respected scientific genius, has re
cently died though his brain has been kept alive in a quiet,
cool compartment in the science lab. O f course, the brain has
no sense organs, but it can communicate through one of Dr. V i
cen te’s final inventions, and the story is told by a devoted
student or apprentice who narrates the efforts to bring Dr. V i
c e n te "back to life." T he brain is finally p laced in a
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cadaver that has b een surgically altered to resem b le the
former doctor as closely as possible, yet after the operation,
th e brain "rejects" the body and the oth er scientists are
forced to return it to its silent, isolated compartment.
The narrator wonders what the brain could be thinking
"without any hum an distractions," and the story closes with
his comment "We are drawn to [the compartment’s] glass door,
not by our love for the old Dr. V icente— who has perhaps
died— but by a yearning w e do not understand" (28). That
yearning, it seems, is provoked by the desire to answer ques
tio n s sim ilar to th o se that p u zzled O ates in W onderland:
is personality or identity solely the product of cognition or
is the physical body as well as the external circumstances of
a life a lso " essen tia l" to th e s e l f ’s c o n c e p t o f its e lf?
O ates asks such questions in the Afterword that closes this
collection and explains that the experience o f writing these
stories raised but did not resolve them for her.
A "Faustian" desire for knowledge as well as powerful long
ings for love and faith are exhibited in many of the charac
ters in these stories, and each of the stories in this collec
tion , inclu ding th e title story, is an exam ination o f "wor
ship" or devotion that shades into yearning and often then pro
gresses to a ravenous desire. The title story, in fact, seems
to narrate the fren zied im p atien ce o f H a w th o rn e’s young
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n arrator w h o ca n n o t resist his d esire for the forb idd en ,
p oisoned kiss of Rappaccini’s daughter. Similarly, the story
"The Secret Mirror" echoes R. D. Laing’s case study of a young
man called "David" who dresses as a woman and who lives out
his fantasy o f being desired and loved in front of a mirror
though in the "real" world he knows he is desperately alone
and lonely. Although the stories are told in a cryptic, ellip
tical style, and the perspectives range from first person to
third, the consistency in the collection comes from the "mys
terious" nature of these stories, which are an assemblage of
puzzle-pieces that form the "mosaic" of human personality. In
an excised portion of the Afterword, Oates explains that the
o rig in a l title for th e c o llectio n w as A zu le jo s, a P ortu gu
ese word for a decorative or ornate tile often used in mosa
ics. This title, however, was abandoned because its meaning
is so obscure, yet it reinforces the idea that Oates, in this
collection, as in all her work, is examining the nature of the
self in various relational contexts.
The desire to pursue knowledge that extends beyond ordin
ary experience is also evident in O ates’s collection The Sed
uction (1975), which is unified by its focus on "mystical ex
periences." This collection im m ediately follows the Portugu
ese stories, and like the stories "for young America" in her
book Where Are You Going, Where H ave You Been? (1974),
327
co llec ts to g eth er narratives that w ere written over a w ide
span o f tim e. T his fact, it seem s, suggests that O a tes’s
experiences with Fernandes were not perhaps so much "new" as
they were extrem e. In any case, this collection m oves the
connection beyond self and the world into more ambiguous are
nas w here reality itself b ecom es "fluid" and "unpossessible."
Certainly this is true o f many of her stories in her 1991
collection H eat and O ther Stories, but it d oes not suggest
that Oates would ever limit herself to such a narrow or static
v is io n . W h ile th e s t o r ie s in N ig h t-S id e ( 1 9 7 7 ) , L a s t
D ays (1 9 8 4 ), and R a v e n ’s Wing (1986) certain ly focu s on
m y sterio u s e le m en ts o f co n scio u sn ess, inclu ding the "dark
side" of human nature, these collections are interspersed with
others that return to O ates’s "daytime" interests in relation
ships and connections with the world. These include Cross
ing the Border (1976), a collection whose stories are highly
interconnected, as will be discussed below; A ll the G ood Peo
p le I ’ ve L eft Behind (1978), in which O ates "memorializes"
those people and places that have sustained her in a sequence
o f stories that are linked by the life of a recurring protagon
ist, a young woman named Annie Quirt who attempts to find
h e r se lf, her id en tity , in rela tio n sh ip s w ith o th ers, m ostly
m en ; A S e n tim e n ta l E d u c a tio n (1 9 7 8 ), w hich is a c o l
lection of very long stories set mostly in Detroit; and The
328
A ssignation (1988), which is a collection of very short stor
ies that "withhold emotion" in order to increase the powerful
impact of their narratives about relationships.
In all of these collections, then, Oates has made a delib
erate attempt at unity in order to provide her readers and her
self with the experience of "constructed knowledge." That her
stories have, over the years, becom e increasingly complex and
ambiguous is not that surprising when they are viewed as a "co
hesive artistic whole" that has never attempted to provide fi
nal answ ers, but rather in vestigates possibilities o f m utual
concern to the self, to others, and to the world. As Oates
has stated, "I believe that writing should re-create a world,
san ctifyin g the real w orld by hon orin g its co m p lex ities." ^
In her stories, as in her collections, then, Oates provides a
p aradoxically u n ified and w idely varied range o f investiga
tions on the self and the soul.
O ne o f the collections in which O ates demonstrates just
how connected are the "parts" to the "whole" is Crossing the
9Q
B o r d e r ^ (1976), which might be referred to as a "compos
ite novel" in that it differs in strategy and form from her
other collections. In this collection each story is an inte
gral part of a sequential whole and to remove even one story
w o u ld sig n ific a n tly a lter th e "totality" o f th e c o lle c tio n ’s
cohesive narrative. In fact, the individuality of the single
329
parts in this collection seem to be subordinated to the whole,
and it is this characteristic that causes it to be more like a
novel than even a unified collection o f stories. And even
though Katherine Bastian offers an interesting reading of this
collection as a story sequence, it seem s she has underesti
m ated th e r ela ted n ess o f the stories just as she m iscasts
O a te s ’s p ersp ectiv e as "a p red om in ately n eg a tiv e ’v isio n .”1
A s I hop e to dem onstrate, Crossing the Border is not cen
tered on the issue of "separation" as Bastian contends, but is
a cohesive, im aginative construct that not only explores but
m odels possibilities for expanded self-awareness and reconcil
iation both with others and with one’s self. D espite Kather
ine B astian’s claim that som e of the stories in this collec
tion are "unrelated," it seems more accurate to recognize that
each story is an indispensable elem ent in the total design.
Certainly, all o f O ates’s collections create a relational con
text for the group of stories, and removing one from any col
lection would be a "loss," but removing one of the stories
from Crossing the Border would be comparable to elim inat
ing a chapter from a novel since each of these stories is es
sential to m ove the unified narrative o f the "book" forward
toward its conclusion.
The issue of sequencing is not, at first, as apparent as
th e u n ity c r e a te d by th e c o n siste n c y in se ttin g or th e
330
m etap h orical im p lication s o f "borders," which reinforce the
idea that both adventures and dangers are encountered in "cros
sing over" into new territory. The unity in setting derives
from the fact that the stories are set in Canada where Oates
lived while teaching at the University of Windsor from 1967 -
1978. This collection can also be examined as relating a num
ber of exchanges that challenge assumptions, and like the ear
lier stories, the reader must be willing to suspend judgment
in order not to simply dismiss this as a collection of tales
about neurotic, self-absorbed people, some of whom are having
affairs, som e getting divorces, and som e staying married, but
who seem wholly unconnected to one another except in those
stories where the names "Renee" and "Evan" clearly establish a
connection. The stories are indeed about such people, but
they also suggest a significant developm ent in O ates’s style
and the sophistication of her inquiry, for this collection is
highly interconnected both them atically and structurally. And
althou gh six of the fifteen stories do d eclare— through the
use of names— that they focus on the relationship between R e
nee and Evan Maynard, a young couple whose marriage both pro
vides and survives a number of challenges, there is a similar
connection among all of the characters in all of the stories,
which only becomes clear when the collection is viewed as a
cohesive artistic construct.
331
The title story for the collection, which opens the book,
is cryptic and disjointed, which suggests the stress o f new
beginnings and fear of the unknown: the couple is leaving home
for work in Canada. The beginnings o f their adventure— both
the m arriage and the journey— are far from idyllic as the
story opens and closes with the young wife waiting in an uncom
fortably hot car for her husband to return from the Sunoco
m en’s room where he has been violently ill. Still, they con
tin u e, and althou gh it is "difficult, for lo v e to com pete"
with the harshness o f this reality, the story closes with a
hopeful, even if desperate, "Anyway: I love you. Anyway:
Here we are" (14).
This story is separated from the next one that clearly fo
cuses on R enee and Evan by three other stories that are about
what can be left behind and what cannot and the mistakes that
can be made with such decisions. In "Love. Friendship." a
young couple, Judith and Larry, are "pursued" even after they
move to another town by their needy, obsessive friend, Blaine,
a person with whom they had at first shared a very close rela
tionship. Blaine begins to accuse them of having abandoned
him, and he tries to wedge them apart by appealing first to
one and then the other. When this doesn’t work, he threatens
suicide and settles for the guilt he can impose by making them
think "we’d have only ourselves to blame, we could enjoy his
332
death agony from our secure smug despicable marriage and our
hideout in a foreign country. . . . Traitors, we were. W e
betrayed him, didn’t we?" (38). And although they cannot dis
pel the thought that they might be "Traitors to their country
and their clo sest friends," the story ends with the w ife’s
sin cere plea: "Please let us go, Blaine, I w hisper. But
he doesn’t hear" (38). Although it would be simple to judge
this cou p le as b ein g cold -h earted , the story suggests that
leave-taking is an inevitable part o f life, and the con n ec
tions to a possessive, destructive love like B laine’s, whether
from a friend or from family, is appropriately broken by the
b on d s o f m arriage or physical d istan ce. T his cou p le, it
seem s, have traveled an identical route as have R enee and
Evan.
The next story, entitled "Hello Fine D ay Isn’t It," tells
of a young wife who is excited by the provincial innocence of
her new home in Canada, especially compared to the violence
and fear she assumes she has left behind in New York. One
afternoon, while her mother is visiting, they encounter a well
groomed, child-like man whom the daughter knows to be slightly
retarded and perfectly harmless. Even so, something about him
worries the mother, and even though the daughter gets angry at
her, reminding her she’s not in the United States (suggesting
that people are more innocent in the small Canadian town where
333
she lives), afterwards the girl locks her door and begins to
worry. Fear, it seems, has no trouble crossing borders.
The story that follows, "Through the Looking Glass" is the
tale of an energetic young priest named Father Colton who is
safe and happy in his academic career and comfortably dis
tanced from others in his religious life. W hen he falls in
love with and m arries an em otionally needy student named
Frieda H olm an, he learns the banality o f suffering, for she
quickly deserts him and robs him of his opportunity to "save"
her as he imagined he could. Like Sister Irene in "The Region
of Ice," Father Colton withdraws from the world, but he plans
to return to it someday, in a year or two.
D espite this hopeful intention, his case, it seems, is ini
tia lly m ore d evastatin g than Sister Ir en e ’s b ecau se he is
banned from the Church and cannot use it as a refuge as Irene
does at the end of her story. H e is not able to make it back
"through the looking glass" even into a semblance of his for
mer life. In other words, he is, as anyone would be, unable
to recapture the exuberant innocence he had to leave behind.
In retrospect, however, this is to his advantage since it was
that innocence— and ego— that caused him to assume he could
save another person from herself just as he believed there
w ould be no sacrifice, only gain, in his own transformation
into a new life. This story does not suggest that risks or
334
change must be avoided; they are, in fact, unavoidable. But
it d oes su ggest, as do several oth er stories in this c o l
lection, that some choices are better than others and that a
p e r so n a ctin g w ith as little self-u n d ersta n d in g as F ather
Colton is quite likely to make mistakes.
These stories, like the others that seem to separate the
tales about R enee and Evan, are actually connections in that
each one exposes an assumption related to the various stages
o f that young couple’s marriage. The first three, which fol
low the beginnings of the marriage and the journey to a new
country, su ggest that old ties, esp ecia lly d estru ctive ones,
can and must be broken, that fear is an internal condition
that travels quite w ell and has no respect for borders, and
that the egoistic hope of changing other people, of "saving"
them, is doomed to fail in the same way that the naive, impul
sive hope of remaking oneself completely is likely to lead to
disillusionm ent. Each of these is an insight that is learned
by young married people, like R enee and Evan although differ
ent from them — surprising variations of them — through the ex
perience of their exchanges with others.
The next two stories "Natural Boundaries" and "Dreams" are
about R enee and Margo Brownell respectively, and although they
are not "related" in the text, they could be the same person,
the day-tim e and th e n igh t-tim e p erso n a lities o f a single
335
psyche. In the first story, R enee is being "pursued" by an
aggressive, domineering, self-interested poet nam ed Karl D av
ies, who is attractive and interesting to her even though she
recognizes his faults. The thought of adultery, however, sur
prises her and she assumes she’s safe from any such tempta
tions because she sublimates her desire by reading about it at
the public library. Margo, on the other hand, is fully aware
of the power of her fear and insecurity as it makes her des
perately dependent in her relationship with David Harris, an
other dom ineering, self-interested man. The issues these wo
men need to confront are quite similar though with R enee they
are considered from the "realistic," objective perspective of
ordinary life while with Margo, they are handled~far more ef-
fectively-in the imaginative, subjective arena of dreams.
In the course of her story, Margo has four dreams: the
first separates her from her com fortable fantasy retreat into
her childhood room; the dream has made this memory a fiction
that no longer provides the experience of escape in the pres
ent. The second dream distances Margo from a memory of her
father, another domineering man in her life whose memory is a
mixture o f punishment and protection, pain and security. In
her third dream, Margo recalls an incident from early adolesc
ence and it is a memory that makes her sound similar to Connie
in "Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?": her naive
336
attitudes toward sexuality end in date-rape, and although she
passes it off as a joke, it is a memory of having no control
and being at another man’s mercy. In this dream, however,
Margo does not look to her father for protection, but crosses
the boundaries of time and calls for David, who does not
come. Upon awaking from this dream, Margo realizes she both
loves and hates her father and David for the weak-willed, de
pendent image of herself that they have encouraged her to
adopt. She also realizes she wants to change her life, and a
marriage to David, which she thought she desperately wanted
and n eed ed , will not accom plish this transformation; it will
prevent it.
In her fourth and final dream, Margo assertively calls to
David, demands that he come to her, and he does. She sees his
face more clearly than when she is awake and she realizes, "He
is a w ell-dressed man, a handsom e man with a dissatisfied
mouth; no one could change that mouth. It was no one’s duty
to change it" (103). She allows the dream to "block" her
first exchanges o f pow erful attraction and need, and after
that "it was the dream experience that was real: the ’ real
ity’ was blocked out and gone. And so it was all over" (103).
After this dream, Margo is able to free herself from David in
her w aking life . Through this interplay o f objective and
s u b j e c t iv e r e a lit ie s , th e c o n t e s t o f w ills b e tw e e n th e
337
unconscious desire for freedom and the conscious need for
security, Oates combines "the terrible power of dreams" (100)
with conscious choice in Margo, the poet, who has learned to
manipulate her fantasies of freedom so that her fantasies of
- i n
fe a r w ill n o t m a n ip u la te h er. u T h is is p r e c ise ly th e
project of "rewriting the self' that R enee, in a more halting,
trial-and-error m ethod, attem pts to accom plish in her waking
life.
The next story in the collection, "Customs," is the chron
icle of a fairly trivial encounter during which R enee is de
tained at the border and has some problems getting through cus
toms. The fear and guilt provoked in her by the incident is
disproportionate to the event. Even so, she survives it and
is actually relieved that Evan was not with her and as she
presses on, determined to reach her destination and make new
frien d s, sh e ex p erien ces n ew —even if in sec u r e — fee lin g s of
independence. The story concludes with the line, "She knew
where she wanted to go, but how to get there?" (117).
