"Where Is Here" by Joyce Carol Oates

Joyce Carol Oates published her first book in 1963, and has since published nearly 60 novels, several plays and novellas, and several collections of short stories, poetry, and nonfiction. Her novels "Black Water", "What I Lived For", and "Blonde" along with two of her short story collections, "The Wheel of Love" and "Lovely, Dark, Deep: Stories" were all nominated for the Pulitzer Prize. She has won the National Book Award, for her novel "Them", plus two O. Henry Awards, the National Humanities Medal, and the Jerusalem Prize. For many years, she has been acknowledged as a master of the short story...and, yet, I had never read her work before I strayed into this little collection of stories, "Where Is Here". It is an interesting and entertaining little book containing 35 stories in less than 200 pages. In defense of my having never previously read her work, I can only say that nobody has the time to read every popular writer's works, and many writers whose work is popular are not worth reading anyway. That statement does not fit the work of Joyce Carol Oates. The stories are almost all markedly short, not quite what gets called "Flash Fiction" in today's world but generally shorter than most people write short stories. The stories only average about 5 1/2 pages each, maybe 1,500 words, with the longest being 15 pages. I am not and never will be a fan of "Flash Fiction" since I can get the same kind of thing sitting in a country store or small town restaurant listening to conversations between men with dirty work boots and women who haven't worn anything except Levis in 99% of their lives as waitresses, maids, factory workers, and store clerks. But I like Joyce Carol Oates' stories. They generally contain all the important elements of a good story: Plot, Character Development, Conflict, and most times Conflict Resolution. One aspect of her stories which is interesting is that she almost never gives names to her characters. She describes them with a few choice words which generally do not include a lot of adjectives about appearance, clothes, or other aspects which are not directly a part of her story. It works. But it probably does not work for most other short story writers. She frequently writes stories about men and women who can be extremely violent, aggressive, and not the kind of person you would want to bring home to meet your mother. She writes stories about ordinary people in ordinary situations which might not end in ordinary ways. I recently attended the funeral of a man I had known for about 20 or so years who, the first time I met him, introduced himself to me and in the next 30 minutes told me the story of his life which began with the words "my name is...and I shot my brother six times in that little restaurant up the road in front of ten witnesses." He was the kind of character you might find in a Joyce Carol Oates short story. If that doesn't make her work worth reading, what else could I ever say about it. Will that make me write a 1,500 word short story about somebody like that...probably not. I could never adequately tell his story in 1,500 words...but Joyce Carol Oates might. It can sure be interesting to read stories like that when the author is someone like Joyce Carol Oats.

"Mysteries Of Winterthurn" by Joyce Carol Oates, Some Responses to Reading It!

In the past, I have read and written on this blog about at least one of Joyce Carol Oates' books, "Where Is Here" which is a collection of short stories which I liked a lot. I have also read some of her short stories which have been published independently elsewhere. I have to say that this book, "Mysteries Of Winterthurn" which is generally described as a novel is an interesting book. There are parts of it which I like a lot. There are other parts of it which fail to impress me. First and foremost, I would not say flatly that I see it as a novel. I think of it much more as a Short Story Cycle which is generally described as a collection of short stories with several common aspects including common characters, common setting, a rational timeline which is evident across all the stories, and in most short story cycles all the stories are viable if viewed as being independent of the others. The book is composed of three stories which are also arguably novellas ranging in length from 150 pages to almost 200. The stories have a common protagonist, Xavier Kilgarvan, who is a young man of about 20 or so years in the first story and a man of nearly retirement age in the third. The stories progress across his lifespan in a rational timeline, but there is a sizeable gap of time between each subsequent story and the next. All three are set in Winterthurn a rural,small town in New England. All the stories share a common cast of lesser characters. Each story involves murders which Xavier works to solve since all are unsolved at the time of his initial involvement. The writing style in these stories is very different from the style in the short story collection which I mentioned above. That writing style is reminescent of the work of Edgar Allan Poe or other major writers of early American mystery or detective stories. I believe that Oates set herself the task of emulating as closely as possible the writing style which is generally seen in early American murder mysteries or the English examples such as the work of Conan Doyle. The language is cumbersome, verbose, and replete with words and terms which have nearly fallen out of use in spoken English in America today. I commend Joyce Carol Oates on that effort to emulate the earlier style of writing. She did an excellent job of making the book appear to almost be a 19th century work in the genre. But it is a cumbersome read in today's world. I have to admit that as I read the book I was unmotivated to read it straight through from beginning to end. I had to take a break between the stories, read other works by other authors which were written in more modern styles. After reading another book following each of the stories, I was able to motivate myself to return and complete the book. I have to admit that I rarely, if ever, begin a book which I do not finish reading. I firmly believe that if I begin a book I owe the author an obligation to complete it. That author has spenta sizeable chunk of their time writing the book,obtaining a publishing contract, and marketing the book with public appearances, book signings, and other promotionial work such as radio and television interviews. If you are a devoted reader of murder mysteries, you might love this book. If you are not such a reader, you might stop long before you reach the end.