Product Description
In a stunning portrait of a powerful man's downward spiral to moral ruin, Jerome ""Corky"" Corcoran'sviolent act of vengeance precipitates his downfall. Reprint. NYT. PW. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (19)

Another Masterpiece
This huge, engrossing, compelling and nearly perfect novel was nominated for the Pulitzer Prize and, if it had won, the prize would have been well deserved. This is one of Oates's best novels, ranking up there with the Gravedigger's Daughter. Different territory for Oates. This novel gets inside the head of Corky Corcoran for 600 pages and never lets the reader escape. Small time graft, small time ambitions, passions, and swimming against the current of life in an amazingly upbeat tale for Oates, who usually drags us into the horrific evil of life's determined psychopaths and their victims. Watch Corky struggle against daunting cultural forces in a comedic and serious look at anytown America.

Don't miss this incredibly rich novel if you are a Joyce Carol Oates fan. I am.

Oates has written many fine books - this isn't one of them.
I gave up on this book after reading about two-thirds of it, and I am an Oates fan. The stream of consciousness style she attempts is dizzying, and you have to sift through a ton of minute crap to get to small nuggets of what's actually happening in the story. I guess every one can't be a winner for an author as prolific as she. This one was certainly a clinker.

must read for"dumped" women
I am new to Joyce Carol Oates; What I Lived For is the first of her work I have ever read. Two things struck me.First, how was this written by a woman?And, following that thought, I will be trying to find reviews by men as to how well she hit the target of a man's thoughts.Second, and by far, the most compelling thought I had was wow I need to tell women who are pining over their men who have left them to please read this book.I am not nursing a broken heart.I have not been recently abandoned but a lot of women have and from my observations they can take it incredibally hard.Maybe if they read this they might feel better.Don't get me wrong. I liked Corky, throughout the whole book I never lost the image of the poor little guy seeing his dad obliterated by massive gunshot wounds.Add to this the merciless interegating he received by his uncle and the authorities to say he saw the perpetrator well after they knew he hadn't furthered my compassion.That said, while I liked him, felt degrees of compassion, I certainly would not look upon him as a savior quite the contrary.If women who are suffering from their man having affairs or from their man up and leaving them would just read this book it might be quite an eye opener and more importantly a great comfort.
Get into their man's mind they might find they did not lose the great loss
they are feeling but rather an illusion of what they thought they lost.Women read the book!!!!!Alisa Gremore (not Jeffrey)

It Takes A Self-Confident Writer To Attempt This Sort Of Novel
I don't know many writers who could sit down at their desk and say, "I think I can do this." What Joyce Carol Oates set out to achieve in this massive book was the telling in the course of about 800 pages of an almost minute-by-minute account of three eventful days in one man's life.

Corky Corcoran, the main character here, is a loud, gutsy, bright but not suave Irishman who has lived his whole life in one tough blue collar city in upstate New York. Corky is a self-made millionaire (but just barely!) and a minor elected member of city government, friend to the monied and political elite, yet somehow socially beneath all of them, unknown to him but clear to us a sort of friendly, slobbery dog they allow into their presence because he's good for a laugh. Corky is also a flashy, handsome, charming man who has always had success with women, but he limits himself with his alcoholism, his course manners and by the curse of his life, which is his inability to move beyond the brutal Christmastime mob hit that left his popular businessman father shot to death on the family doorstep when Corky was a child, and the crime's sole witness.

Over the course of the three days in the early 1990's in which we follow Corky second by second through all (and I mean ALL) aspects of his life, we watch while he becomes obsessed with the apparent suicide of a local girl who had shady ties to both a radical political group as well as certain establishment big-wigs, tries to contain his mentally unstable, violent, leftist stepdaughter in her own obsession with the girl's death, ends his relationship with his singularly faithful/unfaithful mistress, has perverse fantasies about virtually every attractive female within range, wheels and deals with his defensively Jewish accountant to hold his semi-crumbling fortune together, and we slide through the inner workings of his mind, sometimes his subconscious mind, via the non-stop inner dialogue of the private Corky being who he is.

By the end of this hard-edged novel, we know Corky inside and out, as Oates intended. We know what motivates him, what he fears, what he would do in a given situation, and we can guess how the remainder of his life will probably play out.We have met by novel's end, Corky the brave hero, Corky the self-dooming victim, Corky the shameless hustler, and Corky the vulnerable dead man's son, who craves the acceptance his flamboyant father never lived to get.

Those who maintain the head of steam needed to reach the last page of this slow-moving but richly described work will have made it through literary boot camp and will be the better for it. There are very few books out there quite like it.