The next two stories, which at first seem wholly unrelated
to this one, illustrate the connection b etw een this "act of
will" and similar self-assertions by Vincent Scoville and Aunt
M arte in "The Transformation of V incent Scoville" and "The
Golden Madonna" respectively. In Vincent’s story, he has only
to impose his desires on a literary text in the form of the
338
Kipling-Horne letters he has been asked to study. Although,
at first, he deem s the letters worthless, circumstances force
him to modify this position and through an act of will he b e
com es com pletely absorbed in the letters and finally is even
in fa tu a te d w ith and p r o te c tiv e o f th e slightly cross-eyed
author, V iolet Kipling H orne. B ecause this is an exchange
between a person and a text, Vincent meets no resistance at
all to his imposition of desire. In her story, however, Aunt
Marte is dealing with a living, breathing person in her ne
phew, Alexander, to whom she tells incredible family secrets
that may be true or may be lies. They both acknowledge that
he has the freedom to believe them or not, and although he
alm ost succumbs to her sexual advances, he eventually resists
her desires and runs out into the night, away from her. This
contrast seem s to suggest that while one can create a com
p le te ly fu lfillin g and s e lf-e n c lo s e d fa n ta sy life in lite r a
ture, the world has a will of its own, a will that often re
sists on e p e rso n ’s im aginative im position of their p ersp ec
tive, and in this respect, R e n e e ’s encounter at the border
becom es an example of how to negotiate between these objective
and subjective realities in order to reach one’s destination.
The connection between the next two stories "The Scream"
and "The Liberation o f Jake Hanley" is rather oblique, but
they too are interwoven into the texture of this "composite"
339
text. In the first story, the reader learns that R enee and
Karl have becom e lovers, but this course of action has not
taken her to where she wanted to go: "She had hoped that
falling in love would allow her to love herself, once again,
or to halfway respect herself; but it had not worked out that
way" (172). While at a local museum looking at a collection
of wartime photographs, R enee considers the option of leaving
her husband Evan, of "taking" som eone else’s husband, a man
who is also a father, but she cannot reconcile this personal,
local desire "that could not matter" against the enormity of
suffering and happiness she witnesses in the "humanity" of the
photographs before her. Therefore, she decides against her
lover: she chooses instead the "collective human self' with
its "soundless scream . Im m ortal. A nnihilating everything
else" (179) over the temptations of "the merely personal, the
m erely local and e m o t i o n a l . F r o m this perspective, the
reader sees "The Liberation of Jake Hanley" as "a way I might
have gone," which Oates says about her story "The Dead."
H an ley’s "liberation"— he agrees to his w ife’s dem ands for a
divorce-could also have been R enee’s if she had not decided
against her lover. And while Hanley does feel "free" from the
tu r b u le n c e o f fam ily life , he is a lso p a th e tic a lly a lo n e ,
mostly living in his office at the English Department, where
he discovers other lost souls (including Scoville) cast adrift
340
from the wreckage of their personal lives. In contrast, this
choice does not seem preferable to the one R enee has made.
During the course of these stories, the reader has been
given glimpses of the deterioration in R enee’s and Evan’s re
lation sh ip . D esp ite their stoic beginnings, the couple has
grown apart: R enee is involved in her attempt to reconcile a
need for autonomy with a desire for connectedness, and Evan
has withdrawn into a proud silen ce over his dissatisfaction
with his career. In the story "An Incident in the Park," the
reader is allowed to view the situation from Evan’s point of
view. H e has left work but is afraid to go home so early in
the day, afraid of what he might discover, and so he wanders
in the park, angry and upset— not so much over the fact that
R en ee might have been unfaithful, but that she might be in
love with som eone else.
While in the park, he sees an old man, probably drunk and
c er ta in ly d e lu sio n a l, w ho is talk in g angrily w ith h im self.
W hile Evan reassures him self that he is not talking aloud,
he identifies with the old man’s pain, and goes over to him
asking if he can help. Evan is brushed aside by a profes
sional, com petent patrolman who handles the situation without
him. As with his marriage, Evan feels cast aside, but the
sympathetic, connected behavior he has just demonstrated with
the old man is precisely the course he needs to take to break
341
through the wall of silence he has erected between himself and
his wife.
The collection does indeed end with a story of reconcilia
tion, a story that ends with the couple . . safe, in our
own b ed / Evan said sleepily. ’You see. . . ?’" (256). This
is the conclusion to the co u p le’s survival o f a frightening,
fierce storm , a storm that R en ee frantically wants to run
from, but which Evan decides to "wait out" in "River Rising."
This story has been preceded by two stories that consider al
ternate view s o f forgiveness: "Falling in L ove in A shton,
British Columbia" connects carnal love and the need to explore
oth er lives w ith the creative im pulse, which in this story,
the wife realizes and forgives; and "The Tempter," which is
the story of a wife who cannot give up her bitterness toward a
husband who has betrayed and abandoned her, but who also can
not deny him his dying request for a connection to estranged
family and friends, and so she breaks down and tells him the
stories of their lives-knowledge he so desperately craves.
Through the relatedness of these stories and the connec
tions among the characters in them, Oates provokes resonance
and continuity by linking one voice with many in the develop
m ental progress of the recurring protagonist, R en ee. These
sto r ie s, in fact, su ggest a seq u en tia l d ev elo p m en t in the
character, w hich also occurs w ith O a tes’s character A nnie
342
Q uirt in A ll the G ood P eople I L e ft B ehind. This con
tinuity of character and sequencing of events among seemingly
in d ep en d en t stories is shared, in varying degrees, by such
other literary characters as Faulkner’s Ike M cCaslin in Go
D ow n, M oses (1 9 4 2 ), A n d erson ’s G eorge W illard in Wines-
burg, Ohio (1919), Hemingway’s Nick Adams in In Our Time
( 1 9 2 5 ) , S a lin g e r ’s F ra n n y in N in e S to r ie s ( 1 9 5 3 ) and
Franny and Zooey (1961), and Daniel M enaker’s David Leon
ard in The O ld L e ft (1 9 8 7 ). L ike th e se w ork s, O a te s’s
c o lle c t io n C ro ssin g th e B o rd er blu rs th e b o u n d a rie s b e
tween the short story and the novel by creating a "composite"
p o r t r a i t o f a c h a r a c t e r . P e r h a p s i r o n i c a l l y , t h e
fragm entation o f the portrait within a context that relates
those fragments to one another creates the need to view the
character as "individual" and "universal" at the sam e tim e.
It is, in fact, a narrative strategy that stresses relatedness
by requiring that the necessary connections be made by the
r e a d e r , w h o th e r e b y ex p erien ces c o n n e c tiv ity in th e e x
change with the text.
The classic exam ple o f this type o f story sequence, of
cou rse, is Sherw ood A nderson’s Winesburg, Ohio (1919), in
which not only setting but the continual appearance of one
character, G eorge W illard, and the b ook ’s eventual "climax"
that focuses on an event in his life also provide unity to the
343
entire work. O ates’s collection is similarly unified through
setting and it also focu ses on R e n e e ’s conflicted sense of
h e r se lf, w h ich c o m p lic a te s her r e la tio n sh ip s w ith o th ers.
That R en ee is "central" to this collection is evident in the
fact that the book opens and closes with stories about her,
and th e final story in the c o llec tio n , "River Rising," r e
solves the narrative’s primary conflict: the tension betw een
Evan and R en ee. In this way, Crossing the Border can be
seen as a progressive, cohesive narrative, which formally in
v ites th e read er to "reassem ble" the p u zzle-p ieces of the
story into a structural whole.
This claim is also supported in the manuscript notes to
th e co llec tio n , w hich in d icate that just b efore publication,
Oates added one story, probably "The Tempter," which balances
th e n eed to forgive--illu strated in th e previous story— with
the difficulty of doing so, both of which must be understood
b e fo re the recon ciliation o f "River Rising" can b e accom
plished. In the same way, examining this work as a narrative
whole shows the reader that all of these stories can be viewed
as exp lorin g a sin gle life , ostensibly R e n e e ’s. The book
starts w ith the stress of new beginnings, which necessitates
leave-taking and offers the delusive prom ise of an easy or
com plete transformation, a promise that is dispelled by learn
in g th a t fe a r tra v els w ith in and c a n n o t sim p ly b e le ft
344
behind. The disappointed expectations of a new marriage are
then followed by the attempt to sublimate desire, but reading
hardly substitutes for experience, and so risks must be con
sciously undertaken, and when this "willful" attempt to design
one’s own life is joined with the unconscious, through dreams,
the self is able to "rewrite" its fate. This enables o n e ’s
personality to expand through experiments that negotiate with
life both in fiction and reality, which may lead to an even
m ore daring experim ent— adulterous love— a love that feeds the
personal self at the expense of connections to "the collective
human s e lf of family and humanity. Seeing that such self-ab
sorbed freedom is no "liberation" at all, the person is then
likely to re-enter the original relationship and encourage the
developm ent of an empathic, sympathetic perspective in which
each can com e to understand the other’s point o f view, a
p o sitio n from w hich forgiven ess, although difficult, can be
achieved.
The reconciliation, then, that R enee and Evan experience
at the of this collection is not simply theirs, but belongs as
well to the author and the readers who in the course of shar
ing this experience have empathically crossed the borders that
separate the "surprising variations of o n e s e lf from the au
thentic self that these stories are searching for. In fact,
th e to ta lity o f th e text rep lica tes th e totality o f a life,
345
not on e life, but a fictionally reconstructed possibility for
all lives. The conclusion embodies an optimistic and hopeful
perspective, which confirms that Ellen Friedman is quite right
in statin g that "O ates’s art, in the best artistic tradition,
is moral, intent on evoking exhoratory images."
In th is s e n s e , C rossin g th e B o rd e r is an e x c e lle n t
example of O ates’s attempts to stretch the boundaries of the
known, to redraw the outlines of the familiar, and to cross
the borders that separate individual consciousnesses in time
and space. Each of her collections, in fact, is organized so
that the sum of the parts creates a whole that is extended and
enlarged in its implications and significance. Like the seem
ingly random and disparate events in an individual life, which
O ates contends can be organized in a narrative constructed
through memory and imagination, each story is carefully placed
within a context that is intended "to add up to som e sense."
T h o se con texts, it seem s, invariably situate the self in a
position of relatedness with other people, the mundane world,
and the eternal world of the sacred. That Oates further en
r ic h e s th is r e la tio n a l p e r s p e c tiv e w ith a llu sio n s to and
echoes of other writers’ works makes the critical attempt to
situate her w ithin a particular literary or philosophical tra
dition or to categorize her work within the confines of a
specific style or m ode a futile attem pt, for, as one of her
346
characters says, "it is a foolish business, and futile, seeing
connections where there are none or may in fact be many, too
many for the mind’s eye. . .
CHAPTER FIVE: NOTES
347
^Robert Phillips, "Joyce Carol Oates: The Art of F ic
tio n L X X II," C on versations with Joyce Carol O ates, ed.
Lee Milazzo (Jackson: University of Mississippi Press, 1989)
^Mary Field Belenky et al., Women’ s Ways of Knowing:
The Development of Self, Voice, and Mind (New York: Basic
Books, 1986) 15.
^Belenky 137.
^Jurgen Habermas in Belenky 145-6.
^M ichael and Ariane Batterberry, "Focus on Joyce Carol
O a te s," C o n ve rsa tio n s with Joyce C a ro l O a te s, ed . L e e
M ilazzo (Jackson: University of M ississippi Press, 1989)
45.
W alter C lem ons, "Joyce Carol O ates: Love and V io
lence," Conversations with Joyce Carol Oates, ed. L ee M i
lazzo (Jackson: U niversity o f M ississippi Press, 1989)
35.
^L eif Sjoberg;, "An Interview with Joyce Carol Oates,"
C o n ve rsa tio n s w ith Joyce C a ro l O a te s , e d . L e e M ilazzo
(Jackson: University of Mississippi Press, 1989) 110.
O
°This is a term coined by Eric Rabkin in 1976 and used
by Ann R. Morris and Margaret M. Dunn in their proposal for
the new "Studies in Genre" series to be published by Twayne
Publishers. Although Morris and Dunn contend that this genre
is more closely related to the novel than the short story, its
usefulness to this study is in its focus on the relationship
of the "parts" to the whole."
348
CHAPTER FIVE: NOTES
^Michael Schumaker, "Joyce Carol Oates and the Hardest
P art o f W riting," C o n versa tio n s with Joyce C arol O ates,
ed. Lee M ilazzo (Jackson: University o f Mississippi Press,
1989) 145.
1 fl
Robert Luscher, "The Short Story Sequence: An Open
Book," Short Story Theory at a Crossroads, ed . L oh afer
and Clarey (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press,
1989) 167.
-^Clemons 34-5.
1 7
H e in z K o h u t, S e lf P sych ology a n f th e H u m a n itie s
(New York: W. W. Norton, 1985) 222.
■^Sjoberg 117.
■^Clemons 39.
1 5
x J a cq u es D errid a , The E ar o f the Other (L incoln :
University of Nebraska Press, 1985) 51.
-^ D ian e Skafte, "Video in Groups: Im plications for a
Social Theory o f the Self," International Journal o f Group
Psychotherapy 37, no.3 (July 1987) 400.
17Phillips 68.
-^Schumaker 145.
19Skafte 394.
90
Linda K uehl, "An Interview with Joyce Carol Oates,"
C o n ve rsa tio n s w ith Joyce C a ro l O a tes, e d . L e e M ilazzo
(Jackson: University of Mississippi Press, 1989) 12.
349
CHAPTER FIVE: NOTES
^ J o y c e C arol O ates, N ew H eaven, N ew Earth: The
Visionary Experience in Literature (N ew York: F aw cett
Books, 1974) 274,275.
A nthony Paul Kerby, Narrative and the Self (B loom
in g to n and In d ian ap olis: Indiana S tate U n iversity P ress,
1991) 87.
^ J o e D a v id B ella m y , "The D ark L ady o f A m erica n
L etters," C onversations with Joyce Carol Oates, ed. L ee
M ilazzo (Jackson: U niversity o f M ississippi Press, 1989)
19.
^ R o n a ld D eF eo, "Only Prarie D og Mounds," Critical Es
says on Joyce Carol Oates, ed. Linda Wagner (Boston: G. K.
Hall, 1979) 31.
^ N o t e s from th e J o y c e C arol O a tes A rch iv e, B ird
Library, Syracuse University, New York, n. p.
^ O a tes, "Speculations" 6.
^ J o y c e Carol O ates, "Speculations on the Novel," NBA
Authors Speak Out, 25th Anniversary o f the National Book
Awards (New York: Viking Press, 1974) 6.
^ J o y c e Carol O ates, afterword, The Poisoned Kiss and
Other Stories from the Portuguese (N ew York: Vanguard
Press, 1975) n. p.
^ J o y c e C a r o l O a t e s , C ro ssin g th e B o rd e r (N e w
York: The Vanguard Press, 1976).
350
CHAPTER FIVE: NOTES
Of)
M any psychologists, including Jung, Kohut, and Martin
agree on the dynamics of this process. According to Jung, it
is the "advantageuos" process whereby a conceptually construc
ted self replaces "instinctual nature;" Kohut sees it as the
healing process o f "reintegration" that can result from ther
apy for an emotionally damaged person; and Martin discusses it
as the means by which artists learn to manipulate their fan
tasies in order not to be controlled by them, which he b e
lieves to be the difference between creative and neurotic be
havior. Similarly, Gunn, Iser, and Kerby describe this pro
cess in literary term s as resulting in the reconstruction of
o n e ’s reality b ased on an in teractive relationship betw een
literature and language.
