American author Joyce Carol Oates was born on June 16, 1938. She is an author of more than 70 books, including novels, short story collections, poetry volumes, plays, essays, and criticism. ‘We Were the Mulvaneys’ and ‘Blonde’ are her national bestsellers.
Among her many honours are the PEN/Malamud Award for Excellence in Short Fiction and the National Book Award.
Oates is the Roger S. Berlind Distinguished Professor of the Humanities at Princeton University, and has been a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters since 1978. In her Paris Review interview conducted in 1976 by Robert Phillips, she has spoken of her own art of fiction as well as wrong notions on literary writing. Following are such nine wrong views which most people believe in:
(A) Writers can produce too many books
Oates is a prolific writer, and critics often charge her that she produces too much. Can a writer produce so many books? Joyce’s answer is:
“Productivity is a relative matter. And it’s really insignificant: What is ultimately important is a writer’s strongest books. It may be the case that we all must write many books in order to achieve a few lasting ones—just as a young writer or poet might have to write hundreds of poems before writing his first significant one.
Each book as it is written, however, is a completely absorbing experience, and feels always as if it were the work I was born to write. Afterward, of course, as the years pass, it’s possible to become more detached, more critical.
Each book is a world unto itself and must stand alone, and it should not matter whether a book is a writer’s first, or tenth, or fiftieth”.
(B) I can read my own works
Generally, writers are reluctant to read their own works after they are published. But some writers do not believe in this. What are the views of Oates?
“Evidently, there are writers (John Cheever, Mavis Gallant come immediately to mind) who never reread their work, and there are others who reread constantly. I suspect I am somewhere in the middle.”
(C) Writing creates the mood
Some writers say without emotional stability you can’t write a fiction. They suggest that you should have some mood or state of mind to start a novel or story. Is this true for writing?
“One must be pitiless about this matter of “mood.” In a sense, the writing will create the mood. If art is, as I believe it to be, a genuinely transcendental function—a means by which we rise out of limited, parochial state of mind—then it should not matter very much what state of mind or emotion we are in.
Generally I’ve found this to be true: I have forced myself to begin writing when I’ve been utterly exhausted, when I’ve felt my soul as thin as a playing card, when nothing has seemed worth enduring for another five minutes and somehow the activity of writing changes everything, or appears to do so.
Joyce said of the underlying structure of ‘Ulysses’—the Odyssean parallel and parody—that he really didn’t care whether it was plausible so long as it served as a bridge to get his “soldiers” across. Once they were across, what does it matter if the bridge collapses? One might say the same thing about the use of one’s-self as a means for the writing to get written. Once the soldiers are across the stream”.
(D) Why can’t work start on many projects at a time?
Can a writer get involved in many projects at a time? According to many, one can write only one work at a time. Joyce Carol Oates’ opinion is below:
“When I complete a novel I set it aside, and begin work on short stories, and eventually another long work. When I complete that novel I return to the earlier novel and rewrite much of it. In the meantime the second novel lies in a desk drawer. Sometimes I work on two novels simultaneously, though one usually forces the other into the background.
The rhythm of writing, revising, writing, revising and so on seems to suit me. I am inclined to think that as I grow older I will come to be infatuated with the art of revision, and there may come a time when I will dread giving up a novel at all.”
(E) A character determines “voice”
For whom does a writer write? One can say, it is for himself, while another can say his close friends or his own readers. What is the Oate’s answer?
“Well, there are certain stories, like those in ‘The Hungry Ghosts’, which I have written for an academic community and, in some cases, for specific people. But in general the writing writes itself—I mean a character determines his or her “voice” and I must follow along.”
(F) What is easy? A novel or a short story?
There is an old adage that it is more difficult to write a good story than a novel. Is that true?
“Brief subjects require brief treatments. There is nothing so difficult as a novel, as anyone knows who has attempted one; a short story is bliss to write set beside a novel of even ordinary proportions.”
(G) No difficulty to write in male’s perspective
Joyce Carol Oates is a female writer, but she has also created many male protagonists. But is it difficult to write from the male’s point of view?
“Absolutely not. I am as sympathetic with any of my male characters as I am with any of my female characters. In many respects I am closest in temperament to certain of my male characters—Nathan Vickery of ‘Son of the Morning’, for instance—and feel an absolute kinship with them. ‘The Kingdom of God’ is within.”
(H) No woman language
As per many writers, there is a language in fiction as woman language, but can you tell the sex of a writer from the prose? Oates says, “Never.”
(I) After finishing a book I feel a loss
Every writer enjoys when writing. But after finishing a story or a novel, how does he feel? Many say he or she was quite relieved. But is it correct?
“I feel somewhat at a loss, aimless and foolishly sentimental, and disconnected, when I’ve finished one work and haven’t yet become absorbed in another.”
Oates has more things to add:
“All of us, who write, work out of a conviction that we are participating in some sort of communal activity. Whether my role is writing, or reading and responding, might not be very important. I take seriously Flaubert’s statement that we must love one another in our art as the mystics love one another in God. By honouring one another’s creation we honour something that deeply connects us all, and goes beyond us.
“Of course, writing is only one activity out of a vast number of activities that constitute our lives. It seems to be the one that some of us have concentrated on, as if we were fated for it.
“Since I have a great deal of faith in the processes and the wisdom of the unconscious, and have learned from experience to take lightly the judgments of the ego and its inevitable doubts, I never find myself constrained to answer such questions. Life is energy, and energy is creativity. And even when we as individuals pass on, the energy is retained in the work of art, locked in it and awaiting release if only someone will take the time and the care to unlock it.”