Just another brick in the wall - a foreigner's perspective
I read "What I Lived For" in Polish several years ago when it was freshly translated and published in a deluxe hardcover series in Poland. My impressions faded a bit in their freshness since that time, but I still remember what tickled me while reading this novel. Never having been to America beforehand, I tried to form the image of this country based on literature, motion pictures and third-hand information coming from people of my cultural heritage who have been there already. This novel by Joyce Carol Oates helped me form the initial expectations, adding just another brick in the wall of expectations, to borrow a phrase from Roger Waters. Much like the Floydian Wall, that house of cards fell down and disintegrated almost from the very first day of my visit to America, but after several years spent here, I think that if nothing else, Oates's novel is about the only remaining bastion of my old impressions. I still perceive the fictional world of Oates as representative for America, or to be precise, a slice from the overall cake of a picture. Her fiction, though never being pompous or in-your-face-yankee-style patriotic quasi-fiction of the engaged kind, it serves quite well as a door to America, to the anxieties specific to the upstart middle class, an endemic layer of the American society half of the country aspiring to, the newcomer generation in particular, the other half having just outgrown it and moved forward. There is a multitude of possible answers to a trite question what makes America so special, what makes it a magnet attracting people from all over the world. "What I Lived For" is one of these answers, and a compelling one at that. The book starts off with a brutal scene several decades ago, and we are introduced to the life of one "Corky" Corcoran, a son of the relatively poor Irish neighborhoods, whose life will soon turn about to be one long quest in the search for an escape valve from the maze of the labyrinth of his complexes, the inferiority complex with financial grounds being one of the most prominent ones. Corky moves upward, and as soon as he reaches one rung higher in the social ladder, he turns and faces his thus-far perfectly acceptable peers in condescending manner. As soon as he becomes a locally recognized man of moderate power, he decided to reach down to the bottom, and familiarize with the masses. There are few scenes in literature that depict the snobbish artificiality and resulting embarrassment better than many scenes in the second half of "What I Lived For". Oates looks very critically at the typical new-American upstarts for whom grace and tact are lost art. America attracts people of specific personality; by the laws of nature it is a self-selection process. The worst kind, and the most brilliant kind are attracted to come to that "golden land of opportunity". And then the second and third generations are not free from their inferiority complex, as this novel illustrates. While it's only one aspect of the American phenomenon, it is not a negligible one, and that is one of the reasons why this particular book is translated and popular in Europe. While the details fade away in time, the overall impression is long-lasting, and should you happen to be more familiar with the specifics this novel is rich with, the more sense it makes. Joyce Carol Oates has written a thought-provoking book that bitterly asks questions few people seem willing to answer. ... Read more

Product Description
It is 1952 in Hammond, upstate New York. Maddy is the bookish member of a girl gang called Foxfire, and its official "chronicler", who tells the gang's story. Foxfire is dominated by the charismatic "Legs", a feminist Robin Hood who steals from the rich to give to the poor. ... Read more

Product Description
Crime fiction's biggest names have been rounded up for a truly impressive collection of the year's best short stories. Featuring authors like Michael Connelly, Charlaine Harris, and 2009 Edgar Award winner T. Jefferson Parker, this volume should be on the shelf of every mystery fan.

Three more Edgar Award finalists, a Thriller Award finalist, and many other award nominees are also included!

Other contributors include: Joyce Carol Oates, Scott Phillips, Megan Abbott, Charles Ardai, Sean Chercover, Nancy Pickard, Bill Crider, Gary Phillips, Patricia Abbot, Peter Robinson, Martin Edwards, Jeremiah Healy, Martin Lim and Kristine Kathryn Rusch, Robert S. Levinson, Bill Pronzini, Doug Allyn, Brett Battles, Norman Partridge, N.J. Ayres, David Edgerly Gates, Dominique Mainard, and John Harvey.

The collection also features an article, "The Mystery Year in Review," written by Jon L. Breen. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (9)

An American Tragedy

I couldn't help but feel sad for Abraham Licht, the father at the heart of this novel set in the age of Ragtime, as first his wives and later his children deserted and betrayed him one by one. I got the impression throughout this book about the fall of a king among con-men, that nearly all Licht did in his career of non-violent, pseudo-victimless crime was done on his offspring's behalf, not his own. It was disheartening to read about the disintegration of a once-proud, cunning, powerful man whose worldly goods all came from his own intelligence and skill. I think the effects of isolation from those who are loved was the real soul of this book more than the grifting and elaborately staged thefts that lay on the surface. I didn't find as much evil in Abraham as others seemed to. He loved his children, he was devoted to them, he served them in any way that was within his range: in return they were disloyal. As he said of his life of schemes and swindles, those he conned were willing partners in their own downfalls. "Complicity? Then no crime." Anyone who fails to understand that this is a sadly revealed tragedy is missing Oates' central story.

it is worth the wait.
when i initially began the book, i almost gave up.it didn't seem to make that much sense...the sentence structure was a bit unconventional.who are these people?it didn't make sense.after the first chapter the entire scene changes and the characters are completely different.Then we are let into the secret of the Licht family. from then on it kept me reading to see what was going to be their next exploit.it was quite a long read for me but worth it.i grew attached to the characters because of their flaws.the Licht family developed a culture all their own.

Overrated, in my opinion
Joyce Carol Oates is certainly prolific. But a book this long should not have the same sentence structure on every single page. The prologue is promising, but the rest of the book maintains exactly the same style of questions, incomplete sentences, and sentences beginning in prepositions. I got so bored with the repetition that I couldn't get past the first chapter. The style is pretentious and overly simplistic at the same time. Maybe if you like Oates you'll like this book; if you're not sure, I'd advise at least reading a bit of it before you buy it. Then, if you can imagine enjoying that style of prose for 531 pages, more power to you.

Blazing promise, competetent and brilliant writing, but ....
"With dignity he rises from his chair; with dignity, manages to maintain his balance; his thin cheeks, hawklike features, the stain of old ivory, a fleeting elderly beauty . . . now his heart's laid bare, for greedy daws to peck at." -Joyce Carol Oates

The story begins in early 1900 at a New York racetrack.The first vignette and the prologue are breathtakingly written; they set a standard and hold out the promise of a journey with fascinating people. The story then jumps from one seeming unrelated event to another, all revolving around a character having a name with "licht" woven into it. It becomes evident that the characters are of the same family, and are involved in "The Game," their father's word for gaining others' confidences and then taking from them. The work details the father's life during the time of his three youngest offspring, and winds its way around the experiences (as well as the people) spawned by this father.It is an exploration into the art of Taking and the art of "The Game."At the end we are presented with the specter of the father who is reaping the fruits of his life.It gives one pause to consider the actual benefits of "The Game" and the repercussions of one's actions.

Beginning with such blazing promise, this book just never delivered. The plot lurches from one vignette to another, presenting characters that are stilted and neither likable or fascinating.The story spans a 30 year period which ended after the election of FDR, and it seemed like it took thirty years of real time to finish, as well.It was a work that was very easy to put down.The writing was certainly competent, brilliant at times, but what was lacking was depth and sparkle, both in terms of the characters and the heart of the story.