J o y ce C arol O a tes, The Profane A rt (N ew York:
Dutton, 1983) 176.
In an interview with Walter Clemons, Oates referred to
the character Ilena in her story "The Dead" as an "alternate
self." She explained that "sometimes a crossroad appears and
one can go one direction or another. Sometimes just writing a
story about it, mapping out these directions, saves one from
doing it, and maybe in reading it som eone else might be saved
from it, too." See C lem on’s interview entitled "Joyce Carol
O ates: L ove and Violence," Conversations with Joyce Carol
Oates 36.
o a
J J E lle n F r ie d m a n , Jo yce C a ro l O a te s (N e w Y o rk :
Frederick Ungar Publishing Company, 1980) 129.
Joyce Carol Oates, "The Crying Baby," Heat and Other
Stories (new York: Duttton, 1991) 357.
351
CHAPTER SIX
FROM REALISM TO FANTASY
In his b ook The Uses o f Literature (1982), Italo Cal-
vino explains that the term "fantasy," at least in French lit
erary language, usually refers to "horror stories," which he
su ggests "involve a som ew hat nineteenth-century relationship
with the reader." 1 That Oates enjoys the richness and depth
o f this type o f "relationsh ip’ is not only evid en t in her
e a rlie r w orks, such as her Bellefleur trilogy, but also in
her recent writings. In the notes to her 1990 novel Because
It Is Bitter, A nd Because It Is My Heart, she comments on
the central section of the novel, which is entitled "Torsion,"
e x p l a i n i n g t h a t it is "a f a n t a s y w it h a r e a l i s t i c /
n atu ralistic / historic v en eer, lik e all my work. perhaps
’fantasy’ is too strong: romance, parable, Hawthornian leg
end." She further comments that "The legend has its fantasti
cal / nighttime elem ents . . . corresponding to what we want
or im agine we want; but its naturalistic / daytime elem ents
suggest that it is also real. ’real’ enough, given the struc
tural demands of fiction."^
352
T his d escrip tion , in fact, lists the qualities present in
all O ates’s work: the external casem ent of a realistic, his
toric fram ework that en closes a "nighttime," dreamlike real
ity, which, as Freud has suggested, presents the objects of
"wish-fulfillment" to the dreamer in ways that are puzzlin g-
like "parables." This "nighttime" elem ent also refers to the
life of the unconscious as it is revealed in dreams, which,
like H aw thorne’s stories— often legends and rom ances— blur the
distinctions betw een reality and fantasy in ways that directly
involve the reader.
Two other important aspects of this self-defining descrip
tion are the implicit concepts behind O ates’s statements about
the legend and art itself. O ates’s idea of the legend is that
it recalls the past so that people, places, and events may be
"meditated upon afterwards," which affirms her idea that "part
o f the motive for writing seems to me the act of conscious mem
ory."^ To O ates, o f course, memory is a mysterious func
tion that in volves b oth im agination and interpretation and
which links the individual with the "luminosity" of the sacred
through its co n n ectio n s to u n con sciou s p rocesses. A ll o f
this, however, is being accomplished within the world of the
artistic product, which O ates acknow ledges is not real but
"real enough." In this way, she has attempted to synthesize
an en orm ou s range o f antip od al features in the h op e of
353
provoking both emotion and an extended level of awareness in
her readers.
And so, despite O ates’s musing that "fantasy" might be too
strong a term, one comes to understand that it is an important
elem en t in all her writing, which attem pts to achieve pre
cisely the experien ce that Calvino describes as necessary to
the "game" of fantasy:
if the reader wishes to take part in the game
(at least with som e part of himself) he has to
believe in w hat he is reading, and be p re
pared to be seized by an alm ost physiological
emotion . . . and seek an explanation of it as
he would in real life.^
According to Calvino, this experience requires a "leap on the
part of the reader into the em otional flood of the text."^
B eca u se O a te s’s w ork is o ften "disruptive" or "disturbing"
this is no doubt a difficult "leap of faith" for many readers,
and yet it is necessary if the reader is to be able, as Oates
says, to "comprehend feelingly."^
O a te s ’s m ost recen t c o llec tio n called H eat and Other
S t o r i e s ^ ( 1 9 9 1 ) r e v e a ls a c o n t in u in g in t e r e s t in th e
lim inal quality o f "borders," and th ese stories sequentially,
progressively, blur the boundaries of the known and the real
by merging them with mystery, imagination, and fantasy. A c
cording to Oates, "All serious art attempts the integration of
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o p p o sites: s e lf and ’o th e r ,’ inn er and outer worlds, the
tem p o ra l and the tim e le ss— the d iverse, osten sib ly w arring
parts of the human mind." In order to accomplish this, Oates
believes the writer must "make the eternal come alive in the
fam iliar, even regional and top ical g u ises— for w ithout the
th ree d im en sion al reality o f ordinary life, the ’etern al’ is
n o t a v a ila b le for our e x p e r i e n c e . P r e c i s e l y such c o n
trary p e r sp e c tiv e s are jo in ed in this c o llec tio n , w hich is
divided into three sections, each of which enlarges the m ean
ing of the others.
T he first section contains realistic stories that exam ine
ch o ices, esp ecially secrets, that m ust be negotiated in the
exchanges in which characters must confront both them selves
and others. The second section, the largest, is comprised of
sto r ie s that are se lf-r e fe r e n tia l: " m eta-fiction " that not
only draws attention to itself as a construct, but by virtue
1 n
o f "the unavoidable interpretative dim ension o f memory,"
to use Kerby’s phrase, suggests that life is also a construct.
In this sense, the stories do not simply compare fiction and
life, but they blur the boundaries between these two experi
ences, raising the question of whether or not they are even
distinguishable. The last section erases this boundary and
"reality" becom es the product of a highly subjective, imagina
tive interpretation o f events, yet th ese undisguised fantasies
355
reveal "truths" about the objective world. The general move
ment of the collection is from realism to metafiction to fan
tasy, a m ovem ent that requires an increasingly receptive, em-
pathic stance on the part of the reader, who is made to wonder
if the writing "is fantasy securely grounded in naturalism; or
is it naturalism subtly grounded in fan tasy?" ^ In either
c a se, as exch an ges, th ese stories also p rovide "collisions"
since each individual story questions assum ptions just as the
collection as a whole challenges the fundamental assumption of
a fixed reality.
The collection opens with a story called "House Hunting,"
in which a young married man, Joel Collier, sets out to save
his marriage but finds he must first save himself. Joel trav
els to Pennsylvania in order to find a house where he hopes he
and his wife can "start over" and leave behind the grief of
having lost their newborn child. Joel believes this grief has
affected his wife m ore profoundly than him self, and as she
continues to withdraw into herself, away from him, he desper
ately wants to pull her back but does not know how. To Joel,
the choice of physically moving to another state is the only
solution he can imagine, and he has not dared to consider that
grief— like fear— travels within.
O nce in Pennsylvania, Joel becom es increasingly frantic,
looking through house after house, not quite sure what he is
356
search in g for, but declarin g "I’ll know it w hen I see it"
(8). Eventually, he finds him self in the right house: "He
walked through the downstairs rooms, slowly, reverently, star
ing and blinking. Coming home! Coming home!" (18). This
expression, suggestive of the "eternal" perspective that O ates
r e p r e se n ts in th e "three d im e n sio n a l r e a lity o f ordinary
life," also indicates that Joel is ready for a reconciliation
among "the warring parts" of his own mind. Joel’s conflict is
that he has not yet consciously acknowledged the darkness of
his own grief at the loss of the child, his fear of losing his
wife, or even his own terrified glimpse at mortality, prompted
by the sight of his premature child. Instead, Joel only recog
n izes— though he does not fully understand— his "daytime" de
sire for a settled, dom estic life. The connection betw een
th ese conscious and unconscious realities begins to tease at
his aw areness in the form of distant, half-heard sounds of
children laughing or singing, which he at first attem pts to
explain as wind, or a radio, or som e other logical phenomenon.
Similarly, when the edges of his sight catch fleeting, elusive
im ages of light, he wonders if these might not be children
playing in the upstairs rooms or hallways of the house.
These sights and sounds may indeed be hallucinatory, which
to O ates, makes them exceedingly important. They are not
sh a r e d by M rs. B ro d y , th e r e a l e s t a t e b r o k e r w h o is
357
accompanying Joel on his tour of the house. M ore importantly,
however, they suggest that Joel is in the midst o f a crisis
that is demanding its own resolution. According to Jung, "the
activation of unconscious fantasies is a process that occurs
1 7
w h en c o n sc io u sn e ss fin d s its e lf in a critical situation."
B e c a u se J o el d o e s not yet u n d ersta n d his crisis, he is
confused and can only wonder if he has actually seen or heard
anything at all.
Despite his confusion and his doubts, Joel climbs a stair
case to a small attic room that is dusty and empty but suf
fused with sunlight, and this is where he has his revelation:
"He knew his life was pointless, yet he wanted to live. There
was no purpose to it, yet he wanted to live. H e was desper
ate, greedy, sham eless-he wanted to live" (23). This declara
tion can only be recognized as celebratory within the context
o f the story, for Joel is not in any physical danger from
external sources nor has he considered suicide, but he is in
danger o f losing his desire to live by losing his identity,
his self, which he sees-w ith ou t question--as a shadowy figure
"too weak to move" (22) lying on the abandoned bed in the room
where he has his revelation. The exhaustion that his wife,
Kim, exhibited quite openly in response to her grief has also
infected Joel though it was hidden from him— and was therefore
358
m ore critical— in his attem pt to sublimate his grief and fear
in the bustle and activity of "house hunting."
Through images, or what Calvino calls "the symbolic re-
1 ^
qu irem en ts o f the u n con sciou s, J th e story su ggests that
J o el’s desire for life is not very different from the sam e
instinctual drive in the wasp, buzzing on the windowsill in
that attic room , but Joel n otices in am azem ent that this
creature is still stubbornly alive. This will to live, which
is described by Dylan Thomas as "The force that through the
g reen fu se drives the f l o w e r , i s also W allace S te v en ’s
"concupiscent curds," and it is celebrated in the first stanza
of Y eats’s "Sailing to Byzantium." This phenom enon connects
all living things and is at once representative of the most
b asic in stin cts and th e m ost creative im pulses p ossible to
humanity. That Joel becomes conscious of this drive suggests
that he has found what he was "hunting" for: that small,
dusty attic room that he is surprised to find "empty," neither
filled with demons nor wonders, is the core of his most inter
ior self, which is represented in the archetypal image of the
h ou se. H is recognition, acknowledgment, and acceptance of
this insight is a victory, as suggested in the story’s closing
line: "So close to extinction, to move an inch was to move a
thousand miles" (23).
359
A similar "small victory," if survival can be described as
small, is celebrated at the end of the story that closes the
collection. This story, called "Family," which won an award
in the 1990 Y ear’s Best Fantasy series, obliterates the tradi
tional concepts of family in a futuristic depiction of a pol
luted, warring world where mothers and fathers are casually re
placed and soon forgotten. Even so, there is an enduring
unity among the survivors— new ones and old— and the story con
cludes w ith these diseased, m urderous, seem ingly interchang-
able people gathered together singing joyfully. In them, the
reader sees an unmistakably human impulse to band together, to
be connected, and to celebrate the continuation of life even
when it appears to be, from all exterior perspectives, despic
able. The note that introduces this story in its original ver
sion, which w as published in Omni m agazine in D ecem ber
1989, also foregrounds continuity over disruption: "Times of
civil u n rest o ften inspire radical ch a n g e— even o f society’s
most basic structures. Their essence, however, can remain the
sa m e ." ^ T hat e sse n c e, this story suggests, is the desire
for con nectedn ess. T he revisions to the original magazine
v e r sio n o f "Family," m ostly ch an ges in d ialogu e, h elp to
incorporate the story into the collection by naming it as a
story and by m ore directly callin g into question the dif
fe r e n c e s b e tw e e n o b jectiv e and su b jective r ea litie s. For
360
exam p le, in th e original, the narrator is accused of lying
when she calls her brothers and sisters to see a rainbow that
disappears before they com e to the window, and her father
rebukes her: "Father said, frowning, ’D on ’t say such things
at all if you aren’t certain they will be true for others, not
sim p ly for y o u r s e lf .’" In th e c o lle c t e d v e r sio n , O a tes
revised this exchange to read "Father laid his hand on my
head, saying, with a smiling frown, ’D on’t speak of anything
if you aren’t certain it will be true for others, not simply
for yourself. D o you understand?’" and the child replies,
"’Yes, Father,’ I said quietly. Though I did not understand"
( 3 8 1 ) . T o th e c h ild , w h o s e p e r s p e c t iv e is n a tu r a lly
su b je c tiv e , th e w orld is the way she se e s it, so sh e is
p u zz led by th e issu e o f "truth," e sp ecia lly th e id ea that
another’s truth might be different from her own.
T he first and last sections of H eat and Other Stories,
then, are in direct contrast to one another in that one des
cribes "ordinary life," which it elevates to the level of mys
tery through the use o f symbols while the other presents a
"fantastic" reality that reveals ordinary truths. T hese are
seemingly antithetical perspectives, and yet through the medi
ation of Section II, they point to the same conclusion, a con
clusion also reached by Anthony Kerby in his book Narrative
and the Self: "language is viewed not simply as a tool for
361
communicating or mirroring back what we otherwise discover in
our reality but is itself an important formative part of that
r e a lity , p a rt o f its v ery te x tu r e . T h is id e a is th e
thread that integrates all o f the stories in this collection,
for w hile Section I realistically exam ines choices, especially
as these reveal identity and the assumptions that support it,
Section II suggests that reality need not only provide a "col
lision," but it can be negotiated, and Section III stretches
the boundaries o f that negotiation into the imaginative realm
of fantasy.
S ectio n I contains such apparently disparate stories as
"The Knife," "The Hair," and "The Boyfriend." In the first of
these, a young mother named Harriet must face two drug-crazed,
ruthless burglars who break into her home and threaten her and
her young daughter in the father’s absence. Throughout the
story, the m other is mostly concerned with remaining calm,
b e in g se n s ib le , and, at first, sh e tries to m ain tain this
stance by not telling her husband or the police that one of
the two men did indeed rape her. The story concludes, how
ever, with a self-affirming decision: "That evening she would
tell her husband about the rape. And what would happen, as a
consequence, would happen" (38). This is a bold decision for
a woman preoccupied with decorum and who has a profound fear
for her family’s personal reputation as well as her husband’s
362
p ro fessio n a l standing. N evertheless, the conclusion to the
story makes it clear that she must be willing even to risk
rejection by her husband, for her choices are truth or insan
ity. Like Oates, she recognizes this is "a risk that must be
taken," and so she chooses truth even though she will not be
able to control how it is interpreted by others.
The other two stories mentioned above also end with affir
mations that require a reshaping of identity. In "The Hair" a
socially am bitious couple walks away from their "prestigious"
frien d s w hen th ey finally adm it to th em selv es that th ese
h igh ly sou gh t-after p e o p le are sm all-m in ded, sm all-h earted
bigots. Even so, this couple’s victory is qualified and prom
ises to be limited and temporary due to their own lack of self
understanding. In "The Boyfriend," Miriam, a seemingly self-
sufficient young woman with a Ph.D., "hadn’t made any mis
takes, at least any serious mistakes, in quite a while. So
she’d becom e complacent" (69). During the course of the story,
however, she makes the serious mistake of taking up with an
abusive man named McCurdy, who beats her severely. The story
closes with Miriam making her way to a form er boyfriend’s
house, a lover with whom she had enjoyed a positive relation
ship that she let casually slip away. H er final statem ent,
spoken while waking from a frightening dream, is a mirror
image of Joel’s revelation: " ’I don’ t want to die. I’m not
363
ready’" (81), and the story concludes with M eriam ’s sleepy
"yes"— an affirmation of both life and love.
