You Must Remember This

It was an extremely long and arduous journey to get through. The topics were so tough that it felt like a mountain of challenges. Reading them required a great deal of concentration and perseverance.

Every page seemed to be a struggle, and I found myself constantly having to stop and think, trying to make sense of the complex ideas and concepts.

It took me an incredibly long time to finally reach the end. But in the end, I was proud of myself for not giving up.

This experience taught me the importance of patience and determination when faced with difficult tasks. It also made me realize that sometimes, the hardest things are worth the effort in the end.

4.25/5 stars

I truly relished this captivating story centered around the Stevick family. It was fascinating to witness how their lives underwent significant evolutions as the narrative unfolded. The various plot twists and turns kept me engaged from start to finish.

Moreover, I had a special affinity for Enid's side of the story. Her character was well-developed, and I found myself deeply invested in her journey. The way her relationship with her uncle Felix developed throughout the story was both heartwarming and complex. Their interactions added an extra layer of depth and authenticity to the overall narrative.

Overall, this family drama story left a lasting impression on me. It managed to capture the essence of family dynamics, love, and growth in a truly remarkable way. I would highly recommend this story to anyone who enjoys reading about the intricacies of family life and the power of relationships.

I absolutely adored this book.

Every single aspect of it was simply wonderful.

Oates demonstrated an extraordinary ability to pen a truly captivating family epic.

Her prose was stylish and commanding from beginning to end.

It truly felt as if this book encompassed a little bit of everything that makes fiction so great.

There was even a touch of subtle humor interwoven throughout.

To be honest, there were moments when the story delved a bit too deeply into the backstories of some of the less relevant characters for my personal taste.

However, for the most part, I found myself liking everything about this remarkable book.

It was a literary gem that I would highly recommend to anyone with a passion for great storytelling.

The characters were vividly brought to life, and the plot had me hooked from the very first page.

I can't wait to explore more of Oates' works in the future.

Even though certain chapters tend to get tedious,

I felt an overwhelming need to award You Must Remember This a full 5 stars.

This is mainly due to its exquisitely beautiful writing, which has the power to transport readers to another world.

The evocative scenes it描绘 are so vivid that they seem to leap off the page.

Overall, the authenticity of the story is truly remarkable.

This is by far my favorite piece that I've had the pleasure of reading by Oates.

She has a unique talent for satirizing the characters without resorting to mean-spirited poking fun at them.

Instead, she delves deep into their minds, revealing their inner thoughts and emotions with great insight.

Even though I wasn't alive during the 50s, Oates' masterful storytelling makes me feel as if I were actually living in that decade.

She captures 50s America with such convincing detail that it's truly a joy to experience.

Gore Vidal is said to have made a rather bold statement when he claimed that the three saddest words in the English language are "Joyce. Carol. Oates." And you know what? I wholeheartedly agree with him.

There is no denying that Joyce Carol Oates' works possess a certain degree of lyricism. Her use of language can be quite beautiful at times, painting vivid pictures in the reader's mind. However, this lyricism is often overshadowed by the overwhelming amount of physical, mental, and sexual violence that permeates her stories.

The constant barrage of violence can be numbing and disturbing, leaving the reader feeling drained and disillusioned. It seems as if she is using violence as a crutch to shock and awe the reader, rather than relying on other literary devices to tell a meaningful story.

In conclusion, while Joyce Carol Oates may have some talent as a writer, the excessive violence in her works ultimately detracts from their overall quality. It is a shame that such a talented author would choose to focus on such dark and disturbing themes at the expense of other aspects of her writing.

This book truly made me feel extremely uncomfortable, yet that is precisely part of its power, and also of Oates'. I grappled with it, constantly wondering how it would emotionally distress me. I felt manipulated, as if I had willingly placed myself in Oates' hands. Oates has always had a keen interest in the intersection of violence and life, and this book serves as a vivid exploration of that very theme. Felix, a boxer, has incredibly described boxing scenes. Written in the 80s and set in the 50s, it is also an epic portrayal of America - with McCarthyism, bomb shelters, and the Korean War. It is a book about American optimism, about the unwavering belief that we can be and do whatever we desire, that we can become someone special or talented, only to discover that in reality, we are all rather average.

Oates' writing style entails comprehensive explanations of the character's thoughts, feelings, and motivations. We are not confined to what the characters themselves know. Her writing style is one of realism.