I do not see why people make such a fuss...
I seem to be the only reviewer who did not like this book, and I will try to work out why.I picked up My Heart Laid Bare in the bookstore, rifling through the pages, and because some words caught my eye I went back andread the first chapter.It was spectacular.It caught my attention, andmade my mind speed along with what the book promised, so I bought it.Butas I moved beyond the first chapter and into the lives of the Lichts, Ifound myself wrinkling my nose and setting the book aside more often.Thecharacters I neither liked nor admired, the style bored me, and the plot...depressing, bumping along.I don't know what happened to the excitingbreathlessness of the first pages, but whatever magic that made me purchasethe book was lost by the time I forced myself to the last pages.Sincethen, I've read a few short stories by Joyce Carol Oates, and found that Ididn't like them much either.But difference of opinions like such arecommon as everyone has his/her own taste, and my disliking of My Heart LaidBare is just one example. ... Read more

Product Description
another fantastic romance novel by Joyce Carol Oates. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (8)

American Genius
Ms. Oates, in this second - after "Bellefleur" - novel of her "Gothic Trilogy" has now thoroughly convinced me that she is a literary genius of the first water.By penning a novel of over 600 pages all the while adhering to the - by 21st Century standards - ornate stylistic devices of 19th Century prosody, as well as maintaining, in her narrator, the stream of moralistically arch judgments peculiar to women writers of the era, Ms. Oates has created a time machine which envelops the reader in a sense of what it was like to breathe the very air of 19th Century America.

Of course, there's much more, more than I can cover in this review.The books in the trilogy are dubbed "Gothic" for a reason. And, from the first section, drolly entitled "The Outlaw Balloon," in which Deirdre is abducted by a man in a sable balloon, reminiscent of Poe's narrative of A. Gordon Pym, to "Deirdre of the Shadows" herself, reminiscent of the character in the Yeats' play "Deirdre of the Sorrows," all sorts of truly eerie, literary allusive events are related with stunning virtuosity.

If you are tired of the tripe that passes for "masterful" writing these days, I can suggest nothing more refreshing than to turn to the works of Ms. Oates, the "aesthetic power" of which - a term cribbed from this book - will leave you intellectually refreshed and convinced of the power of literature to transform your life.

A Bloodsmoor Romance : A critique of the conditions of women in the nineteenth century
Taken at its face value, A Bloodsmoor Romance can be looked upon as a domestic romance where issues relating to marriage and securing husbands upon the part of the female species populating the novel occupy centre stage. However, events over the course of "600 pages of anti-romance" prove that there is more to the novel than being a mere replica of Austin's Pride and Prejudice or Suzan Warner's The Wide Wide World. Faithful to the romantic conventions, the novel introduces five marriageable girls but unlike a typical romance three of these five girls spurn marriage "... in their frenzied quest for their own fortunes in the wide world". Far from being "a reiteration of a more or less euphoric or depressed romanticism" (Women's time, Kristeva 43), A Bloodsmoor Romance is more of a critique of the conditions of women in the nineteenth century, conditions Oates sees lingering and spiraling into the modern day. Only the instruments of oppression are different this time.

An Awesome Read!
This middle volume in her "Gothic Trilogy" is set in the last third of the 19th century and concludes with its main character's death at the last stroke of midnight on December 31, 1899. It is about the four daughters of an eccentric New England existentialist and inventor, whose lifelong quest is the discovery of a perpetual motion machine, even though, as he readily confesses, he has no idea what use such a thing would be, except for its ability to "keep going". Along the way, this man, a pacifist, invents the electric chair in response to the cruelty of hanging, sees one daughter kidnapped by a black-clad man who descends from the sky in a black hot air balloon, only to take the girl off to become the most celebrated medium in New York City; has his oldest daughter escape a sure-to-be unhappy marriage on her wedding morning and go west to begin living life as a hired gun; witnesses his most beautiful daughter go to the stage, gain fame and rape Mark Twain; and sees his most eccentric daughter secretly become the finest inventor alive at that time. Wow...what can I say...this is SOME book!

19 C feminism in a funny, surprising Cinderella story
It's popular in some circles to turn up noses at "romance" novels. If you're in one of those, don't turn up your nose at this one! In it Oates has captured the style of the 19th Century Gothic Romance novel down the the last crossed t and dotted i. It's also a beautifully researched picture of how women lived in the late-1800s, written in the language of the time -- or at least a very good simulation of it. 20th century feminism in 19th century guise.

It's about women's roles in society and the rules they lived by. A fast-moving tale full of imaginative twists -- there's a wedding night scene that's the funniest and the most surprising I've read.

The story begins with the introduction to a surly Cinderella-type with step sisters who definitely are not Meg, Jo, Beth and Amy. It's September, 1879. All five girls are spoiled and privileged, living lives of ease in the white-columned splendor of Kiddemaster Hall, near the Bloodsmoor River in Pennsylvania.

The girls are relaxing in the gazebo after a grueling party. Deirdre (did they really name girls Deirdre in those days?), who is our Cinderella, becomes angry and stalks down the path to the river. Suddenly a giant black balloon dips from the sky and carries her away. The book describes the fates of the girls for the next 20 years in rich and lively prose.

Oates takes the romance novel and skewers it with social satire. Her volume of work is prodigious -- she has probably written more in a wider variety of style and genres than any other contemporary author. Whether romance, horror, science fiction, mainstream, mystery, short story collection, essays, criticism or poetry, her work excels. Joyce Carol Oates is the Renaissance Woman on the modern American literary scene and A BLOODSMOOR ROMANCE eclipses the genre.