Each of these characters must make choices that demand
they orient themselves in moral space by clarifying their view
of themselves and establishing a new identity based on an en
hanced understanding of their own desires, fears, and motives.
T he variance in their successes is often the result o f their
relative abilities to bridge the gap between conscious and un
conscious worlds. Joel’s challenge, for example, is to sur
vive the process o f understanding and acknowledging his own
d eep est desires and fears. This challenge com es from his
self, his unconscious, and its resolution is entirely internal
even though the need to finally listen to the unconscious was
provoked by external events and no doubt will influence his
futu re "external" relation s w ith oth ers, especially his w ife.
Ironically, the ostensible conflict o f saving his m arriage is
left unresolved at the end of the story, which forces the read
er’s attention back onto the subject of his interior self and
its stubborn will to live.
In the same way, Harriet of "The Knife" has to reconsider
her identity "as a woman who took control of situations, a w o
man who was mature, responsible, not hysterical— a woman with
a steady, level gaze whom you could trust" (26), for she is
forced to make a choice that requires her to give up the
364
illu sion o f control: she cannot d eterm in e or design the
responses she will have to endure or accept from her husband,
her neighbors, or others who hear the news of her rape. This
story, too, is threaded with irony, for H arriet understands
the mere fact of her survival as a victory. In the story, the
end o f the attack— a situation in which she did not "take
control"— is directly followed by a memory from childhood when
her survival from a bad fall became "legendary" in her family.
She knows too well that her having survived a rape will not be
celebrated in the same fashion though she is no more (or less)
responsible for the rape than she was for the fall.
The central irony of the story, however, is that Harriet’s
original concept of herself as mature and steady is mistaken,
based on the simulacrum of these qualities, which manifests
itself as her desire to keep secrets, m aintain appearances.
This positive concept o f herself existed only as a potential
ity, but it is a potentiality that she achieves by escaping
madness and embracing the harsh and frightening truth about
herself and her situation. By surviving not only the attack
but a lso the p rocess o f disillusionm ent, H arriet gains the
self understanding necessary to strengthen her identity.
The final three stories of Section I conclude with choices
that are not affirmations but which suggest the consequences
o f a p erson taking action s b ased on lim ited or d elu d ed
365
se lf-u n d e r sta n d in g . In th e s e c tio n ’s fin al story, en titled
"Naked,” a woman very much like the one encountered in "The
Knife," that is, a w om an con cern ed w ith m aintaining her
dignity and social standing, is attacked, beaten, robbed, and
stripped naked by several black children who accost her in the
park. She is extremely surprised by the fury of the attack,
and she rehearses her report to the police, which she intends
to p r e fa c e by a sser tin g th at sh e is not a racist. T he
e x trem ity o f this exch an ge, h ow ever, has left her rather
confused about who she is or what she believes.
Rather stubbornly, she does not call for help but instead
she "sneaks" home, hiding behind bushes and making her way
through the woods in order to avoid the busy streets where no
doubt som eone would see her nakedness. Once home, even though
she "wanted so desperately to get home," she feels no emotion
at seeing her husband or son who appear to her as "stran
gers." She is watching them from the backyard where she is
still hiding, and as if she has anticipated their confused,
intrusive questions, she thinks to herself "I do what I want
to d o " although this is difficult to reconcile with her pre
sent situation: "So in the dark below the house, squatting
where no one could see, she waited naked— until such time it
would becom e known to her why she was waiting" (138). This
woman, unlike the main character in "The Knife," is not able
366
to give up her delusion o f self-sufficiency and reach out to
another or others for the solace she so desperately needs.
Another female protagonist, Lydia Freeman, is faced with a
life-a lterin g ch o ice in the story "Morning," which is quite
close to being a compressed version of the entire book Cros
sing the Border. While Lydia is a young philosophy student
at college, and she knows that Schopenhauer has warned that
"Passion is fa c e le s s a n d m ere b lin d n e ss o f w ill " (1 0 3 ),
she decides (unlike R enee in the previous book) to leave her
husband, Meredith, and go off into the country with her lover,
Scott Chaudry, one of her teachers. She has largely chosen
Scott over Meredith because her lover, an older, married man
and a father, seem s "so com fortable in his physicality, so
instinctive in ways o f demonstrating love" (102) whereas her
husband is intense and moody and obsessively absorbed in writ
ing his dissertation.
The story concludes with Lydia awakening "with her knuck
les jammed against her mouth" (122). It is just before dawn
and Lydia and Scott have spent the night at his dilapidated
farmhouse, away from the city, and as she awakes, Lydia real
izes it is a cold, unfamiliar place and that her lover also
looks strange, unfamiliar, and even unattractive. This young
woman, who greeted life with a willful hunger, exclaiming "I
want to learn! I want to know! I want, want!" (102), has
367
gotten her wish, but it is not what she expected. The final
image of the story is of Lydia, looking out a window, not at
the pleasant scene that would have appeared if it were clear,
the author tells the reader, but at a dismal, misty scene ob
scured by fog: "It is the first morning o f her new life"
(122). Lydia, it seems, has not moved any closer to the "Pla
tonic abstractions" she b elieves in; instead, she has slipped
into a relationship even less honest than the one she left
behind.
In a story that declares that its topic is "Passion" in
its title, Dennis, a young man in his second marriage, learns
that his first wife, Rona, has committed suicide. H e becomes
ob sessed with her death, eventually convincing him self that
she would not have taken her own life; she must have been mur
dered. D ennis’ m em ories of his hot-tem pered, often vicious
and accusatory former wife begin to crowd out his present
life, which is rather comfortable and ordinary, with his new
wife Charlotte and their daughter Suzanne. This displacement
is suggested by O ates in a very subtle, almost imperceptible,
use of "now" in the description of Dennis’ memories:
Signing the divorce papers had been a relief to
him after years of protracted anxiety; his grief
at the breakup of the marriage, and his loss of
Rona, was behind him and, he’d thought, rapidly
retreating, like a scene o f devastation view ed
368
from a speeding car. And now the woman was hot
eyed, m urderous, her face drained w hite. "I
h a te you!" she was saying, incredibly. "How
could you let this happen to us?" (84)
D ennis’ memory of this final, ugly argument with Rona in a
restau ran t fills his p resen t life w ith the sam e anger and
shame he experienced when it first happened, when Rona accused
him of lacking character and of not being "a man of passion"—
an accusation he fears is true.
The story concludes with a similar argument between Dennis
and Charlotte, and the new wife, like the former one, attacks
him: "She came at him again as if to slap or claw, and he
seized her wrists and forced her down clumsily. They were
both panting, trembling badly" (100). Charlotte accuses him
of still loving Rona, and when he realizes the mistake of de
fending him self by saying, "I’m not in love with anyone," he
wants "to touch her, to comfort her, yet he couldn’t bring him
self to touch her" (100). The final paragraph of the story re
turns Dennis to his original concern: "It frightened him, the
emotion he felt— its crudeness, violence. H e wondered was it
passion. H e wondered was it anything to which he might give a
name" (100).
B eca u se D ennis is unsure o f his identity, still worried
that he is not "a man of character" or a passionate person, he
369
transforms his new marriage into a replica of his first one by
provoking anger and violence in others-the only "passion" he
can recognize or feel. In this way, he makes himself a vic
tim, projecting the problem onto his wives, and he continues
acting based on this identity, which is ignorant of his own
conflicted desire to fe e l passion even though (perhaps b e
cause) he is unable to experience passion provoked by romantic
love. This conflict is shown to him in the im ages of his
dreams, "yet to have named that predicament, to have given it
a precise vocabulary: this was a task seemingly beyond him"
(85). Because Dennis does not understand and cannot articu
late his own framework or perspective, just as he cannot under
stand his dreams or connect them with his waking life, he is,
like Annette and many other of O ates’s characters, robbed of
the capacity to deal with his fears. Still, the point here is
not sim ply to "judge" D ennis since O a tes’s m otive in this
story, as in all of her art, is "to honor the life in [these
characters], to give som e permanent form to their personali
ties." Oates believes that even those characters who win only
"the sm a ll v icto ries" --o r no v ic to r ie s at a ll--d e s e r v e th e
honor of being remembered: "It seems to m e that there are so
many people who are inarticulate, but who suffer, and doubt,
and love, nobly, who need to be immortalized or at least ex
plained."^
370
The reader, however, understands that Dennis’ "theory" of
life has left him in an impoverished position. H e has no al
ternative to "the theory that mankind has invented myths of
all k in d s--ro m a n tic, r elig io u s, tr a n sc en d e n ta l, ’m y stica l’— to
deny the bleak, unm itigated horror o f biological life: that
human beings no less than other creatures are simply part of
an im m ense food chain" (90). This may be true, but even
D ennis admits it is "not very romantic, after all" (91). In
this passage, O ates is not suggesting, surely, that a romantic
perspective, especially not one like C onnie’s in "Where A re
You Going, Where Have You Been?" is preferable to Dennis’
bleak deterministic view of the world; however, in order to
enjoy the "passion" that eludes both o f these characters, a
p e r so n m ust be able to u se im agin ation as an ordering
p rin cip le that allow s on e to n e g o tia te w ith reality rather
than simply colliding with it.
To this end, Section II explores how the acts of writing
and interpretation, both of which employ memory and imagina
tion, can help one succeed with this project, which requires
authentic exchanges based on empathic sympathy if the reader
is going to participate in the experience of the stories. By
exam ining a variety o f m otives for attem pting to integrate
op p o sin g ob jective and subjective perspectives, this section
su g g e sts that "interpretation" is an in elu cta b le fea tu re o f
371
both life and art. The title story for the collection, called
"Heat," introduces the second section, which so directly chal
lenges the limits of what can be known and questions what, in
fact, reality really is. This story is ostensibly about the
Kunkle twins, Rhea and Rhoda, who are somehow— the specifics
are never made clear-killed by the dull-witted Roger Whipple
on a bright day in the summer before they are to enter the
seventh grade. At least this is the point in time from which
the rest of the story radiates, flashing backward and forward
in the mind of the unnamed female narrator, a close childhood
friend of the Kunkles. This narrator tells the story as an
adult, years later, filtered through memory, though the reader
may not be fully conscious o f this fact until the story’s con
clusion.
In th e la st lin e o f th e story, after having told the
reader m any sp ecific details o f the K unkles’ last day, the
narrator admits, "I wasn’t there, but som e things you know"
(153). A t this point, the reader understands that the story
is not only about the fact that Rhea and Rhoda "thought the
same thoughts sometimes at the same moment" (142) or even that
they "were the same girl; they’d wanted it that way," but it
is as much about the narrator, who states that "except for our
faces, their face and mine, we could all be the same girl"
(145). This brings the degree of empathic understanding near
372
th e lev e l o f p erfect id en tification . But O a tes’s story, o f
c o u r se, illlu str a te s b o th sid es, for the narrator has also
told the reader that "I never dream about actual things, only
things I don’t know. P laces I’ ve never been, people I’ve
never seen. Sometimes the person I am in the dream isn’t me.
Who it is, I don’t know" (144). Similarly, in remembering an
affair she had as an adult, married woman, the narrator claims
that "in looking back on it I’m not able to recognize that
woman as if she was som eone not even not-me but a crazy woman
I would despise" (152). In both the dream and waking state,
then, the narrator is able to see herself as another person,
som eone not even recognizable to her, just as clearly as she
can see herself as "one and the same thing" with the twins.
In this way, O ates has violated all the boundaries of other
ness both by erasing the " I" and merging the "me" with the
"other." In fact, this story moves between dream and reality,
self and other, past and present as well as life and death in
such a way that the narrative structure of the piece echoes
the "fluidity" of reality as it is remembered and imagined.
In the story, then, Oates is asking the reader to partici
pate in the artist’s view "of the fluid nature of the world we
inhabit."-^ She has engaged her readers by asking them to
"leap," as C alvino says, into the unfam iliar reality o f the
fic tio n . T h is rea lity , it se e m s, su g g ests th e p o ssib ility
373
that the world we inhabit as "reality" and the world we in
hab it as "m ental construct" m ight be "one and the sam e
thing." The narrator, of course, is quite convinced of the
"reality" of the story she has constructed about the Kunkle’s
last day, claiming "some things you know." This suggests that
she has woven the story of the twins into a narrative that, to
her, constitutes "truth." According to D onald Spence, "nar
rative truth can be defined as the criterion we use to decide
w hen a certain experience has been captured to our satis
fa c tio n : it d e p e n d s on an a e sth e tic finality." S p e n se
further asserts that "once a given construction has acquired
narrative truth, it becom es just as real as any other kind of
t r u t h . F o r the reader, however, the issue of "truth" is
left unresolved, which is not surprising, since O ates believes
"the successful work of art is a consequence of the integra
tion of conscious and unconscious elements; a balance of what
is known and not quite known held in exquisite tension."^
The story "Heat" is a clear example of such an integration
in its m ovem ent among opposing perspectives. Originally en
titled "The Wake" and "Mid-Summer," the draft o f this story be
gins with descriptions of the twins: "Rhea and Rhoda were the
dead girls’ names. They’d been eleven years old when they
died and that was the talk of the summer, around town." This
opening was then revised into "Rhea and Rhoda were the twins’
374
names. They were eleven years old the summer day they were
killed, and for a long time afterward held up as examples to
us. You see: look what can happen! If you’re disobedient."
Again and again, O ates began this story, typing at least six
drafts that started with descriptions o f the twins, each one
extended a little further than the one before it, and som e
that even explored a fragmented conversation between the girls
about a dream they had shared but only needed to discuss in
snatches since they both already knew its content.
The notes and the drafts to this story not only support
O a te s’s claim that she "tirelessly revises," but also suggest
that she gets to know her characters, discovers them, as she
writes them. Each draft only goes to the point where she
finds sh e’s taken a wrong turn, hit a false note, and she
stops, and begins again; she takes another look. This prac
tice supports her claim that "I write to discover what it is
I w ill h a v e w r itte n ."21 S h e a lso e x p r e s s e s th is id e a
through the voice of the narrator in this story, who in remem
bering a disturbing incident from her own life, concedes that
both memory and life are a process of discovery: "It’s like
living out a story that has to go its own way" (152).
Despite this impulse to submit to the nearly random, spon
ta n eo u s, or organic en erg ies that sponsor behavior o f all
kinds, the reader knows that art is not purely spontaneous,
375
but constructed and intentionally ordered. This point is sup
ported by the fact that the published version of this story
begins, not with O ates’s original descriptions o f the twins,
but with a haunting, im agistic description of nature, a de
scription that does not appear in the drafts until at least
five or six "openings" had been tested and discarded. Iron
ically, it is in this artist arrangem ent and exploration of
p ossib ilities that O ates, as she says of D ostoyevski, allow s
us to "experience the surprises that belong to a genuinely
spontaneous art, an art that seems to be in the process of
77
being born as we attend. ^ In fact, O ates maintains that
this process o f discovery, which is itself spontaneous even
though it is prom pted and supported by the discipline o f
w ritin g , is th e "challenge" o f "individual artistry," for it
p rovid es an "opportunity . . . to exp erim en t w ith partly
c o n sc io u s or to ta lly u n con sciou s elem en ts in [o n e ’s] own
personality; but only in so far as these liberated elem ents
71
can c o m p e te w ith th e p r in c ip le o f reality itself." In
this way, O ates maintains that both objective and subjective,
or "daytime" and "nighttime" realities are equally important
in helping her to "discover" herself through the discovery of
her fic tio n , ju st as her rea d ers have an op p ortu n ity to
discover them selves through a similar process o f inquiry and
interpretation. This view of art as constructed experience
376
and constructed know ledge requires a suspension o f self to
"live" the character, and the ordering or interpretation must
be combined with reflection that links the experience to "the
reality principle" itself. In other words, as C alvino sug
gests, the reader must be willing to treat the experience, and
the puzzle of the story, as if it were real.
