Joyce Carol Oates is truly the master of short-storytelling.

Her works are a source of inspiration that knows no bounds for me, as I predominantly focus on writing short stories.

Her ability to craft vivid characters, develop engaging plots, and create a unique atmosphere within the limited space of a short story is simply remarkable.

Each of her stories is a gem, filled with depth, complexity, and emotional resonance.

When I read her works, I am constantly amazed by her creativity and her skill in handling various themes and genres.

She has taught me so much about the art of short-story writing, and I am deeply grateful for her influence.

I strive to emulate her style and learn from her techniques, hoping to one day achieve a fraction of her success.

Joyce Carol Oates will always remain an inspiration to me, a guiding light in my journey as a short-story writer.

This generously proportioned book has truly shaped up to be a well-balanced collection by the incomparable Joyce Carol Oates.

It serves as an ideal anthology to dip into during those fallow periods on the novel front. I purchased it mainly for its inclusion of "Where are you going, where have you been?" This story is dedicated to Bob Dylan, inspired by his song "It's All Over Now, Baby Blue", and based on the case of serial killer Charles Schmid, also known as The Pied Piper of Tuscon. However, there are an abundance of gems within these pages, spanning JCO's long and illustrious career. It's extremely difficult for me to single out any favorites.

The stories are populated by characters who are always on the outside looking in, the lonely souls, the ones who leave things unsaid. Oates's remarkable skill lies in her ability to put the reader right inside the heads of her characters, allowing us to experience their thoughts, emotions, and inner turmoil.

It's this unique talent that makes her stories so engaging and captivating, drawing us in and making us reluctant to put the book down.

The first thing that catches one's attention about Joyce Carol Oates is the sheer volume of her work. In fact, it seems almost impossible to write about her without at least briefly mentioning the vast number of books she has published. By now, she has apparently written more than fifty novels and forty story collections, several volumes of essays, and various other works.

"High Lonesome" is a substantial volume, but it likely represents only a small fraction of the first forty years of Oates' writing, from 1966 to 2006, combined with eleven new stories (at the time of publication, anyway).

When I picked up this volume, I had only a very vague idea of what to expect. I had read "Mysteries of Winterthurn" a long time ago as a teenager and only remembered being confused by it but also kind of liking it. It's a bit of a mystery to me why I haven't read anything by her since then, considering I read a lot of books and tend to like prolific authors who can keep feeding my reading habit. A career-spanning collection of stories seemed like a good way to remedy that and find out whether I actually liked the author or not. However, things didn't quite work out as planned.

For one thing, Oates is not only known for her productivity but also for the great variety in her work. However, this variety is not as明显 in "High Lonesome." I should add that this is probably intentional. The collection is organized by decades, and each decade appears to have a thematic emphasis, such as violence, adultery, or rape. I'm almost certain that this is due to the selection rather than being a representative sample of the stories Oates has written in those periods. There's nothing wrong with this as it's a way of presenting the central themes of Oates' fiction in general. However, if one reads the collection in one go, as I did, it can create a sense of sameness. Maybe it would have been better to read the stories individually, with breaks in between. On the other hand, reading the collection as a whole not only makes the thematic focal points clear but also reveals some general traits of Joyce Carol Oates' writing that I found quite fascinating.

One thing becomes very clear quickly when reading this collection: Joyce Carol Oates is not Raymond Carver or even Ernest Hemingway. She does not subscribe to the school of understatement in story writing and is as far from minimalism as possible. She strongly favors grand gestures and intense emotions, and generally does so using a large amount of words. In fact, as I was reading through this collection, I had the nagging suspicion that, despite the diversity of styles and genres she uses, she is actually only writing in a single genre, and that genre is melodrama. By the time I finished "High Lonesome," that suspicion had become certainty. Everything in this collection is high melodrama, all 690 pages of it. Even those stories that seem to be masquerading as realism are only wearing a disguise. Scratch the surface a little, and the psychological veneer peels away, revealing the improbable plot, the outlandish characterization, and the excessive emotions that are so typical of melodrama.

Admittedly, this is not exactly an original insight. The connection between Joyce Carol Oates' writing and melodrama is often made, and generally not in a positive way but rather as criticism. This might be valid if psychological realism is the standard by which all literary works are measured. However, the 19th century has been over for a while now, and there are more ways to write a novel. There is no a priori reason why melodrama should not be just as valid as realism in giving form to the perception of contemporary life (not to mention all the other possible purposes of literary writing). So, instead of rejecting these stories because they are melodrama, the question should be why they are melodrama and whether their chosen form and genre achieve what they set out to do.