A marvelous work--satire, humor, twist the knife laughs
This book provides about as much fun as you can ask for in a novel. Without being at all like him in style or story--this book reminds me of a Vonnegut romp: The dry wit; The ludicrous behavior of the characters; The lampooning of our society's absurdities, especially as they apply to attitudes toward and treatment of women.It keeps you smirking, smiling and from time-to-time breaking out in full belly laughs-and these are laughs that do not leave you for days-because there is plenty to think about along with the laughs.Oates has merged a variety of literary styles; the romance, the 19th century classic, the woman's novel, etc and she brews up a broadside that is beyond amusing: It is in fact social commentary and it is social commentary at it best.There is no preaching, nothing every gets too serious. But you would have to be as dumb as a rock to miss the points that are being made. For instance, there are some of the most amazingly funny sex scenes that you can imagine in this book--and while no one could read them and not howl--it is also mighty serious stuff that anyone's sexuality could be so distorted in the name of being proper.Oates employs the technique of a having a narrator who, in her capacity as being responsible for chronicling a family's history, tells the reader what proper folks ought to think about the goings-on--and exactly when and where we ought to be shocked and alarmed. Meanwhile, there is the story itself, which reveals as much lunacy about our culture as does the narrator.Plus there is the actual story, which is a kick, full of cameo appearances of famous people acting like themselves as if we were reading a historical biography.Stir it all up, adding heaping doses of tongue-in cheek and riotous activity, and you find the book is a regular page-turner.Get this book. Read it.You will be glad you did and you will be looking for copies to give to your best friends...the ones who understand the worth and power and the fun that can be had in a great novel.Thanks you Ms. Oates-what a job you did, what a gift you gave with this one! ... Read more

Product Description
Following her highly acclaimed 1994 short fiction collection, "Haunted", Joyce Carol Oates offers 24 literary gothic tales.Amazon.com Review
The Collector of Hearts is an eerie, powerfully strange collectionof classic Oates narratives.Few of the stories are blatantly horrific, although "Posthumous," with its subtle handling of a gruesome death, couldgive Stephen King's blood and gore a run for its money. Instead, Oates isa master of turning the everyday into the horrible, so that the stories areunsettling--grotesque because they seem familiar. The author skillfully createsbelievable characters, both sympathetic and despised, sometimes in as fewas three or four pages.We feel for the victims of dysfunctional families,and we loathe the perpetrators of evil even as we cringe while relishingtheir demise.

Not every one of the stories in The Collector of Hearts is amasterpiece.Some are almost forgettable.However, enough of them arefilled with Oates's signature understated dread to make them worth reading,and the occasional gems, such as "The Hand-puppet" and "The Affliction," make this collection worth owning. --Mara Friedman ... Read more

Customer Reviews (12)

Scary as hell
This book is scary as hell from story one.The Collecter of hearts--woe to be alone after reading this.JCO lives in Princeton NJ, and my mom did work in her house when I was young, years before I read Blackwater and then proceeded to read every word she ever wrote.I am happy to have met her in my lifetime, and wish I knew then how significant it was.She is the best writer out there, in my opinion.

Grossly Disappointing
Collector of Hearts is another short story collection that centers around grotesque characters and plots. Despite the similarity with themes in Haunted, Collector of the Hearts pales in comparison. In fact, it seems as if Oates has ripped herself off with this collection by using almost the exact same techniques as she did in her previous collection (such as numbering certain segments and arranging the stories in three parts).Similar to Haunted, the stories in Collector of Hearts are almost entirely about family relationships that become violent with physically or sexually. However, they are far more weird and border on being science fiction.

I finished the collection but it took a great deal of motivation! I found some of the tales to be terrifying, but not in a "spooky ghost story". Instead, it was terrifying in a "how could someone think of anything this sick and twisted" way. Perhaps the best word to describe this collection is disturbing.

Better than Haunted, but still not her best
This is by no means Oates best collection of stories, but it's better than Haunted, and it has enough bang to keep readers interested.
The first story, "The Sky Blue Ball," quite honestly blew me away. It's short, odd, and written with amazing precision. While it may be argued that this story, along with several others, are hardly grotesque, that story is in it's own way. The last paragraph it very odd and sad, and is a beautiful wrap up.
A lot of these stories, such as The Hand-Puppet and The Collector of hearts, are grotesque in their own way, but not in the way we're expecting them to be.
Oftentimes the grotesque in Oates stories is an abusive relationship with family members, things like this. It even includes a story about the journey of growing grass.
This is very worthwhile for fans of Oates in general, or someone who wants to be creeped out or disgusted (The story Demon will certainly do that)

The Squeak
Restrained and disappointing mild, this follow-up to "Haunted: Tales of the Grotesque" didn't render me numb from head to toe yet eerily entranced. The stories seemed strained and forced; very requisite, as if Joyce Carole Oates had a gun pointed to her temple, the nudge of the gun's barrel rattling preconceived story ideas into a mush of oatmeal and brain matter more closely resembling...well, these stories are so ordinary and mundane that an appropriate description is hard to pinpoint. Sad, sad, sad. A huge, HUGE letdown...

Another amazing, disarming short-story collection by Oates!
Those who have followed my reviews know that I love Joyce Carol Oates's writing. Her books are beautifully written and her stories are poignant and haunting at the same time. There is nothing grotesque about The Collector of Hearts, but the stories within this collection are dark, strange, and sometimes downright disarming. This collection, like many of this author's other works, center on broken families and relationships gone awry, and, just like her other books, these stories are at times disturbing and thought provoking to the core. My favorite stories are "Death Mother," "The Sepulchre," "Demon," "Posthumous," "Scars," "The Dream-Catcher," and "Shadows of the Evening." These are my favorites, but there are more incredible stories in this collection. Joyce Carol Oates is one of the best literary voices of today. I urge everyone to read her books if you haven't done. Her books are not for the faint at heart, but for those who enjoy reading strong, dark literature that touch and haunt you in more ways than one. ... Read more

Product Description
"How ironic," Joyce Carol Oates writes in her introduction to this marvelous collection, "that in our age of rapid mass-production and the easy proliferation of consumer products, the richness and diversity of the American literary imagination should be so misrepresented in most anthologies." Why, she asks, when writers such as Samuel Clemens, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Eudora Welty, Flannery O'Connor, Saul Bellow, and John Updike have among them written hundreds of short stories, do anthologists settle on the same two or three titles by each author again and again? "Isn't the implicit promise of an anthology that it will, or aspires to, present something different, unexpected?"