M ost o f th e other stories in this section also em ploy
se lf-r e fe r e n tia l statem en ts to in d icate, as O a tes has said,
th a t "it is th e sp e c ta to r , and n o t life , th a t art rea lly
m irrors."^ The story "Buck," for example, begins with the
sta tem en t, "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 m e . . . like
an arrow through the neck" (154). Although the narrator
claim s this story would be easier to tell if it began with
"once upon a time," it cannot begin with those magical words
because the incident it narrates happened in the present, out
side a rural small town called Bethany, New Jersey. In this
way, O a tes reverses the usual "direction" o f fiction, e sp e
cially the fairytale that acknowledges its movement away from
the present and away from reality in its opening words. In
stead, she begins by acknowledging that the work is a fiction
and then pulls the reader into the "reality" of the story and
especially into the emotion of its experience.
377
In this story, an elderly spinster, M elanie Snyder, dies
while trying to save a huge, beautiful buck that wanders onto
her property with an arrow in his neck. M elanie is perhaps
eighty years old, but she is a fierce woman, a woman who has
always been horrified at hunting, and it is ironic, of course,
that she dies pinned under the deer, their blood mingled to
gether, but the story ends with a declaration of M elanie’s cer
tainty that her attempt to save the buck was worth the sacri
fice: "And does she regret her gesture, trying to save an in
nocent beast? She does not. And would she consent, even now,
to having made a mistake, acted improvidently? She would not"
(168). A nd then the reader sees a "gap," a H eideggerian
"clearing," that opens in his consciousness when he realizes
these words could not be M elanie’s; she’s dead. And their
present tense narration is also "fictive" since the reader has
been told this incident happened over a year ago. In fact,
the narrator, whose words and thoughts these are, has told the
reader, "I was not a witness. The sole witness did not sur
vive" (154). As in the story "Heat," it is only at the end of
the tale that the reader understands that this is the narra
tor’s story, and it must be reread with that new knowledge in
mind.
According to Thomas Leitch "all short stories. . . proceed
to a revelation that establishes a teleology, a retrospective
378
9 S
s e n se o f d e sig n , in form in g th e w h ole story. J T his is
Iser’s "backward glance" as well as O ates’s idea of the past
as something to be "meditated upon afterwards." But in this
story, this "revelation" takes place in the reader, not in the
characters; it is som ething "external" to the story itself and
yet provoked by it, and it requires that the reader becom e con
sciou s of h im self as a reader in order to understand the
exchange that has taken place between himself and the text.
In his essay, of course, Leitch’s major premise is that such
stories present a challenge to the self, and in this way one
can u n d ersta n d O a te s’s con ten tion that "art itse lf is not
redemptive; but the sudden shifting point of view that allows
for a resto ra tio n o f sanity is o ften redem ptive." This
"sudden, shifting point of view" is the movement into a meta
perspective, the position of witness, which the narrator, the
reader realizes, has been in since the beginning of the story:
Each time I tell this story of the wounded buck,
the hunter who pursued him, the elderly woman
who rescued him, or tried to rescue him, I think
th a t m aybe th is te llin g w ill m ak e a d iffe r
e n c e . This tim e a se c r e t m ean ing w ill be
revealed, as if without my volition, and I will
be released. (154)
This is a statement that describes O ates’s dream of "the sac
red text," which she explains as "language set down with such
379
ta lis m a n ic p r e c is io n , su ch p a in sta k in g a rd o r, su ch w ill,
it can never be altered; language that constitutes an indissol
uble reality of its own— human in origin but more-than-human
in essen ce She explains that the dream, or wish, for
this text is prompted by the desire for "perfection," for "com
pleteness," which the writer dreams could be accomplished in a
work "hammered out of profane materials, it becom es sacred:
which is to say, no longer m erely personal." This is an
ideal, a kind of paradise in which the writer wants to abide,
and as Kohut believes, "When you talk about paradise, the idea
is that there is really som ething greater than the individual
lif e ." ^ For O ates, this "something greater" includes oth
ers and the world in her secular perspective, but it includes
a much larger "transpersonal" reality in the dimension of the
sacred. She adm its that the desire for this reality "might
spring from the child’s belief in the omnipotence of thought,"
but it is manifest in a wish "for permanence by way of the
90
m edium o f langu age, a com m and that tim e stand still,
which O ates suggests is possible only through art, and then
only temporarily.
Follow ing the narrator’s expressed desire for "release" is
the admission that "each telling is a subtle repudiation o f a
previous telling. So each telling is a new telling. Each
tellin g a forgetting. T he arrow lodged ever m ore firmly,
380
cruelly. In living flesh" (154). The "cruelty" is the nec
essary adm ission that, in life, there is no perm anence, no
p erfect understand in g, no tim eless, im m ortal self. In an
essay entitled "Stories that Define Me," Oates explains, "Each
angle of vision, each voice, yields (by way of that process of
f ic t io n a l a b io g e n e s is a ll s to r y te lle r s k n o w ) a s e p a r a te
o n
w riter-self, an alternative Joyce Carol Oates." And yet,
through the com prehensive nature of her perspective, this is
also a fact that O ates celeb ra tes, for it is precisely the
"fluidity" and m o v em e n t o f life that p reven ts stasis and
sta g n a tio n , that allow s for a "new" tellin g as w ell as a
" fo rg ettin g ," b o th n e c e s s a r y in o rd er to n e g o tia te w ith
suffering in the process of rewriting a life.
The other stories in this section also explore the inter
actions betw een "living" and "telling," which Sartre suggested
w ere an either/or proposition as did Yeats, who bifurcated
them into a choice between the "life" or the "work." Oates,
h ow ever, claim s they are sim ply sequential, explaining that
one can do both if first one lives and then one tells. In
"Sundays in Summer," for example, the reader is told a story
that is resonate with details from O ates’s own history: the
bridge that opens the story, the mother whose "own father had
been killed in a tavern fight when she’d been less than a year
old" (1 8 7 ), but w h eth er or n o t this story is "an act of
381
conscious memory," it is related to the others in this section
by a narrator w ho gives a detailed, seem ingly eye-w itness
account of a death and then admits she was not there when it
happened. In this story, as in "Heat" the narrator slips into
second person speech in the meta-perspective from which she
observes herself: "If you think about it, you see yourself
running from the bridge calling for help, running back over to
the Victory Inn for help, you can feel your blood pump harder
and your throat constrict," and then she tells the reader,
"but in fact you weren’t there at the time, you weren’t at the
bridge w ith th e oth ers, you w ere with your m other. . ."
(186). This is clearly a person who possesses a powerful
memory of her young cousin Lyle, who died by jumping off that
bridge into the dirty, polluted water below, water that hid
the danger o f "cables, wires, chunks of concrete" left there
when the bridge was constructed many years before.
The question the story seems to pose is whether or not
this memory is any less "real" because it was told to her by
others rather than experienced first-hand. Through the power
of the imagination, it seems to be as real as experience it
self, esp ecia lly in the descriptions o f the physiological re
action s— the heart pumping, the throat constricting— which are
experienced as part o f the "memory" rather than remembered
them selves. In this way, the story as well as its internal
382
narrative about cousin Lyle take on th o se characteristics,
w hich, to O ates, m ake literature instructive: by im agina
tively and empathically experiencing the story, the reader is
in the same position as the narrator whose memory has incor
porated a story as an "event."
In her essay "Fiction Dreams Revelations," Oates considers
the relationship between form and idea and wonders if the in
troduction o f fantasy as a formal feature of the work alters
its "reality": "As form al fantasy breaks down— plot, charac
ters, settin g, ’them e,"— the artist h im self em erges, creatin g
his art and himself while we stare in bewilderment: is this
new character m ore or less fictional than the old-fashioned
ch a ra cters o f fiction?"**^ T h ese are not new id ea s for
O ates; how ever, as this collection o f stories dem onstrates,
the complexity and subtlety with which she conveys them make
increased demands on the reader, who must not only empathize
with the characters, but more importantly, must recognize and
accept the vision which O ates has overlaid on the story it
se lf. In other words, these stories, like the o n e ’s about
mystical experiences, require that the reader "keep a foot in
each world," as Fitzgerald said, and through the use o f lan
guage that shades, alm ost im perceptibly, into the sym bolic,
sh e in vites her readers to participate in "the pleasure o f
fantasy [which] lies in the unraveling of a logic with rules
383
or points o f departure or solutions that keep som e surprises
- l a
up their sleeves."~,->
In fact, in the third section of this book, the portion
th a t d ea ls w ith stories that are exp licitly w ritten in th e
mode of fantasy, Oates employs what Calvino refers to as "in
tellec tu a l fantasy," in w hich "play, irony, the winking eye,
and also a meditation on the hidden desires and nightmares of
contemporary man" are forem ost.^ This is certainly true of
the story "Ladies and Gentleman," in which a cruise ship, the
S. S. Ariel, takes a group of passengers, all of "retirement"
age, to an island called the Island of Tranquility, in the
South Seas. Just as they reach their destination, the captain
addresses the group (the story is, in fact, one long m ono
lo g u e ), tellin g them that this is their "final" d estin ation .
T here is nothing "supernatural" about this experience, how
ever, for the passengers are not being delivered to their "ult
im ate restin g place" by som e ben ign spirit; instead, their
deaths have been very simply arranged and paid for by their
c h ild r e n , w h o , th e c a p ta in e x p la in s, "are very tired o f
w a itin g for th eir inheritances" (3 7 5 ). O nce this fact is
revealed, the captain, never changing his rather formal but
obsequious tone, gives them a typical "tour guide" description
of the island where they will be left, as others have been
left b efo re them , and explains there is no escaping their
384
deaths, but they should rem em ber their children fondly and
r e a liz e th e ir ch ild ren are n ot u n lo v in g , on ly im p a tien t:
"they want only what's theirs" (378).
Perhaps O ates is ironically contrasting the events of her
story with the blissful resolution o f all problem s on Pros-
p e r o ’s island in S h a k e sp ea r e ’s play, The T em pest, but in
any case, this story definitely casts "a winking eye" on the
American nightmare of greed and materialism. The story sug
gests, in fact, that the children have "inherited" their dis
torted values from their parents, and so the fact that they
would rationalize "hurrying" their parents’ deaths in order to
get their money seems a logical outcome of this legacy, which
in itself is not at all "logical," but horrifying. It is also
ironic that this "fantasy" story is written in a simpler, more
straight-forward style than many of the m ore "realistic" stor
ies in the volume. In fact, it can only be categorized as fan
tasy given the fact "it could never happen," yet it does hap
pen in life, often far more brutally than the means used in
this story, and so this com pletely incredible story reveals a
"fact" in both its realistic and sym bolic dim ensions about
American life.
T his se c tio n o f O a te s’s story c o llec tio n only con tain s
five stories, but they seem to be carefully arranged and or
dered, m oving from concerns that are largely "personal" to
385
concerns of the world. The first, called "Twins," deals with
the palpable aspects o f absence when a family m em ber is
estranged or rem oved from the immediate community of the
fam ily. This story, like all o f O ates’s stories about twins
or doubles, centers on the issue of identity or concepts of
the self. The next two stories, "The Crying Baby" and "Why
D on’t You Come Live With M e It’s Time," are both also "per
sonal" explorations for Oates, for the first of these examines
artistic issues w hile the second focuses on attachm ents and
issues of will. In the first story, a woman is the only per
son in her house who can hear a crying baby, but the sounds
are diffuse and random, and eventually the woman desists from
talking about it because it becom es clear that her family is
b egin n in g to q u estion her sanity. In actuality, the story
c h r o n ic le s th e a r tis tic fr u str a tio n s an d se lf-d o u b ts th at
accompany "knowing" a truth that others refuse to hear. In
the story, however, the main character, unlike Oates, is even
tually m oved to silence and dissembling, and also anger, at
the petty comments she has to endure, and yet she refuses to
abandon her vision: "Why some are chosen to bear witness
while others pass their days in deaf contendedness is . . . be
yond my ken." Even so, the need to "bear witness" overrides
the personal desire for release: "if I know myself chosen why
then I acknowledge my chosenness and will try to be equal to
386
the task" (354). The tension in the story, of course, is cre
ated by the problem of distinguishing between truth and delu
sion regarding an issue such as "chosenness." The narrator,
however, is only unsure about the nature and "reality" of the
baby’s cries in the early portion of the story. By its close,
she, like Gail Godwin’s narrator in "Dream Children," is quite
sure the experience is real although it is troubling and she
only reluctantly accepts the challenge with which it presents
her.
The other story, "Come Live Me," is the most surrealistic
piece in the collection, and it narrates the story of a young
girl’s attachm ent to her grandmother though it is not quite
clear in the story if the events that are being related are
being experienced in a dream or waking state. In fact, as the
child passes over a bridge, both going to and coming hom e from
her grandmother’s house, the reader realizes that the invita
tion that the grandmother has offered the child-to stay with
her— cannot be accepted because the grandmother does not re
side in the world of living, breathing human beings. Although
she is "real enough" in the story, the grandmother has already
died, and so the girl’s experiences are only possible through
memory and imagination.
The bridge, then, becom es symbolic of the places where one
can "cross over" betw een actuality and dreams, between love
387
and loneliness, and even between the ordinary and the extra
ordinary realities of life and death. The issue of will comes
into the story as the child crosses the bridge, which is very
frightening for her, perhaps especially because she crosses it
at night, having left her hom e (eith er literally or figura
tively) without her parents’ knowledge. As she crosses, she
thinks to h erself that by making this journey, even if she
never tells anyone, she will have "proven something" to her
self: "I will do it because I want to do it, because there
is no one to stop me" (365). In fact, she concludes this
"has been one of the principles of my life. To regret the
principle is to regret the life" (365). Certainly, O ates has
lived her own life according to the principles of Neitzsche’s
"will to power," though the choice that the narrator makes
seem s also to echo Kierkegaard’s idea that "the possibility of
freedom does not consist in being able to choose the good or
the evil. Such thoughtlessness has as little support in Scrip
tu re as in p h ilo so p h y . P o ssib ility m ea n s I c a n ." ^ jn
this story, then, the reader sees an application of this philo
sophy that is em powering whereas in the story "Naked" the
woman’s insistence "I can do what I want" is merely a stubborn
ness that keeps her locked in a limiting perspective. As is
so often the case, O ates has organized her stories so that
388
they resonate with one another in a way that amplifies the
entire collection as a cohesive artistic construct.
Through memory and imagination, using realism and fantasy
as com bined m odes of thought as w ell as of investigation,
O a tes has created a c o llec tio n o f stories that fulfill her
requirements for "serious art," for they do indeed attempt to
integrate opposites as well as make "the eternal come alive in
the familiar." As with all of her work, these stories are an
ep istem ological inquiry into the nature o f the self, others,
the world, and "beyond." To this end, her art, like her per
sonal framework, must be comprehensive in order to accommodate
the paradoxes and dualities of life, which can only occasion
ally and temporarily be transcended in moments of art or mys
tical experiences. Even this transcendence, however, must be
accom plished in the physical world, and it is constrained by
human limitations, for O ates asks, "How does one transcend
o n e ’s own self, w ithout d elu sio n ? " ^ In fact, d esp ite the
pow erful desire for certitude and perm anence, O ates insists
that th e inquiry cannot and should not "resolve" the ad
v e n tu r e s o f liv in g , for sh e b e lie v e s th at life , lik e art,
"most succeeds when a delicate balance is struck between that
which is known, and conscious, and that which is not yet
known, and unconscious" in the same way that "the psyche seems
to be at its fullest when contradictory forces are held in
389
suspension."^ This is the perspective that allows Oates to
live life as process and as continuous inquiry, which m ani
fests itself in her art as an endless and honest search for
the self. This search, it seems, is sponsored by a perspec
tive that is com prehensive, that integrates opposites even as
it celebrates "all pleasures and all pains, remembering / The
bough of summer and the winter branch. / These are the mea
sures destined for her soul."^
390
CHAPTER SIX: NOTES
^ Italo C a lv in o , " D efin itio n s o f T erritories: Fantasy,"
The Uses o f L iterature, trans. Patrick Creah (N ew York:
Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1982) 71.