To answer this properly would require a detailed analysis of every story in this collection, which, even if I were inclined to do it, would be beyond the scope of a humble blog post. If I had the time and leisure to take a close look at the stories, I would argue that what Joyce Carol Oates employs here is a very specific kind of melodrama that I would like to call hysterical. This connects back to the old, pre-Freudian, and openly misogynistic concept of hysteria. I would argue that what Oates attempts in these stories (and quite possibly in her writing in general) is an appropriation of that concept for feminism. Hysteria has traditionally been a symbol for a supposed emotional instability in women, who allegedly would fly off on an emotional tangent at the slightest provocation, with an effervescence of feeling that would have only a very tenuous and strained connection to what caused it. And this seems to me to be a very good description of the modus operandi of every single story in this collection. There is a constant sense of emotional overdrive here, of feelings being in excess of what the events (as horrible as they often are) seem to warrant, a relentless tension of high-strung emotions that never relaxes. Almost 700 pages of this can become exhausting, leaving the reader drained and numb, or it can, as it did for me, induce a strange kind of dizziness, a state of trance, almost a delirium-like state. And, the more stories I read, the more I had the nagging feeling that maybe the excesses of these stories are not so excessive after all. Or rather, they are excessive only in that, by being so emphatically over the top, they break through the numbness and boredom with which we tend to receive any news about repeated violence, continued rapes, and commonplace adultery these days. Oates' hysterical tone marks a hyper-sensibility. It is a seismograph whose needle reacts sensitively to even the faintest tremblings. And the fact that such a finely tuned instrument is necessary to make the shock value of the violence/rape/adultery/whatever else she happens to write about felt, to make it even felt at all, is already a comment on the state of things as they are on a purely formal level.

It will hardly come as a surprise that this method is not successful in every single story in this collection. In fact, the quality varies widely. It works best when Joyce Carol Oates either lets go and gives in to excess, where the form and language adjust to the story's tone, as if distorted by hysteria (as, for example, in "Fat Man My Love" - a story blatantly based on the relationship between Alfred Hitchcock and Tippi Hedren, transformed into an utterly over-the-top psychodrama about art and patriarchal power structures), or in the reverse case of those stories that are most restrained on the surface, where Oates tells of mundane events but enhances them, elevates them to a different level of significance by telling them in her hysterical tone of voice (like "The Dead," Oates' feminist take on James Joyce's story of the same title, or the short "Nairobi," whose unassuming surface hides the abyss of gender relations into which it drops the reader).

In conclusion, I still don't know whether I like Joyce Carol Oates or not. Quite a few people do seem to love her work, or else I might suspect that she was just not the kind of writer to be liked. I suppose I will just have to read more of her work to find out, and at least I can say that much - that I find her interesting enough that I do want to find out.

I truly enjoy her novels. The way she weaves the plots and creates the characters is simply remarkable. However, most of these stories were just too dark for me. The themes she explores often deal with the harsher aspects of life, such as pain, suffering, and loss. While I appreciate the depth and complexity of her writing, sometimes it can be a bit overwhelming. I find myself having to take breaks in between reading to process the heavy emotions that the stories evoke. Despite this, I still continue to read her work because I know that there is always something valuable to be gained from it. Her novels make me think, question, and reflect on my own life and the world around me.

Joyce Carol Oates truly has a remarkable ability to tell outstanding stories.

She has mastered the art of creating deeply poignant characters and crafting truly twisted tales within just a few pages.

Although some of the short stories in this collection didn't resonate with me as strongly as others, the majority left me with a sense of wonder and a smile on my face.

The fascinating aspect of this particular collection is that it encompasses stories dating back 50 years.

Some of the stories are completely new, while the oldest ones are from the 1960s.

It was extremely interesting to observe how her storytelling has evolved over the years.

Moreover, it was astonishing to realize that her earliest stories are of the same high quality as her most recent ones.

I am a dedicated fan of Oates because she is an incredibly talented writer.

Her fiction has a unique appeal to me that no other fiction can match.

With each story I read of hers, my fascination for Oates grows stronger and deeper.

Joyce Carol Oates is a literary giant whose writing skills are truly remarkable.

She has an uncanny ability to craft stories that are both engaging and thought-provoking.

Her deftness in handling language and plot is evident in every page of her work.

Whether it's a short story or a novel, Oates has the power to draw readers in and keep them hooked until the very end.

Her characters are complex and well-developed, and her descriptions are vivid and detailed.

It's no wonder that she has won numerous awards and accolades for her writing.

Joyce Carol Oates continues to amaze with her talent and creativity, and her work will surely be studied and admired for years to come.

For decades, I have boycotted the writing of Joyce Carol Oates.

Back when I was striving hard to get published and amassing rejection slips, it seemed as if her work was popping up in every literary magazine.

I know it was petty of me, but still, that was my stance.

However, I recently decided to give this collection of her short fiction a try.

To my great surprise, Ms. Oates has scared the living daylights out of me more times than I care to remember!