In The Oxford Book of American Short Stories, Joyce Carol Oates offers a sweeping survey of American short fiction, in a collection of fifty-six tales that combines classic works with many "different, unexpected" gems, and that invites readers to explore a wealth of important pieces by women and minority writers. Some selections simply can't be improved on, Oates admits, and she happily includes such time-honored works as Irving's "Rip Van Winkle," Poe's "The Tell-Tale Heart," and Hemingway's "A Clean, Well-Lighted Place." But alongside these classics, Oates introduces such little-known stories as Mark Twain's "Cannibalism in the Cars," a story that reveals a darker side to his humor ("That morning we had Morgan of Alabama for breakfast. He was one of the finest men I ever sat down to...a perfect gentleman, and singularly juicy"). From Melville come the juxtaposed tales "The Paradise of Bachelors and the Tartarus of Maids," of which Oates says, "Only Melville could have fashioned out of 'real' events...such harrowing and dreamlike allegorical fiction." From Flannery O'Connor we find "A Late Encounter With the Enemy," and from John Cheever, "The Death of Justina," one of Cheever's own favorites, though rarely anthologized. The reader will also delight in the range of authors found here, from Charles W. Chesnutt, Jean Toomer, and Sarah Orne Jewett, to William Carlos Williams, Kate Chopin, and Zora Neale Hurston. Contemporary artists abound, including Bharati Mukherjee and Amy Tan, Alice Adams and David Leavitt, Bobbie Ann Mason and Tim O'Brien, Louise Erdrich and John Edgar Wideman. Oates provides fascinating introductions to each writer, blending biographical information with her own trenchant observations about their work, plus a long introductory essay, in which she offers the fruit of years of reflection on a genre in which she herself is a master.

This then is a book of surprises, a fascinating portrait of American short fiction, as filtered through the sensibility of a major modern writer. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (10)

This is a GREAT collection!
I have thoroughly enjoyed reading this book and am sad that I'm almost finished.I just maystart all over & read it again.Very nice pages, too - thick white paper, not that newspapery type.I also appreciated the editor's notes about each author before each story.Nice to know a little of the background of the person writing the tale.

Short stories
I am using this book as part of a class of seniors studying literature.We read the stories, then one of us leads a group discussion based on questions the leader has written.We have studied Great Books, Great Conversations, Great Religions, and philosophers over the last 2 years and thanks to a core of very bright and deep thinkers, I have developed new level of understanding of the minds of some of the best writers ever.This particular book is a fascinating anthology of the most exemplary works of some of the best writers in America.

Not your average anthology
Oates earned her money on this gig, steering clear of the relentlessly anthologized standards of American short fiction.This book is worth having for the Paul Bowles story alone, but I use it in my class because of the clear line it paints in terms of style.

Quality with a difference
Short story anthologies may be the easiest and best way to undertake a quick scan of the scale and varieties of our national literature. Still, most collections have not only the same authors but the same stories, over and over. Oates self-consciously set out to be a little different: she chooses many stories and a few authors who often do not get much "air time." Still, the selections are first rate even if not first run. Her introductions are good but a tad personal and very short so do not expect much biographic or historical context. In brief, if you already own one collection, this one will not be disappointing or redundant.

A must have for any book collection
I am still reading the stories and each one has been pretty good.Overall, I feel this book is a wonderful collection for anyone's personal library and I would highly recommend! ... Read more

Product Description
Now in paperback, the most recent volume of poems by the award-winning author. Tenderness, the eighth volume of verse by Joyce Carol Oates, is a generous selection of fifty-seven poems, ranging in voice from the lyric to the narrative to the satiric. Most of them have appeared in prominent magazines and literary journals, including The New Yorker, The Atlantic Monthly, and Triquarterly; all feature Oates at the height of her powers. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

I love JCO, but...
Joyce Carol Oates, Tenderness (Ontario Review Press, 1996)

While I'm a huge fan of Joyce Carol Oates' prose-- Cybele alone would have me singing her praises as one of America's finest living novelists, the rest is icing-- I've never been all that enamored with her poetry. Tenderness is an improvement over the volumes I've read to date, but honestly, not much of one. Every once in a while, she turns a good phrase or catches a really fine metaphor, but there's still a somewhat distressing lack of subtlety here, and when what little there is flies out the window, sometimes the resulting work is just painful to read:

"It's an ordinary morning & an ordinary flight, even in my new skin that's a fact I must acknowledge!
I've been here before, I meet myself returning swaying from the lavatory, I avoid my eyes!
Through the pressurized cabin waft the usual psittacosis viruses, Bacillus leprae, airborne TB!
Belted snug in Seat 2B my faceless companion reads Forbes,
I am belted snug at 30,000 feat reading Scientific American!
Must mark off universe into units of a certain length I am reading!
Infinity with a geometric figure I am reading!"
("Frequent Flier II")

Ouch. Three pages of this. (And, yes, every line that does not end with a question mark ends with an exclamation point. It's Tappy Tibbons afraid of flying.)

