In Rough Country

by Oates, Joyce Carol

• ISBN13: 9780061963988
• ISBN10: 0061963984
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2010-06-29
• Publisher: Ecco Pr

Summary

In twenty-nine provocative essays, Joyce Carol Oates maps the "rough country" that is both the treacherous geographical and psychological terrain of the writers she so cogently analyzes-Flannery O'Connor, Cormac McCarthy, Philip Roth, E. L. Doctorow, and Margaret Atwood, among others-and the emotional terrain of Oates's own life following the unexpected death of her husband, Raymond Smith, after forty-eight years of marriage."As literature is a traditional solace to the bereft, so writing about literature can be a solace, as it was to me when the effort of writing fiction seemed beyond me, as if belonging to another lifetime," Oates writes. "Reading and taking notes, especially late at night when I can't sleep, has been the solace, for me, that saying the Rosary or reading The Book of Common Prayer might be for another." The results of those meditations are the essays of In Rough Country-balanced and illuminating investigations that demonstrate an artist working at the top of her form.

Author Biography

Joyce Carol Oates is a recipient of the 2010 National Book Critics Ivan Sandrof Lifetime Achievement Award, the National Book Award, and the PEN/Malamud Award for Excellence in Short Fiction. She has written some of the most enduring fiction of our time, including the national bestseller Blonde, which was nominated for the National Book Award. She is Professor of Humanities at Princeton University.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments	p. ix
Preface: In Rough Country	p. xiii
Classics	p. 1
A Poe Memoir	p. 3
The Woman in White: Emily Dickinson and Friends	p. 13
Cast a Cold Eye: Jean Stafford	p. 29
The Art of Vengeance: Roald Dahl	p. 45
Revisiting Nabokov's Lolita	p. 63
Shirley Jackson's Witchcraft: We Have Always Lived in the Castle	p. 68
"As You Are Grooved, So You Are Grieved": The Art and the Craft of Bernard Malamud	p. 84
"Large and Startling Figures": The Fiction of Flannery O'Connor	p. 94
Boxing: History, Art, Culture	p. 112
Contemporaries	p. 131
Remembering John Updike	p. 133
Homer & Langley: E. L. Doctorow	p. 135
In Rough Country I: Cormac McCarthy	p. 144
In Rough Country II: Annie Proulx	p. 180
Enchanted! Salman Rushdie	p. 197
Philip Roth's Tragic Jokes	p. 216
A Photographer's Lives: Annie Leibovitz	p. 226
"The Great Heap of Days": James Salter's Fiction	p. 236
Margaret Atwood's Tales	p. 251
In the Emperor's Dream House: Claire Messud	p. 282
After the Apocalypse: Jim Crace	p. 299
The Story of X: Susanna Moore's In the Cut	p. 310
"It Doesn't Feel Personal": The Poetry of Sharon Olds	p. 320
Too Much Happiness: The Stories of Alice Munro	p. 327
Nostalgias	p. 343
Nostalgia 1970: City on Fire	p. 345
The Myth of the "American Idea": 2007	p. 351
"Why Is Humanism Not the Preeminent Belief of Humankind?" Address upon Receiving the 2007 Humanist of the Year Award	p. 354
In the Absence of Mentors/Monsters: Notes on Writerly Influences	p. 357
Revisiting Lockport, New York	p. 372
Notes	p. 387
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