In the song "As Time Goes By," Herman Hupfeld writes about love and its timelessness, both in its themes and in its language. "A fight for love and glory, a case of do or die." But what exactly is love? Because this story is not a beautiful romance, not a heartwarming love story. This book is about a very, very young girl (perhaps 15?) and her physical love affair with her uncle. When I think of the song "As Time Goes By" (from which this book took its title), I think of "Sleepless in Seattle," a cheerful, uplifting, completely PG-rated type of love. Not this. Was it love between Enid and Felix? I suppose we are meant to think so, considering the title, but it is a love so different that it might deserve a different name. Maybe, in fact, this book is named for the song because of our remarkable human ability to change the course of history by rewriting it, by transforming something into a funny or romantic story. Some reviews have described the book as "sexy" - no thank you. Part of the excitement for Felix is the fact that Enid is forbidden. His "love" for her cannot be separated from that; his successful claiming of his niece is an expression of his masculine power. And this exertion of masculine power is necessary because he knows himself, he knows he is not a great boxer, just an average one. Boxing was his passion, what he had set out to do, part of who he was meant to be, and he realizes that he will not be a success, he will not excel. I literally loathed Felix and willed him to be hurt. There is so much self-destruction in Oates' works, especially from the women. Enid seems determined on self-annihilation. Oates has said that the female characters submit until they "absorb his violence" at which point they win.

Pamela Smiley writes that Oates' incest victims have four common traits: 1) they are isolated from and angry with other women (here: Enid's mother and sister) while being sympathetic to men (here: her father and brother); 2) low self-esteem; 3) vulnerable to repeat victimizations, including suicide, eating disorders, and drinking; 4) highly sexual yet sexually dysfunctional.

Lyle was my favorite character. He had dreams as a young man, but he finds himself selling used furniture, balding with a belly, wrapped up in the news, afraid of not being able to protect his family... all with Enid and Felix right under his nose.

After five years, I finally read a book by Joyce Carol Oates, out of the three or four of hers that I have unread in the library. This is the fourth book of hers that I have read and surely the best so far, as well as the most page-turning. The United States in the 1950s, McCarthyism (or more accurately MacCarthyism), the Korean War, rock and roll, the execution of the Rosenbergs, the fear of nuclear destruction and the paranoia about atomic shelters, conservatism, and the evil void. The Stevicks are a rather classic American family of that decade, ordinary and middle-class. Through the characters and events, the author touches on some important issues regarding American society in the 1950s, with all its negatives and positives, without judging and condemning or taking the side of one or the other. The central theme of the whole story is, of course, the incestuous relationship that develops between the fifteen-year-old Eileen and her uncle, who is the half-brother of her father, the thirty-year-old Felix, a former boxer who is involved in various shady deals. Oates does not stint on descriptions, does not hesitate to present scenes and images that may cause some kind of uproar due to the nature of the relationship between an uncle and a niece. At the same time, she manages to present a whole society, a whole era, in considerable depth. The writing is very beautiful, the narration is special, with a lot of back and forth in time and to and fro among the characters. The atmosphere is amazing, the plot is generally good and interesting, although perhaps not to everyone's taste. There is surely some verbosity, the rhythms are not so fast that the reader needs the appropriate disposition and patience to enjoy the book, if indeed one can enjoy a rather dark and not so optimistic social drama. For details, I don't give five stars (four and a half to be exact).

The aspect of Oates's writing that endears me so deeply to her short story, "Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?" is, regrettably, precisely what fails to excite me in this novel. She crafts individual scenes that are truly amazing, detailed to the minutest degree, poignant enough to tug at the heartstrings, and deeply affecting. In the context of a short story, this creates a stunning and indelible impression. However, when these scenes are piled one upon another for a hefty 436 pages of rather small print, their impact gradually wanes.

This is the tale of the Stevick family residing in a dilapidated industrial town in upstate New York. It is also a story that delves into the 1950s in America, encompassing the politics of the era, the social conformity imposed by religion (particularly Catholicism), and the seedy corruption that lurked around those even loosely associated with the mob. Additionally, it is a narrative of twisted love, incest, and violence. In essence, it contains all the ingredients of a page-turner. And yet, it somehow fails to reach that level. It is overly long, too diffuse, and, as was said about the Mozart pieces Enid learns, "too many notes."

I have now read a couple of Oates's novels, and for me, her short fiction remains far more memorable. It seems that in the brevity of the short story format, Oates is able to distill her ideas and emotions with greater precision and intensity, leaving a lasting imprint on the reader's mind. In contrast, her novels, while rich in detail and complex in theme, sometimes lack the focus and conciseness that make her short stories so remarkable.