I rush to point out that most of the book is not this bad. It's not great, mind you, but this, I suspect, is a nadir for Joyce Carol Oates writing in any form. The strongest pieces ("Like Walking to a Drug Store, When I Get Out"), not surprisingly, are those where she returns to the same ground she covers in her strongest novels--getting inside the heads of the damaged, the twisted. Unfortunately, there are far too few pieces of this ilk here; I suggest grabbing this from the library and reading them, rather than adding this to your collection. **
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In the raw was how the world felt now. My feelings were raw, my thoughts were raw and hurtful like knife blades. . . . In the blue had been my place to hide, now In the raw there was nowhere to hide.

Customer Reviews (9)

fantastic for teens!
I love Oates and bought this for myself but soon realized it was written more for teens, though I did enjoy it.Gave it to my 14 year old niece and she LOVED it!

NEVER RECEIVEDITEM
I contacted this seller numerous times and have yet to get anything back, have not received the purchase. This is a very poor seller. I have been selling on Ebay for over 10 years and have never treated one of my buyers in this fashion. This seller needs to be reported.

Excellent Young adult book, good book for parents too
If you have ever known a teenager who sullenly withdraws into herself, begins doing poorly at school, denies cutting classes, drinks, lies, steals, and "accidentally" OD's on Christmas Eve--then you might recognize Jennifer Abbot, the 15-year-old protagonist in Joyce Carol Oates' young adult novel, After the Wreck, I Picked Myself Up, Spread My Wings, and Flew Away.
After Jenna's mother is killed in a freak car accident in which Jenna is severely injured, she is left feeling guilty (the accident must have been her fault) and angry (rehab is painful, her house is sold to pay for the medical bills, her teachers and friends feels sorry for her) and powerless (she has to move to New Hampshire to live with her aunt- there is nowhere else for her to go). Her father, who abandoned the family years earlier for a new wife and family, is of no help and Jenna's bitterness towards him fuels the flame of her anger and despair.
In her loneliness, Jenna finds acceptance from `Trina, a bulimic teen who befriends Jenna, but also uses her. A dramatic scene at a party gone bad shows Jenna the direction in which she is heading. Although the reader only sees him briefly, Jenna's one true friend is a young man nicknamed "Crow" who speaks words of truth that resonate in Jenna's heart. His own traumatic experiences (including his brother's death, living with a father who is an injured Vietnam vet, and his own accidents) enable him to come alongside of her and provides the exact help that she needs--a firm hand that pulls her out of her fears and self-incrimination and pushes her to move on with her life.
Oates use of symbolism is powerful. When you read this book, be aware of how birds and bridges are important in the story. I would recommend this to older teens (there are some sexual references in the book, although nothing explicit) and adults. Parents who are struggling to understand their own teen or the effects of peer pressure might better appreciate the iceberg underneath the surface of a teen's "whatever" façade after reading this book.

Beautiful
Jenna Abbott was just a normal girl living a normal life, until the wreck happened. Nothing was the same after the wreck as before it--Jenna's friends, her home, even her own self. She has been irrevocably changed, whether she likes it, or wants to admit it, or not. She's really only a shell of the girl she once was, clinging desperately to distant memories of happiness even though she's on the verge of completely losing it. She can't trust anyone, can't let herself trust anyone, even her own family. And then Jenna meets Crow, who's got secrets of his own. Jenna finds that she can open herself up to him, but will this put her on the path of redemption and self forgiveness, or will she continues down the ugly road of self-destruction? In this emotional and moving story, Oates explores the trail of damage that death causes and the fragile strength required to rise about it.

Most of this story can be summed up with its lengthy title, After the Wreck, I Picked Myself Up, Spread My Wings, and Flew Away, because that is, in essence, what Jenna struggles with doing and eventually accomplishes. I really appreciated Oates' sometimes simplistic writing style because it so effectively conveyed Jenna's thoughts, emotions, and delusions. It's from this style of writing that I was able to truly grasp how damaged Jenna was by the wreck, and it caused my heart to go out to her. There is something so fragile and delicate about Jenna's character that makes the reader want to protect and take care of her, but at the same time, Jenna's nature does not permit this type of babysitting. I loved how complex Jenna was and how she struggled to distinguish between dream and reality, because I feel this is an issue many of us also struggle with, although not necessarily on so desperate a scale as Jenna. After the Wreck, I Picked Myself Up, Spread My Wings, and Flew Away is an emotional journey and moving tale about death, forgiveness, and everlasting friendship.

This novel is one of those that you want to take your time reading to fully understand. It ranks up with other novels on the same topic such as Thirteen Reasons Why by Jay Asher, Freeze Frame by Heidi Ayarbe, and Saving Zoë by Alyson Noël.

A New Life
Have you ever been in a horrific car accident that has changed your life forever?

Jenna was living a normal life as a normal teenager. Then she got into a car accident. Her mom dies and she is seriously hurt and is sent to rehab. Then she is sent to live with her aunt and her aunt's family, and has to go to a different school. She is determined not to get close to anyone ever again because she thinks that anyone one who you get close to either leaves you, like her dad, or is taken from you, like her mom. That is when Jenna meets Crow. He becomes her friend and helps her get through the rough times.

This was definitely not a great book. It was okay. The one good thing was that it was like talking directly to the main character, Jenna. It was made in diary form, and it seemed like it was actually written by a teenager named Jenna instead of an adult, even though Jenna seemed pretty boring.

I gave this book two stars because it was a boring and slightly annoying book. It would have been better if there were longer chapters. On average they were only two and a half pages long. There were also many fragments in the book that were annoying. It would say things like, "Or not. Kick the remote off my bed," and she would be talking about something she did, not something that she was telling someone to do. It had many other fragments and they would make the book hard to understand sometimes.