Her tales are far more terrifying than those of Stephen King.

The reason being that the monsters in her stories are real, all-too-human ones.

They live right in your neighborhood, within your family, inside your home, and perhaps even within your own soul.

It really pains me to admit this, but now I understand why she is so widely published.

Her ability to create such intense and chilling stories is truly remarkable.

It makes me realize that I have been missing out on some truly great literature all these years.

I will definitely be exploring more of her works in the future.

37 stories:

(4/37 read#)

NEW STORIES

Spider Boy

The Fish Factory

The Cousins

Soft-Core

The Gathering Squall

The Lost Brother

In Hot May

High Lonesome

*BD* 11 1 87

Fat Man My Love

Objects in Mirror Are Closer Than They Appear

THE 1960s

Upon the Sweeping Flood

At the Seminary

# In the Region of Ice

# Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?

# How I Contemplated the World from the Detroit House of Corrections, and Began My Life Over Again

# Four Summers

THE 1970s

Small Avalanches

Concerning the Case of Bobby T.

The Tryst

The Lady with the Pet Dog

The Dead

THE 1980s

Last Days

My Warszawa: 1980

Our Wall

Raven’s Wing

Golden Gloves

Manslaughter

Nairobi

THE 1990s

Heat

The Knife

The Hair

The Swimmers

Will You Always Love Me?

Life After High School

Mark of Satan

This collection of stories offers a diverse range of narratives spanning different decades. From the mysterious Spider Boy to the thought-provoking tales set in the 1960s, 1970s, 1980s, and 1990s. Each story has its own unique charm and theme, captivating the reader's imagination. Whether it's the drama of The Lady with the Pet Dog or the intensity of Heat, there is something for everyone to enjoy. The titles alone pique the interest, making one eager to explore the worlds within each story. With a total of 37 stories, this collection provides hours of engaging reading material.

“If the phrase ‘women of letters’ existed, Joyce Carol Oates would be, foremost in this country, entitled to it.”

This statement by John Updike truly highlights the remarkable literary status of Joyce Carol Oates. Joyce Carol Oates is an incredibly prolific and talented writer. She has produced a vast body of work that spans multiple genres, including novels, short stories, and poetry. Her writing is known for its depth, complexity, and exploration of the human condition.

Throughout her career, Oates has received numerous accolades and awards, further solidifying her position as one of the most important writers of our time. Her works have been widely read and studied, and she has had a significant influence on generations of writers.

Oates' ability to create vivid and memorable characters, as well as her skill in crafting engaging and thought-provoking narratives, makes her a true master of the written word. She continues to write and publish, constantly pushing the boundaries of literature and captivating readers with her unique vision.

In conclusion, it is no wonder that John Updike believes Joyce Carol Oates is entitled to the phrase ‘women of letters’. Her contributions to literature are undeniable, and she will undoubtedly be remembered as one of the greats.

The stories are indeed well written.

For such short stories, the character development is truly remarkable.

The authors have managed to bring the characters to life in a vivid and engaging way.

However, for my personal taste, they are a little too dark.

The themes and atmospheres presented in the stories can be quite沉重 and depressing.

While I appreciate the skill and craftsmanship that went into writing these stories, I find myself longing for a bit more light and hope.

Perhaps a touch of humor or a glimmer of redemption would have made them more enjoyable for me.

Nonetheless, I can still recognize the quality of the writing and the talent of the authors.

These stories are definitely worth reading for those who enjoy a darker, more intense literary experience.

Leah's review on 6/2/07 is worth referring to.

If you read this collection from cover to cover, you'll encounter a sequence of stories - new, oldest, old, less old, and so on. However, it's not advisable to read it this way. You'll go from a set of extremely well-written and strange stories to a group of less well-written and less engaging ones. You'll constantly be waiting for that weird thing to occur, the event or the revelation of information that clarifies what the story is otherwise being secretive about. In the 1960s, this weird element is less common. Or, even worse, the weird thing is so strange that it's difficult to understand. For example, a girl who, feeling that she is about to get her period, starts stomping her feet in the hope of bleeding on the floor? What does that mean?

I wish I had read one story from the 1960s, then one from the 1970s, and so on. That way, I could have seen a progression and been able to appreciate the evolution of the wordsmith. That's my advice.

RCM

I truly like this book.

It has captivated my attention from the very first page. The story it tells is engaging and full of excitement. The characters are well-developed and come to life on the pages. I find myself easily getting lost in the world that the author has created.

The writing style is流畅 and easy to follow, yet it also has a certain elegance and charm. Each chapter leaves me eager to turn the page and find out what happens next.

This book has become a favorite of mine, and I would highly recommend it to anyone who loves a good read. It has the power to transport you to another place and time, and make you forget about the world around you.

I can't wait to see what other wonderful books this author has in store for us.