^Notes from the Joyce Carol Oates Archive, Bird Library,
Syracuse University, New York, n. p.
good exam ple o f this is H aw thorne’s story "Young
G oodm an Brown" or his novel The Scarlet Letter. Both of
these works quite clearly move between the realistic and the
fa n ta stic in w ays that cause th e read er to q u estio n the
distinctions betw een them. This is, in fact, in keeping with
Hawthorne’s own definition of "romance."
M ichael Schumaker, "Joyce Carol Oates and the Hardest
P art o f W riting," C o n v e rsa tio n s w ith Joyce C a ro l O a te s,
ed. Lee M ilazzo (Jackson: University of Mississippi Press,
1989) 144.
Calvino 71-2.
^Calvino 72.
^ J o y ce C arol O ates, (W om an ) Writer: O ccasion s an d
Opportunities (New York: Dutton, 1988) 206.
^ J o y ce C a ro l O a tes, H e a t a n d O th er S to rie s (N e w
York: Dutton, 1991).
% oyce Carol Oates, "Speculations on the Novel," NBA
Writers Speak O ut, 25th A nniversary o f the N ational B ook
Awards (New York: Viking Press, 1974) 1.
^ A n th o n y Paul Kerby, Narrative and the Self (B loom
ington and Indianapolis: Indianana U niversity Press, 1991)
43.
391
CHAPTER SIX: NOTES
H jo y c e C arol O ates, introduction, B est A m erican Short
S to ries 1979, ed. Shannon R aven el (B oston : H ou gh ton
Mifflin, 1979) xviii.
1 7
C a rl G u sta v Ju n g, The U n d is c o v e r e d S e lf (N e w
York: Penguin Books, 1957) 79.
l^Calvino 72.
l^Dylan Thomas, "The Force That Through the Green Fuse
D r iv es th e F low er," The N o rto n In tro d u ctio n to P oetry,
ed. J. Paul Hunter (New York: W. W. Norton, 1986) 469.
l^ J o y ce C arol O ates, "Family," O m ni, 12, no. 3, (D e
cember 1989) 74.
16Kerby 2.
17
Joe David Bellamy, "The Dark Lady of American Let
ters," C on versations with Joyce Carol O ates ed. L ee Mil-
azzo (Jackson: University of Mississippi Press, 1989) 27.
1 R
xoJoyce Carol O ates, "The N ature of Short Fiction; or
The N ature o f My Short Fiction," H andbook o f Short Story
Writing (Cincinatti: Writer’s Digest Books, 1981) xvi.
19Kerby 90.
^ O a tes, (Woman) Writer 166.
"^Joyce C arol O ates, "Stories That D efin e Me," The
New York Times Book Review, Section 7, (11 July 1982) 1.
77
■ “ ^ J o y c e Carol O ates, Contraries (N ew York: Oxford
University Press, 1981) 33.
392
CHAPTER SIX: NOTES
^ O a tes, Contraries 59, 54.
^ O a tes, Contraries 16.
^T h om as Leitch, "The Debunking Rhythm of the American
S h o rt Story," S h o rt S tory T heory a t a C ro ssro a d s, ed .
Lohafer and Clarey (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University
Press, 1989)) 131.
^ J o y c e C arol O a tes, The P rofan e A r t (N ew York:
Dutton: 1983) 102.
^ O a te s, (Woman) Writer 41.
^ H e i n z K o h u t, S e lf P sy c h o lo g y a n d th e H u m a n itie s
(New York: W. W. Norton, 1985) 264.
^ O a tes, (Woman) Writer 42.
•^Oates, "Stories That D efine Me" 1.
^ O a tes, "Stories That D efine Me" 1.
■^Joyce Carol O ates, preface, "Fiction D ream s R ev ela
tions," Scenes fro m A m erica n L ife: C on tem porary Short
Fiction (New York: Randon House, 1973) viii.
^C alvino 72.
•^Calvino 73.
•^Soren K ierkegaard, "Dread and Freedom," Existential
ism from Dostoevsky to Sartre, ed. W alter Kaufmann (N ew
York: New American Library, 1975) 104.
CHAPTER SIX: NOTES
•^Oates, The Profane A rt 188.
•^Oates, (Woman) Writer 185.
•^ W a lla ce S te v e n s, "Sunday M orning," The
Poems (New York: Vintage Books, 1982) 67.
393
C o llected
394
CONCLUSION
A ccordin g to O ates, "G enuine artists create their own
modes of art and nothing interests them except the free play
o f the imagination." 1 O f course, this statem ent is rather
sw eeping, and O ates’s careful attention to the craft of her
art suggests, as she has often acknowledged, that the success
ful artistic product results from both imagination and disci
pline. Even so, this declaration is consistent with her cele
bration of the individuality o f the artist’s vision as well as
her reluctance to be confined by literary traditions or comfor
tab ly c a teg o rized according to a lim ited range o f "influ
ences."
Instead, O ates’s vision is both eclectic and com prehen
sive, and perhaps more importantly, it is constantly "in pro
cess" through her pursuit of understanding as an ideal, unat
tainable goal that still needs to be sought within the range
of human limitations. To this end, Oates employs memory and
im agination as sources of knowledge and insight, which she
tran scrib es into langu age in order to create th e distance
necessary to be a "witness" of her own conscious processes.
Similarly, she uses language to discover that which is not yet
395
conscious or known, and in this sense she regards her writing
as an opportunity for scrutiny as well as discovery. The fin
ished artistic product, perhaps of more interest to the reader
and critic than to the artist herself, is the "cohesive whole"
through which the experience of writing and reading moves both
the author and audience toward a reconciliation with if not a
resolution of "complexity and ambiguity." It is in this sense
that O ates b elieves "art labors to give meaning to a pro
f u s io n o f m e a n in g s : its s t r u c t u r e s - - in e v it a b ly ’e x c lu
sive,5 and therefore inevitably ’unjust5 — provide a way of see
ing with the mind’s eye that is unquestionably superior to the
eye itself."^
If acknowledged and recognized, such uses of the imagina
tion do not result in delusions or projection, but in art.
W allace Stevens examines this contrast throughout his poetry
and it appears quite clearly in the poem "Anecdote of the
Jar," which suggests that even though art "orders" nature or
the w orld, this ordering is the resu lt o f persp ective and
in tu itio n , b o th n e c e s s a r ily s e le c t iv e an d su b je c tiv e and
therefore "unjust" if not held in combination with the idea
that the world is more than "the way we see it" and needs to
be acknowledged as itself. Oates, like many artists, extends
th ese principles and observes them at play in the lives of
ordinary people. After quoting Hesse, who said, " ’Each self
396
has a secret th eatre,’" Jay Martin asserts that "the fictive
processes may be seen as an organizer of the scenarios that
drive behavior. Jung, too, recognized the n eed for an
"organizing principle" based on a thorough understanding of
conscious and unconscious or internal and external factors:
the individual in his dissociated state needs an
ord erin g p r in c ip le . E g o -c o n sc io u sn ess w ou ld
lik e to let its own w ill play this ro le, but
overlooks the existence of powerful unconscious
fa c to r s w h ich th w art its in te n tio n s . If it
wants to reach the goal of synthesis, it must
first get to know the nature of these factors.
It m u st e x p e r ie n c e th e m , or e ls e it m u st
p o s s e s s a n u m in o u s s y m b o l th a t e x p r e s s e s
them and conduces to synthesis.^
It is precisely her use of symbols (the house, the knife, the
hair) and her understanding o f literature as an experience
that allow Oates to examine and channel memory and imagination
into art as an ordering principle. O f course, to Oates, the
artistic p roject is not "merely local or personal," but in
cludes humanity as a collective human whole even if each mem
ber of that community is addressed as a single reader.
In her work, as in life, some people succeed while others
fail in their attem pts to negotiate a satisfactory order that
w ill allow them to understand them selves, others, and the
w o r ld . E v e n s o , t h is p r o c e s s o f im a g in a t iv e ly b u t
397
authentically ordering o n e ’s world is the artist’s m otive for
creation just as it can be the reader’s motive for attempting
to em pathically experience the text, for as Sartre has stated,
"reading is directed creation."-* In this sam e sense, O ates
suggests that "properly executed, the act o f reading is not
only a creative act; it aspires to the condition of what might
be called a mystic communion. ’ A book is an axe,’ says Kafka,
’for the frozen sea within.’ And so indeed it is." **
Writing and reading, then, perform parallel functions for
just as art orders fantasy, so reading orders inquiry by creat
ing a framework or context within which one can investigate
th e ran ge o f p o ssib le in terp reta tio n s o f "reality" as this
concept applies to one’s self and the world. In this way, lit
erature itself becom es a "world" in which those interpreta
tions can be tested as a means of negotiating with the reality
one discovers or apprehends. The result, of course, is a new
possibility: a "constructed" reality that includes a se lf at
least partially of one’s own making.
A lthough literature provides both the experience as w ell
as p o sitiv e and n egative m od els o f in terp retation , if th e
reader is to determine whether the fictional characters’ negot
iations with the reality presented in the text have resulted
in insight or delusion, the reader must examine the motives be
hind th o se n egotiation s. If the m otive is m anipulation, or
398
fear of one’s own identity, which results in projection, or an
a ttem p ted esca p e from the d ifficu lties o f in teractin g with
o th ers and th e w orld , th e resu lt w ill m ost lik ely b e a
d e lu s io n a l p e r s p e c tiv e th a t, as Jay M artin e x p la in s , is
typical o f the "schizoid" p ersonality, a p ersonality that is
"split" from reality rather than reconciled to it. According
to Martin, such a person "seeks an authentic self, but instead
d e v e lo p s a r o le ; lo o k s for r ea l in tim a cy , but a c h ie v e s
pseudo-relations; appears involved, but remains distant. Yet,
one thing is achieved: the self is protected, even if it does
not satisfy its yearnings."^ In other words, the self that
in scr ib es its e lf as "identity," w hich m ight also be called
e g o -c o n sc io u sn e ss, resists its own an n ih ilation , ev en w hen
such a "death" is the only means of silencing those delusions
that separate it from the accomplishment of positive goals.
O a te s, lik e B la k e, b e lie v e s th at such an n ih ilation or
"suicide" of a delusional or divided self, esp ecially as this
can b e acom plished through art, "cleanses" (or unifies) the
person’s perspective on himself as well as on the realities of
the mundane and the eternal "as impractical, unworkable, out
grown, inadequate, myopic ideas or states of mind are tested
and found lacking."^ This attitu d e also r eflec ts V irginia
W oolfs motive for wanting to kill "the angel of the house"—
that socially acceptable or "good" identity that prevented her
399
from taking a hard, honest look at reality or speaking frankly
about it in her writing. Apparently Oates, too, suffered from
similar misgivings early in her career as Donald Dike, one of
her tea ch ers at Syracuse, has attested .^ B ut the fierce
ness o f spirit required to "keep a steady gaze" is also the
difference betw een those characters in such stories as "House
Hunting," "The Hair," and "The Knife," who can adopt revised
perspectives and those who cannot, such as the protagonists in
"Passion" and "Naked."
That the self fears its own death is not surprising, espe
cially if it can n ot co n ceiv e of a satisfactory replacem ent.
A n authentic self or an em otionally secure identity that is
receptive to new inform ation is able to take the risk "to
think what it is not," to use Iser’s expression. Iser assumes
this is the case for the readers he discusses in his article,
but an alternative to this fully volitional change occurs when
the unconscious intrudes upon the conscious mind during a per
iod of crisis. In order not to be overwhelmed by this exper
ience, the person must be in "readiness" as if, as Oates has
stated, preparing for the reception of grace. W hether the
in s ig h t is sa c r e d or p s y c h o lo g ic a l in its o rig in s, O a tes
rem inds her readers that the recipient has the options of
a ccep tin g , rejectin g, or am ending the opportunity for self
r ev isio n , even though such o p p o rtu n ities are availab le to
400
e v e r y o n e . P a ra d o x ic a lly , th en , e ith e r sta b ility or crisis
affords an opportunity "to formulate the unformulated," which
Iser contends "entails the possibility that we may formulate
ourselves and so discover what had previously seem ed to elude
our c o n s c i o u s n e s s . " - ^ This idea ech oes F reud’s contention
in his essay "Wit and the Unconscious" that writers use "wit"
as a socially acceptable means of making the "unconscious con
scious." ^ Writers and readers, then, may be familiar with
this rather d ifficu lt task o f "rewriting the self," but m ost
people, even those who practice enlarging their personal frame
works through literature, still find they must persist through
th e resistan ce offered by the present-tim e self or identity
that is facing the challenge of new ideas. This task, it
seems, presents an equal challenge to both writers and readers
"to resist a failure of will."
The natural reluctance to embrace new or unfamiliar ideas
is precisely what Norman Holland is refering to when he as-
1 9
serts th at "identity c r e a te s and r e -c r e a te s itse lf. ^ In
this statem ent, he is suggesting that each person first ap
proaches the new or unfam iliar from a subjective position
based on his identity. Holland further contends that identity
naturally seeks the fam iliar (things or ideas that "fit" with
or confirm existingly held b eliefs) or adapts the unfamiliar
into familiar terms in order to understand it. If "healthy"
401
or authentic imaginative processes, such as the positive uses
of em pathy and sympathy, are used to adapt the unfamiliar,
then the result can be a confluence of understanding or a
circu m stance in w hich syn thesis and recon ciliation can be
achieved. If, on the other hand, neurotic or delusional im
aginative processes such as projection or denial are brought
to bear to resolve the conflict between the familiar and the
unfamiliar, then the unfamiliar is distorted rather than adap
ted into understanding. T he difficulty of distinguishing b e
tween these perspectives, which can vary greatly even in a sin
gle individual based on the context or the choice being con
sid ered , is that gulf betw een "blindness" and "seeing" that
rouses Oates to "simple animal dread" and infuses her inquiry
with a passion not only to know, but to know how one knows
in order to determine the validity of the knowledge.
These are precisely the "poles" from which O ates’s char
acters approach their challenges. Fearful of losing the only
sen se o f identity they know, som e characters, such as Carl
Reeves, Margo in "Dreams," or Joel Collier, push through this
fear to insight while others, such as Annette, Walter Stuart,
and Dennis, resist embracing a new and unfamiliar concept of
th em selv es, eith er b eca u se they cannot im agine or cannot
accept the unfamiliar. The result for those who resist these
necessary challenges to the self is that they remain locked in
402
their delusions, a perspective that forces them to resort to
projection or denial in order to "save" that self or identity
d esp ite the fact it w ill be chronically dissatisfied . C on
versely, if the person is willing to risk this "death" o f old
con viction s or even identity, then the result has a better
chance of being an insight that prom otes such reconciliation
both with o n e ’s unconscious nature and the exterior world.
