In a sparsely furnished cosy (i.e. small) apartment at the age of eighteen, working multiple jobs and having little energy or money to do much in my off-hours (and no television), going to the library was my main source of entertainment for several years. And it seemed like, every time I went, there was another book by Joyce Carol Oates (b. 1938) on the new release displays.

Their cover art striking, their descriptions enticing: most of them with a good heft to them, the kind that I associated with a good read—but the big books I read back then, were the kind of fiction you can buy in drug- and grocery-stores now. Browsing her work online, I’m surprised by how many of her covers are familiar.

Hers was a name that I knew, and when Bookish Beck and I started to chat about her, I went looking to see where/how that happened. Deep in my files was a copy of an early interview with Margaret Atwood, a writer whose books I was already reading regularly. Knowing that Oates and Atwood were having conversations, that alone would have made me curious. (And Atwood was published in pocketbook in the beginning: women’s fiction, shelved with the beach books.)

Maybe I borrowed some of Oates’ books from those “new” library shelves—it wasn’t unusual for me to borrow books but give up on them quickly, after a page or two. Maybe I read them, even—I wasn’t yet dedicated to logging the details of my reading.

But the first that I recorded in my log was Black Water (1999), for a book club and, at the time, it seemed to me to be my first Oates. And I attributed its darkness to the subject—the death of a young woman travelling in a car with an American senator. Anyone familiar with American politics would have recognised the scenario—but I wasn’t that reader. But after all, even the title is dark. (I won’t name the real event, in case you want to read it, and don’t want history getting in your way.)

What I did read? Two novellas, a story collection, a skinny book about writing, and a short novel described as somewhat autobiographical. (Even at that point in her career, it was clear she was publishing at an extraordinary rate; I probably was hoping to find clues to her method, in a novel about a young bookish woman’s coming into her own!)

But, when it came to her booklength work, mostly what I remember is not reading it. I remember copies of Solstice, A Garden of Earthly Delights, Expensive People, them, and Blonde were on my shelves for many years; some of them I had begun to read on multiple occasions, but my bookmark got stuck early and lastingly.

The only work of hers I reread was a short story which was frequently anthologised in the kind of anthologies one found in abundance second-hand (probably textbooks—but they didn’t look like textbooks as I knew them).

I won’t name it, because I’m about to spoil the fact that what begins as an ordinary girl’s coming-of-age story ends with prolonged contact with a man you come to understand is not a flirt but a murderer (also based on a true story).

Many times I’ve read this story, but even on the most recent rereading (more than ten years ago and, once again, not recognising it as a story I’d read it before), I still fell entirely into the young woman’s view. Wholly adopting that state of knowing-everything-knowing-nothing-ness, a swift change in understanding, as she moves from a state of ease, confidence, and a sense of power in her exchange with this man, into vulnerability and—ultimately—terror.

Even though I’d like to think I’d recognise that story now, I’m not convinced I would.

Because knowing that story, I should have been prepared for what I found in By the North Gate (1963).

But I wasn’t.

And this is where Oates demonstrates her skill, because how often do women (people… but particularly women?) make the mistake of believing that they are in a safe space, that the individuals with whom they are sharing time and space are trustworthy…

…only to discover that that is not the case and, in fact, they are at great risk—and they are suddenly confronted with betrayal, brutality—or, both.

There are fourteen stories in this collection (some of which had been previously published in magazines—a reminder of the important role that periodicals can play in building writers’ careers) and no matter how ordinary their premise might seem, readers are meant to be unsettled (or appalled, or horrified) by how humans behave, simply going about the business of living their lives. By the obstacles they encounter, be they tangible or abstract.

From “The Census Taker” for instance:

“‘But why don’t he? It’s what I mean to do. I ain’t goin’ to keep on, no walled-in world, no numbers written down in a book to stand for me,’ the girl said despitefully, passionately. ‘I ain’t goin’ through the old ways – not comin’ from a child to a woman, havin’ children to keep on with the old ways, sufferin’ them, sufferin’ all agony to squeeze them out in no walled-in world! An’ sick all your life, an’ poor, and got to get up in the mornin’ to ice on the window. I ain’t goin’ through the old ways!’ She said. Her face had a harsh, unhealthy glow. ‘I ain’t!’”

Oates apparently read a lot of Flannery O’Connor, and it shows in her commitment to inhabiting a viewpoint (which appears to be quite different from the author’s experience) and in her use of dialogue. Her vocabulary is deliberate and her structure considered. (For instance, the repetition of “sufferin’”, which not only makes the character seem more believable—because who doesn’t repeat themselves when speaking passionately—but forces the word into the reader’s mind twice, so that we can’t overlook the implied truth beneath the girl’s desire to have a different sort of life than she’s seen other women living.

There are no serial killers here, just average people. People whose mental health has been dealt a blow or has been disrupted entirely, men and women who see opportunities to exploit naivete or innocence or good will, and families stressed by the sorts of tension that arise when sharing close quarters (say, a marriage strained by one spouse’s parent moving in).

Consider this bit from “Sweet Love Remembered”:

“Now they were out in the country, driving along the beach, but the land here was rough and sand-swept, the beach looked harsh and cold in the glare of the moon, the road was only little more than a single lane. ‘I don’t like to keep moving from one place to another,’ he said. Amie waited for him to continue. She thought about this, about him. He had told her about himself, of course, but she had listened only vaguely, she had matched her reactions to his gestures, she knew what to do, she understood the expected behavior. He was a teacher somewhere; he wrote things, but mostly he was a teacher of some sort, she thought, so she could not be sure – perhaps a teacher in college; she could not be sure. He was separated from his wife; there were some children. Amy could not remember, she had never really known.”

Amie finds herself in a place that she hadn’t envisioned, and the spiralling, turning-back-on-itself uncertainty is evident in the cluster of contradictions (she heard, she didn’t listen—she isn’t sure, she might know, she isn’t sure). Violence is not a constant in these stories, often there’s simply un-ease. (But it does erupt sometimes. Just as it does in real life, particularly when relationships are strained—by class, by poverty, by privilege.).

More than anything, Oates seems fascinated by the story that seems to exist superficially, and how it differs from the “truth” that is only visible when one peers closely or inward. This is a theme of enduring fascination for me, and the fact that Oates seems to choose the perspectives oft-overlooked in her era (e.g. young and unwed mothers, ageing parents, small-town youth who can’t figure how to fit where they were born) seals the deal.

By the North Gate proved to be a tough read for me, however; my stack was filled with injustice and loss and slaughter, and I had expected to find some relief with Oates but had misunderstood.

Now, I don’t know what I’ll find in The Assassins (1975), but at least now, I think, I’m ready for it, and my chunky pocketbook copy feels like a quintessential summer blockbuster novel (political intrigue √).

Rebecca at Bookish Beck is posting about her further adventures with JCO today as well. We’re planning to read another of her books in the fall, when the light falls early and the shadows of the bookstacks grow ever-more menacing. (One of my options alongside.)