December 2017: Joyce Carol Oates

We'll finish up the year with Joyce Carol Oates.

FYI - here is the thread from the last time we read Oates.

In four years, not much has changed for me! I've still already read Blonde and still have We Were the Mulvaneys on the shelf and didn't get to it yet..

I'm still struggling to believe it's the end of the year already, and yet here it is in December. I know it's still early on in the month, but has anyone picked up anything by Joyce Carol Oates ?

I have quite a few of hers on the shelf but I think I will try Blonde.

I'm not sure...I'll need to see what strikes my fancy. I truly disliked both of her books I've tried (We Were the Mulvaneys and Foxfire ).

Edit...I can't get the tag for Foxfire to work, so I'm trying again...

>3 Yells: I read Blonde many years ago but liked it very much at the time.

>4 sparemethecensor: Hm, that's not promising. I have We Were the Mulvaneys on my shelf but have never gotten around to it. I was thinking about maybe giving it a try this month, time permitting.

Slow to start but I have read the first 100 pages of Blonde and I am really liking it so far.

So I finished Blonde. I now want to read more about Monroe just to see what is actually true. This was a sad novel about a very frightened and lonely woman who was horribly used by all those around her. I hope for her sake that Oates did a lot of exaggerating.

>7 Yells: Sadly, I think the basic facts were true. It's been a long time since I read Blonde, so I wouldn't remember specifics though. There are many, MANY Marilyn Monroe biographies out there for you to do further reading; the hard part is sorting which ones are decent and which ones are just sensational.

>8 sweetiegherkin: I just bought the Norman Mailer biography on Kindle so we will see.

From what I can see on Wikipedia, the bones of Oates' book are accurate but the details changed a bit. What a sad life...

I did start We Were the Mulvaneys a while back (my copy was so old the pages were starting to yellow, so I figured it was time). I was really excited for it, but I've been having trouble getting in to it. On page 70-something and it still feels like an intro...

>10 sweetiegherkin: I read that one quite a few years ago so don't remember much. I do remember it being a rather long, slow moving book about a dysfunctional family.

>7 Yells: Yeah, I was really sad after reading Blonde, about that poor girl's whole, short, life. Just not right what some people go through. :(

>11 Yells: It had so much praise, but I'm finding it hard to slog through. Hoping it gets better... fingers crossed.

>12 .Monkey.: Indeed. Some people really draw the short straw in life. It's a real shame.

Joyce Carol Oates is a guest at the Dublin Ghost Story Festival this year. I am going but I have not read any of her work yet. I must rectify that before June.

>14 pgmcc: Oh wow, cool. I take it you are going to the festival then ?

So two months later, I've finally finished We Were the Mulvaneys. The beginning 80 pages or so took forever to get through. After that the pace picked up considerably. The book is about this sort of "perfect" family in a small town in upstate New York during the 1970s. After a high school dance, the charming daughter is sexually assaulted. From there, things just get worse. The father can't bear looking at his daughter and knowing he couldn't protect, so the mother arranges to send her away to live with a distant family member.

However, the father continues to spiral, losing friends and business, and the family continues to suffer. Most of the remaining children move away as quickly as possibly. The book follows the family over the next couple of decades as they deal with the consequences of these life events and their reactions to them. Two of the children (the daughter and the second son) are interesting to read about, especially as we get more of their inner thoughts. I didn't care for the mother or father so my interest in reading about them was less so. The oldest and youngest sons were really not well developed, but we also saw less of them.

Overall, it was an interesting read, but not one so compelling that I feel the need to recommend it. I did get a chuckle out of this line about the mother: "There came a succession of slow dull safe jobs--in the Mt. Ephraim Public Library, in a day-care center, at the Chautauqua County Bureau of Records where eventually she would be promoted to office manager." Having work in several day care centers and public libraries, I can testify that these jobs are not slow, dull, or safe!

Came across this article recently and thought others might enjoy: https://www.theparisreview.org/interviews/3441/joyce-carol-oates-the-art-of-fict...