08/15/2016
This collection of essays, reviews, and lectures from a reigning doyenne of American letters is a bit of a hodgepodge, but taken as a whole provides an eclectic survey of contemporary American literature. Oates is likely most familiar to readers as a novelist (The Man Without a Shadow) and short story writer. But the author is also one of the U.S.'s keenest literary critics, as the works collected here demonstrate in abundance. The book's first section, "The Writing Life," contains a lecture and a trio of essays. These are generous and engaging, though Oates's Cassandra-ish warnings about the threat social media poses to literary culture may chafe more tech-savvy audiences. In the second section, "Classics," a standout is her invigorating dive into H.P. Lovecraft's contributions to genre and literary fiction. The third section, "Contemporaries," is the largest and most cohesive. Reading these selected reviews, one develops an acute sense of Oates's literary philosophy as she lovingly yet rigorously critiques works by a diverse set of authors, including Derek Raymond and Jeanette Winterson. The final section, "Real Life," contains just one essay and thus feels a bit tacked on, but the piece is a harrowing and thought-provoking work of reportage on a visit to San Quentin Prison, and is well worth readers' time. (Sept.)

09/15/2016
This collection of essays from the award-winning author Oates ranges from observations on the writing life to critical reviews of classic and contemporary works. Additional pieces include commentary on the film The Fighter and details of a visit to San Quentin prison. The selection of 33 previously published essays encompasses a wide range of topics with Oates's pinpoint focus. "Writing Life" essays detail the demise of the 3-D book in spite of her claim that most authors write because of their love of physical books and the stories and information they contain. Oates considers Rebecca Mead's My Life in Middlemarch and Mead's lifelong admiration for George Eliot. Claire Tomalin's Charles Dickens: A Life is acknowledged for its literary craft for applying life to art. Observations on Larry McMurtry's The Last Kind Words Saloon recognize McMurtry's inclusion of "sharp-tongued wives and 'whores'" who match the men in the rough Texas environment. Additional authors critiqued include Jeanette Winterson, Anne Tyler, Zadie Smith, Lucia Berlin, J.M. Coetzee, and Paul Auster, among others, and, with a nod to Oates's love of boxing, Mike Tyson. VERDICT Oates's appreciation of books and reading while reflecting on the merit of contemporary authors is inspiring. [See Prepub Alert, 3/28/16.]—Joyce Sparrow, Kenneth City, FL

Renowned literary writer Joyce Carol Oates shares her thoughts on writing and reading in what could be called her literary memoir. Narrator Susan Ericksen captures Oates’s essence with great style and clear enunciation. The collection of writers Oates discusses is eclectic—H.P Lovecraft, John Updike, Larry McMurtry, and Margaret Atwood, to name a few. With each author she explores a particular work, framing its significance within his or her previous works and the culture in which it was produced. There’s a haughtiness to Eriksen’s delivery, which aligns with Oates’s linguistic flourishes. The author delves deeply into the abstract, and Eriksen is there to make her meaning clear through pacing and emphasis. L.E. © AudioFile 2016, Portland, Maine

2016-07-31
Another collection of sparkling literary essays from the prolific author of both fiction and nonfiction.Culled from her literary reviews in the New York Review of Books, the Kenyon Review, and other venues, these short essays probe the reasons we continue to read, both classics and contemporary works, and—despite the torture—write. Titling her collection after a smoldering line by Emily Dickinson, Oates (Humanities/Princeton Univ.; The Man Without a Shadow, 2016, etc.) finds enormous inspiration (and passionate literary obsession) in pursuing the answer to the age-old question, why do I write? In her initial essay, “Is the Uninspired Life Worth Living?” which establishes cohesion to the collection, she finds particular resonance with writers who grasp the essential subversive quality of literature—poets are often seized by a force beyond their control, being not in their “right mind,” and “out of [their] senses,” as Plato elucidates in Ion. (Poets, of course, were banned from the Republic because they could not conform to the authority of the state.) “Inspired” is akin to being “haunted” or “captivated,” and in these far-ranging, occasionally didactic essays, Oates delights in authors who have been selectively obsessed and captivated by their material: Rebecca Mead by Middlemarch; Claire Tomalin by Charles Dickens; Julian Barnes harnessing “catastrophe into art” while writing of the death of his wife of 30 years in Levels of Life. Always eclectic, Oates also includes essays on the visionary detective fiction of Derek Raymond; Wild West fabler Larry McMurtry; Louise Erdrich’s North Dakota novels, which Oates compares to William Faulkner’s Yoknapatawpha County cycle; and, most sensitively, Jeanette Winterson’s memoir of coming out to her North England Pentecostal mother. Oates ends with a strange visit to San Quentin prison with a group of female graduate students—not to teach, however, but to feel shocked by the experience. As always, Oates is curious, probing, and memorably startling.