Joyce Carol Oates Shames Us All:
Lest you think that you are a productive person, I direct your attention to this piece in the New York Review of Books on novelist Joyce Carol Oates, particularly the opening paragraphs.
Joyce Carol Oates still bothers people—in all kinds of ways. For more
than forty-five years she has been steadily producing novels, short
stories, poems, essays, plays. Between the beginning of 2000 and the
end of 2005 she published nineteen books. She has written over seven
hundred short stories, more than Maupassant, Kipling, and Chekhov
combined…
With her husband Raymond Smith, moreover, Oates has edited The Ontario Review
and, from time to time, published books under its imprint. She has
regularly contributed substantial essays and reviews to, among others, The New York Times Book Review, The New Republic, and The New York Review of Books.
Somehow, the seemingly tireless writer also keeps a journal, plays the
piano, jogs, gardens, draws, cooks, and reads as indefatigably as she
writes. (But she doesn’t watch television: TV, Oates has said, is "for
people who are skimming along on the surface of life.") Her good friend
the scholar Elaine Showalter once remarked that you had but to mention
a book and "Joyce will have the novel read by next week."
I’m going back to bed.
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8 Replies to “Joyce Carol Oates Shames Us All:”
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That bitch.
Actually, in all seriousness, I’ve *met* Joyce Carol Oates and she struck me as a particularly polite, charming and wonderful individual. So as much as I’d like to mutter belittling things about her, it’s awfully hard to do so. I will, instead, only suggest that she was born with a genetic defect: the lack of any need for sleep. And, to that end, I humbly move that we kidnap the woman and either use her for scientific research or make her a breeder. For the good of all mankind! JOYCE CAROL OATES WILL SAVE US ALL!
*ahem*
Right. Back to the desk job now… 🙂
That bitch.
Actually, in all seriousness, I’ve *met* Joyce Carol Oates and she struck me as a particularly polite, charming and wonderful individual. So as much as I’d like to mutter belittling things about her, it’s awfully hard to do so. I will, instead, only suggest that she was born with a genetic defect: the lack of any need for sleep. And, to that end, I humbly move that we kidnap the woman and either use her for scientific research or make her a breeder. For the good of all mankind! JOYCE CAROL OATES WILL SAVE US ALL!
*ahem*
Right. Back to the desk job now… 🙂
Postscript: as a somewhat prolific SOB yourself, Kevin, I got a chuckle and a half out of your being the one to post this!
Postscript: as a somewhat prolific SOB yourself, Kevin, I got a chuckle and a half out of your being the one to post this!
Oh Geoff, I have no doubt. That’s what drives me crazy. She manages to be insanely productive, good at it anda fully functioning decent person to boot. Makes me wanna crawl under the bed with my Story of America Cards and weep.
Oh Geoff, I have no doubt. That’s what drives me crazy. She manages to be insanely productive, good at it anda fully functioning decent person to boot. Makes me wanna crawl under the bed with my Story of America Cards and weep.
I suddenly feel lazier than I ever thought possible..
I suddenly feel lazier than I ever thought possible..