The goal of this struggle, of course, is to create a balance
b etw een interior and exterior worlds, which Taylor believes
prom pts "the search for m oral sources outside the subject
th rou gh la n g u a g es th at r e so n a te w ithin him or her," an
activity that is intend ed to result in "the grasping o f an
order which is inseparably indexed to a personal vision."^
F or this r ea so n , O a tes te sts her in terior p ersp ectiv e
against the reality of the outside world just as she "recon
structs" the external reality she inhabits through an asser
tion of her personal vision. In this way, her "inner vision
of some complexity and ambiguity" becom es both an influence on
and a reflection o f " ’the life of the tim es’ in America" as
w ell as an exploration of possiblity that extends perspective
beyond the mundane world. The irony-and genius~of O ates’s
technique is that she puts her readers, like her characters,
in th e disruptive situation of having to take risks, accept
challenges, and survive the discom fort of disillusionm ent in
403
order to achieve such a synthesis or recognition of possibili
ties perhaps not even previously considered. As she has
stated, however, these are risks that must be taken in order
to accept the challenge of negotiating with reality and par
ticularly w ith suffering. T h ese risks, of course, are both
"promising and menacing" in their challenge to the self.
Oates is in good company, however, in pursuing this path
way to understanding, for such writers as Dante, Milton, and
Blake (to name only a few) have also suggested to their read
ers that it is not simply acceptable "to take the long way
hom e" through sin, or ign oran ce, or d elu sio n s, it is the
only way hom e. In this sense, the issue of m oral judg
m ent, especially condem nation, is subordinated to the quest
for meaning and understanding as a necessary prelude to moral
c h o ic e or m oral action. O a te s’s p ersp ectiv e, in fact, is
com p reh en sive in that it is im aginative, em pathic, celeb ra
tory, brutally h on est, and e sp ecia lly m oral in its orienta
tion.
These qualities, combined with a love of work and a sharp
intelligence have allowed Joyce Carol O ates to "escape" her
early life in rural New York and to excel, even by her own
standards, at the art of fiction:
Standards of greatness must encompass a depth of
vision; a breadth of actual work; a concern for
various levels of human society; a sympathy with
404
many different kinds of people; an awareness of
and a concern with history; a sense of the inter
lock in g forces o f p olitics, religion, econom ics,
and the mores of society; concern with aesthe
tics; perhaps even an experim entation in forms
and language; and above all a "visionary" sense
— the writer is not simply writing for his own
sake, but to speak to others as forcefully as
possible.
All this she has done on her journey of memory and imagination
that rewrites the self.
405
CONCLUSION: NOTES
"I
xSanford Pinsker, "Speaking A bout Short Fiction," C on
versation s w ith Joyce C arol O ates, ed. L ee M ilazzo (Jack
son: University of Mississippi Press, 1989) 96.
^ J o y c e C a ro l O a te s , " N otes on F a ilu r e," P u sh c a rt
Prize VIII: B est o f the Sm all Presses, ed. Bill H enderson
(Wainscott, N. Y.: The Pushcart Press, 1983) 202. This quo
tation is taken from a passage that appears in the original
Pushcart version o f this essay, but which was excised from
the version published in The Profane Art.
^Jay Martin, Who A m I This Times? Uncovering the Fic-
tive Personality (New York: W. W. Norton & Co., 1988) 128.
^Carl G ustav Jung, The Undiscovered S elf (N ew York:
Penguin Books, 1957) 74.
^Jean P au l S artre, "Why W rite?" T w en tieth C entury
Literary Criticism, ed. David Lodge (New York: Longman,
1972) 374.
*\Joyce C arol O ates, introd u ction , B est A m erica n Short
Stories 1979, ed. Shannon R avenel (B oston: H oughton
Mifflin, 1979) xxii.
^Martin 133.
^ J o y ce C a ro l O a te s , The P ro fa n e A r t (N e w Y ork:
Dutton, 1983) 175.
% ee the 1972 interview with Walter Clemons in Conver
sations with Joyce Carol Oates 35.
1 n
A Wolfgang Iser, "The Reading Process: A Phenomenologi
cal Approach," R eader Response Criticism, ed. Jane P. Tomp
kins (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1980)
65, 66.
406
CONCLUSION: NOTES
1 ^R ichard F in h o lt, A m e ric a n V ision ary F iction
Washington, N. Y.: Kennikat Press, 1978) 16.
^ N o rm a n H olland, "Unity Identity Text
R e a d e r R esp o n se C riticism , ed. Jane P. T om pkins
timore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1980) 130.
^ C h a r le s Taylor, Sources o f Self: The M aking
M odern Id e n tity (C am bridge: H arvard U n iversity
1989) 510.
(P ort
Self,"
(B al-
o f the
P ress,
l^ L eif Sjoberg, "An Interview w ith Joyce Carol Oates,"
C o n v e r s a tio n s w ith J o y ce C a ro l O a te s, e d . L e e M ilazzo
(Jackson: University of Mississippi Press, 1989) 115.
407
BIBLIOGRAPHY
I. PRIMARY: WORKS BY JOYCE CAROL OATES
A. SELECTED ARTICLES AND ESSAYS
"Art: Therapy and Magic." A m erican Journal 3 (July 1973):
17-21.
"Background and Foreground in Fiction." Writer 80 (August
1967): 11-13.
" B u ild in g T e n s io n in th e S h ort Story." W riter 78 (J u n e
1966): 11-12.
"F iction D ream s R evelations." Scenes fro m A m erica n L ife:
Contem porary Short Fiction. Ed. Joyce Carol Oates. New
York: Random H ouse, 1973: vii-viii.
"The M yth o f the Isolated Artist." P sych ology Today May
1973: 74-75.
"The Nature of Short Fiction; or the Nature of My Short Fic
tion." H a n d b o o k o f Short Story Writing. N ew York:
Writer’s Digest Books, 1970: xi-xviii.
"N otes on Failure." Pushcart Prize VIII: B est o f the Sm all
Presses. Ed. Bill Hendersen. Wainscott, N.Y: The Push
cart Press, 1983: 194-208.
"On the C om position o f ’Funland.’" Funland. Concord, N.H:
William B. Ewert, Publisher, 1983: n. p.
"The S h ort Story." Southern H u m a n ities R eview 5 (1971):
213-14.
"Speculations on the Novel." NBA Writers Speak O ut. N ew
York: Viking Press, 1974: n. p.
"Stories that D efine Me." N ew York Times B ook Review 11
(July 1982): 1, 15-16.
408
B. NOVELS
American Appetites. New York: Dutton, 1989.
Angel o f Light. New York: Dutton, 1981.
The Assassins. New York: Vanguard, 1975.
Because It Is Bitter, and Because It Is My Heart. New
York: Dutton, 1990.
Bellefluer. New York: Dutton, 1980.
i
! Black Water. New York: Dutton, 1992.
\
! A Bloodsmoor Romance. New York: Dutton, 1982.
i
I
Childwold. New York: Vanguard, 1976.
Cybele. Santa Barbara: Black Sparrow Press, 1979.
D o With M e What You Will. New York: Vanguard, 1974.
Expensive People. New York: Vanguard, 1968.
A Garden o f Earthly Delights. New York: Vanguard, 1964.
I L ock My D oor Upon Myself. New York: The Ecco Press,
1990.
Marya: A Life. New York: Dutton, 1986.
Mysteries o f Winterthum. New York: Dutton, 1984.
Rise o f Life on Earth. New York: New Directions Books,
1991.
Solstice. New York: Dutton, 1985.
Son o f the Morning. New York: Vanguard, 1978.
them. New York: Vanguard, 1969.
j Unholy Loves. New York: Vanguard, 1979.
| With Shuddering Fall. New York: Vanguard, 1964.
Wonderland. New York, Vanguard, 1969.
You M ust Remember This. New York: Dutton, 1987.
409
C. NOVELS WRITTEN UNDER PSEUDONYM OF ROSAMOND SMITH
Lives o f the Twins. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1987.
Nemesis. New York: Penguin Books, 1990.
Snake Eyes. New York: Dutton, 1992.
Soul/Mates. New York: Dutton, 1989.
D. NOVELLAS
i Triumph o f the Spider Monkey. Santa Barbara: Black Sparrow
I Press, 1976.
Wild Nights. Athens, Ohio: Croissant & Co., 1985.
E. LIMITED AND SPECIAL EDITION SHORT STORIES
"The B lessing." Sparrow 45 Santa Barbara: Black Sparrow
Press, 1976.
B lue-B earded L over. Concord, N.H: William B. Ewert, Publi
sher, 1987.
i
| Cupid & Psyche. New York: Albondocani Press, 1970.
Daisy. Santa Barbara: Black Sparrow Press, 1977.
\
\ Funland. Concord, N.H: William B. Ewert, Publisher, 1983.
j The Girl. Cambridge, Ma: The Pomegranate Press, 1974.
The L am b o f A byssalia. Cambridge, Ma: Pom egranate Press,
1979.
"Plagiarized M aterial by Fernandes." Sparrow 19 Santa
| Barbara: Black Sparrow Press, 1974.
"A Posthumous Sketch." Sparrow 10 Santa Barbara: Black
Sparrow Press, 1973.
Queen o f the Night. Northridge, Ca: Lord John Press, 1979.
' Rumpled Bed. Derry: The Rook Society, 1976.
410
LIMITED EDITION STORIES (continued)
The Stepfather. Northridge, Ca: Lord John Press, 1978.
White Trash. Northridge, Ca: Lord John Press, 1990.
F. SHORT STORY COLLECTIONS
A ll the G ood People I ’ve L eft Behind. Santa Barbara: Black
Sparrow Press, 1979.
The Assignation. New York: The Ecco Press, 1988.
By the North Gate. New York: Vanguard, 1963.
Crossing the Border. New York: Vanguard, 1976.
The Goddess and Other Women. New York: Vanguard, 1974.
H eat and Other Stories. New York: Dutton, 1990.
The Hungry Ghosts. Los Angeles: Black Sparrow Press, 1974.
L ast Days. New York: Dutton, 1984.
Marriages and Infidelities. New York: Vanguard, 1972.
Night-Side. New York: Vanguard, 1977.
The P o iso n ed K iss and O ther S tories fro m the Portuguese.
New York: Vanguard, 1975.
R aven’ s Wing. New York: Dutton, 1986.
The Seduction and Other Stories. Los Angeles: Black Spar
row Press, 1975.
A Sentimental Education. New York: Dutton, 1981.
Upon the Sweeping Flood. New York: Vanguard, 1966.
The Wheel o f Love. New York: Vanguard, 1970.
Where Are You Going Where H ave You Been? Stories o f Young
Am erica. Greenwich, Ct: Fawcett, 1974.
G. LIMITED AND SPECIAL EDITION POETRY
Celestial Timepiece. Dallas: Pressworks, 1980.
Dreaming America & Other Poems. New York, A loe Editions,
1973.
Fertilizing the Continent. N orthridge, Ca: Santa Susana
Press, 1976.
In Case o f Accidental Death. Cambridge, Ma: Pomegranate
Press, 1972.
Luxury o f Sin. Northridge, Ca: Lord John Press, 1984.
The Miraculous Birth. Concord, N.H: William B. Ewert,
Publisher, 1986.
Nightless Nights: Nine Poems. Concord, N.H: William, B.
Ewert, Publisher, 1981.
Season o f Peril. Santa Barbara: Black Sparrow Press, 1977.
Small Hymns. Concord, N.H: William B. Ewert, Publisher,
1983.
The Time Traveler. Northridge, Ca: Lord John Press, 1987.
Woman is the Death o f the Soul. Toronto: Coach House
Press, 1970.
W ooded Forms. New York: Albondocani Press, 1972.
H. BOOKS OF POETRY
A n g el Fire. B aton R ouge: Louisiana State U niversity Press,
1973.
A n on ym ou s Sins. B aton R ouge: L ouisiana State U niversity
Press, 1969.
The Fabulous Beasts. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State Univer
sity Press, 1975.
Invisible Woman: New and Selected Poem s 1970-1982. Prince
ton: Ontario Review Press, 1982.
412
BOOKS OF POETRY (continued)
L ove and Its Derangements. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State
University Press, 1970.
The Time Traveler. New York: Dutton, 1983.
Women Whose Lives Are Food, Men Whose Lives Are Money.
Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1978.
I. PLAYS
Miracle Play. Los Angeles: Black Sparrow Press, 1974.
Three Plays. Princeton: Ontario Review Press, 1980.
Twelve Plays. New York: Penguin Books, 1991.
J. NON-FICTION
Best American Essays o f 1991. Editor. New York: Picknor
& Field, 1991.
The Best Am erican Short Stories. Editor with Shannon Rave-
nel. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1979.
Contraries. New York: Oxford University Press, 1981.
The E dge o f Im possibility: Tragic Form s in L iterature. N ew
York: Vanguard, 1972.
F irst P erson Singular: W riters on T h eir C ra ft. E d ito r.
Princeton: Ontario Review Press, 1983.
The H ostile Sun: The Poetry o f D.H. Lawrence. Los Angeles:
Black Sparrow Press, 1973.
N ew H eaven, New Earth: The Visionary Experience in L itera
ture. New York: Vanguard, 1974.
Night Walks: A Bedside Companion. Editor. Princeton: On
tario Review Press, 1982.
On Boxing. New York: Doubleday, 1987.
The Profane A rt: Essays and Reviews. N ew York: Dutton,
1983.
NON-FICTION (continued)
Reading the Fights. Editor with Daniel Halpern. New York:
Henry Holt & Co., 1988.
Scenes from A m erican Life: Contem porary Short Fiction. E d
itor. New York: Vanguard, 1973.
(W om an) Writer: Occasions and Opportunites. New York: Dut
ton, 1988.
II. SECONDARY: WORKS ABOUT JOYCE CAROL OATES
A. SELECTED ARTICLES AND ESSAYS
Allen, Mary. "The Terrified W omen of Joyce Carol Oates." The
Necessary Blankness: Women in M ajor American Fiction o f
the Sixties. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1976.
Boesky, D ale. "Correspondence with Miss Joyce Carol Oates."
I n t e r n a t i o n a l R e v ie w o f P s y c h o a n a ly s is 2 ( 1 9 7 5 ) :
481-86.
Barza, Steven. "Joyce Carol Oates: Naturalism and the Aberrant
R e s p o n s e ." S tu d ie s in A m e r ic a n F ic tio n 1 ( 1 9 7 9 ):
141-51.
Bender, Eileen. "Between the Categories: Recent Short Fiction
by J o y c e C a ro l O a tes." S tu d ie s in S h ort F ictio n 17
(1980): 415-23.
Cunningham, Frank, and Mickey Pearlman, eds. "Joyce Carol
Oates: The Enclosure of Identity in the Earlier Stories."
A m erica n W om en W riting F iction . L exington: U n iversity
Press of Kentucky, 1989.
D enne, Constance Ayers. "Joyce Carol O ates’s Women." N a
tion 1 December 1974: 597-99.
Gillis, Christina Mardsen. " ’Where Are You Going, Where Have
Y ou B e e n ? ’: Seduction, Space, and a F ictional Mode."
Studies in Short Fiction 18 (1981): 65-70.
Godwin, Gail. "An O ates Scrapbook." North A m erican Review
256 (1971-72): 67-70.
414
SECONDARY ARTICLES & ESSAYS (continued).
J e a n o tte , S h aron . "The H orror Within." Sphinx 8 (1977):
25-36.
Liston, W illiam. ""Her B rother’s Keeper." Southern H u m an i
ties Review 11 (1977): 195-203.
Park, Sue Sim pson. "A Study in Counterpoint: Joyce Carol
Oates’s ’How I Contemplated the World from the Detroit
H ouse o f C orrection and Began My Life Over A gain.’"
M odem Fiction Studies 22 (1976): 213-24.
P hillips, R ob ert. "Joyce Carol O ates: T he Art o f Fiction."
The Paris Review 1A (Fall-Winter 1978): 199-226.
Pickering, Samuel. "The Short Stories o f Joyce Carol Oates."
The Georgia Review 28 (1974): 218-26.
P in sk er, Sanford. "Isaac B ash evis Singer and Joyce C arol
O ates: S o m e V ersio n s o f G othic." Southern R eview 9
(1973): 895-908.
