Editor's Preface

Chapter 1Understanding Joyce Carol Oates
Chapter 2A Garden of Earthly Delights
Chapter 3Expensive People
Chapter 4them
Chapter 5The Short Stories (I): The Wheel of Love
Chapter 6Wonderland
Chapter 7Son of the Morning
Chapter 8Angel of Light
Chapter 9The Short Stories (II): Last Days

Conclusion
Bibliography
Index

Dust-Jacket Blurb

Understanding Joyce Carol Oates provides the reader with an introduction to and an overview of Oates' achievements in fiction. In addition to a general discussion of her distinctive style, themes and fictional concerns, the book gives an in-depth analysis of six of Oates' major novels and two of her short story collections. Though the selection of books from Oates' large canon is necessarily limited, this study covers the years 1967–1984 and attempts to trace the progression of her entire career. An extensive bibliography of works by and about Oates is also included.

Excerpt

Joyce Carol Oates's versatility as a fiction writer relates directly to her overwhelming fascination with the phenomenon of contemporary America: its colliding social and economic forces, its philosophical contradictions, its wayward, often violent energies. Taken as a whole, Oates's fiction portrays America as a seething, vibrant "wonderland" in which individual lives are frequently subject to disorder, dislocation, and extreme psychological turmoil. Her protagonists range from inner-city dwellers and migrant workers to intellectuals and affluent suburbanites; but all her characters, regardless of background, suffer intensely the conflicts and contradictions at the heart of our culture—a suffering Oates conveys with both scrupulous accuracy and great compassion.