I would recommend this book to teenage girls who want to bore themselves and nothing else to do.
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Product Description
Joyce Carol Oates is America's most extraordinary and prolific woman of letters. In Dark Eyes on America, Gavin Cologne-Brookes illuminates the vision of this remarkable master of her craft, finding evidence in her novels of an evolving consciousness that ultimately forgoes abstract introspection in favor of a more practical approach to art as a tool for understanding both personal and social challenges. With her clear-eyed perception of human behavior, Oates has for decades offered unhesitating explorations of genre, topic, and style--making her an inevitable if somewhat elusive subject for critical assessment. Cologne-Brookes's conversations and correspondence with Oates, his close textual study of her novels, and abundant references to her essays, stories, poetry, and plays result in a work that critically synthesizes the layers of her writing. This comprehensive yet accessible study offers an essential analysis of one of the twentieth century's most significant writers. ... Read more

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"Joyce Carol Oates' reputation has been established as honored, solid, and reliable, and justly so.She writes dynamic, credible fiction which is as dangerous as it is artfully intoxicating.She has no peer in depicting violence in human relationships and this collection of short stories is no exception... Pick it up and start it, you won't be able to lay the book down." --- Detroit Free Press ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

Potentially Oates's Best, But Too Tawdry, and Too Graphic
This novel by Oates includes many of Oates's strengths as a writer; and, who is not interested in Marilyn Monroe? All in all, it is one of Oates's most interesting novels from a research viewpoint and she tries to get into Marilyn's head and fill in the details - albeit fictional. I thought that she failed to do so. She spent a lot of time on the small sexual details. Do we really want to know "how" the head of a studio had sex with her, and what position they were in, etc., etc.... and you can fill in the details yourself or read the book for much graphic detail. And, remember it is part fictional so it is part guess work by Oates. Less is sometimes better in literature. In short, it is a bit over the top.

Joyce Carol Oates was born in 1938 in upstate New York State and is a distinguished Professor of Humanities at Princeton. She gained fame with her first novel With Shuddering Fall in 1964. Now four decades later, she is the author of scores of novels, many short stories, essays, plays, and poetry. The present novel from is somewhere near the end of the chronological order of her body of work and we see the polished prose of an experienced writer.

I have read a number of her works from different time periods in her career and set up a Guide to Joyce Carol Oates Listmania list. Compared to her early novels, this is a straight-forward and almost a "light" read. It contains some drama but there are a few intense scenes, but less than in some other works. The novel has a good story structure and easy prose, and the reader is spared the "too much prose" found in some early works such as The Assassins. The read is mostly compelling.

Oates is known for her emotional and dramatic stories, often with women or even poor women such as students or teachers caught up in stressful situations, and often set in her native upstate New York (Niagara River - Syracuse - Erie,PA. triangle). Actually, some of her best work is found in her 10 to 20 page short stories, which are often dramatic, sometimes very intense, and many involve off-beat characters, and they include rapes, murders, and people with serious mental health issues, etc. People who have not read her collections of short stories should take a look at those.

The present novel is a departure in location but not in spirit. Marilyn Monroe was a stressed young woman with a mentally ill mother. She had to make many sacrifices to follow her acting career. Oates gives a good step by step view of her teenage years, her first days as a model, and the career that followed, along with her marriages.

This is a relatively compelling read, but very graphic, and some will be turned off by the details of Marilyn's sex life. Again, as in other works, she mixes in the tawdry a little too much. Overall I did not like it. I still prefer You Must Remember This and We Were The Mulvaneys. Both are better works.

Neutral recommendations: 4 stars.
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Product Description
The Key and Tone Clusters are two one-act plays by 2009 Man Booker Nominee Joyce Carol Oates. The Key: a hilarious perverse encounter between a vacationing suburban housewife, recently separated from her husband, and a prosperous businessman. Tone Cluster: a chilling trig-comedy that takes the form of an interview between a middle-aged, middle-class American couple and the media.

A L.A. Theatre Works full-cast performance featuring: Edward Asner, Hector Elizondo, Don Reed, Joyce Van Patten and JoBeth Williams. ... Read more

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Joyce Carol Oates's prize-winning story "Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?" takes up troubling subjects that continue to occupy her in her fiction: the romantic longings and limited options of adolescent women; the tensions between mothers and daughters; the sexual victimization of women; and the American obsession with violence. Inspired by a magazine story about a serial killer, its remarkable portrait of the dreamy teenager Connie has made it a feminist classic. Connie's life anticipates the emergence of American society from the social innocence of the fifties into the harsher contemporary realities of war, random violence, and crime. The story was the basis for the movie Smooth Talk, which became the subject of much feminist debate.This casebook includes an introduction by the editor, a chronology of Oates's life, and authoritative text of "Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?" an essay by Oates on Smooth Talk, the original Life article about the serial killer, ten critical essays (including two about the film), and a bibliography.The contributors are Brenda O. Daly, Christina Marsden Gillis, Don Moser, Tom Quirk, B. Ruby Rich, R.J.R. Rockwood, Larry Rubin, Gretchen Schultz, Marie Mitchell Oleson Urbanski, Joyce M. Wegs, and Joan D. Winslow.Elaine Showalter is Avalon Foundation Professor of Humanities at Princeton University. She is the author and editor of many books on women's writing, including Sister's Choice: Tradition and Change in American Women's Writing.A volume in the Women Writers: Texts and Contexts Series. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

Rehashing a classic
This book is an interesting look at Joyce Carol Oates's short story, "Where are you going? Where have you been?". It includes articles about theories regarding the story and its 1980 movie version, but more importantly this edition includes the actual news article that inspired the lurid tale of Connie and A. Friend as well as Ms. Oates own comments on the piece. ... Read more

Product Description
John Reddy Heart came to Willowsville, New York, driving a salmon-colored Cadillac Bel Air and sitting on three Las Vegas phone books; he was eleven years old. From that day on, as John, his seductive mother, addled grandfather, and younger siblings settled into one of the town's most beautiful homes, John Reddy Heart would become legendary as a rebel, a heartthrob, and an outlaw. In this uproarious epic novel from one of our most gifted contemporary storytellers, the ballad of John Reddy Heart--his rise, fall, and second ascent into the realm of myth--is sung by a chorus of Willowsville voices who find in him their savior, scapegoat, dream lover, and confessor. Broke Heart Blues may be the most entertaining novel yet from Joyce Carol Oates: razor-sharp satire that holds a mirror up to America's obsession with celebrity.

