ENG 104H Lecture Notes - Lecture 9: Joyce Carol Oates, Valedictorian, Fyodor Dostoyevsky
Joyce Carol Oates (Modern Gothicism) - Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been
Childhood
- Born 1983
- Raised in upstate New York
- Working class family (first in family to go to college, later grad school)
- Attended one room schoolhouse
- One teacher, k-8 all in one room
- Taught at Princeton
- Started writing out novels as a teen
College & Beyond
- Valedictorian of her class at Syracuse University
- Won Mademoiselle short story contest at 19
- Lived in Detroit in the mid 1960’s - cites this as a turning point in the specificity & realism
of her work
- Racial tension, gritty city
- Taught at Princeton until 2014
Writing Career
- Incredibly Prolific (lots of books)
- Has published more than 70 books
- Often compared to Dickens and Balzac
- They were paid to write by the word so they would stretch out their stories
- Writes in longhand, 7-8 hours everyday
- Influences: Brontes, Faulkner, Hemingway, Kafka, O’Connor, Dostoevsky
- Themes: Violence, rural poverty, sexual abuse, class tensions, power, gothicism,
women’s experience
- Other books: Them, Blackwater, Blonde, We Were the Mulvaneys
- Stone Award for lifetime literary achievement (OSU award)
- Lively Twitter presence: 64,000 tweets at last count
- Sees herself as bearing witness
- Criticized for brutality, views it as rebirth
- “When people say there is too much violence in my books, what they are
saying is that there is too much reality in life.”
Key term: Coming of age (Bildungsroman)
- Young adult protagonist - often a teenager
- Focus on psychological and moral growth of protagonist
- Transformation from childhood to adulthood, innocence to experience
Examples:
- Huck Finn, Catcher in the Rye, To Kill a Mockingbird, Fault in our Stars, Harry Potter
- Breakfast Club, stand by me, moonlight (most teen movies)
Document Summary
Joyce carol oates (modern gothicism) - where are you going, where have you been. Working class family (first in family to go to college, later grad school) One teacher, k-8 all in one room. Started writing out novels as a teen. Valedictorian of her class at syracuse university. Won mademoiselle short story contest at 19. Lived in detroit in the mid 1960"s - cites this as a turning point in the specificity & realism of her work. They were paid to write by the word so they would stretch out their stories. Themes: violence, rural poverty, sexual abuse, class tensions, power, gothicism, women"s experience. Other books: them, blackwater, blonde, we were the mulvaneys. Stone award for lifetime literary achievement (osu award) Lively twitter presence: 64,000 tweets at last count. Criticized for brutality, views it as rebirth.