Sullivan, Walter. "The Artificial Dem on: Joyce Carol O ates
and the D im ensions of the Real." The H ollins Critic
9 (1972): 1-12.
Urbanski, M arie M itchell O lesen. "Existential Allegory: Joyce
Carol Oates’s ’Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?’"
Studies in Short Fiction 15 (1978): 200-03.
W alker, Carolyn. "Fear, L ove, and A rt in O a tes’s ’P lot.’"
Critique: Essays in M odem Fiction 15 (1974):
59-70.
Wegs, Joyce. " ’D on’t You Know Who I Am?’: The Grotesque in
O ates’s ’Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?’"
Journal o f Narrative Technique 5 (1975): 66-72.
B. SECONDARY BOOKS
B a stia n , K ath erin e. Joyce C arol O a te s’s S h ort Stories: B e
tw een Tradition and Innovation. Frankfurt: V erlag Peter
Lang, 1983.
Creighton, Joanne V. Joyce Carol Oates. Boston: Twayne Pub
lishers, 1979.
415
SECONDARY BOOKS (continued)
F ried m a n , E lle n . Joyce C arol O ates. N ew Y ork: U ngar,
1980.
G ra n t, M ary K athryn. The Tragic V ision o f Joyce C a ro l
Oates. Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 1978.
Johnson, G reg. U nderstanding Joyce Carol O ates. Colum bia,
S.C.: University of South Carolina Press, 1987.
L ercangee, Francine. Joyce Carol Oates: A n A nnotated B ibli
ography. New York: Garland Publishing Co., 1986.
M ila zz o , L e e, ed . C o n ve rsa tio n s w ith Joyce C a ro l O a tes.
Jackson: University of Mississippi Press, 1989.
Severin, Hermann. The Image o f the Intellectual in the Short
Stories o f Joyce Carol Oates. Frankfurt: Verlag Peter
Lang, 1986.
Wagner, Linda W, ed. Critical Essays on Joyce Carol Oates.
Boston: G. K. Hall & Co., 1979.
W aller, G .F. D ream ing Am erica: Obsession and Transcendence
in th e F ic tio n o f J o yce C a ro l O a te s. B a to n R o u g e:
Louisiana State University Press, 1979.
III. GENERAL REFERENCE: BOOKS
A. BOOKS ON LITERARY THEORY
B arricelli, Jean-P ierre, and Joseph G ibaldi, eds. Interrela
tions o f Literature. New York: The Modern Language
Association of America, 1982.
C alvin o, Ita lo . The U ses o f L itera tu re . Trans. Patrick
Creagh, New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1982.
Coolidge, Archibald. A Theory o f Story. N. p.: M aecenas
Press, 1989.
D ew ey , John. A rt A s E xperience. N ew York: M inton,
Balch, & Company, 1934.
BOOKS ON THEORY (continued)
416
Dickson, Frank and Sandra Smythe, eds. H andbook o f Short
S to ry W ritin g. C in c in n a ti: W riter’s D ig e s t B o o k s,
1981.
F ied ler, L eslie. L o ve an d D eath in the A m erican N ovel.
New York: Stein and Day, 1966.
F in h o lt , R ic h a r d . A m e r ic a n V isio n a r y F ic tio n . P o r t
Washington, N. Y.: Kennikat Press, 1978.
Gardner, John. On Moral Fiction. New York: Basic Books,
1978.
G unn, G iles. The Interpretation o f Otherness. N ew York:
Oxford University Press, 1979.
Kerby, Anthony Paul. Narrative and the Self. Bloomington
and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 1991.
L odge, D avid, ed. Twentieth Century Literary Criticism: A
Reader. New York: Longman, 1972.
L o h a fer, S u san . C om ing to Term s w ith the Short Story.
Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1983.
— , and Jo E llen C larey, ed s. S h ort Story Theory a t a
C rossroads. B aton R ouge: Louisiana State U niversity
Press, 1989.
S tein er, G eorge. R e a l P resences. Chicago: U niversity of
Chicago Press, 1989.
Tom pkins, Jane P., ed. R eader Response Criticism. Balti
more: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1980.
B. BOOKS ON THE SELF
Belenky, Mary Field et al. Women’ s Ways o f Knowing: The
Developm ent o f Self, Voice, and Mind. New York: Basic
Books, 1986.
Dennett, Daniel C. Elbow Room: The Varities o f Free Will
Worth Wanting. Cambridge: MIT Press, 1985.
417
BOOKS ON THE SELF (continued)
E lia d e , M ircea . The S a c re d a n d th e P ro fa n e . T rans.
Willard R. Trask. New York: Harcourt Brace & World,
1957.
Gregory, Richard, ed. The Oxford Com panion to the Mind.
Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1989.
Good, Graham. The Observing Self. New York: Routledge,
Chapman and Hall, 1988.
Hofstadter, Douglas and Daniel Dennett. The M ind’ s I: Fan
tasies an d R eflection s on S e lf an d Sou l. N ew York:
Bantam Books, 1982.
J a m e s, W illia m . T he V a ritie s o f R e lig io u s E x p e rie n c e .
New York: Random House, 1929.
Jung, Carl Gustav. M em ories, Dream s, Reflections. Trans.
Richard and Clara Winston. Ed. Aniela Jaffe. New York:
Vintage Books, 1989.
— The Undiscovered Self. N ew York: Penguin Books,
1957.
K ohut, H ein z. S e lf P sychology and the H um anities. Ed.
Charles B. Strozier. New York: W. W. Norton, 1985.
Lacan, Jacques. Ecrits: A Selection. Trans. A lan Sheri
dan. New York: W. W. Norton, 1977.
Martin, Jay. Who A m I This Time? Uncovering the Fictive
Personality New York: W. W. Norton, 1988.
Ogilvy, Jam es. S elf and the World: R eadings in Philoso
phy, 2nd ed. N ew York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich,
1980.
P alm er, D onald. L ooking at Philosophy. M ountain View,
Ca.: Mayfield Publishing Company, 1988.
S h ea, John. Stories o f God: A n U nauthorized Biography.
Chicago: The Thomas More Press, 1978.
Taylor, Charles. Sources o f Self: The Making o f the M odem
Identity. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1989.
418
BOOKS ON THE SELF (continued)
T rillin g , L io n e l. The O pposing Self. N ew York: T he
Viking Press, 1969.
W ylie, Sypher. The Loss o f S elf in M odem Literature and
Art. New York: Vintage Books, 1962.
419
APPENDIX A
PERSONAL HISTORY: JOYCE CAROL OATES
June 16,1938 Born to Carolina and Frederick Carlton Oates in
Lockport, New York.
1952 G raduates from grammar school: a one-room
schoolhouse in rural New York.
1956 Graduates from Central High School in Williams-
ville, New York. Goes to Syracuse University on
a Regents State scholarship.
1959 W hile a junior at Syracuse, wins the M ademoi
selle Fiction Writing Contest with her story "In
the Old World."
1960 Wins the senior class poetry contest at Syracuse
and graduates Phi Beta Kappa and valedictorian
for her class.
1961 Graduates from University o f W isconsin with a
Master’s Degree in English. M eets and marries
her husband, R aym ond Sm ith. Enters Ph.D .
program at Rice University in Texas.
1962 D iscovers her story "Sweet Love Remembered"
listed in H onor Roll o f Martha F oley’s annual
B e st A m e r ic a n S h o rt S to r ie s. L e a v e s R ic e
University to becom e a writer.
1963 P u b lish es first story co llectio n , By the N orth
Gate.
1963-1967 In str u c to r o f E n g lish at th e U n iv e r sity o f
Detroit.
1964 Publishes first novel, With Shuddering Fall.
1965 First play is produced, "The Sweet Enemy."
420
PERSONAL HISTORY
(continued)
1967 Named Guggenheim Fellow.
1967-1978 Professor of English at University of Windsor in
Ontario, Canada.
1968 R e ce iv es R osen th al Aw ard from the N ational
Institute of Arts and L etters. Publishes first
book of poetry, Women in Love.
1970 Wins the National Book Award for her novel,
them and receives the O. H enry Aw ard for
Continuing Achievement.
1972 P u b lish es first n on -fiction book, The Edge o f
Impossibility.
1974 Founds The Ontario Review with her husband.
1975 Receives the Lotus Club Award of Merit.
1978 G o es to P rin ceton as w riter-in -resid en ce and
Professor of English. Becomes a member of the
American Academy of Arts and Letters.
1980 P u b lis h e s first drama c o ll e c t i o n , Three
Plays.
1986 Receives a second O. Henry Award for Continuing
Achievement.
1987 G iven the key to the city of her hom etown,
Lockport, N ew York. Publishes first pseudony
mous novel, Lives o f the Twins.
1988 Receives the St. Louis Literary Award.
1989 R e c e iv e s th e A lan Sw allow A w ard for Short
Fiction, the H eidem an Award for one-act plays,
and the Bobst Lifetime Achievement Award.
1990 Receives the Rhea Award for Short Fiction.
421
APPENDIX B
PUBLISHING HISTORY: JOYCE CAROL OATES
YEAR TITLE OF WORK TYPE OF WORK
1963 By the North Gate Story Collection
1964 With Shuddering Fall Novel
1965 The Sweet Enemy Play (produced)
1966 Upon the Sweeping Flood Story Collection
1967 Garden of Earthly Delights Novel
1968 Expensive People
Women in Love
Novel
Poetry Collection
1969 them
Anonymous Sins
Novel
Poetry Collection
1970 W heel of Love
Love and Its Derangements
Sunday Dinner
Story Collection
Poetry Collection
Play (produced)
1971 Wonderland Novel
1972 Marriages and Infidelities
Edge of Impossibility
Ontological Proof of My
Existence
Story Collection
Non-fiction
Play (produced)
1973 D o With M e What You Will
The Hostile Sun
Scenes from American Life
Angel Fire
Dreaming America
Novel
Non-fiction
Story Anthology (editor)
Poetry Collection
Poetry Collection
PUBLISHING HISTORY
(continued)
YEAR TITLE OF WORK TYPE OF WORK
1974 Goddess & Other Women
Where Are You Going,
Where Have You Been?
The Hungry Ghosts
Miracle Play
New Heaven, New Earth
Story Collection
Story Collection
Story Collection
Drama
Non-fiction
1975 The Assassins
The Poisoned Kiss
The Seduction
The Fabulous Beasts
Novel
Story Collection
Story Collection
Poetry Collection
1976 Childwold
Triumph of the Spider Monkey
Crossing the Border
Novel
Novella/play
Story Collection
1977 Night-Side
Season of Peril
Story Collection
Poetry Collection
1978 Son of the Morning
All the Good People I’ ve
Left Behind
Sentimental Education
Women Whose Lives Are Food,
Men Whose Lives Are
Money
Novel
Story Collection
Story Collection
Poetry Collection
1979 Unholy Loves
Cybele
Best American Short Stories
Novel
Novel
Story Anthology (editor)
1980 Bellefleur
Three Plays
Celestial Timepiece
Novel
Drama Collection
Poetry Collection
1981 Angel of Light
Contraries
Nightless Nights
Novel
Non-fiction
Poetry Collection
1982 A Bloodsmoor Romance
Night Walks
Invisible Woman
Novel
Essays (editor)
Poetry Collection
423
PUBLISHING HISTORY
(continued)
YEAR TITLE OF WORK TYPE OF WORK
1983 The Profane Art
First Person Singular
Luxury of Sin
Non-fiction
Essays (editor)
Poetry Collection
1984 Mysteries of Winterthurn
Last Days
Presque Isle
Novel
Story Collection
Play (produced)
1985 Solstice
Story: Fictions Past and
Present
Triumph of the Spider Monkey
Novel
Anthology (editor)
Play (produced)
1986 Marya: A Life
Raven’s Wing
Novel
Story Collection
1987 You Must Remember This
On Boxing
Time Traveler
Lives of the Twins
Novel
Non-fiction
Poetry Collection
Pseudonymous Novel
1988 The Assignation
(Woman) Writer
Reading the Fights
Story Collection
Non-fiction
Essays (editor)
1989 American Appetites
Soul/Mates
Novel
Pseudonymous Novel
1990 Because It is Bitter, And
Because It Is My Heart
I Lock My Door Upon Myself
Nemesis
Novel
Novel
Pseudonymous Novel
1991 The Rise of Life on Earth
H eat and Other Stories
Best American Essays
Twelve Plays
Novel
Story Collection
Anthology (editor)
Drama Collection
1992 Black Water
Snake Eyes
Novel
Pseudonymous Novel
Note: Pseudonymous novels published under name Rosamond Smith.
424
APPENDIX C
AWARD STORIES: JOYCE CAROL OATES
YEAR STORY COLL/PUB. AWARD(S)
1963 The Fine White Mist of Winter NG OH/BASS
1964 Upon the Sweeping Flood USF BASS
1965 First Views of the Enemy USF OH/BASS
1965 Stigmata USF OH
1965 In the Region of Ice WAYG? OH
1967 Where Are You Going...? WAYG? BASS
1968 Where Are You Going...? WAYG? OH
1969 Accomplished Desires WL OH
1969 By the River M&I BASS
1970 How I Contemplated the World.. WL OH/BASS
1970 Unmailed, Unwritten Letters WL OH
1971 The Children M&I OH
1971 Through the Looking Glass CB OH
1972 Saul Bird Says/Pilgrims Progress HG OH
1973 Silkie WAYG? BASS
1973 The Dead M&I OH
1976 Blood-Swollen Landscape AGP OH
1977 Gay Playboy Magazine BASS
1977 Hallucination AGP PUSH I*
AWARD STORIES
425
YEAR STORY COLL/PUB. AWARD(S)
1978 The Tatoo M ademoiselle OH
1978 The Translation N-S BASS
1979 Detente LD PUSH VII
1979 In the Autumn of the Year SE OH
1981 Mutilated Woman Michigan Q. Rev. OH
1981 Presque Isle The Agni Review BASS
1982 Theft The Northwest Review BASS
1982 The Man Whom W omen Adored LD OH
1983 My Warszawa LD OH
1984 Nairobi RW BASS
1985 Raven’s Wing RW BASS
1985 The Seasons RW OH
1986 Master Race The Partisan Review BASS
1987 Ancient Airs, Voices RW OH
1987 Haunted The Architecture of Fear YBF**
1988 Yarrow HEAT OH
1989 House Hunting HEAT O H
1989 Party ASG PUSH XIV
1990 Heat HEAT OH
1990 Family HEAT YBF
1991 The Swimmers Playboy Magazine OH
1991 The Hair HEAT PUSH XVI
1991 Americans Abroad North American Review BASS
426
AWARD STORIES
ABBREVIATIONS
AWARDS:
OH = O. Henry Awards
BA SS= Best American Short Stories
P U SH = The Pushcart Prize (see notation below)
YBF = The Year’s Best Fantasy (see notation below)
*PU SH = Pushcart (1 9 7 7 + ) / Best Little M agazine Fiction
(prior to 1977)
**YBF = 1987 was the first annual collection
STORY COLLECTIONS:
NG
=
By the North Gate (1963)
USF = Upon the Sweeping Flood (1966)
WL
=
The W heel of Love (1970)
M&I = Marriages and Infidelities (1972)
WAYG? = Where Are You Going . . . ? (1974)
HG = The Hungry Ghosts (1974)
CB
=
Crossing the Border (1976)
N-S = Night-Side (1977)
AGP = All the Good People . . . (1978)
SE
=
Sentimental Education (1978)
LD
=
Last Days (1984)
RW = Raven’s Wing (1986)
ASG
=
The Assignation (1988)
HEAT = H eat and Other Stories (1990)
COLLECTIONS NOT REPRESENTED:
The Goddess and Other Women (1974)
The Poisoned Kiss (1975)
The Seduction (1975)

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