"Superbly inventive, driven by a dynamo of nostalgic emotion . . . Broke Heart Blues more than maintains Oates's place as one of America's finest contemporary novelists." --San Francisco Chronicle Book Review

"Oates at her blazing best . . . The extraordinary and ordinary exchange fates, trade secrets, and locker combinations, for the fevered, hierarchical world of adolescence is Oates's great muse . . . Astonishing." --Lorrie Moore, The New York Review of BooksAmazon.com Review
If our age's ascendant idol is celebrity, then Joyce Carol Oates's conceitin Broke Heart Blues--that such worship is as compelling as in anyless secular era--is both insight and affront. Set primarily in an affluentBuffalo, New York, suburb in the mid-'60s, the novel's charismatic core is high-schoolsensation John Reddy Heart, a local legend whose faultless, James Dean coolis so penetrating that it colors his peers' lives--even as his Christ-liketransfiguration removes him from their orbit. As always, Oates'schronicling of her many characters is fairly astonishing in its scope,while the allegorical sheen of the book allows her to probe an oftenambivalent fascination.

When the young John Reddy first arrives in town, he--as well as hisbeautiful and dissolute mother--becomes an object of instant awe. Handsome,dangerous, and inscrutable, he transforms steadily into a near-rumor, hisevery act lore-worthy, his habits the stuff of endless speculation. "Thoughhe enters you through the eyes, he's someone you feel," observes oneclassmate. While his allure is, initially, mostly physical--the boys wantto emulate him, the girls want to lose their virginity to him--John Reddyeventually becomes transcendent: that someone like him exists is achallenge to the drab and predictable trajectories of his classmates'lives. When one of his mother's lovers is killed, and the evidenceseemingly points to John Reddy himself, a feverish martyrdom ensues, aself-sacrifice that is, we discover, more tangled and exacting than hisdisciple-like peers can imagine.

Oates, admirably, takes many chances in Broke Heart Blues, not theleast of which is a frequent first-person plural narrator that,while allowing both a broad and immediate view of the proceedings, oftenseems thickly undifferentiated, a device for emphasizing the insular natureof rumor. John Reddy's identification with Christ (and the trinity he formswith his mother and grandfather) is a difficult maneuver as well, makinghim less a viable protagonist than a central cipher, an accretion ofconjecture and myth. When, after a lengthy detour into the prosaicaftermath of John Reddy's high school career, we see his classmates attheir 30-year reunion in Second Coming posture, longing for a John Reddysighting, the endurance of celebrity becomes not only plain but pathetic.The cult of personality may lead to redemption, but life, inevitably, iswhat transpires in the interval. --Ben Guterson ... Read more

Customer Reviews (32)

Truly awful
This book would have made a decent short story.Only the middle part from John Reddy Heart's perspective was worth reading.Her other characters are horrible caricatures of over-privileged teenagers and mid-life crisis adults.The 'dreamlike' quality of the writing just came across as a repetitive and annoying lack of focus.
Leave it on the shelf - you can find much better ways to spend your time.

really disappointing
I had checked this book out of the library before and returned it without reading it.I couldn't for the life of me remember why I had done so, because I usually like this author's work.So recently I checked it out again.It didn't take more than a few pages for me to remember why I had given up before.This novel never gets started.The most exciting page is the first one and then Oates begins to ramble.And ramble.

Don't get me wrong, I adore this author.I have inhaled everything else she has ever written.But there is much better to be found in "Oates Country" than this.

I have given this novel two stars for the quality of the writing and phrasing.Very few can craft a sentence better than Oates.However, this novel doesn't move beyond the pretty sentences, for me anyway.

However, thankfully, there are better Oates novels from which to choose.Try out We Were The Mulvaneys, Foxfire or My Heart Laid Bare instead.

JCO knows suburban culture
The history and trajectory of a privleged high school class of suburban Buffalo in the early sixties ... and their adopted bad boy, John Reddy Heart. Fascinating and tasty. Oates has such an ear and eye for U.S. culture.

not her best
As a fan of all things Joyce Carol Oates I was pretty dissapointed. I've read at least 75% of her books and this was the first time I didn't complete one. I put this book down because it was so repetitive and it didn't really go anywhere. The basic story is outline in the first couple pages and then slowly built up over the next hundred, but the charators never become real. I think that the idea behind the narrative was good. The story is told through the point of view of John Reddy Hart's classmates much like the Virgin Suicides, but if you're looking for a good Joyce Carol Oats read pick up Because its Bitter and Because its my Heart, or Invisible People if you can find it.

ADistortion of an Affluent High School Memory
I've enjoyed all of the books that I've read by author Joyce Carol Oates, except this one.She has portrayed the angst of adolescence so beautifully in previous novels.What happened?

Oates introduces the reader to fascinating people: mysterious John Reddy Heart, his luminescent mother and eccentric grandfather, but fails to flesh-out the characters, to establish deep family ties. Curiously, Heart's little brother becomes a computer industry tycoon and his pathetic little sister becomes a "famous" nun.If they had grown up to be less prominent citizens would that have diminished the plot?

The sensuality of being "young and restless" was ever-present as was the loss of that vitality 30 years later at the high-school reunion. In spite of the fact that the story was episodic, disjointed, I couldn't help but wonder what was the allure of John Reddy Heart (more saint than sinner). Alas, if only the story had been told from the "heart." ... Read more